Ever Lick a River?

Ever Lick a River?

Anyone who knows me knows I love to fish and that I am good with a fly rod. I can pick a spot on the river or stream and hit it dead on with the fly, or I used to anyway. It has been a while. I first learned to fly fish when my mother bought me a fly rod set for my birthday years ago. Along with the package came a lesson/trip down to L.L. Bean on how to handle the rod and a lesson in tying flies.

Years before, I had made several attempts to teach myself to fly fish. Unless you know the basics though, you are probably gonna end up with a barbed fly stuck in the back of your head as I did. Then you’re gonna curse and throw the rod back into the shed all the while reaffirming the original thought that fish prefer worms anyway, so why not let the fly rod collect dust with the other brilliant ideas tried and abandoned and left to be forgotten. This was the case with me years prior.

When new Maine laws came out that reduced the amount of fish caught in waters from 15 down to 10 down to five then down to 1 or 2 for your bag limit and once worm fishing brooks turned to artificial lures only, it was no longer a fish-for-your-meal but a fish-for-your-pleasure hobby. I balked at these new laws for years and continued to catch and keep my 10 to 15 fish per day each fishing trip. Wrong, I know but it was what it was and I am a good girl now. J

Back in the day, I would fish anywhere there was water but, mostly my fishing spots were back out of the way of people but I did find the opportunity to fish each morning when I worked in Dover. The office where I worked, there was on a huge embankment and way down below, the river. Each day before work, I would grab my fishing gear from the trunk of my car and ever so carefully make my way down the embankment to the river below. I don’t know how many times I got chuckles and comments about a woman in a skirt, blouse and barefoot catching fish. The limit was two per day and each day I would catch my limit, actually, I caught more than my limit but I would always throw back the stocked trout. I only kept the native and made sure my limit of two was of fish worth eating. I would clean them down by the river and bring them into the kitchen area of the office and someone would eat them for lunch. It was always someone’s turn to eat them, never mine, because I could care less to eat but one or two trout a season. They never went to waste.

One day a few years back I was headed fishing to one of my favorite spots way back away from anywhere. I had some friends with me who were also avid anglers (fly-fishermen) and I decided I would show them a spot I had planned to catch fish. It was mid summer and for those of you who have fished that time of year, you know spring fishing is usually much more productive fish wise. The place I had in mind I knew where the fish were located that time of year, the streamers needed and knew without a doubt we could all catch our limit of 10 to 12 inch native trout.

In no time, at all we all caught our limit of fish. Six total and they were nice trout ranging in length from 10 to 13 inches and were deep, fat native brook trout. As we sat there eating warm, squished, bologna sandwiches with mustard we had retrieved from our packs, we seriously entertained the idea of a small fire. How nice it would be to eat our freshly caught trout, then catch more to bring home with us? We abandoned the idea due to it being a dry summer and we did not want to chance the fire getting away from us, besides, that would have been illegal. J

After we cleaned the fish and marveled at their beauty, we strung them on crotched sticks and laid them in the stream in the shade as we enjoyed nature, good conversation and dreading the long uphill hike back out to the blazer. Our conversation was interrupted when we saw birds flushed out of the woods behind us. We joked that if it was a bear he could have the yucky warm squished bologna sandwiches but not the trout, well, maybe the trout but not us. I remember I dropped my empty water bottle and it floated down stream and it quickly hung up on a grass mogul. I got up, retrieved the bottle, and grabbed another bottle of water from the pack. I filled the empty bottle with stream water to keep so I could pour it over my head when I got hot walking back out of the woods. As I sat back down a mosquito bit me on the lip and it was swelling fast so I leaned over from the rock I was sitting on in the stream and stuck my face in to cool the lips and wash the sweat from my face.

Just as my face hit the water, I heard an unfamiliar voice asking how the fishing was. I popped up and saw a game warden standing on the bank talking to the guys and they were already digging out their fishing licenses. I wiped the water from my eyes so I could see better, when I heard the game warden ask me what I was doing with my head in the water. I soooooooo wanted to say I was hiding fish under the rock I was sitting on but thought better of it and instead heard myself say, “evuh lick a rivuh?” The guys laughed but the warden did nothing but ask to see my license and the fish we caught and if we would empty out our packs.

We were legal, this time and thank god we did not start a fire, eat the fish we had caught and then try to fish for more to bring out.

One of my friends has since passed away but the other one still reminds me of the quote. This story and others have been told many times sitting out by the fire. “Evah lick a rivah? Lora-Jean has, just ask her.”