Ten Years Gone

Maybe, she was the first one finished that day.  Or perhaps, she was the last labor of love handled before a pair of hands paused to unpack a brown-bag lunch.  It could have even been that the work-clock struck “that’s a wrap,” and the family-owned builder’s doors closed upon having crossed all final touches that constitute their holy custom of hand-assembled creation.  After yet another saintly shift of men and women aligned, in the light, to bind blank materials into the bending-benefit experienced of anglers the world over.  An hour, in the evening, that sealed the ending of the ordinary for some, but rather birthed the extraordinary for some unknown some-one.  True, it may have simply been a setting of sun that was preceded by fifty-eight years (at the time) of those very same resin-ating, time-honored traditions of molding excellence and issuing parabolic-passports to other worlds-wet by cork-taping the fulcrums of fish-finding freedom, but it was of some achieving hour imprinted of October during 2006 when the hands of a craftsman carefully set aside the final and freshly-fitted standing-length of a gleaming, graphite-dream.  One aching to begin the arcing life.  A celebration day, that the expert craftsmen, engineers, and designers who all humbly huddle between those honored walls and work under that legendary roof in Park Falls fell inspired to anoint with a unique name for their newest, avid kin.  She was to be introduced as FJ00689.  Measuring at a respectable ten-feet in length and weighing a healthy eleven-point-four ounces, every adorned feature of her tapered figure embodied the handcrafted pride of inspired imagination braved from a workshop in Wisconsin. 

Whatever the case, I’ll never know.  What matters most, is that a star was born that day.  Of a star.  One rebirthed, to spiral wrap and layer as the integral element of her graphite backbone.  Carbon, reshaped as an agile authenticator of Newton’s third law of motion (for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction).  A slender and sleek super-model that demonstrated such with every loaded cast it rocketed from shore like an arrow fired into the sky from a drawn bow.  A veritable slingshot crafted of the very fabric of atoms that were formed through nuclear fusion as the reactionary byproduct of stellar nucleosynthesis once burning deep in the belly of a now extinct star.  Thus, to really fancy over it, one of the best rods on Earth was eventually distilled from those very seconds spanning the universe’s evolutionary infancy marking the beginning of scientific time.  So, it may have been a near-eternity in the making, but I obligingly learned that she was worth the wait. 

By her very nature, it only seemed fitting then, that this surfcaster grew to know his accomplice best under star-light, where she shined most-frequently of a bending-benefit.  Those untold and unforgettable outings seasoned of salt and sand when the battling-bow of her spine and straining genuflection before the giving sea and pulsing tip startled alive by turning-tugs pulling within the tumbling wave and my white-knuckle grip frozen unto her upper-handle of cork were those shaking slices of time won of a bonding virtue.  Those innumerable, intransigent instances of influence she beached forever onto the banks of memory. 

Ten years gone.  The thousands and thousands of casts.  Dare I even imagine how many miles have unspooled through her concentric holds of ceramic.  Those polished passageways which have effectively guided me before waters gin-clear and steely-gray and Jersey-green.  Each faraway heave or short fling, a toss that tickled her to speak of swish-sounds as spiraling braid spewed into those haunts familiar or spilled before latitudes new and mysterious and afar.  One then inhaling silently to take it all back in.  A night-stick, bending always for those slopes sandy and drumming of pounding waves or trickling of wash by the seaside.  Of the ocean.  The Hook.  Harbors.  Sounds.  Flats.  Inlets.  Riverside.  Atop an esteemed grassy-knoll.  Over hills and dunes far away.  Road-trips to the stone-strewn forefronts of submerged boulder fields.  Baptisms adventured of storied, east-coast meccas.  Montauk.  Islands.  Before the houses of the holy.  Nearest the stairways of surfcasting heaven. 

Beside angling strangers.  In the silent company of friends.  With friends no longer with us.  Alongside my father.  In the whisper of midnight conversation disrupted by laughter.  Among calls yelling, “they’re over here!”  Among points out to sea indicating, “they’re way out there.”  Under the informing swarms and swoops of feathered fishing-finding shrieks fluttering in-front in-range.  Posed in a fish-hoisting picture.  Balanced in-hand or rested over shoulder.  Broken down in-car or mounted upright to front-bumper.  Laid upon grass or settled over sand.  Always asked of one last cast.      

