I don’t know why, way back at the beginning, I wanted to fish. But somewhere within my spirit, I had that calling. 

My first adventures with the aquatic community began in Kill Brook. That little stream across from my house meandered from its headwaters all the way to the Hudson River. There, I caught chubs and dace with a piece of window screen fashioned into a makeshift net. And there were crayfish.

But my first real fishing—even though no one in my immediate family fished—was at a small lake where my father worked as a maintenance man. He took me there when I was likely six or seven years old, and I fished for whatever would bite.

That meant using worms when bullheads were the first species to cooperate. When I was a little older, Dad took me to Oliver’s Pond, where with a bobber and a shiner minnow, I caught my first bass.

After that, my uncle Mike—my dad’s brother—took over. He liked to fish in the Hudson River. So whenever he was available, we headed off to Croton Point to fish for white perch. 

Sometime after that, when I entered high school, I met Tony and was invited to go trout fishing with him and his dad. It was on our first trip to the Amawalk Outlet that I saw my first trout, two lovely browns, caught by Tony’s father. After that, it was weekend trips to all the local trout streams, where we fished for brook trout, and later, browns. Once May arrived, we were off to the Catskills.

In those early years, the preferred bait was angleworm and later, Mepps spinners. I won’t say it was combat fishing back then, but it was certainly competitive, with our goal to catch a limit. And Tony and I did compete, trying to get to the best pools first, with the hope that by the end of the day, there would be 10 trout in each creel. The size limit was seven inches in those days. 

That kind of bait/meat fishing went on for several years, until I met some folks who fly fished. Then, once I got my first really good fly rod, a seven-and-a-half-foot Orvis Madison, my methods as a trout fisherman changed completely. I attended fly-tying classes, met a lot more fly fishers, and gave up my worm can for a fishing vest and fly boxes. 

In spite of my intentions, the transition from bait fisherman to fly fisherman was not easy. I continued to fish with Tony and his father every weekend. While I drifted my wet flies and nymphs into likely looking riffles and pools, the trout did not come. Tony continued to ply the rivers; we fished with angleworms, and continued to limit out more often than not. So it took a lot of resolve and determination on my part to continue with flies and get skunked, while Tony prevailed. And it must be said that there were some humiliating times for me during most of our weekly fishing trips.

One day, a friend suggested that we try the Roeliff Jansen Kill, a trout stream that flows from the foothills of the Berkshires before entering the Hudson River in Columbia County. The first few times we fished that river, there were few results. But one day, we decided to go way upriver, near a dam, and walk well inland.

This was a remote area well away from the road, where the river flowed through a lowland deciduous forest, dispersed with large skunk cabbage. I cast my wet flies across the head of a very nice-looking pool and let them swing with the current. Suddenly, there was a large flash behind the flies. But no strike. I cast again the same thing happened. For some reason, while this trout showed interest, it did not take. So I called to Tony, and suggested he let his worm drift into the same area where I saw the flash. He cast his bait upstream, so by the time it reached the area where I saw the flash, his worm would be near the bottom. It didn’t take long before he had an 18-inch brown in the net. I just stood there in awe.

Anyway, sometime later, after any number of fishless outings, we stopped to fish Schoolhouse Brook in Putnam County. It’s a small stream that runs along a rural road for a while before entering Croton Falls Reservoir. Then it was known mostly for its wild brook trout with a smattering of small browns. I was fishing a number 12 Royal Coachman wet fly, and cast it across a riffle that fed a very nice pool. On my second cast, the fly stopped; I lifted and soon landed a very plump, wild brown about 10 inches long. My first trout on a fly and certainly a fish well earned. A lot more followed, of course, but that one remains etched in my memory as a giant step forward for me as a fly fisher. Success at last!