Bergdorf Saxatilis

The dramatic lighting she appeared within alongside the avenue of my urban, evening amble captured my attention rather unexpectedly, but I immediately and instinctively recognized her striking form flaunted outwardly on display.  In an instant, my eyes poured over all of those perfectly-proportioned and pleasing curves that would incite any of her spellbound admirers to wildly ogle accordingly alike.  Unbelievable, I thought with smiling surprise.  So spectacular, striking, and altogether startling.  Dressed to kill, I see.  But, here?  What were the chances, I asked?  Not exactly as you were when first your eye I eyed, but such seems your beauty still.  I imagine she’ll always entertain that irresistible and overwhelming allure over me, holding me entirely inescapable of anything but casting her attention and having turned my head when I least expect it.

She was joined even by company clearly of a haute-pedigree, albeit not heartbreakers from the familiarity of her own neighborhood.  I could tell.  They were long and lean, seductive out-of-towners that countless crazed men have tried their hands at reeling-in of capricious affection, spending thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of dollars in a courting pursuit, all for the hope of capturing a prize as fine-looking.  They were those of dreamy, exotic names like A. Solandri, T. Albacares, Makaira, Istiophorus, Megalopidae, Coryphaena, or Carangidae.  Who could blame them?  As I understood it, their only curse was that of being victims of adventure and ambition, as disposed, heart-throb casualties of this most ancient disease of devotion. 

But here she was, of all places, on the corner of 5^th & 58^th in mid-town Manhattan, dressed to the nines in a custom-fitted, sparkling sequin skin, posing for everyone to admire - in a Bergdorf Goodman display window!  Her sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, although mine eye may be deceived.  Although she boasted no laterally-running stripes or viridescent shoulders, clearly every running inch and every scale of tile embodied that of the magnificently-admired Morone Saxatilis, from head to tail.  Surprising, on this bustling Saturday night in the heart of New York City’s concrete jungle, she appeared naturally-poised in a luxury retail store’s eye-catching exhibition, despite being mounted as an ornate and opulent rendition of various Atlantic saltwater gamefish artistically depicted in an undersea, visual offense of tiny tiles meticulously-laid in scaly hues of cerulean and seafoam blue, silver, and copper.  For whatever reason, the Eastern seaboard’s Queen of the Whitewater was decorated as a prop amid the imaginative staging of an aquatic-themed spring clothing-line inspired by those impossibly-blue, bluewater-borne delights of a shoreline swept solely by the swallowing Gulfstream.  The island of Bermuda. Bergdorf’s colorful promotion of paradise.

For a moment, I stepped aside from the throngs of passersby’s flooding this one sidewalk so I could look her down.  I thought, although camouflaged in tile among speedy, apex pelagics, this one brown egg among the eleven white is actually right where she belongs.  She was being honored on the very ancient island of bedrock and glass and raised steel rooted square in the middle of Morone’s-mecca, one bisecting the mountainous descent of the Hudson’s headwaters into the briny New York Bight.  Her promotion of paradise, for all faraway islands and rocks and sands she inhabits for consumers of Nature.  For us, the countless surfcasters, metropolitan and suburban and rural, who offer seasonal homage to her presence in these very surrounding waters of our chosen reaches.  Beginning here, from this saturating artery of tidal-life she seasonally swims and spawns, the river that flows two ways. 

In a short month-and-a-half, or less, I’ll be seeking her adoration, thinking of her day and night.  Wading, waiting, and wondering.  Hypnotized in daydreams over her portrait of perfection that hardly one can deny as anything but sublime.  Wooing for her favor and courting pursuit, myself.  Again, I’ll find myself on the chase for her undying affection.  On nighttime dates lit subtly by stars.  Running my own ad campaign with hopes of attracting the sights of her splashing exhibitions.  And as the season’s fashion’s change, so will my offerings.  Adapting always, for more.  

Bergdorf Saxatilis

 Carangidae

T. Albacares

Why does the angler angle? (excerpt from "The Song of the Angler")

The year 1967 chanced A.J. McClane to huddle over the rackety hammering of a typewriter some evening.  A Renaissance man of the angling world was steadfast in a silent recollection, save a soft parade of fingers triggering an alphabet of keys into provoking the mechanical, striking sound of typebars as they transcribed his storied, four-plus decades of angling tenure onto paper.  With each thought, words assembled into sentences, as return by each carriage return branded to page that which merely bled from his veins of experience, and with it, the testimony of a life appeared to multiply upon the eclipsing memoir before him as if spontaneous generation were at all possible.  What he must have humbly pulled from the roller embodied the hallmark of one life’s experiences in having fished 140 different countries in a remarkable variety of fresh and saltwater environments.  It was his unyielding defense, answered complete.   He titled his piece of writing “The Song of the Angler.”  At last imprinted to paper, was a single man’s articulate attempt at detailing what he witnessed in color and experienced in sensation as ample rationale in elucidating elemental justifications to a question posed of non-anglers - why fish? 

