Waiting . . .
Waiting by the Bay
(02 28 2020)
February for the local fisher can be a time for fly tying, reading, or simply cleaning and organizing tackle in anticipation of the new season. Throughout all these pastimes is a central principal: Waiting.
Waiting for the thaw
Waiting for spring
Waiting for opening day
Waiting for fishing
Leap year adds one additional day to this, the shortest month of the year, so we’ll all be waiting just a little bit longer.
— rPs 02 29 2020
The End of the Regular Season . . .
Basepath Around the Pond
(NYC 09 2019)
Evening falls fast for the tenkara fisher now that the Autumnal Equinox has passed. The lingering, almost lazy, evening hours have been replaced by a quick race into darkness that can add a bit of urgency to a fishing trip taken after work.
The local ponds have begun to turn over, weedy waters turning clear, and the fish appear paler and more actively feeding, which, if one is lucky, can result in a grand slam:
Bluegill
Bluegill
(NYC 09 28 2019)
Black Crappie
Black Crappie
(NYC 09 28 2019)
Largemouth Bass
Largemouth Bass
(09 28 2019)
The largemouth bass came at last light, making it a grand slam, an appropriate finish alongside the final weekend of the regular MLB season.
— rPs 09 30 2019
Summer Flush . . .
Solstice Shower Passes Meadow Lake
(NYC 06 21 2017)
Meadow Lake, shaped like a peanut, perimetered by tall phragmites, has again proven to be a place where fish confounds fisher.
The fish of Flushing-Corona Park are there, but when and where, mystery remains. The bite becomes regular, as all fishes feed, still Flushing’s finned inhabitants hold the cards.
The southern end of this shallow brackish lake has undergone substantional reclamation. Indigenous wildflowers bloom now along its open bank and litter to one eye has been reduced by 80%.
Evidence of species other than carp and white perch can be found. Two large yellow perch, large enough to believe their passing was caused by natural older age, revealed the only fish kill found around the entire water body, one minor enough to cause no concern.
Retired Perch
(NYC 06 21 2017)
No snakehead species have been spotted despite a conscious attempt to find one. What was a scare in the spring of 2013 may well have been an isolated incident.
These fish are tough, and so can be the actual fishing. Wind has the ability here to foiled the best of casters. The lake seems to draw down the atmosphere, forming a vortex, a kind of reverse funnel, forcing, blowing air at once in all directions facing the fisher. There are breaks in this steady breeze, pauses measured in minutes, and this is when calm water may be read. Bubbles surface in scattered spots; turtles, a few, and carp, grazing the bottom in loose schools that resemble grazing sheep.
“Careful casts now!” is my whispered mantra at such times.
Numerous marsh birds, redwing blackbirds, cormorants, ducks, and gulls abound. Fishing birds are another good giide to the fishes’ whereabouts.
Mulberries have ripened with the arrival of summer. Flush with the fruit of the tree, birds are fed and so are their counterparts in the water. The tenkara carp challenge continues around an interesting and improved urban natural environment.
Solstice Sweetness: Mulberries
(NYC 06 21 2017)
— rPs 06 30 2017
Salad Days . . .
Modest Largemouth (NYC 06 2017)
. . . of June.
Pond shallows, turtle banks, all is lush.
The largemouths chase small fry.
Feathered bright as the white sky.
Herons all angle up modest luck.
(3) – a three-pound athletic bass was wrestled to the shaded green bank, the two of us tethered by 6X (4 lb.) monofilament tippet of a kind ideal for tenkara. Two runs had just bent the TUSA Yamaha rod into a bridge arch over turmoiled topwater. There had been a witness, Jesse Valentin, who earlier, with, together we watched the tall white bird spear pinch a brace of bluegill.
June = Bass
King Sunfishes.
Jesse; “Heron 1, Bluegill 0” (NYC 06 2017)
Heron Approved.
— rPs 06 05 2017
I learned of C.A.S.T. for Kids from my fishing friend named Morgan. My appeal to you directly regards the event, a morning of city fishing, to be held on Sunday, September 18 at Harlem Meer in Central Park.
My reasons are founded on several strong personal connections:
1) My wife’s twin brother, Louis, is a special needs citizen.
2) I am the author and illustrator of two books on fly fishing. The second, Small Fry: The Lure of the Little, includes a chapter on Harlem Meer as well as fly fishing with younger anglers.
3) I work part-time at Urban Angler, Ltd. on 5th Avenue and have independently guided several clients along The Meer, so I know the lake and how to fish there well.
4) I maintain an ongoing blog on tenkara, a simple form of Japanese fly fishing, great for Harlem Meer, which requires only rod, line, and fly. Physically challenged anglers have found the more simple style to be a godsend that allows them to keep fishing despite challenged limbs.
I’ll be there. Will you?
C.A.S.T. for Kids at Harlem Meer
8:30 a.m. -1:30 p.m. Sunday
September 18, 2016
Dana Discovery Center
Harlem Meer, Central Park
New York, New York
– rPs 09 14 2016
Tenkara Vegetarian . . .
Genus Fucus (NYC 07 2016)
One photo with one caption can at times tell it all.
Location: the salt waterfront of Manhattan Island.
– rPs 07 11 2016
Three of One . . .
One of Three: Green Guarantee! (NYC, 2016)
Tenkara = One Fly
Three of One? I can agree to that.
One pattern I may agree upon with allowance for three copies of said one. Three copies: one to fish, one as a backup if the first finds itself lost on fish or, to be most avoided, a snag. The third may be a gift for another angler met along a stream, or around the pond. That third one might also be the one to act as charmed third attached at last to a fish photographed and released humanely, else dispatched humanely, promptly, for shore lunch on or off the water.
Reasonable Compromise.
The one I carry most often remains the Green Guarantee, here displayed in trio with fun flea market finds. The American Buffalo nickel and Mercury dime circulated America in general when weighted hair streamers held simple and effective reputation. Archiving and philosophizing and tying attentive to all strata of the legacy from the vise remains complemented in parallel to the interest in the age of bronze, silver, and gold American coinage
Fly patterns and numismatics both share a small scale, a quality of materials rendered artfully within the frame of little physical space. Minor major wonder the two connect for me, this coming from the guy who penned Small Fry: The Lure of the Little.
Connected hobbies, activities: similar investments in a happy future on and off the water. The two tethered today make one happy indoors during a span of almost extreme weather; a cold rain drenches the city this day after sustained surface winds set at the speed of storm. Strange how the frigid air blew below an almost white sun above a bluebird sky filled with cloud of the purest white condensation, cloud marching as well, yet seemingly slower than the headlong gale off the Hudson River.
Actual angling must come later, sometimes.
– rPs 04 04 2016
ron P. swegman is an angler, artist, and author whose writing focuses on those times and places when and where nature and the city intersect.