Among blitzes and between blow-outs of weather.  In drenching rain and season-ending snow.  Of good times, of bad times.  Snapped of line.  Snagged a many lure.  Gone lifeless to lost battles.  Beached beauties.  Substantiator of, the epic.  Chased bait-balls, pinpointed boils, cheered-on blow-ups, and aimed toward tail-slaps.  Pursued invariably under soaking summer sun and subtle shadow of autumnal moon and constellations of twinkling light and grey-colored, low-pressure bellies pressing of childhood imagination.

Through showers of salt.  The wearing and tearing.  Those drops, grazes, bangs, scratches, scrapes, chips, and crashes.  Tolls cast to time.  Freshwater wash-downs and soapy cleanings.  Safe, tucked-away leanings.  Inert winter hibernations.  Readying spring dustings.  An eventual reunion of two, agreeing sections.  The engagement proposal of a reel.  The rhythm of that first-cast made again.  All of that, and so much more.  A whole lotta love.  For the reverence of a rod held in-hand.  For a purebred.  A mid-western-made medicine.  An arcing elixir of graphite-fed adrenalin.  For dreams that may finally be witnessed in colors littoral and living.  You shook me.  Your song will forever remain the same.  Thank you.

They're Here

It happens one night during October.  When dreams are lulled to drift the reaches of your mind made by the whispers of water escaping from a surrounding sea.  By the siren of swells and rhythms that rise in swallowing wave from the silence of infinite blackness whence they came.  Time looms above, twinkling of its endless size, casting down her clearest of invitation to fall lost within the magnitude of a skyward-seizing moment.  To wander amongst the nebulae of dust powdering the very same pathway of discovery marked of fallen footsteps by untold generations of flesh come before.  To feel reduced in size, in order to gainfully grow.  For this celestial survey cast trillions of miles away across the existence of eternity.  At pinholes of light, like scattered grains of salt spilled upon the table of the heavens.  Of dark-adapted eyes conjuring revelations from concealment.  Of clustered constellations fabled and worshipped of seafaring ancients.  For the catching moment when distractions of thought and sight are lured by a streaking Orionid meteor raining rapidly from an expanse of the eastern abyss.  That cosmic-captive of billions-of-years whose fateful flash of escape only ricochets this rim of emptiness that is furthest of time’s origins billions of light-years away.  A profound pronouncement of presence only to vanish of its very presence in this world above a beam of eyes casting below, casting over all.  This chance encounter becoming of your sling of sight a breath of shining color from the vast black nothingness.  One witnessed as happenstance, shooting from the heavens.

Without warning, your rod bends hard and then you know.  They’re here.  Suddenly, immeasurable distances drawn of space and time instantly coalesce to exist only as the infinitely-small distance drawn of taut-line now separating you from the sight of breathing-color.  One of fins that may briefly, if not spectacularly, illuminate your night.  She too, has pronounced a presence, pulling from her expansive abyss, of a nomadic life invited only by this otherworldly nature of night.  One shining of streaking-colors shooting laterally amongst a vastness of spilled-salt looming over your whispering universe of sand.   One flashing at the epicenter of your own striking, celestial retrieval.  One witnessed as fortune, flopping from the starlit shallows.

They're Coming

They’re coming.  With every successive sunrise piercing from the Atlantic, spilling skyward the brightly blooming hues of hypnosis over first-light’s ombré canvas of cobalt-blue quietude.  By every swallowing of sight’s colors in sinking sun-set.  With every hourly move of an ambitiously-rising and counter of a rhythmically-receding current breathing of this seasonally-cooling, steely-grey tide.  By all rolling waves thrust ashore, those tirelessly sculpting our shorelines in crashing spray and tumbling thunders of splash.  With earnest, as the earlobe-biting whistle of a signaling season’s northwest- borne whisk and whirl of wind descends.  The sensing waters, infinite and deep and mercurial, ripple in vibration to her approaching pulses of wave.  Those scales of millions pushing ahead and slipping-through a season’s chilling cauldron of water.  Of salt shedding the smothered affection of a many summer sun’s courting.  A sea, mature of life, cradling in suspension the striped-multitudes glimmering of gold and green.  Those collagenous filaments of dorsals, responsive and raised, surreptitiously-seeking, pillaging, and barraging.  Ones cleaving through the life-blood of her element, morning by morning, night by night, mile by migrating mile.  The schooling constellation of her every spilling turn in an undersea infestation of viridescence.  There sway the silhouettes of standing dorsals and splayed caudals shoaling within the jade-green barrels breaking over bars.  Those rolling waves cast ashore giving glints of light that reveal the silence of her color caught within a vacuous stare angled asea.  Fluid movements.  Nature’s orchestral order, observed.  A timbre, resonating in the heart of the surf-afflicted's soul.  For this natural steeping of life and time, seen swirling in a perfect tincture of opportunity.  For this viridescent splendor of October.  This migration of Morone.  This season of Sax.

