It is that time of year again, and another trout season has come to an end. This year, the end of the season comes with another ending, at least for me. This will be my last Valley Angler.
I have been writing this column for 19 years, and it is time to call it a day. For the last two years, I have been taking a winter sabbatical, with the consent of my editor, and each year he has allowed me to return in the spring.
Last year, I wrote to him and told him I just couldn’t write another “season end” column and that I thought my readers had had enough.
It with a great deal of reluctance that I have decided to do this. Valley Angler has been a part of my life for a long time, and I have enjoyed the experience immensely.
Over the last couple of years, I have come to think that the column has lost some of its edge. This is a problem with becoming old. One tends to tell the same stories over and over again. This was one of the reasons for not continuing the column during the last two winters. It was becoming harder to find fresh material during the off-season.
In the days when I owned the North Country Angler, inspiration walked in the door every day. Every angler has a story to tell, and my friends and customers kept me supplied with a steady stream of ideas for stories.
I always said that my only reader was my mother, but I know that wasn’t true and some of the greatest joy I got from the column was when someone took the time to tell me they enjoyed a particular article.
My wife Janet told me that every so often someone would stop her in the supermarket and ask if her husband was the guy who wrote the fishing stories. She said she would always cringe and wonder what I had said now. For the most part, the remarks were positive.
Once in a while someone would come in the shop and personally tell me that they had liked a column and sometimes they would have an opposing opinion. I always took both seriously and tried to do better the next time.
Perhaps the greatest compliment I ever got was from a father of a solider fighting in Afghanistan. Every week, he would send my articles to his son. He said that his son told him that the columns reminded him of home and his desire to be fly fishing again.
When Janet and I first opened the North Country Angler, I knew I wanted to write a fishing column. One morning, I was in the office of The Conway Daily Sun placing an ad in the newspaper. I asked the woman who was taking my ad if she thought the paper would be interested in having a fishing column. She said she didn’t know, but the guy to ask was right behind me.
She introduced me to the owner, Mark Guerringue. He said it sounded like a good idea and took me upstairs to meet the editor of the weekend section of the paper. He agreed that it might work and told me to send him a sample and if it was any good, he would run it in next week’s edition. I guess it was OK, and Valley Angler has been in the Sun ever since.
I admit that those first columns were pretty poor and the articles were bad clichés of every outdoor writer I had ever read. One of my first stories was about striper fishing in Maine. I never have been a good speller and thanks to spellcheck had misspelled striper. The editor called me up and asked if there really was a fish called a “stripper.” A lot of those first columns were “tell-alls.” Like a great many outdoor writers, I gave up every fishing hole in the valley.
What I have tried to do in my columns is share my passion and love for our sport. I have tried to let my readers know that the fish are only a part of the equation. Fishing is all about being outdoors and taking time to enjoy your surroundings and that the journey is as important as the fishing.
At times, I expressed my opinion on the importance of protecting our natural resources. Most of all, I tried to express that fishing is just about having fun.
Thanks to all my readers and to the Sun for publishing my stories all those years. I am going to miss this.
For the last time, I will see you on the river.
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