We Talk About Owls

It’s late afternoon of a breezy Monday in June. I’m driving to the Vermont border where the Hoosic River turns north, leaving Massachusetts, and flows into the Green Mountain State. The journey offers a brilliant display of New England’s early summer finery, emerald greens and a piercing blue sky.  Brian Gilbert, my guide, has suggested we meet in Pownal, VT, an hour before sunset. Our plan is to convince some of the river’s larger brown trout to eat a mouse pattern stripped slowly across open water. I arrive several hours early to poke around, take a few pictures, and wait at a rail crossing as the swinging gate flashes and bells ring for a good 10 minutes without a train ever appearing.

The Hoosic is a relatively unknown trout stream given the population density through which it flows. Originating in the Berkshires, it meanders its way north and west through central Massachusetts, cuts the corner of Vermont and into New York where it meets the Hudson, passing through North Adams and Williamstown, MA, and finally Schaghticoke, NY. I had had the opportunity to fish the river with Brian several times the past winter and spring. I enjoyed Brian’s company; he knows his water and I was eager to return for a summer-night float.

Brian’s put-ins, as is typical for him, are impossible to find for anyone else. This one involves dragging his inflatable down a steep embankment, across railroad tracks (no gates, bells or whistles here) and down another embankment to a calm, almost marshy section of river. Streamside, I watch fish dimple the surface; small or large, my eyes aren’t good enough to tell. Brian makes several trips up and down the bank with our equipment. Any efforts to assist would only interrupt the well-choreographed launch. I keep quiet and take pictures.

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