Walk-Off Fish

First "pitch" and I sent one over the wall for a walk-off solo shot.  The river wall.. And after a long game of play under the cast of night lights, various pitching changes made and designated swimmers called into action, the scored simply ended 1-0 in a home team win over the Striped visitors.  All it ever takes is one raised fish, no matter the size (or even shape!) to change the game.  A win will always be a win.

 

On a dissimilar field of dreams tonight, the Chicago Cubs pulled-off an epic series comeback, winning 3 consecutive do-or-die games over the week, taking the final game 7 of the 112th World Series with a score of 8-7 in suspenseful extra-innings.  Their historic, 108-year clubhouse dry-spell was victoriously showered in champagne, finally.  For the Cubs, it was a win unlike any other win.  A tide, however seasonally-challenging, favored in delivering destiny.  However microcosmic in comparison, it's that exact tide of favor that every fisherman who swings graphite into the night hopes to one-day find himself standing ready for.  Ready to steal his own game 7 victory from the hold of night.

Portrait of Perfection

There are those found inspired by nightfall’s surge of darkness that suddenly swallows all failing shades and shadows of daylight.  The rock-hoppers.  The fence climbers.  The skishing wet-suiters.  The wader-clad.  All those who motion and daydream throughout light of day, but live to mobilize during this magic hour of metamorphosis.  This reactive catalyst they know as sunset.  That spilling span of time when the covert cadres grow stirred by incitement for the holding sea’s most coveted fortune dressed of fins.  For Sax, the preeminent inshore piscatorial portrait of perfection, whose very migratory manifestations brave as the swimming envy of their every neglected exchange of nocturnal retrieve and prelude of sudden, striking anticipation. 

The rod-wielding advantaged arrive all points framed of seawater to disappear from sight, save a headlamp’s faraway blink of light unmasking perfect strangers standing with the night.  Fellow-fishers honoring homage at the forefront of their chosen sandy alters.  Their sanctuaries of giving generosity that with flooding tides, are blanketed by the cover of lapping waters inundating the fringes of surf-carved slopes.  There, entrenched amongst the rhythmic chorus of gravel and stones churning and sands seething, they wait for just one brief encounter when the Atlantic’s divine-denizen may be momentarily revealed from such underwater expanses of her briny extremities to lay deathly still upon the terra firma fraction of a foreign world pierced of starlight and Orion overseeing all high above.  They imagine the scaly sight of her gleaming green glamor to again fall reflected upon the gaze of their hungered, hunting eyes.  These envisions all the same that thousands upon thousands exert so many countless hours of in-pursuit, only for those so few glorious seconds borne as hovering witness.  Sax, their shining trophy.  A mount suitable for the mantle of memory.

So each does what he knows best.  He casts.  He casts, again.  And yet, again.  He casts such that triumph may again saturate his eyes in scaly accents of oceanic-going lavender atop those thick shoulders shimmering of a glittering gold.  He wets line for those seven black, laterally-running stripes segmenting a broad viridescent body’s gradient of moss-green washing away to white.  He wades closer towards a haunting memory luring to ensure that only the most crazed and afflicted remain awake for through all hours and minutes of an autumn or winter night.  Wading and waiting for that one, preferred incident of tidal rendezvous.  He accepts, as an adamant angler in a state of sleep-deprived stupor, that he may languish in withering-away, suddenly seeing double-vision of the graphite accomplice held before him, knowing full-well there exists no chance of hooking a double-header, but casts again, to only try.  He reties, for the glory of reliving a moment that was lived yesteryear.  For the next cast made that will fall closer in closing sigma’s statistically-probable, enuring curve of time, before enduring the next startling tug.  He switches colors, for the hope of seeing the inconceivable.  For the surprise and thrill of surfacing a new personal-best.  He readies himself for the shaking-satisfaction of lying her wet, long broad body onto sand, while making visual contact of her golden-colored iris rotating towards his own, as a skinny rush of bubbling water passes around her alabaster-colored belly, only to stall upon the beach slope and then retreat to sea.  To photograph the Atlantic’s prized daughter, pulled aground upon dark and hard-packed, smoothened sand.