For McClane, angling was as natural as breathing the air that surrounded him.   There was never the hint of any why.  He knew of no better reason not to. 

Whether you will agree with all, most, some, or none of McClane’s reasoning is entirely up to you, the individual angler.  That, is the entire premise of his plea.  That angling, and what it meant to him, spooled solely upon the reel of his own heart and twinkled upon the arbor of his eyes.  Its story, a retrieval of ritual and people and places and favor he held dearest.  Yet, similarities of interest, pursuit, or experience overlap in the largest sense, such that each individual pair of hands clenching at the lower-end of a rod with eyes set asea or those cast downstream through the curves of towering canyon or impasse of snow-capped mountain or vista of infinite plain, over rounded river rock and wind-combed leafy limb, before babbling or whitecapped water, blazing sun or star-studded sky, each will have understood those indisputable, universal musical notes we hear emanating from the symphony of life as being one immersed with Nature.  What genre of music one chooses as an angler is entirely self-determined. 

Perhaps, it is only the angler himself who knows exactly why he angles, but for each rising of the rod tip, there sounds yet another note of music enjoyed.  Plucking at the heartstrings are those “caudal confessions, tides of talking, and angles of life” awaiting to flood through the angler’s eyes.  His ever-lasting, magnificent score, the song of the angler.

………………………………………………………

(excerpt)

People often ask me why I enjoy fishing, and I cannot explain it to them because there is no reason in the way they want meanings described.  They are asking a man why he enjoys breathing when he really has no choice but to wonder at its truth. There are pundits who believe that the rod provides an outlet for our hostilities, our frustrated egos, or our competitive instincts, or that it symbolizes the primitive feelings of a man in his search for food, ergo the need to kill.  To a degree I believe all these qualities exist in every participant in any sport, and if so, healthfully so, as it is far more harmless to vent one’s spleen on a trout stream or a golf course than on one’s fellow man.  However, if this assumption is logical, then the rationale of angling is still without explanation.

Angling is a robe that a man wears proudly.  It is tightly woven in a fabric of moral, social, and philosophical threads which are not easily rent by the violent climate of our times.  It is foolish to think, as it has been said, that all men who fish are good men, as evil exists on all of life’s paths, but I would argue that life is a greater challenge than death, and that reality is as close as the nearest river.  Perhaps an exceptional angler doesn’t prove the rule, but then anglers are exceptional people.

What are the rewards of angling? A dead fish? A trophy? At some point perhaps, but then it takes years to become an angler.  There are tidal marks in our development.  In the beginning, when one is very young and inexperienced, fish are measured in quantity.  Then, only quality becomes important.  Eventually even record fish lose their significance unless they are of a particular species, and ultimately the size doesn’t matter provided they are difficult to catch.

Psychologists tell us that one reason why we enjoy fishing is because it is an escape.  This is meaningless.  True, a man who works in the city wants to “escape” to the country, but the clinical implication is that (no matter where a man lives), he seeks to avoid reality.  This is as obtuse as the philosophical doctrine which holds that no reality exists outside the mind.

Perhaps it’s the farm boy in me, but I would apply Aristotelian logic – the chicken came before the egg because it is real and the egg is only potential.  By the same reasoning the fluid content of a stream is nothing but water when it erupts from a city faucet, but given shores it becomes a river, and as a river it is perfectly capable of creating life, and therefore it is real.  It is not a sewer, nor a conveyor of barges and lumber, although it can be pressed to these burdens and, indeed, as a living thing it can also become lost in its responsibilities.

So if escapism is a reason for angling – then the escape is to reality.  The sense of freedom that we enjoy in the outdoors is, after all, a normal reaction to a more rational environment.

Who but an angler knows that magic hour when the red lamp of summer drops behind blackening hemlocks and the mayflies emerge from the dull folds of their nymphal robes to dance in ritual as old as the river itself?  Trout appear one by one and the angler begins his game in movements as stylized as Japanese poetry.  Perhaps he will hook that wonder-spotted rogue, or maybe he will remain in silent pantomime long into the night with no visible reward.

That, Professor, is why anglers really angle.

- A.J. McClane (1967)