Serenity Spots

[stoney]

So does yours, poly-tail man...

[JGRobinson]

The Sconondoa was my home away from home (it was only a few hundred yards from the house), very handy, very nice troutage, clean and cold!

I loved Creek stomping when I was a kid; after my chores were done if I wasn't haying it or cleaning out calf pens. An old pair of Cutoffs, fishing pole, some matches, a jackknife and a can of worms and you wouldn't see me for the rest of the day. Alone or with my BF George, it didn't matter, time stood still during those endless Summers of days gone by.

A little fishing, a quick dip every couple hours, maybe climb a tree or two and life couldn't get much better for this country boy!

I would come home at night with a full stomach, a sunburn and water logged feet but there was few better ways to spend a lazy hazy July day...

[ladyoracle]

Lots of great thoughts here on places to get some peace of mind, so I am embarrassed to tell you mine: my own backyard. My backyard is as basic as you can get and I live in Utica, so it is pretty small. I have a slab concrete porch that has a simple roof over it that is at "end of life", so nothing fancy here to enjoy. But there is something so relaxing about sitting out there in the evening when the weather is nice. I never cared about having a yard -- I hate yard work -- and I mostly have lived my adult life in townhouses and condos, and really liked that style of living. But I just love the simplicity of this backyard here in Utica.

[dgriffin]

Mar 26, 2011 18:04:53 GMT -5 @stoney said:

What an unbelievable picture, Dave!! It looks like it was taken by a professional.

Stoney, may father loved photography and I'm sure he set everything up and just had my uncle click the shutter.
Fiskie, that portion of the creek near the falls does indeed remind me of some of the water in the movie, A River Runs Through It.

I frankly like Catskill streams better than those in the Adirondacks. The Catskills are older mountains and so its streams have less of a gradient, whereas the Adirondack streambeds are quite steep. This makes Adirondack streams more changeable from heavy spring torrents. Catskill streams are smoother, with gravely bottoms. The West Canada trophy section south of Trenton Falls is quite nice, just like our Esopus Creek down here. The Ausable in the high peaks area south of Whiteface is always filled with fishermen, but I think it's a horrible place to fish with the bottom littered with basketball size stones to walk around and over. Really hard on the feet and more likely to slip and fall in that water.

[dgriffin]

By the way, my last self-published book, Heaven, was titled for a story I wrote regarding a "serenity spot" I often fish down here in the Catskills.
The story is online. You can click on it from this page, where it is number 95.
www.windsweptpress.com/essays.htm

[kit]

That's nice LO. Simpler is better. Whatever floats your boat.

There seem to be several different ways and places that people use to relax and get into a serene mood. Wouldn't it be nice if our country and the world ran the same way? But of course then there wouldn't be much to wail and moan about, would there?

[Ralph]

That's a might familiar looking rock Dave.

[JGRobinson]

Condo living is OK if thats what you like, your not that far from the boonies if you wish to take a stroll.

[Clipper]

You are making me homesick again Ralph. Once in my teen years a friend and I took two days walking and fishing from the old swing bridge above Noblesboro to the High Falls bridge. It was the first and last time we tried to camp, fish and hike on that scale. It was a royal pain in the butt carrying sleeping bag, pup tent, fishing gear and food while trying to fish our way from bridge to bridge. THAT trip however was the first time I ever camped out at that little campsite by the small bridge. We had my dad drop us at the trailhead to the firetower on a friday evening, and we called him from Creekside to come and pick us up on Sunday evening.

It was fun, but cumbersome to pick up and put down a Boy Scout Yucca pack every hundred yards or so in order to wade and fish. We were spin fishing, had packs, tackle vests, creels, mess kits, canteens, bait cans, as well as our bedrolls and tents. Hiking in hip waders is not real great either.

Just before the base closed, I had a guy working for me whose dad was the ranger at the Noblesboro fire tower years ago. It was sad when they took down the swing bridge. It was a great hike from Route 8 to the tower for the young and fit. My dad took me there when I was about 12. Having an "outdoorsy" dad growing up was wonderful. We did everything from winter camping on the backside of Stillwater during hunting season, to carrying a canoe back into some of the remote ponds in the Moose River Plains and sleeping in the lean-to's. We once carried a canoe almost 3 miles, only to find that when we got to the pond in question, there was a state owned boat there for use by fishermen.

It is sad that many kids in today's world don't care anything about such activity, and those that do often don't have a dad that is into that sort of activity, or into spending time with them. Dad was my best friend and a great teacher of all that was important in my life.

