A dearth of me

Bloody Bastard. Courtesy of Me.

My buddy TJ Brayshaw has posited that once one has twice achieved success in a given arena one has achieved sufficient expertise to counsel others with authority. I cannot deny that his logic leaves an indelible impression upon the mind. It is both mystifying and liberating at the same time; the explication of the profundity of angling expertise on the intertubes is at once revealed.

Last November I missed a trip to Pulaski, New York. It was an annual event that I missed for the first time in two years. During my absence an otherwise mundane journey turned into the most successful Steelhead trip in recorded memory. Not only were the fish numerous, but they were large and strong and firm and brightly colored. Nickels and Kardashians were by comparison dull. Tales of this epic will be told for years to come. I'll be sitting on the sidelines nodding and smiling wanly as the stories are retold. I will pretend that I understand one iota of the awesomeness that I missed. I will be wrong.

As I pondered my misfortune through the bleak, frigid days of the season I wondered if there was anything to be taken away from this. I even ventured to the water myself to try and find some connection. I couldn't. There wasn't.

As the year turned I received another invitation. This time to journey to the Blue Ridge to find a connection to mild weather, flowing water and brook trout as long as your arm. But as a minion I was not able to sever the strings. The clan gathered and they drank their shine and fished lines in the mists of waters curling around hillocks smooth and firm like the Kardashians while I dialed into conference calls.

The first text I received about this trip seemed to be error of auto-erection. Sitting around the fire, sipping shine and bourbon the host passed to me a story told in less than one hundred and forty characters of brook trout exceeding eighteen inches. It was too fantastical to comprehend and I fell asleep pondering such mystical creatures.

Grrrr..... You're welcome

The next morning, I was awoken from a mid-meeting doze by the urgent buzzing of my smart device. This genie beckoned me and taunted me with the news of a rainbow trout measuring thirty-five inches. I swore that I was bewitched by some demon of labor. Yet the characters told of the insufficiency of brodin and 6x and of the escape of the beast. Surely this was a tale from Quill Gordon or Twain! The story was repeated yet still I doubted. But the words and the emotion and the certainty eventually led me to believe that it was, disturbingly, true. Epic fishing, alone a grail, had been eclipsed by the discovery of the Castle Anthrax and its willing inhabitants.

And I wailed at the injustice and doubly painful pain.

Until the argent fringe was revealed.

In my absence I had twice granted bounty which was unexpected and undeserved and yet it did manifest itself. There can be no explanation other than my expertise in the matter of the dearth of me and its effect on angling success.

I am unavailable for your next adventure. I await your invitation. And your gratitude.