Fishing breakups are rough. I’ve had three. The first was Pat. We were just kids with tackle boxes on our handlebars, biking to our local bass spots in Northern New Jersey: office complex fountains, golf course ponds, bends of rivers obscured by thick brush you’d have to army crawl through. The best spots were the ones you weren’t supposed to be in. That all came to a head when we were arrested after breaking into a reservoir spillway with monster bass lurking. His mom saw me as a bad influence and forbade him to fish with me anymore.

The second was Wes. We were older then and drove to the Catskills weekly, where we learned to flyfish while using substances Hunter S. Thompson would frown upon. Ever cast a fly rod on mushrooms? It’s beautiful, but less than effective. Ever ski the Willowemoc? Impossible, you say. It’s not. Things became harder with harder substances. Too much, too much. Our friendship died with a paranoid whimper.

The third just happened. Jerry. He’s a little older and grew up south of me in the same punk scene. When you’re a kid, a couple years difference can be a generation, so we didn’t meet until recently. I’ve never hit it off with anyone as easily as I did with him. We floated for a year. I was his passenger princess on the Delaware, but in the wake of bad timing and apprehension on my part he found a new friend and parked her in my seat. I fumbled our hearts. Before I met him I was a prolific wader. He would kid me and say, “You know why people wade? Because they have no friends.”

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