Posts Tagged Winter Solstice

On Ice

On Ice . . .

Hielo Fino: Oh, yes, it’s winter now.
(NYC 12 23 2020)

Early rise and an eager hike to the park for a final fishing trip found its goal foiled by that signature of the season: ice.

True, the new lid on the lake was “Hielo fino” with a few teasing openings, yet not enough free water presented itself for practical angling. The season is now . . . on ice.

So, 2020, a year to remember – not so much – comes to a close. Those days of bluegill and bass, the elusive trout and carp, and exciting new experiments in the salt – fluke and more – the silver linings to an unexpected, challenging, trying time, remain to warm the imagination over the winter.

Winter Dawn: fishing gone, but beauty remains
(NYC 12 23 2020)

Farewell, 2020.

— rPs 12 30 2020

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Cold Solstice Holidays

Cold Solstice Holidays . . .

December Brook
(NY 12 2018)

Open water remains. Cold, clear, high visibility no match for the fishes obscura.

Was that a trout? Was that a bass? Was it a reflection, of something else, something not even a fish? Daylight flies faster than the fisher.

Retired to the warm indoor, reading and the contemplation of visual art returns to front focus.

Moving Water by Dave Hall

Moving Water

by Dave Hall

hardcover, 50 pp.

Blaine Creek

Dave Hall, an artist of works in oil, has Moving Water give an illustrated meditation, poetry and brushwork combined, in a sublime 10-minutes of illuminated manuscript. Recommended.

Back Seat by Henry Hughes

Back Seat with Fish

by Henry Hughes

hardcover, 303 pp.

Skyhorse Publishing

Not to take a back seat, do take a Back Seat with Fish off the shelves and buy it. Don’t miss the opportunity to immerse with an American life lived in America’s northern corners, New York and Oregon, with the fishing haunting happily in its present attendance at all times in between. Recommended.

The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories edited by Henry Hughes

The Art of Angling

edited by Henry Hughes

hardcover, 256 pp.

Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf

The greater corpos (including, yet beyond the canon) gives a broad read in a pair,  stories and poetry, presented in two attractive hardcover collected volumes edited by Dr. Hughes: The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories

Fishing Stories

edited by Henry Hughes

hardcover, 369 pp.

Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf

There are many, many literary angles as there are anglers, men, women, children who all still relish hours reading fish tales and rhymes pictured on the page in a quiet corner on a winter afternoon.

Happy Holidays.

— rPs 12 23 2018

 

 

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Jetty Knight

Jetty Knight . . .

Jetty Knight by Maryann Amici (12 2016)

Jetty Knight
by Maryann Amici
(12 2016)

or Nothing, for the Birds . . .

Sometimes one takes tenkara to the ends of the Earth near the end of the year. Can one go father on running foot than the surf zone, North Atlantic Ocean, in December? Here you are.

The Birds

The Birds Family Scolopacidae (12 2016)

The Birds
Family Scolopacidae
(12 2016)

One picks fishing trips like slot machines. A line wins, sometime(s). Engaged in it on the fly is only a strategy. So is Tenkara. Wins are enjoyed, as are fishes, yet these come spaced enough for no exact science to be sure. Time and place judge. Conditions mix. Catches vary.

One day the water was calm, the breeze, barely, but very cold. The tenkara rod extended above surf and tolerated twitches tethered to a Clouser Kebari along the swells. Cormorants and other birds angled nearby. Hours passed. No takers.

The Pattern

Clouser Kebari (rPs 12 2016)

Clouser Kebari
(rPs 12 2016)

The Bait

The Bait (12 2016)

The Bait
(12 2016)

The Waves

The Waves (12 2016)

The Waves
(12 2016)

Next time swells capped white even an 8-weight could only surf high, water bucking the weighted pattern like a reveler on a casino’s mechanical bull. One hour made an epic casting lesson schooled by wind and water as fishes below hugged into boulder rock crevices unreachable.

Sometimes one fishes and catches nothing but a contemplative time, an athletic time, spent in a surf wave of sporting happiness.

Nothing, for the birds?

Slumbering Shell (12 2016)

Slumbering Shell
(12 2016)

— rPs 12 20 2016

Postscript: In memory of Louis J. Amici, Jr. (1947-2016) and Jeff Feldmeier (1966-2016). They always met the train on time.

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