Evolution

   

      We fished with worms.  The way our father taught us.  First with small, cheap, bait-casting reels, the kind that sat on top of your rod with the line spooling in and out of a plastic dome, which your father would have to unscrew in order to tease apart the tangle of line that formed inside, asking you how in the world you had done this and reminding you to keep some tension on the line and then this won’t happen, as he hands it back to you. 

   Later we graduated to somewhat longer rods and open-faced spinning reels, which seemed so much more sophisticated, more technical.  But still we fished with worms.  The way our father taught us.  Tying a barbed Eagle hook on the end of the line, then adding a split-shot sinker about six inches above that.  Walking the streams we fished with plastic containers of worms we had dug from the garden and night crawlers we caught in the wet grass with a flashlight, a careful step, quick hands, and a strong, determined pull if they got any part of themselves back in their hole.  Between outings we kept the bait in a five-gallon bucket in a cool corner of the barn, the bucket full of dirt and old leaves and sometimes some coffee grounds.  You took it out onto the packed dirt driveway to tilt in its side, poke around for worms on the new surface you had exposed, then rotate the bucket and do it again.

   We did not fly fish.  We did not know the first thing about it.  And could not have begun to afford the tackle.  And besides, it was not something people like us did.  It was something flatlanders did.  Rich people.  People with fancy waders and vests and hats, who kept their rods in cases in the backs of their expensive cars.  There is wrong with worms, we thought.  We caught our share of trout.   And besides, there was no room to cast a fly on just about any of the streams we fished, with their overhanging branches and brush.  Especially if you didn’t have the waders that would let you walk out into the middle of the stream.

     As time went on we finally did what men do, given enough time to think things through, and one kind of hunger or another – we evolved.  We bought waders and canoes and ventured off the shore and out into ponds and lakes, actual lakes, and big rivers like the West and the Connecticut, where we caught not trout but bass, actual bass.  

And yellow perch and panfish of all kinds, and then pickerel and the occasional walleye and catfish and even a bowfin on southern Lake Champlain.  Some of this with worms, but also shiners and lures – spinners and crank-baits and even, finally, ironically, artificial worms.

     And then, finally, after turning the far corner of fifty, I walked into the Kittery Trading Post and put myself in the hands of a friendly young Mainer who helped me buy my first fly rod and reel combo, along with the new waders and wading boots that I should have bought years ago.  And then he picked out a handful of woolly buggers to get me started and out the door I went.  Smiling broadly.  Happily tucking my new gear into the back of my car.  Wishing, once again, it didn’t have those flatlander plates.