Slim Randles' Home Country

“It’s okay, I’m using a dry fly.”

[May 30, 2014]  The problem Marvin Pincus had yesterday was simply time. You see, he’d found that new-to-him but older-anyway deluxe glass Fenwick fly rod at a yard sale and snapped it up. While others had succumbed to the flyweight temptations of graphite, give Marvin a grand old glass Fenwick and just turn him loose.

This rod was for a four-weight line, which he didn’t have, so he had to go to the store and outfit himself with all new everything for it. So by the time he had his “outfit” ready to fish, it was late afternoon. The fish would have to wait until tomorrow. Flogging (gracefully of course) the waters of Lewis Creek would have to wait until tomorrow.

But Marvin wasn’t going to wait until tomorrow. Not with a brand-new (to him) Fenwick!

So he walked out in the street in front of his house and began casting. Oh that backcast was smooth. The line just went lazily back there, and then, with a master’s touch, he flicked his wrist forward and the line came over, traveled out to a spot about three feet above the asphalt, and the fly quietly fluttered down.

Even without water, Marvin could feel the fly fisherman’s unspoken thrill at doing something so well people would stop to watch. It was a ballet, like those girls do with ribbons in the Olympic games, but this … he just smiled.

And it was the first time his fly casting had ever stopped traffic … literally.

He stepped out of the way to let the car go by. Ten-year-old Johnny Symmes rolled down his window in the back seat of the car.

“Catchin’ anything, Mr. Pincus?”

“Little slow without water, Johnny. But I’ll keep trying.”

“Without water?”

Marvin grinned. “It’s okay,” he said, “I’m using a dry fly.”

[Text from file received from Slim Randles]

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