The Return Home

Over a period of weeks, those short sessions turned into a daily occurrence in the evenings, sometimes lasting well into the edge of darkness. And although enjoyable, to my conscious mind they weren't indicative of anything significant or meaningful. At best they were a means to an end to polish up the old form, and teach my son to fish. At worst they were a pleasant stroll down the dimly lit lane of a former life. Then it started to get a little weird.

Several folks from my past life in angling seem to appear out of the ether, within weeks of one another, to carve out a significant place in my life again. One of whom was my old mate from across the pond Paul Arden with whom I got back in touch with through Facebook. I first met Paul here on the forum somewhere around 2003. I was in the middle of compiling a series of interviews for RodMaker Magazine that profiled famous rod designers. Paul had an interest in re-publishing some of those interviews, so we worked out an agreement with the original publisher to reproduce a few of those articles on this site, where they can still be found today. I’ll never forget sitting in my office one summer day in 2006 when the phone rang, ironically enough it was our boy Paul. He was driving across America and was on his way through Texas to visit Bill Gammel. After exchanging pleasantries, Paul said he had an hour or two to kill and could I free up some time to meet up. Not knowing what the evening had in store, I went ahead and threw an 8wt. in the car just in case we had a moment to cast.

Turns out, casting was ALL we did. I had kind of assumed we would partake in the consumption of an adult beverage, and maybe some Texas BBQ. But there we stood, on a rural stretch of land just south of Marion Texas on the side of the Interstate 10 highway casting flyrods. Not much more than a fly lines length away, large semi-trailer trucks and charter buses raced by, mockingly honking their horns at the two grown men waving long whippy sticks in the air, for what would probably have appeared to be no apparent reason. It's been close to 23 years since I first picked up a fly rod, and I still contemplate daily the multitude of reasons why we wave long whippy sticks in the air. That experience reinforced in my mind that many of those reasons are not even about catching fish. It was one of those moments where you realize how this sport can bring people together, many times from different parts of the world, in a simple but very profound way.