- Home Water - November 4, 2024
- The Ferrari of Fly Rods - September 18, 2024
I don’t get off the train at Goldens Bridge even though I think about it. It’s just such a beautiful name that I’d like to see what’s there.
But my train stop is not Goldens Bridge, it’s two stops later, after Purdy’s; it’s Croton Falls. Croton Falls is another good name for a place if you’re looking to go fly fishing and I am.
I’m on my way to fish what’s becoming my home water. I can call it “home water” because I know it well enough to know the fish there personally. (Can I say I know fish “personally” or should I say that I know them “individually”?) Anyway, Croton Falls is where I get off the train to fish the Croton River.
I leave the train platform, cross the parking lot, and head into the woods that slope downhill to the river. I pull waders and gear from my pack, suit up and step daintily into the undergrowth, hoping brambles won’t ruin another pair of waders. The walk down is steep and the last part is hand-over-hand to reach the bank where there’s a nice riffle feeding a wide pool. It’s overgrown with trees including some big peeling sycamores shading the stream and dropping their broad leaves into it. I can feel myself easing into a delicious relaxation as I hear the river running and smell the woods. I say the words again, “home water.”
The Croton River where I fish is the West Branch where it flows out of Croton Falls Reservoir, clear and cool. I fish there because it’s nice water but even more so because I can reach it by train from my apartment in New York City. It’s one subway ride, a walk and ride on Metro North to get to the river. No car needed. Just me and my pack, carrying my rod, looking a bit odd as I walk through Harlem on 125th street, but it’s fun and it takes me to what’s become my home water.
When I first started fly fishing as a kid, I had a home water stream I could ride my bike to near Long Lake in the Adirondacks. It was called Big Brook and there was one pool I fished. It was a bushwhack off the road- 15 minutes of pushing through the trees until the creek emerged, tannin dark, flowing out of a swamp. I fished for brook trout with several flies I tied. A Zug Bug and a Mickey Finn were my staples. I stood near where the flow narrowed out of the swamp and I cast down stream and worked flies along the edge of the current and into the pool.
This was my home water because I knew it and I knew the fish. I didn’t know much of it, just one spot and two flies, but I knew it well enough to catch fish there in all seasons. And I’m learning the Croton this way too.
I had a friend once who said wisdom is nothing more than pattern recognition; that crosses my mind as I start to cast upstream. I hang a Zebra Midge off a Hare’s Ear under a strike indicator and let the rig float down with the bubbles. I believe in these flies and the movements feel natural. On each downstream float I expect to feel a fish seize a fly and pull against me. That’s because this all follows a pattern that I know well: the pattern of these flies, this way of casting and this place on the stream. This is familiar and this is what passes for wisdom. But I don’t catch any in that pool so I move upstream.
Here the bushes crowd the stream and I’m stooping under branches and pushing through thickets over the water which is fast flowing and twisting around corners. I’m headed for a fallen log I know. I lift my head from under a branch that knocks off my hat and I see the log. It’s a tree that fell off the bank and now lies part way in the stream aligned with the current. The water beside the log is dark and deep.
I snip off the Zebra Midge so I just have the Hare’s Ear because I want to keep it simple in this mess of trees. Also, controlling the drift beside the log will be enough of a challenge with just one fly. But I know there’s a fish there. And then I see a flash in the deep water.
“There you are. Still hungry for nymphs, I see.”
I force myself to move slowly. I keep my eyes on the fast water seam beside the log and look closely at the overhanging branches. This is where as a younger person I always got so excited I screwed it up. I’d cast too fast and embed my hook in a branch or try to get too close and stumble into the fish’s view. But I know myself better now. I can be calmer.
There’s enough room for a short roll cast upstream of the log where the current flows around a bend and then courses deeply beside it. I flip the fly into the seam. Not far enough upstream. I let it flow downstream then flip it again. This time it lands upstream of the log and floats naturally downstream. I do it again. And again. I’m in the rhythm now, losing myself in the action of casting. I’m forgetting about the fish and I’m just feeling the satisfaction of placing the fly in the right spot and letting myself dissolve into the flow of the stream and the flow of my actions.
Then, wham! I’m pulling against a living force and my rod is bobbing with resistance. I see a flash of white as the fish goes broadside to me heading downstream. I take in line and step back onto a little beach lifting my rod higher and pulling in line.
Back on the train heading south, I pass Goldens Bridge and I watch swans paddling the Muscott Reservoir like wedding cakes floating by. The fish I hooked next to the log was the first and last one of the day. A healthy brown, lord of that pool. I continued pushing my way upstream after but my hunter’s instinct was gone and I was not so much fishing anymore as just exploring. I had made a connection with that beautiful creature and that was enough for one day. Especially knowing that I’d be back soon. It’s my home water.
