eno

i pity the frog who comes within arm's reach of emerson.

we fished the eno this evening; or rather: i fished; emer frogged.

but at first we waded; or rather: i waded, flycasting with one arm while holding emer in the other. then we came to a gravelly spot on a bank that was hopping with frogs. "down." i put him down. soon he had a frog in each hand, which is, by the way, the definition of heaven when you are two years old and a boy.

i left him to his frogging and waded out to fish a little. caught a few bream, or "brim," as they say around here.

emerson soon came wading out into the river, singing and happy as could be, waving a stick in one hand and frog in the other. then the stick became a spear that he jabbed at imaginary fish, and soon he lost his balance, slowly tilting back onto his bum, now in water up to his neck with terror in his eyes and a whimper in his throat. i scooped him up. he still had the frog in his hand.

i waded back upstream, dripping wet, casting (one-arm) here and there. we reached the other bank by where the car was parked, but emer wasn't ready to go. he was having too much fun throwing his frog in the river and watching him swim back to shore for another toss. boy, how he'd laugh.

a couple more brim to poke in the eye and let go, a few more toss-and-swims for the frog, and then he was ready to say good-bye to the frog, to the river reflecting the setting sun, and then on back to home, asleep before we got there, dreaming, no doubt, of ketching frogs.
-sept. 3

saxapahaw

i fished the haw river today, just downstream from the bridge at saxapahaw. i parked at the rivermill and crossed the bridge. saw three giant turtles bobbing their heads in the current, in the wide of the river. took a dirt road down to the riverside. a frog hopped in front of me, crosswise, into a puddle in the road. a little root-worn trail led down to the riverbank. i tied on a cork popper and caught a handful of hefty bream: green sunfish, mainly. stepped out onto a boulder in the stream to cast. the exposed tops of rocks around me were speckled with the carcasses of large black flies with tan splotches on their laid-flat wings. looked like caddis. they were cemented to the rocks, as if for some purpose, by cement of their own make. i opened my flybox and found a stonefly pattern that looked like a good match. tied it on. caught a few more. moved upstream. caddis fluttered in swarms from the hedge along the bank when i brushed it. a watersnake slid meandering s-curves through the water. a blue heron, or perhaps it was a sandhill crane, took to flight and two canada geese waddled out to midstream, and on down. i sat on a rock in the sunlight under the bridge. opened my flybox. figured i’d go back to a popper, a bigger one this time. but first i phoned home. emerson had just woken up from his nap; olivia awake too. so i broke off my fly and wound in my line. made my way upstream until i found a little trail leading to another trail leading to the road, bridge, rivermill.

as i was leaving saxapahaw, i noticed that people were gathering at a greenlawn amphitheater in the middle of town. i saw a sign that said festival parking, watch for pedestrians. so i drove home to carrboro, gathered up the missus and the kids, and we headed right back out to saxapahaw where we listened to lizzie jones play her guitar and sing as emer waved a rope-loop-on-2-sticks-dipped-in-a-bucket-of-suds and made giant bubbles in the air and ’livi smiled and laughed at everyone and everything in saxapahaw.
-august 14

update: the large black fly carcasses, with tan splotches, that looked like caddis: I looked them up in a book on caddisflies, and they are indeed caddis: macrostemum zebratum, commonly known, to vulgar fishers, as the zebra caddis. i was down on the stream again today, same spot, and saw a bunch of live ones, as well as another specie of the same order: smaller, and whitish-tan in color, fuzzier looking (caddis are, after all, classified as trichoptera, greek for "hair wing").

-august 21