November

On the ride back from James Bridge the night before, I began thinking to myself, waxing sentimental about my rod. It's not anything particularly fascinating, a low-end St. Croix model I bought on clearance at a big box store. Nine feet long, graphite, and rated for a 4 weight line, it'd been my fishing partner when I was all alone, it had performed admirably for me on several dozen trips, it was, in a strange way, a fishing companion and my magic wand. I thought about naming it, as I suppose you're supposed to do with the things you love, whether they be a car or your dog. And the only thing I could come up with was Victoria, if only because the song by the same name, written and sang by the Kinks decades before I was born, happened to be playing on the radio at the time. Little did I know I had jinxed myself.

I was hoping to catch a wild rainbow today, all I'd caught all weekend were browns. They were fun, but even the little wild fish on the North Fork of the White are pretty powerful fish. I'd caught several last March up to fourteen inches, and it was amazing the fight in those fish.

I had no such luck, though. I worked my way up the run just outside the River House, up to a nice-looking gravel bar which dumped into a deeper tub. It looked fishy, and I tied on a big, heavy rubberlegs with a #14 Red Ass as a dropper. I lobbed the rig onto the bar and let it all tumble into the tub, when the indicator stopped and I set the hook.

I felt the tension of the fish, then heard the swift snap of the rod, and watched the top half hinge into the river. Stunned, I grabbed it and began towing rod, line, and fish through the water. The fish came to hand, a little stocker brown, foul-hooked directly in the caudal peduncle. this was what I had broke my rod on.












I yelled and cussed and waded back to the house, putting the rod back together as best I could with some aluminum foil, epoxy, and single-strand waxed nylon. No dice- it broke again after only a few casts. Disheartened, I decided to head south into Arkansas. There was a decent-sounding rodbuilding shop I'd read about in Mountain Home, and I figured I could perhaps make something happen there...