Fish On A Stick

Fish On A Stick

Posted by: Greg Keeler / added: 07.21.2009 / Back to Tailgate

It's getting to be the time of year when I don't bring a rod, just some little flies and some tippet, when I walk in to the high streams up from the Gallatin.  Since I can't cast to these pools, I just tie a fly to
the tippet and dangle it down through the deadfall on a stiff willow branch.  It's enough to watch the brookies coalesce from beneath the logs and undercut and take the fly, so sometimes I snip the hook off at the bend.

These places always make me think of this Yeats poem: 

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.




Comments:

Posted by Cam on Jul 25th, 2009 @ 9:43 pm

Stick On A Fish...

Greg, your painting and brook trout fishing does remind me of Yeats. For some reason the dry fly fishing this time of year down here in Colorado, too. Maybe because it is all so fleeting.

Lightening Round

I went out to the river, hungry at its banks
it pulled hungrily at me, I let it pull.

Rod in hand I cast into the slow seam,
Nymphs, down dropping down,
felt a rock, another rock, then a quick tick.

Fish after fish I gathered there,
by the big tree where the rivers met.

When I let my last fish go, dusk and drakes
were on the wing, descending, descending.

I changed to a dry fly and let it fall.

Silent as the dew it fell, and where
it landed I couldn't see, but landed all the same

and took another trout beneath the silver moon.

I heard the river all night in my dreamless sleep.
Tangled in its currents I rose at dawn

and slipped back down to its wandering edge.

www.sugarmule.com



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