Fall 2016 LOCALadk Magazine 54
LOCALadk
I caught three beauties before noticing that I could no longer
see where I was casting. I wanted to keep fishing, but some-
thing told me to put my rod down and just listen. Sitting in the
dark, I could easily have been on the bank of a trout stream
near my home in South Carolina. The sound of the river falling
past me in the cooling evening sounded like that of other riv-
ers I have fished and fallen in love with. It didn't feel like I was
a thousand miles from home waters. My worries about being
a first-time visitor to legendary waters had evaporated, and
this experience had already begun to reshape my perspective.
Will I ever reach a point where I consider myself an expert an-
gler and no longer wrestle with self-doubt, the fear of failure,
or fessing up to just not knowing what's going on? I'm not
sure I ever will, but in the meantime I hope to remain like the
child I imagine was put in charge of naming all those bugs, and
let my imagination lead me. And when people ask me about
the time I experienced the Mythical Green Drake Super Hatch
on the Ausable River in the Adirondack mountains, I will an-
swer honestly that I just consider myself lucky to have been in
the right place at the right time.
