Grews Pond, Falmouth

July 4, 1992
Grews Pond, Falmouth MA
Spin gear due to wind. Alan Shoolman caught one tiny smallmouth. Deep. Kettle pond, clear water. Scraped my legs on rocks/light rain.

This was the second attempt at one of the geological kettle ponds in Cape Cod. The interesting thing that I note about this trip was that I scraped my legs and there was a light rain. We didn’t bring the canoe with us today – likely due to the dreary weather.

Scraped shins are pretty common affliction among fisherman. Scrambling among rocks is part of the territory in finding the places where fish like to hide. Contrary to the images of fly fisherman in television commercials, standing knee-deep in smooth flowing rivers, fully protected with waders that go up to their chests, fly fisherman often fish wearing shorts and Tevas among sharp algae covered rocks.

Fishing waders are a modern invention that greatly advanced the sport of fishing. Free of the restrictions of a boat, waders allowed you to enter the water on its own terms and get close with nature without actually getting nature on you. The simple concept of keeping the water off your skin can ward off hypothermia for the better part of an hour, bulking up underneath your waders with long underwear or having insulated waders can keep you in the water for nearly half the day under the most brutal weather conditions.

We all like protection. Protection and preserving your comfort are the most basic human instincts after straight up survival. We all seek comfort, whether it is a better seat for our bicycle, higher thread count sheets, a new SUV, or the brand o ultra-soft f toilet paper my ex-wife buys that is the envy of her brother who lives in Portland (his ex-wife is still purchasing the 1000 sheet rolls of Scott Tissue that have been in restrooms since I was in Elementary school in the 60’s).

To keep things simple and to avoid hauling around waders or slogging around and over boulders and rocks with what is really the sartorial equivalent of a clown’s oufit; often times fishermen do what is called “wading wet.” When I was a teenager wading wet meant Levis and a pair of old sneakers. It seemed slightly more palatable than stepping into the water on a cold May morning in the Connecticut River with bare shins. There were lots of weeds and other things in the river that you’d rather not feel as you slogged around in the murky water waist deep water.

In the summer, on a hot day, wading wet provides a nice relief from waders, which can make you feel clammy, hot and sticky if it is warm outside. Wearing nylon shorts and a pair of Tevas is a pretty low maintenance fishing outfit that is light and dries easily. The downside is that your skin is not protected like you are in waders.

While I’ve never seen statistics, I’m guessing that most fly fishing injuries are related to slipping and falling. The only fly fishing deaths that I’ve ever heard of are caused when a fisherman wearing waders gets swamped, meaning his waders fill with water up to the chest, and he gets swept away with the current, unable to free himself from the added weight of extra gallons of water he succumbs to the current and drowns. Chest waders filled with water are the equivalent of cement shoes – a good reason why people wearing chest waders should at the very least wear an elastic belt around their waists to slow the swamping process should they get dunked.

In the Gallatin River near Bozeman where Robert Redford filmed some scenes for A River Runs Through It, I once took a spill and was carried downriver about 100 yards. It is not a performance I’d like to repeat. I was wearing waders which filled up. Had I been wading wet I would have likely only been carried 10 or 20 yards down river and probably kept my dignity intact.

At Grews Pond that day, I was not wearing waders and the risk of that was evident in the skin on those rocks glacial erratic rocks that had been hanging around that pond for the last 12,000 years. In any event if there was a lesson about this day it would probably be you can travel lighter to increase your comfort, but it comes with greater risk. The other lesson is, if you don’t want to scrape the skin off your shins, don’t climb on slippery rocks wearing shorts and tevas.

This is the kind of advice that I dole out to 9 and 10 year olds on a regular basis now that I am a dad and over 40, but at the age of 28 when this journal entry was written I obviously had some lessons to learn. Probably a bit of sound advice would be “don’t do anything you would tell a ten year old not to do.”