Month: July 2012

Happiness is Valerie Attia, chaulking up a day of firsts along with her husband Garem.  Being raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, Val didn’t have the opportunity to hone her smallmouth bass-fishing skills.  That happened last Saturday, when the physician’s assistant got close and personal with about 50 of them!  Notice in the first photo, the soaking wet shirt––the 19-inch bass she is holding did everything but pull her over the side before succumbing to the net.  Garem, an experienced fisherman, was experimenting in the bow with flies, topwater lures, and subsurface attractors of different designs.  He found action on nearly everything he tried.  Do women out-fish men?  Ask any guide.  The answer will be, only ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

where-cool-waters-flow

Leo Sideras, a sophomore at Ohio University, created an audio synopsis of my book, Where Cool Waters Flow, by using the college recording studio, hiring student actors to perform various voiceover rolls, and selecting sound effects and background music. Here is his 12-minute presentation (for which he received an A!)

Many guides, when a single day off comes along, go fishing.  This chronicles my day off last week, the first in several weeks… From heading out, to an eagle escort, to the first fish of the day, to a botched attempt to take a pic of a friend’s camp, to the final fish.  It was a day I’m still enjoying.

Mike Fastoso had been coming to Grand Lake Stream for many years with his friends, “The Stalwarts.”  They have their own chapter in, “Where Cool Waters Flow: Four Seasons with a Master Maine Guide.”  They receive further mention in a new book I’ve written, at the publisher’s now.  Mike always sat amidships, right in front of me, close and personal.  We laughed and raked through the coals of the previous year together, occasionally interrupted by a salmon reporting from his rod tip.  Mike arrived this May wearing a device that mainlined medicine to his lungs for his pulmonary hypertension.  He was somewhat weakened, but we found a hand-carved cane among the relics of my guiding and outfitting camp which helped prop him up to negotiate the uneven terrain.  On one of his final days, he hooked up with this fine salmon which he was happy to hold high for a photo.  The news came within a couple weeks of his departure:  Mike had succumbed in a Boston hospital.  My consolation is that I know something for sure that others may not know.  At the end of his life, Mike found a peace and a truth and a meaning that was going to be enough to tide him over.  I’m carrying that meaning with me now, and I wish the same to all his friends and loved ones.