[dgriffin]

Ralph, is that Wilmurt Falls? You're right, the rock is the same as in my father's photo. But it all looks a little different from where I was that day in roughly '95 or '96 when I went looking for the spot.

[Clipper]

That is definitely Wilmurt Falls Dave. I spent enough time there in my younger days to know just about every darn rock one can stand on to cast a line.

[Clipper]

Your dad was a handsome man, and you look very much like him. That IS a beautiful picture of him at the falls. Was he a fly fishing purest like yourself, or did he fish live bait also?

I envy your skills as a fly fisherman. My dad tried to teach me, and I have tried several times over the years to cast a fly line. I can do it with very limited skill and don't really have the patience for it. I still have a fly rod, and I use it for crappie fishing and an occasional trout fishing trip to the weir dam below South Holston Lake. Places where short amateurish casts can get it done, haha. I spin fish mostly for trout and cast all sorts of tackle for other species. I catch and release only very small or very large trout and eat the rest, haha. I DO release all bass, and fishing bass tournaments was my passion for a while.

I remember fishing that pool below the falls at Wilmurt, but I usually fished the creek below there. That pool was full of chubs and horned A's and if you were fishing with live bait, they drove you crazy. You would catch 50 of them to every trout that you might hook.

Have you ever fished the Battenkill? My first wife was from Cambridge NY in Washington County. I used to fish the Battenkill every time we went down there. Only once as a kid did I get to fish the Catskills when my dad took me to Roscoe NY to fish for trout. One of my fly fishing lessons, haha. He caught trout, and I got skunked, lol.

To a fisherman, any stream is a serenity spot. Even if it were in the middle of a city, when the first cast is made, your mind drifts away to a place where you hear nothing but the stream flowing, and see nothing but the riffs and eddies.

[dgriffin]

Clip, my father was neither hunter nor fisherman, but he loved to hike. I think it was the scenery of the outdoors that thrilled him. As a young man before he married he skied, he and my uncle piling skis on the car and in the 1930s driving wherever a farmer with a cleared hillside allowed skiers. They tracked up the hill with that "V" formation I've forgotten the name of and then skied down. They sometimes treated themselves to the Parkway's ski and toboggan tows, but I don't remember when these were built. These were rope tows.
You put your gloved hands around the rope as it sped by and let it slide through your gloves, gradually increasing your grip for a smooth take off. If you grabbed too fast you flipped over on your face or were dragged along or ... if you knew the trick ... kept your hands half way out of your gloves so they would shoot off without you for a few feet.

I took up fly fishing in '95 and finally learned the trick to casting by '97. That's two full years of feeling foolish on the creek, although no one would have cared enough to watch me unless I asked for a critique.
Here's the trick ... just keep doing it. You may not be able to figure out how to get the fly to where you want it but your hand and arm will figure it out if you keep trying. It's nothing but practice. Actually, I do have a trick when I show someone how to do it and that is start by putting the rod in front of you, straight out. Then wave it left and right keeping it level. Get a feel for the action and watch that the fly at the end of the line and tippet don't drop. (Do it in grass and tie a piece of yarn on in place of the fly.) That's pretty easy. Once you've mastered that, turn and do it to your side so that it goes behind you and then ahead to the side. Then do it for a while with the rod 45 degrees up from level. Etc. Etc.

Well, I probably found Wilmurt Falls, but it seemed so small compared to my memory from ca. 1950. No surprise. I was probably there and didn't know it. I'll go back.

[Ralph]

Clipper’s right, that’s it. Though it is much more imposing than it looks in that picture.

Clipper….Did you ever hear of “The Little York Creek”? It is several miles in from the GW Road, totally off the beaten path and deep in the woods. If I recall about 9 miles or so.
I am supposedly the youngest person to ever hike back that far ( I was 9 at the time), It was an all day affair and when I came out I was clawing the blackflies from my head running towards camp! My step fathers family owned an old farm/camp on the GW.

I don’t know if this is the “Gray” American Legion you were thinking of, but it is the one on the road that everyone went to. This is all that was left of it when I was there in 2007, I have to get back up there this year.
I can still see them in there, have bombed and full of fun.

[Clipper]

I have never heard of Little York Creek Ralph. Sounds like you picked the wrong time of year to hike back there, haha. Black flies are the scourge of the area up in that country. I actually used to wear a pith helmet and netting to fish during the season, along with a long sleeved shirt and lots of Deet based repellent on the exposed parts.

Yes, that is the Gray American Legion that I remember. That is sad to see.