As this day approached over the course of the past couple of months, I felt my apprehensions, because I would have to get the Great Canadian canoe at Brian's, and then drive all the way to Flemington to meet my brother Rick. After paddling four or five miles of the South Branch, I would have to take it back. Loading it on alone, taking it off alone. Rick was enthusiastic about using mouse flies he bought from Etsy. We found the tail action is fantastic, but today he would catch no bass on them. There might be another time ahead when he does.
I found fetching the canoe some 40 or 50 vertical feet above Brian's parking space easy and loading it easy, too. All this is better than doable. We all know how "doable" can mean less than zero, as novelist Bret Easton Ellis put it. The drive to Flemington was complicated by a detour, but otherwise, the length of the ride allowed me to sink deep into listening to Jean Luc Ponty and thinking over all sorts of things. Very pleasurable. The ride back would prove to be even better. All told, I drove 135 miles, many of them over twisting and hilly county roads. Rick must have driven about the same mileage, coming from Wall Township at the shore near Brick. Hauling the canoe up those steep 40 or 50 vertical feet alone was easy, too. I huffed and puffed deeply when I stopped pulling, but that felt great. After all the years of smoking cigarettes, I felt very reassured that my lungs are good. After treading clams for 13 years--deep aerobics, you breathe all the way down and hold that breath as you dunk, not to mention the jogger's pace for four or five hours--I have strong lungs. Today, we would often have to get out and haul the canoe through the shallows, which is no comparison to the strenuousness of clamming while wearing three layers of wetsuits in brine near its 29-degree freezing point, the thermometer near zero F, the wind chill falling far lower as 40-knot winds pushed immense swells over my head. It's just to say I seem to have a future on the river.
We had found the river somewhat off color where we met downstream, but that was as I expected. Now as I got in the canoe with Rick, I felt nervous as hell. He's heavier than Matt, though really not by all that much, but for all I knew, the margin might be critical. The canoe is tippy. I had nearly $10,000.00 worth of photography equipment in that canoe. "Maybe you should get a plastic bag," Rick said later. I never will get a water-tight something or other for it though, because that's too much a hassle. I do zip the camera bag every time I put the camera back, but I need to zip it open easily to get the camera quickly.
I imagined how I would grab the camera bag and keep it above the river surface if we went over. I probably would have failed. Later on, I felt I had been unrealistic. It was probably just the trauma of what happened in Florida, when the kayak my wife and I had paddled rolled as she got out, and I lost $3600.00 worth of equipment.
I like the river when it's clear. Usually, it's not until September. Afraid we would get skunked, since we came only with fly rods--Rick brought two of them--I was all the more afraid. I'm not much experienced fishing this way, but it didn't take very long before I hooked one about 10 inches long. It took a subsurface fly six or seven feet deep or more. A Haggerty's Hell Raiser. I lost the fish, but it was the first my St. Croix seven-weight has played. I missed a few knocks and taps that could have been sunfish, then further downstream played an eight-inch bass for a couple of seconds before it got off. That one on a white sculpin fly with a helmet head weight.
Rick meandered on downstream. We had beached the canoe. I got word from him that he had missed a hit on a small popper, and he also told me had seen three bass leap out of the water for damselfies. Before I could turn and go tie one of mine on, he hooked a bass on the popper of nearly 11 inches. "They fight so hard," he said before lipping it.
It seemed as if we had paddled too much water, because the highway was visible and I figured the bridge was right around the bend, so I felt especially good about all the time we invested in the stretch. But after we got back in the canoe, we found no bridge. Even so, it seemed to me we were making good time. Rick caught another on a popper, and then yet another on the popper at another spot where we got out of the canoe.
We finally did pass under the bridge, and further downstream I caught my first bass on the Hell Raiser. Another of mine came over the side minutes later. Rick caught some sunfish on the popper. He enjoys catching them. It makes me think of the times I've gone to the river over here near my family's condo with my two-weight.
The river felt set deep down where real things happen. The highway is situated above. So are railroad tracks. All that high speed activity seems to zoom about in hyperspace. Imagine space travel with no destination. I have no doubt traveling in space would be cool. It can be cool to travel a highway. But with nowhere to go? Nowhere real to go?
I don't find the words tonight to match the quality of our experience. It's just after midnight and I feel beat. As easy as each task proved to be, I did feel some stress near the end of our paddle. We finished about a half hour before sunset. It wasn't that we had to hurry. We had paddled the typical length of my family's Barryville Delaware River floats.
I know how exertion works. When you do it well, it doesn't feel very hard, but I guess especially when you're about 60 years old as I am or older, you feel beat later. But it never stops me. The experience was worth a lot more than being left spent, and obviously I'm not all used up as I write this post now.
Listening to Ponty as I flew back to Brian's house, I became aware that I have a whole decade of floats like this one in front of me yet.
Sculpin
Rick supplied cigars from his humidor.
