The Unbroken String
What We Have Here
Monday mornings make a pretty long and strong string when I do my best to put about fifty of them a year together here on the Monday Morning Sidewalk. Some of them are better and some of them are worse than others. In the end, they are just a string.
The Reckoning
I have arrived at a place, literally a geographic “place” where the lake in my backyard has gone stale. Or maybe I have staled on it. All I know is … something ain’t right for me on Lake Ray Roberts, and I LITERALLY don’t have the time to whiff through, swinging at it again and again with a skinny piñata stick hoping fish candy falls out.
I think it is time to “Kenny Rogers” Ray Roberts, fold ‘em, and know when to run. North Central Texas has too much of a lot of things, but it has just enough water bodies to make the run to one of them a viable alternative to another losing hand on Ray Roberts. Yeah, there are fish on that lake, yes they can be caught, but it is different. It has changed.
I don’t mind change. And in fly fishing I consider it one of our premier challenges – facing and dealing with changes to what we had come to expect. But the degree of change? On my backyard pond? It goes beyond normal, and begs for explanation. I don’t have it, and I don’t have time for it, and in this social atmosphere of an economic disaster? nobody really has time to care – about science they can do nothing about.
Moving On
The realignment in my thinking is long overdue (see the above graph). But a lot of things are being realigned these days in the fly fishing world aren’t they? Sometimes knowing something is “long overdue” comes only after you finally realize … it’s way long overdue!
We had a very good summer of pond fly fishing for bass, mostly thanks to friends who, new and old, have offered up their excellent ponds for my fly fishing surveys. If I could just go pond-to-pond for my fresh(water) fix? That would do me until proper carp action came back on line. While the number of ponds with access has never been larger, they lack access for you always bothers me. I do try to analyze them for your general benefit, for you to apply things I discover for myself – on ponds you DO have access to.
But the “Big Calm” abides. Lakes that everyone has access to, and lakes that are willing participants in the fly fishing adventure call us now. Faraway rivers are starting to whisper in the cold distant season. Salt, always sweet, never lets down. That most distant smell of the shallow salt brine, sweet and seductive unforgotten. It is away. These destinations are away, some far away, but I want to pull them in close … not to own them, but to share them with you and hope this healthy fever for escape spreads to you as well. Have we ever needed escape more than we do now?
Have I ever needed a new set of tires more than I do now? How about a new ride that gets more than a 14 miles-per-gallon? There’s a major celebration coming, related to that sweet old Toyota 4Runner, very soon. That is the 300-thousand mile mark on my odometer, and less than a thousand miles away … a Texas hop-skip-and-jump. That’s going to be a party royale.
Airspace
Thanks for reading today. I felt it absolutely necessary to give a full week’s airspace for the loss of a South Texas artist and fly fishing icon to sink in for me and I hope for you as well. I have not heard how the services turned out, or what could come next in memory of a fine person an artist and fly fisher. My opinion: It would be fitting to have something in the name of Larry Haines be established. Perhaps a tournament, event or even a scholarship for artists applying at the local high school level would be proper?