It’s the picture of such a moment thus captured in his mind, raised of his hands and hoisted ashore by hook, which keeps him reeling in the night.  The torpedo-shaped portrait, embodied of time and tide, slice of moon and ceiling of cloud, buffet of bait and blow of wind, water of chilling and luck of locating, is ultimately, where this collision of sea will have confessed her best-held secrets unto sand.  As Sax.  As a sculptured snap-shot freeze-framed in his mind forever.  As a streamlined benefit tail-slapping the glass-smooth, saturated sands of a beach.  All, for pursuit of recreation.  All, in the name of chasing picture-perfect dreams worthy of re-creation.

"Joe's Bench"

A plaque memorializing the legacy of a fallen-fisher was dedicated onto a riverside bench in Sea Bright waiting for the interest of all and any.  However firm at rest, its concrete frame and cemented foundation didn't stand a chance at surviving through the raging and ruinous night that was October 29, 2012. 

I never met Joe.  I'd like to imagine he was a fine, elderly man who awarded those he met with a warm and anesthetic sense of kindness, impressed time with nostalgic, neighborly manners, perfect strangers a welcoming smile, and as a angling companion, one who interrupted silence on the water with his many tales of bygone fish stories.  Eras of time I can only envision in colors sepia or black & white.  Lazy days of his youth that swept by like the tide rolling before his feet, off to the depths of elsewhere, but always seen to return with the memorable clarity of hope in existence.  The water he knew, as another returning flood of churning prosperity.  His presence before it, as the life-giving indulgence to intercept, wrangle, and reel-in another tail.  And with that, another tale, from Joe. 

May we all, one day, be judged as big enough to keep.

  

Evidence

Hunter's Moon

May the fortunate fishers among us be those whose eye's wander skyward to elope with the silvery Hunter’s Moon and whose thoughts arise from a silhouette of shadow to reflect within the soft shower of her chalky light.  That autumnal anglers absorb those salty seconds of silence prescribed as the remedying tonic of time spent wading hip-deep in this seasonally-cooling and clear, briny bath of October's bringing.  The ancient apothecary of saltwater we so habitually and dearly seek to benefit a humbling renewal of spirit.  Tonight, most especially, under the fully-rounded face and cratered celestial charm of our seleno-saucer's captivating companionship admired somewhere overhead.

Excerpt in illustration is that of author Rich Murphy - Fly Fishing for Striped Bass (2007). 

Sturdy Tails Has September

It comes but once a year, those thirty dreamy days of September.  The long-awaited “local’s summer” that welcomes a different face of tourists to the surfcaster’s town.  It’s an all-too-brief, but coveted splash of time, when the angling lunate-lunatic leers and lunges to engage in methods of combat-fishing with anxious heaves of tin and crossed-line retrieves of frenzy at the very sight of those porpoising pelagic fish glazed-over in green backs bursting airborne.  Those targets of piscatorial passion rapidly racing to assault the many hapless Anchovies and Silversides they prey. 

So with it, hardly was wasted a balmy afternoon’s outgoing ebb ripping seaward through The Hook’s Rip for those hard-fighting, but hard-to-hook, hard-tails.  The summertime swimmers whose uncommon names of Fat Albert or Spanish Mack  and even Jack Crevalle are of a celebrity status to the cluster of graphite and fiberglass poles of paparazzi slinging.  Those anxiously repositioning or excitedly aiming, cramming closer among that one lucky reel emptying and singing. 

            This year, with the arrival of an early-season Nor’easter as the thirtieth sunset sets, we may faintly lament, knowing all good things must come to a tail-end.  Twenty-minute barefoot treks in bathing suits through Fisherman’s Trail will soon be waived for waders instead, but with the colorful benefaction of contentment, most must agree that the sturdy tails of September have again treated us well. 

This is a beautiful time of year to celebrate cool, crisp-air nights, dwindling humidity, and free-of-charge, wide-open beach access come daybreak.  With any luck, just one more pelagic will make it up a slope of sand or slide of slimy rock as an autumnal surprise. 

Now, as the first sunrise of October is nearest, the surfcaster is yet furthest from the tale-end of a season..