It rained a lot in 2024, and then it didn’t.
That’s the Tangled Lines 2024 recap in a nutshell.
With recent changes in angling regulations in my two main stomping grounds, Connecticut and New York, the idea of “trout season” is now more of an idea than a legal reality.
Poor conditions, not regs, keep me inside. This includes high water, low water, muddy water, and ice chunks floating in high or low, possibly muddy water.
Let us not overlook the angler’s poor condition. In 2024 the Tangled Lines medical beat was established, and how.
Out in 2024: Ice cream. Chips. Bread. Pasta, unless it is made entirely from chickpeas, comes in an orange box and costs a lot more than the regular stuff. (Also — don’t overcook it. The difference between al dente and al mush is about 12 seconds.)
In: Salad. Fields and fields of…salad.
It’s been a tough slog. I am considering starting a nonprofit advocacy group, the Society for the Suppression of Salad. We could march in the Memorial Day parade, waving styrofoam cheeseburgers.
But I did drop about 30 pounds, and kept it off.
A shout out to yoga mastermind Samantha Free of Millbrook Yoga. I described my lower back pain to her. She took one look at my feet and saw I was pronating.
Between deploying an inexpensive corrective insert in my shoes and the stretches and moves Sam showed me, I no longer stagger around like a decrepit man in his early 60s.
Now I lurch around like a klutz in his late 50s. Might not seem like much, but I’ll take what I can get.
The new and improved me voyaged into the wilds of western New York at the end of April, catching the end of the steelhead run in the Salmon River in and around Pulaski.
I managed to land a steelhead. The fish struck me as a little tired out but I put it in the win column anyway, if only because I did it in the most offhand manner possible short of sitting in a lawn chair on the bank with a bobber, a worm, and a piece of line tied to my foot.
I spent more time than usual this year prowling the Catskills outside of my usual Esopus watershed, with mixed results.
And then everything dried up, except for one quick blast of rain in early August that didn’t do much in Connecticut but brought the East Branch of the Delaware in New York up about three feet. This was not helpful.
Switching to bass lake mode for August, I noticed a persistent pain in my right (casting) shoulder.
At first I chalked it up to slinging gigantic, heavy flies such as the Chupacabra, which is like casting a wet sock.
But it soon became clear that something was wrong.
Hello, rotator cuff!
The doc sent me to another low-key miracle worker, physical therapist Mike Mangini in North Canaan, and I am pleased to report I can, once again, inform fellow motorists that they are Number One with a simple, rotator cuff-dependent gesture.
I don’t believe in setting goals or making elaborate plans for fishing. Too often the goal is silly, like catching a big lunker largemouth with a one-weight rod. (It could be done, like tap-dancing in roller skates, but why?).
Or the plan falls through because the fellow who was going to take me to the secret place disappears, leaving no forwarding address.
Instead, for 2025 I will concentrate on simple things. Getting better with longer, finer leaders. Learning some form of two-handed cast without getting buried in minutiae regarding shooting heads and grain weights.
And finding ways to do more with less. I am tired of rummaging around in the pack or vest du jour, looking for the only fly that will work.
Because they all work — if you do it right.
