The term community can apply to a group of people living together, but it can also be used to describe a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. To me, this is the perfect way to describe fishermen and our shared interest. Over the 35-plus years I have been part of the angling community at large, I have also been involved in many smaller “communities.”
Going back to the mid-90s I discovered a community based around the spring striper run on the Connecticut River with its home base of sorts at the ctriverstripers.com message board. At the time I was in my late teens, and I was the know-it-all you’d expect of someone in that age bracket. Fortunately the guys and girls on this page were accepting of me and I made some of my closest long-term friends because of it.
Early on I took notice of a certain angler on the page who was not quick to post, but when he did you made certain that you took notice. His name was Steve Hopkins. Steve was a passionate outdoorsman spending much of his free time in the wild whether fishing, golfing or simply taking in nature. One day he’d be talking of collecting wild fiddleheads for dinner, the next he was out hunting his first shad or striper of the year.
Sometime down the road I finally met Steve in person as he and a fellow community member presented a free seminar on fishing the Connecticut River for those very same spring striped bass which brought us all together in the first place. I remember walking away from the event a better angler for what had been shared, but also a better person as for all of Steve’s knowledge of the subject he showed great willingness to share it with the community.
Over the next few years I became friends with Steve and would run into him rather regularly while out hunting stripers on the river, but I rarely saw him fishing. I knew he was catching, as every so often I’d see a picture posted online, but he was very quiet about how he carried himself.
One night I set out to make some casts near a popular late-May spot and found that someone had beaten me there. Fish had been in the area for the last few days so I was kind of annoyed that I couldn’t fish where I intended. I made a move to a nearby access point on the river and began to wade out when something caught my eye. Looking out 100 yards or so into the current, to a place where I never knew one could gain access on foot, I saw a lone angler casting with purpose. I eased back to the shore and simply observed. I do not recall how many fish the angler caught, but eventually he made his way to shore and discovered me watching him. It was obvious that I had caught Steve at one of his secret spots, but he was cool about it, telling me how to safely navigate the river myself and even encouraged me to make the wade as he left the fish biting.
Over the years he showed me several spots to catch American shad as I mentioned it had been years since I targeted them. He showed me how to fish through a sudden high-water surge on the river in the middle of the striper run. He showed me several spots where stripers could be caught very early in the spring, often weeks earlier than they’d hit the local reports, and so on. This is how Steve always was with me as he never hesitated to share his wealth of knowledge, and I truly appreciated this of him, but it wasn’t just with me that he showed this kindness as many local anglers credit Steve for being given more than a few nuggets of angling knowledge.
Sadly, Steve passed away several weeks ago at the age of 64. He leaves behind not just his close friends and family, but a hole in the angling community that will not soon be filled. While I am not usually one to get overly sentimental, a few of us in that ctriverstripers.com community plan to gather this spring and make a few casts in Steve’s honor.
