Happy Thanksgiving

Deep fry on the left - so, so tender

I was trying to think of a great Thanksgiving story but come to find out, I guess that I don’t really have one. Most of my memories are simple flashes that involve places and people all drooling around heaps of food and maybe Dallas or Detroit on the TV and some cold beer and food comas. I get flashes of family and friends hugging, or shaking hands and taking photographs or telling tales. I have a flash of my brother, Pat, dropping a frozen turkey into a too-hot frialator and creating an instantaneous explosion of hot grease all over my buddy’s garage; or my other brother, Timmy, who once almost burst from eating too many mashed potatoes on a dare; or I sometimes see my mother spilling red wine on her nice white shirt. For a while we had a tradition of going skiing on Thanksgiving morning if there was any snow to be had. But more than any one thing, perhaps I am more taken by the underlying sentiments that are stuffed inside this 4th Thursday of November.

Here and there, I have managed some fishing during Thanksgiving get-togethers. I think it was a couple years ago that myself, and an old fishing buddy that I hadn’t seen in a while, took my brother ,Timmy, out on a long trout float the day after Thanksgiving. My brother doesn’t fish much. In fact, the only time he seems to fish is when we get together - which is all-too rare - but he actually has some skills once he finds his rhythm. We probably should have just gone skiing, because it was far below freezing but I couldn’t kill the hankering to get out and cast some flies.

It was cold out on the river. Ice chunks were floating down on the water and they were also stuck in our guides. It was just one of those days that didn’t seem to warm up at all. My buddy Brian and I were talking about old times and where all those fat hogs must be living this time of year, and there is Timmy, up in the bow, dodging icebergs with his streamer and asking us a few questions here and there about trout and what type of presentation might work best. He’s was doing pretty good up there - no complaints and no frustrations that we could detect. It seemed he was just happy to be along and spend some time even though it wasn’t really his bag to be out there fishing. But he kept at it even though it wasn’t his bag but rather just being cold and casting a fly into the almost frozen river.

Another flash I get is the look that was on his face after he released the fish. It was a big male brown trout of maybe twenty inches or more. It was golden and splattered with big black and red spots. And when he slapped my hand I like to think that his deep smile and his squinty eyes told something of the way he was feeling inside.

Happy Holidays,
Duffy & The Gorge Fly Shop