Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

Award-winning columnist mails it in

By the time this edition of this award-winning fishing column is published, I will be in the middle of a week’s vacation near the Esopus Creek in Phoenicia. N.Y.

It’s a pleasant situation. The best feature of the ancestral estate is the almost complete lack of electronic communications.

We do not have cable or internet. A usable cell signal requires a five-mile drive. And every time it rains, the landline sounds like a transmission from a cold and distant star.

So no streamside updates this time. This edition is filler. Darn good filler, but filler nonetheless.

Here are some websites and bloggers I follow regularly.

Troutbitten (www.troutbitten.com): Produced by Dominick Swentosky out of central Pennsylvania. Extremely detailed advice on gear, rigging, and tactics. This is the man who introduced me to the Bread and Butter nymph, which has become my go-to fly for all freshwater species.

Drew Lookn Fishy (www.youtube.com/c/DrewLooknFishy): This guy has figured out how to spend a lot of time driving around the West fishing and camping out of his truck. Lots of dry-dropper rigs on small and medium-sized streams. Never gives directions, which is good, as these locations are mostly unspoiled. Bonus points for chanting “Hey, bear!” as he makes his way through the undergrowth, and for securing his net to the frame with zip ties.

Alvin Dedeaux (www.youtube.com/c/AlvinDedeauxFlyFishing): The chatty and humorous Alvin Dedeaux is a Texas guide specializing in fly-fishing for bass. Lots of in-the-boat stuff. When I retire, I’m going to hunt Alvin up and spend a couple days on his turf, if only for the running commentary.

At the Orvis website, there is a “how to” section that has lots of good material (www.howtoflyfish.orvis.com).

The king of this particular hill is Tom Rosenbauer, who is to fly-fishing what Bob Vila is to home improvement. (I am not the first to make this observation.)

Rosenbauer has the gift, in print or on video, of making the obscure comprehensible. One video has him with Euro-nymphing guru George Daniels, who writes books I don’t understand.

When Daniels is talking and demonstrating, however, prompted by regular guy questions from Rosenbauer, all becomes clear. Bonus points for shooting this video on the Farmington River.

Let’s wind this up with Connecticut’s own Steve Culton, the courteous and popular proprietor of Current Seams (www.currentseams.com).

Culton is something of a boss fisherman, equally enthused by stripers and wild brookies.

I had the pleasure of fishing with him on the Housatonic a couple years back. Neither one of us did much, which pleased me in a perverse way.

And I learned a lot. You will too.

The Esopus, like the Housatonic, is big water for an 11-mile stretch from Allaben, N.Y. to the Ashokan Reservoir. Here an angler is patiently working pockets at the downstream end, below the Five Arches bridge in Boiceville. Photo by Patrick L. Sullivan
Patrick L. Sullivan
Senior Reporter
Patrick Sullivan has been a reporter for The Lakeville Journal since 2004, covering everything from town meetings to local characters and the outdoors. He grew up in Northern Virginia but spent summers on Mount Riga in Salisbury, giving him a lifelong connection to the Northwest Corner. A graduate of Denison University, Patrick is also the author of Tangled Lines, the newspapers’ popular fly-fishing column—making The Lakeville Journal, as far as anyone knows, the only newspaper in Connecticut with a regular fly-fishing columnist. He once received a fan letter from England, which he considers sufficient evidence that his work has achieved international acclaim.

Latest News

A life reshaped by clay in “Matin”

A life reshaped by clay in “Matin”

Left to right: Hannah Wheeler, Matin Malikzada and Yonah Sadeh.

D.H. Callahan

On Monday, Oct. 26, a group of students, teachers and local residents gathered at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville for a screening of the new short documentary “Matin.” The film tells the story of Matin Malikzada, a seventh-generation Afghani potter making a new life in New Milford, Connecticut. The film was made by local filmmaker Yonah Sadeh, creator of the Video Wall at the David M. Hunt Library, and Berkshires-based potter Hannah Wheeler, who were both present for the screening, along with Malikzada himself.

As a member of the seventh generation of his family to master the art of pottery, Malikzada had done things the way his family had for over a century. Istalif, the village where his family has lived for generations, was known throughout Afghanistan for its pottery, with wares sent across the country for use as everyday cups, bowls, plates and other vessels. The pottery-making families of Istalif gathered clay from the same mountain, about 30 to 45 minutes away by donkey. Every July, they would head north toward the Uzbekistan border to gather ishkar, a plant they processed by hand to make their signature glazes.

Keep ReadingShow less
film

Meg Sher finds her calling among the stacks

Meg Sher finds her calling among the stacks

Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.

L. Tomaino

When Meg Sher came to Falls Village in 2006 from Old Lyme, Connecticut, where she grew up, she never imagined she’d someday be the executive director of the David M. Hunt Library.

Although, in hindsight, perhaps it makes sense.

Keep ReadingShow less
our community

Crescendo’s 23rd season speaks to the heart and mind

Crescendo’s 23rd season speaks to the heart and mind

Christine Gevert, founding artistic director of Crescendo, conducts the audience at a performance.

Steve Potter

For Christine Gevert, founding artistic director of Crescendo, music from centuries past is anything but a relic. It is a living, breathing art form, full of drama, emotional complexity and, occasionally, surprises. As the regional choral and period-instrument ensemble launches its 23rd season, Gevert is once again bringing forgotten masterpieces into the present.

“Early Music has been my lifelong passion and the focus of my specialization in Europe and South America,” Gevert said. “Bringing this repertoire to our audiences in a nuanced way that does justice to its incredible depth, intensity, and beauty is deeply important to me.”

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

Close Encounters with Music celebrates 35 years of musical discovery

Close Encounters with Music celebrates 35 years of musical discovery

Close Encounters with Music’s 35th season opens with “Saluting the Clarinet” featuring clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein.

Provided

For 35 years, cellist Yehuda Hanani has been inviting audiences to experience classical music in unexpected ways. As founder and artistic director of Close Encounters with Music, Hanani has built a concert series that goes beyond the music itself, exploring connections to literature, history, politics and the human experience.

This year, Close Encounters celebrates its 35th season with “Celebration & Discovery,” a seven-concert series that opens Sunday, Nov. 1, at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts

Shinbone Alley brings spooky songs to Spencertown

Shinbone Alley brings spooky songs to Spencertown

Seeing isn’t always believing. Sometimes it’s the lack of a defined picture that can be the most compelling. And when Alex Harvey of Shinbone Alley sings his supernaturally charged sea shanties and street ballads, the unseen will be downright scary. On Oct. 30, the historically inclined storyteller and performer will create a spooky evening of forbidden tales and yarns through a carefully chosen series of songs at Spencertown Academy of Arts.

The repertoire for the performance is a bit fraught. Over the years, Shinbone Alley has explored the world of folklore through music. Though the group usually features two musicians, Harvey, a multi-instrumentalist and singer, will be performing solo. That is, of course, unless you include the spirits.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts

Malian blues and Moroccan Gnawa meet in Sheffield

Malian blues and Moroccan Gnawa meet in Sheffield
Vieux Farka Touré
Proivded

Desert winds rarely blow into the Berkshires, but on Nov. 5, they will carry the Malian blues and Moroccan Gnawa music to Race Brook Lodge.

That evening, Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré, often called “the Hendrix of the Sahara,” and Moroccan musician Samir LanGus will play at the lodge’s Event Barn in Sheffield, Massachusetts, at a benefit for the foundation Touré directs.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.