Fishing with Seth

On Saturday morning I rolled out of bed at seven to get down to a local river by seven-thirty. LL Bean had opened a store in Danbury and their staff had posted a meet-up on a local angling website. The river happened to be fifteen minutes from the house so I drove over to meet the guy running the show.

I pulled into the parking lot a few minutes late and met Seth as he was stringing up a rod. Seth works at the store and was the leader of this merry band. It turns out is was a band of two which was just fine by me. This river is small and two is the maximum capacity of any given stretch.

Seth is a recent high school graduate. He's heading so Susquehanna University in a week to study business. I expect he'll also be learning how to tap a keg, make trashcan punch and not look like an idiot to the fairer, smarter sex. I mastered those first two lessons pretty quickly. I'm still working on the idiot thing.

Seth complied with the corporate protocols required of such an outing and I endured both a waiver and a safety lecture. Curiously, the safety lecture included something about not drinking alcohol. I wasn't sure that this included scotch but just in case I left the flask in the car and brought along an extra cigar.

Seth working a deep, fast run.

The river had come up a bit due to a couple of showers over the past few days and the water temperatures were lower. Though there was an uncertain rain as we walked down to a pool the skies were lightening and I expected before long we'd have comfortably cloudy skies.

Fishing with someone new is always a bit of an adventure. Sorta like dating I suppose though my last first date was twenty-five years ago so I'm a bit foggy on how that works. Most folks are harmless. Some you actually like. Others fancy duct tape and hockey masks (we all have our horror stories).

Mr. Brown

You never know which type it's going to be until you get there so it's always a good idea to make that initial trip short and in a public place. Finding out your same-sex fishing partner wants to be big spoon on day one of a four day back country trip can be quite an eye opener (Unless you're into that sorta thing (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)).

Seth was likable and easy going. A good guy to fish with. He was also new to the sport and while he had the basics down he took advice about tippet size, leader length and fly selection fairly readily. If he keeps sponging up knowledge, though hopefully from someone more knowledgeable than me, I think he's quickly going to be an excellent angler.

And he's going to just the right place to get such an education. It turns out Susquehanna is just an hour east of some of the finest streams in Pennsylvania which in turn are some of the finest trout streams in the East. Penn's Creek, Fishing Creek, Slate Run, the Little J, and Letort Spring Creek all provide undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral educations in tempting trout to the fly.

The fishing was what one would expect of late summer trout fishing; slow. I managed two nice browns to the net early in some fast water and though we worked a good piece of water hard for two more hours Seth couldn't shake the striped beast.

My goal for the day was to reach out the the LL Bean folks to make a connection to help with some of our Trout Unlimited projects. I hope we'll find ways to partner on youth education and Coldwater Conservation work. Seth gave me a name of a guy at the shop. What I hadn't expected was to meet someone who I'd fish with again. I hope he shoots me an email. I'm available for a road trip to Penn's Creek.

Mr. Brook from Friday evening's jaunt back to the Brook Trout stream.