Gray's Sporting Journal, Hunting Lodges, Fishing Lodges, Fishing Magazines, Hunting Magazines, Bird hunting, Wingshooting, Alaska Fishing, Alaska hunting, Canada hunting, Canada Fishing. Hunting art. Fishing Art. Wildlife Art.

January Thaw

A photographic essay.
by Barry & Cathy Beck
From the February/March 2010 Issue

By January, Melville’s damp, drizzly November of the soul has become Solzhenitsyn’s oppressive Siberia of the mind.

It’s seasonal affective disorder, the doctor says, the curse of a northern winter. Buy a sunlamp. Take 1500 IU of vitamin D daily. Get some sunshine. And then from your friends, the best advice yet: Let’s go fishing.

Ice in the guides, ice in the water, snow coating the banks and turning felt soles to stomping clods. But there are very big trout out there, feeding on very small flies, and hardly another angler to be seen. Fishing Creek, such an appropriate name for this deep clear thread running through the northeastern corner of William Penn’s Woods.

Huge trout, soft winter sun, a BWO drifting in the film, a beadhead PT probing the bottom. A soft take and a firm hard run, ice shattering from the guides like breaking glass. Seasonal affective disorder? Physician, heal thyself. Cozy up in Polartec and Gore-Tex and head for the river. Take two big rainbows, and call me in the morning.

Tag it: