It's Not About the Gear
Continued...
It's the same rod that I used the first time I fished a river in New
England. It's the same rod I fished with twice a week the summer
my dad was sick, and the same rod I took with me on the plane
when he died and then caught fish with on the Cranberry River, two
days after his funeral.
It has its flaws, like a reel seat that falls off. I was once fighting a
rainbow on Rhode Island's Wood River when the reel seat, and reel,
slid off into the river. I somehow managed to reach into the water
with my left hand to get the reel and keep pressure on the rod in my
right and land the fish.
Then there's the little blue five weight made by the Mangili Rod
Company. The Mangili rod company consisted of Angelo Mangili, a
retired school teacher who opened a little fly shop across the street
from the Providence, Rhode Island, airport. Shortly after moving to
Rhode Island, I saw a sign for the shop, and peered through the
front door on a Sunday evening. Angelo sat in the back, hunched
over a rod he was finishing. He waved me into the store, and the
first words he spoke to me were, "been doing any fishing?"
He was the first person I ever heard refer to the ocean as "the
salt," when he asked in that first conversation, "do you fish the
salt?"He taught me to tie my first fly--a prince nymph, and was the
first fishermen in New England to sit with me and look over a map,
pointing out Rhode Island rivers. He also glued back the reel seat
on my Three Forks rod.
At 7'6", the rod's a little short for many rivers, but it does its job
even when something else would better suit the situation. And I
keep fishing it, and I think of Angelo who has also moved on, and
how he told me when I took it, to "pay me whenever."
So when I see ads for those sexy new Helios rods, I do lust a little
for them, but then I think I've got it pretty good with the rods I've got.
Maybe their imperfect, but there's no way I could replace them.
--Matt Cooke is professional writer living in Massachusetts and thinking a
lot about West Virginia.
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