My father died early this morning. As you'll learn in a moment, going off to fish was communion. He had Alzheimer's but remained cogent. My Mother died from Alzheimer's in 2012. She unfortunately did not remain conversant. There were months if not a couple of years when she couldn't recognize us. Dad never lost the ability to recognize his family members. I visited every couple of weeks or so; over the past year, we've had conversations that brought us together in a way I think we always have been. Throughout my 20's, he wanted me to leave the shore and get on with college. I ended up staying at the shore and quitting college. For years after I finally did quit my clam harvesting and returned to the mainland, it was difficult for us to connect. But especially over the course of this past year, it's been as if we're no different than we ever had been, but mutually bound in understanding we couldn't relate to each other before now.
It's completely understandable when a father wants his son to finish college, but I had the strength of a team of oxen. I well remember telling Dad so many decades ago that I would work wage jobs until I made enough on royalties from books. Well, chances are I'll never make enough on royalties from books, but I've worked wage jobs all these years because I'm tough enough. I don't regret them as if I should have graduated with a four-year degree. I did graduate RVCC with a two-year Liberal Arts degree in 2006. It never helped me get a job but isn't useless. The exercise of writing papers got my mindset back to my ability to get articles published.
I had payment for an article in the form of a check to process at the bank later this morning, and I stopped at the North Branch with an ultralight and a Haggerty black marabou jig. It was a particularly conscious act of Communion, which means the sense of the finality of my father's life enclosed my sense of natural surroundings. But it felt as if all freely breathed openly--life eternal. It didn't take long for me to hook a fish. At first I thought, "What! A hoover?" I had expected a rainbow, of course. I saw brown and next I wondered if it was a big fallfish, but then I saw the colorful spots and faint yellow above the white belly, and I was simply astonished at the size of this wild brown.
We think of Bedminster river browns as coming from Peapack Brook. They're a rare catch and usually not bigger than seven inches or so. The river heats up considerably during summer, but I couldn't help but wonder if the brown I caught, photographed, and quickly released is a resident fish. Maybe there's enough relief from ground water and springs in some places to hold trout despite the summer warming of what amounts to a smallmouth bass stream. I've heard of a 16-inch wild brown caught in Peapack Brook, but surely that was very much an exception. Just the same, I fished by the 202-206 bridge this past July when temperatures were above 90 and spotted two rainbows stocked during springtime.
