18 Jan 14

Moning all! 

 I have decided to continue my line of nostalgic thoughts for the next few entries.  For some forty plus years five of my best friends and I made an annual trek to the Big Lake in New Hampshire in search of camaraderie, booze, poker and incidentally fishing for land lock salmon.  This is the story which I posted a few years back but feel is worth repeating.

LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE, NEW HAMPSHIRE

It is late April or possibly very early may. In fact it is very early in the morning in the New Hampshire wilderness, probably 5:30 or 6:00 A.M. Well, as close to wilderness as one can get on a lake in a state so near to Boston, Ma. The sun has not completely risen over the Eastern tree line. A tree line comprised primarily of fir and pine, each competing for every square millimeter of sparse rocky soil.

The sun is still filtering through all the air pollution from the major metropolitan areas to the south such as Boston, Connecticut, and New York. The rising light is playing off the different chemicals deposited in the air, creating all the different colors one sees during the "Golden" hours.

Here the air is clear, clean, fresh and still, and likely cold at that time of morning. It smells of the pines where we spent the previous night, tightly rolled in sleeping bags, in a cabin built during the depression of the 30's.

There are five men who have spent forty two years waking to this scene or a thousand variations thereof. For over forty years these same five have endured each other's company for a week of landlocked salmon fishing on Lake Winnipesaukee. It is probably one of the only chances these men have to be together each year and the friendships can best be described as closer to that of brotherhood. There are times, of course, when the brotherhood is tested, but then that is more like sibling rivalry. Each is approaching or passing the seventy year mark, but when the card games heat up and adult beverages flow, one would think they were still in college.  

Or at least think they are of college age.

Or simply behave as if they were college age.

In the first years we would play cards till midnight and fish at five AM. The measure of the adult beverages consumed was in the gallons. Today, bedtime arrives around nine pm and an occasional bottle of wine or vodka is seen. Amazing what maturity can do, or undo!

Two boats, sometimes three, set forth into the image accompanying this piece. Each man is filled with anticipation of the first fish of the day (first winner in the daily pool of categories first, biggest and most) and even perhaps the largest of the day.  If taken early it thus reduces the competition, and creates a good natured ragging. Ragging is defined as railing, tormenting, or teasing.  In our case torment is the most appropriate definition.

Coffee cups rest on the gunnel's or seats of the boats. Fishing rods are held with anticipation, and another adventure begins. "Just look at that water", says one. "Today has to be a great day to fish". "There I saw a salmon rising to the surface". You can see such things on mornings like this. That vision was seen during the dreams of the previous three hundred sixty days.

It is really a great day to be alive pursuing the noble object of Sir Isaac Walton's prose.  Walton’s treatise is a difficult piece to read, but it is however the bible of the angler and not to be taken lightly.