27th Street

Growing up, I thought going fishing was the best thing ever, because it meant having adventures with my dad and my brother Joey. Sometimes we would stay overnight at a roadside motel. We had an old station wagon with a big motor and lots of space and we cooked dinner on a Coleman stove on a bench outside the motel. It was grand.

One of our regular spots was the Nottawasaga River in spring or fall, when we fished for migratory rainbow trout, which people call steelhead these days, and for walleye, which we always called pickerel. We liked to fish the area around Montgomery’s rapids. I remember the so-called hotel pool, which often held big rainbows. More often we fished from the bottom of the cliff below the rapids. Every time we went there were the same 2 or 3 guys fishing there. It was as if they never went home. These guys drifted worms and often caught big pickerel and an occasional trout.

Above the cliff, and tight to the shore, there was a deep run, which was very difficult to fish. I often saw the same fellow working it. He used an exceptionally long rod with a big-ass reel he could spool with the palm of his hand. This guy always caught trout.

Keep going and you can access a stretch above the rapids. For me this was the best trout water. I remember I liked to fish the run with a silver spinner. I’d cast upstream and retrieve the spinner just faster than the current as close to directly toward me as I could.

On the far side of the river there was a deep whirlpool that peeled off the rapids. My dad told me it held huge sturgeon in the spring. He used to end his day fishing the whirlpool with a gob of worms as bait and a heavy sinker to get down deep. He landed one once, which became the subject of a well-worn family photo. It was 57 pounds and 57 inches according to family legend. Dad would point at my brother when he told the story – it was bigger than him, and better lookin’ too. He claimed to have hooked one over 7 feet long once, and got the beast to shore when the line parted and the fish slowly swam back to the depths of the whirlpool.

In those days it was catch and keep – catch and cook – we never heard of the idea of catch and release. The measure of a successful day was fish in the cooler. Over the years we had some great fish feasts. By the time I became an adult, I had lost interest in going fishing. That interest was rekindled in the 90s when I began to really enjoy fly fishing, and I learned to tie flies to imitate the bugs in different stages of their life-cycle when they can be selectively targeted by trout. By then it was all catch and release.

In the last several years now, I’ve done less and less fly fishing, and these days a couple old injuries to my right leg have limited my wading, or at least have increased my fear of slipping and falling in the water. As well, I’m just not so interested in catching trout as I once was. In part, I recognize the great gift my father gave me was not just a love of getting out and catching fish, but also the love of nature. These days I find that more in watching and trying to identify birds and plants and in foraging for edible mushrooms, another pursuit I learned from Joey.

The late John Hartford. Banjo, vocal, dancing. Just right.

Tomi Fujiyama….