If I had to give you the one thing that I like most about my job, it would be finding and working with new authors. And if you’ve been following along over the past 14 months since I resumed my position as editor, you have probably noticed that I have brought in a slew of new voices. Working with new writers requires me to get to know them on a somewhat personal level, that way I can get a good grasp of what kinds of fishing they like to do and a general sense of who they are, this makes it easier for me to assign work that plays to their strengths.
One of the new authors I’ve been working with this year is a fishing guide from Connecticut named Rowan Lytle. If you don’t follow him on Instagram (@ct.fly.angler), you should, because he’s an interesting guy that gets into some crazy fisheries, he has a deep knowledge of snakes and the dude can flat-out fish. Earlier this year, we hatched a plan for him to write a very interesting carp article for next June that will be accompanied by a video and we met up the other day for our first round of shooting. We got some amazing footage and tried some cool things that could be their own story, but we’ll save that for next year’s editor’s log in the June issue.
Getting together with someone you don’t really know is always a little nerve-wracking even when you know that you have the common thread (which is more of a rope) of fishing to fall back on, it didn’t take long to see that we had plenty in common. Fishing and obsessive minds set aside, the other thing that our conversations kept leading back to, was our tendency to experience absurd moments of bad luck, but usually coming out of them – somehow – unscathed. It seemed like every short hike we made was laced with stories about car trouble, epic falls and strange fishing encounters/occurrences.
And then I got to see some of it in action. Rowan laid out a perfect roll cast to a carp on the opposite bank, the fish rose to the fly and sipped it down. Once the hook was set, the fish went ballistic, charging down the river and threading his line through a snarl of branches. Without skipping a beat, he kicked off his shoes and – sort of – foot-skied into the water. With his rod clamped in his armpit, Rowan evacuated his pockets onto the shoreline—a bag of peanuts, his phone, his keys, a few other small items. Then he charged right into the water and freed line, but the fish was already 60 yards further down the river in another pile of branches. Long story, short: he landed the fish, gathered his things and we went on our way.
At the end of the session, we arrived back at our vehicles and Rowan began patting his pockets, listening and feeling for his keys. They weren’t there! My mind went to magnitude of the area we covered and how the heck we were going to find those keys! Rowan was certain that he had simply not picked them up after performing his death-defying carp rescue. Further, he was certain he knew exactly where to look.
We walked to the spot, which was probably a bit over a half-mile away and began searching through the ferns and low brush on the bank. Because I had been the observer during this ordeal, I felt like I knew right where to look. I crouched and lifted the long, feathery fronds of a large marsh fern and there, seeming to cling to the steep embankment, were his keys.
Another story to tell, another disaster averted, another tribulation navigated and escaped…unscathed.
For some further reading from Rowan Lytle, check out his Tale End that details a time when ‘unscathed’ really doesn’t describe the outcome, and his very informative article about catching carp on artificials. Both appeared in the March 2022 print edition.
