The Green Boat

My earliest memory of trout fishing is sitting in a boat my Father built watching a red and white bobber.

The image of the place has blended with so many other perfect trout fishing pools over the years that I suspect my memory is really the best of many spots rather than an actual place.

It is an impression of dark, almost black water with startlingly white gobs of foam drifting by to pile up against any obstruction. The white foam yellowing as it compressed and speckled with black flies that have landed and stuck marked the spots to cast to.

The boat itself was built from a plan Dad probably got from Popular Mechanics Magazine. For some reason I think the design was called a “topper” but memory is a funny thing and I may have pulled that out thin air. What I am sure of is that the boat was painted a deep marine green, almost the colour of the background on this web page.

I still enjoy seeing that colour on a boat. It inspires me with confidence in its seaworthiness.

Thinking back, I am still able to picture the bobber and its slow, slow drift. An intensity of concentration filled me that day as I studied its motion for clues as to what might be happening under the surface. I still get that razor sharp focus when trying to place a fly to a difficult rise or having seen a salmon stir in the depths of a pool. Time stops and every detail leaps into vivid clarity.

You know what is funny? The other thing that has stuck with me is that even now, after all of these years, I can still barely contain my impatience to get on the water at the end of the trip to a fishing spot. And I still delay until the last possible moment the decision to reel in and leave.

Ah, what the heck...just one more cast.