Farmington River Summer

August 7, 1992 Farmington River
Trout Management Area, Junction 318 bridge, New Hartford, CT.
Hundreds and hundreds of risers. All nice trout. Light green mayfly – almost sulfur in color. They were taking emergers. Spoke with some of the regulars. Don’t know why they keep coming back. There must be a hundred fishless days for every trout caught. Clearest river in New England, beautiful – just sparkly. Tried everything in my vest. Had two trout examine the offering. Got to figure out a presentation to fool these wily devils. This stretch of the river tries men’s souls, but all seem to know when to quit – after sundown.

Hindus have a term for the nervous energy that is the common affliction of modern times “rajas” – rajas is the constant need to live in the future – to plan, to worry, to fill the hours with activity towards a perceived purpose. Southerners look at Northerners with an air of amusment and resignation at the constant state of “rajas.”

In Yiddish there is a similar term “spilkes” (pronounced Schpilkees”) this loosely translated means something like a child with needles in his bum who can’t sit still and is filled with nervous energy. The lesson of this trip was the need to balance out the rajas. The Hindus have two other terms that complete the trinity – tomas, which roughly translates to sloth or inaction and sattva – which is that state of being in balance or satisfied.

This August 7 entry would be funny were it not so pitiful. The fact that I felt the need to go to three different streams and five different stretches of river is really an indication of a desperate man. A man succumbing to his rajas.

Once I reached the Farmington though, I should have stayed put. Instead I used a tactic that all fly fishermen employ at one time or another. I stood at the edge of the well and declared it dry without so much as lowering the bucket. There is a phrase that fishermen often use – “it just doesn’t look fishy” meaning there are seemingly no fish in there.

Certainly there are sections of a stream that hold more trout than others, but looking back at the section of water that had the dace, the suckers and the feeder stream on the Farmington, in hindsight I likely passed over a place that would have allowed me to catch a nice fish in a peaceful solitary surrounding. As opposed to the trout management area where dozens of fly fishers lined the banks and you had to find a slot to fish in without disturbing the dozens of fisherman downstream from you.

While it is not uncommon to fish multiple bodies of water in a day of fishing, it appears that I was really doing more scouting than fishing. There is something in our nature that wants to store up the possibilities of future experiences much like a squirrel hording his nuts for the winter. I found that I was often trying to gather as much information about fishing spots as I could, like a fishing guide who relies on “sports” or clients catching fish to make a living.

While I have never been a paid guide, I believe I’ve always aspired to be a guide. Taking a friend or an acquaintance out and helping them to catch fish is pleasing in many ways. By teaching someone to fly fish and seeing them succeed you get a confirmation that your knowledge and techniques are valid – thereby stroking your own ego and providing them with a new skill. It is also selfless, because to teach someone properly requires that you often need to serve the other fisherman by tying on flies, finding the best place to cast and sometimes retrieving their fly from a tree branch or the back of their vest.

If you are teaching a beginner, it requires lessons in casting, patience, and judicious imparting of information. Too much info will likely put them off the sport forever. In a way you are a proponent of fly fishing as a sport so you are also a bit of an evangelist. You view yourself not just as some dandy-looking sport gracefully whipping colored line through the air, but as a steward of the environment.

On this day, I may have been seeking out future “honey-holes” -- a term that denotes a place teeming with fish. Somewhat like shooting fish in a barrel, but still requiring the requisite skills of an angler. It is a view towards the future that is mildly impatient, but provides the impetus to make things more efficient So it was under this influence of excessive rajas that I motored around Northern Connecticut in my rental car in search of fishing spots that I could store up for the future. The lesson of the day – when you are irresistibly propelled forward by a force within you that tells you that life is elsewhere, stay put.

My ex-Mother-in-law gave my ex-wife a little plaque that we kept in our bathroom. It simply said – “Bloom where you are planted.” This may be summed up in the words uttered by every Mom on the planet at one time or another – which sounds like the wisdom of a sage priest high upon a mountain in the Himalayas – “Sit still.”