There are a lot of ways that one can ring in the New Year. As a teenager, most of those significant midnight moments involved doing what was most significant to me. And that was fish. My best friend and I would drive up to Southcentral Pennsylvania from Northern Virginia and go to bed around 8:00pm, in a tent, on a frozen field.
There was something that felt significant about waking up early, buying a brand new trout stamp, and catching a fish before most anglers even saw the new year.
Often, buying licenses on New Year’s Day was an adventure in itself. Most fly shops weren’t be open. Before online sales and digital confirmations, ambitious anglers were dependent upon groggy and disgruntled big-box employees. These holiday workers that pulled the AM short straw were less than eager to go through what was relatively complicated paperwork.
The weather was nearly always a significant variable, too. Fly fishing in cold weather after driving to the stream in a warm car is necessary. Fly fishing in cold weather after sleeping in a cold tent and driving to the stream in a cold car is different. Not better, not worse, but different. Furthermore, if there had been any fishing on December 31st, there was a good chance that wading boots would be frozen solid. In this state, they would be left in some unmanageable shape the next morning. Mitigating this problem requires getting down to the water and submerging the boot until it yields enough to cram a foot inside. No single part of the procedure is comfortable or warm.
But it was all for trout. And, I can say, it was a pure and innocent pursuit. It wasn’t some ridiculous goal. We weren’t trying to be the first person on the eastern seaboard to catch a trout in that particular year. We weren’t even trying to be the first person to catch a trout on our favorite stream in a calendar year, even though that may have happened on more than one occasion. There was something deeper going on. While neither of us were superstitious, I think there was something about starting the year off with a fish. Hooking up with a trout on the very first day of the new year starts things off well.
And we would catch fish. Cold, drowsy, and hurried, we would catch fish.
I loved it. Every minute of it. The close comradery, the quirky experience, and the fly fishing. They were days and nights that are probably unrepeatable; they were for a time of life that was just for a time. Those were days on the water characterized by teenage hijinks, framed in the unusual context of a holiday. Such days are tailor-made for memories. It is always more than fish. Those New Year’s days epitomized how it was more than fish.
This article was a reworked version of a post that appeared in January of 2017 called Trout, Frozen Wading Boots, & Auld Lang Syne. Last week, I spent a night close to where some examples of the above memories took place and I gave me opportunity to think and reflect.