Small Streams and Old Gents
By; Erwin Kennon
Old gents like small streams; years of fishing create an intimacy that can't be felt on a lake or a pond. It takes time for a man to learn where trout hold in a streams pools, or for that matter, where the choice pools are. When the old gent was a young man, he occasionally came home cold and wet before learning the exact location of submerged branched, slippery boulders and a abysmal sink holes masquerading as solid bottom. But lately he fished the Palmer to better understand the eternal cycles of life and death. At the Palmer this seemed to occur all around him, naturally and without remorse. This was tonic for his soul.
Ironically, as his body began to fail in small ways, his mind became keenly aware that to kill something is to share in its life. Although he'd caught and released trout as long as he could remember, it was the few that he kept that taught him the most about his own life and, in later years his impending demise. Lately, trout fishing had taken on a profound meaning; the enthusiasm was still there, but it was tempered by an understanding of life that made the act of fishing complete.
So it was on a raw April day that I first saw the old gent, a solitary figure on the side of a country road looking more like a wind blown sailor in rough seas. Already he was drawn to the river after an interminable winter of tying flies and longing for melting ice and budding trees. On this day he couldn't cross the bridge without parking his old mustang on the sandy turn off to study the water as he had done so many times before; looking at nothing in particular but seeing everything. I would see him this way on my way home for lunch. Noon was his calculated time to be at this pool when the warm air and the elevated water temperature triggered the big mayfly hatch. He was seldom alone since other fly fisherman regularly convened at this pool, fanning out from the bridge to take stations up stream and down.
Anglers actually come in three shifts; morning, noon, and evening. Depending on their work schedules, vacation time or the amount of yard work allotted by their wives. They congregate on the bridge every spring and renew friendships under the towering oaks that stand like sentinels at the rivers edge.
At first glance the Palmer looks dark and unforgiving with alder-choked edges, muddy shoreline. and hurricane felled trees. Real dangers lurk in sink holes hidden in innocent looking cattail marshes that rim the pastures which host the stream. In your mind you would not picture this body of water as an ideal trout stream; but for decades it has attracted the region's best fisherman and has been written up in most publications at one time or another. To the men who fish her, she is both a challenge and an enigma; on one hand yielding large trout and on the other hand seemingly inhospitable and foreboding. The men on the bridge accepted the challenge and were drawn back by both the victories and the defeats.
As fate would have it, I met the old gent on a warm May afternoon. He had already assumed his position on the bridge when I parked in the shade of the oak. He was stature still, eyes scanning. Although I had fished this pool for four decades I had never met him; or, perhaps I was too absorbed in angling to have recognized him. In any event, as I approached him I was struck by his lithe, almost child like build, making his white mustache seem incongruous. His eyes never left the water as he acknowledged my "hello" with a slight nod; so I was startled when he said, " there's a nice brown to the left of the boulder, see'em?" His voice , strident in the afternoon stillness, had a power that belied his size. Feigning indifference, I strained to locate that fish to no avail and finally admitted I could not see him. His amazement was almost palpable as he chuckled and shot back, " It don't matter, I've caught and released him twice. Anyway this place is dead right now, but yesterday they were hammering a Dark Edison Tiger fished at a dead drift down by that bend." Talking about trout animated him and his head and arms moved in a syncopated rhythm with his voice. Glancing down at our images reflected into the pool, I felt we were two kindred souls through whose lives the Palmer River ran.
We shared fishing lore that afternoon, exchanging stories, fly tying techniques. Then, he told me he would reveal his fly tying secret. "Make the streamer look fishy and the flies look buggy," he roared as he waved a Barnes Special in front of me. "Notice the unique barred wing feather?" I nodded. "They're tied the way Joe O'Connell taught me. He was the best brown tout fisherman I ever saw. Been dead for twenty years, but I got most of his flies and tying material." Other ghosts rose out of the Palmer as he recounted days on the stream with men long gone who left him a fishing legacy which, for some inexplicable reason, he was passing on to me. I sensed a restlessness taking hold of him when he confided that his wife wasn't well and that he'd best be getting home to check on her.
I seized the opportunity to learn his name by sneaking a glance at the license pinned to his fishing vest. It was a plain, hard working name, and I was surprised that his residence was only a few miles south across the state line in a small mill town. I imagined him as a young man constrained by the responsibility of wife and child; unable to fish as much as he desired. Truman was president and World War II had ended, but money was tight. Since there was no car to get him to far places and no money to do anything even if he did get there, so he resigned himself to fish the Palmer's tea colored waters with his friends. The men with whom he fished will never be chronicled in sporting literature but they snatch bits of fame by being resurrected in his stories of days gone by. Yes, he had fulfilled his family obligations and now had time to fish everyday all day if he chose. These were his golden years and this was his Valhalla. The stream had always been his retreat where, in times of grief, or happiness, he could be alone to put his life back in perspective.
Sensing the end of out conversation, I wished I could know more about him than words could convey. Backing away from me, he bid me good luck. I can still see his vintage felt hat, patched waders and gnarled briar pipe contrasting black against his snow white mustache.
For a time I half expected to see the old mustang, but death and its finality make believers of us all. Time has erased small details of him from my memory and eventually the need to see him has passed. This is as it should be; after all, I had an hour with him one May day, and that is enough for a lifetime.
Erwin Kennon currently lives in South Eastern Mass. where he practices dentistry. A graduate of Tufts Dental (class of 67) Mr. Kennon has hunted and fished throughout New England since the age of seven. His son is Yale Senior and fisherman, Aaron Kennon.