Part 4 of Trout Fishing in America
THE AUTOPSY OF
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
This is the autopsy of Trout Fishing in America as if Trout
Fishing in America had been Lord Byron and had died in
Missolonghi, Greece, and afterward never saw the shores
of Idaho again, never saw Carrie Creek, Worsewick Hot
Springs, Paradise Creek, Salt Creek and Duck Lake again.
The Autopsy of Trout Fishing in America:
"The body was in excellent state and appeared as one that
had died suddenly of asphyxiation. The bony cranial vault
was opened and the bones of the cranium were found very
hard without any traces of the sutures like the bones of a
person 80 years, so much so that one would have said that
the cranium was formed by one solitary bone. . . . The
meninges were attached to the internal walls of the cranium
so firmly that while sawing the bone around the interior to
detach the bone from the dura the strength of two robust men
was not sufficient. . . . The cerebrum with cerebellum
weighed about six medical pounds. The kidneys were very
large but healthy and the urinary bladder was relatively
small. "
On May 2, 1824, the body of Trout Fishing in America
left Missolonghi by ship destined to arrive in England on the
evening of June 29, 1824.
Trout Fishing in America's body was preserved in a cask
holding one hundred-eighty gallons of spirits: 0, a long way
from Idaho, a long way from Stanley Basin, Little Redfish
Lake, the Big Lost River and from Lake Josephus and the
Big Wood River.
poem by Richard Brautigan
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Part 10 of Trout Fishing in America
WITNESS FOR TROUT FISHING
IN AMERICA PEACE
In San Francisco around Easter time last year, they had a
trout fishing in America peace parade. They had thousands
of red stickers printed and they pasted them on their small
foreign cars, and on means of national communication like
telephone poles.
The stickers had WITNESS FOR TROUT FISHING IN AM-
ERICA PEACE printed on them.
Then this group of college- and high-school-trained Com-
munists, along with some Communist clergymen and their
Marxist-taught children, marched to San Francisco from
Sunnyvale, a Communist nerve center about forty miles away.
It took them four days to walk to San Francisco. They
stopped overnight at various towns along the way, and slept
on the lawns of fellow travelers.
They carried with them Communist trout fishing in Ameri-
ca peace propaganda posters:
"DON'T DROP AN H-BOMB ON THE OLD FISHING HOLE I"
"ISAAC WALTON WOULD'VE HATED THE BOMB!"
"ROYAL COACHMAN, SI! ICBM, NO!"
They carried with them many other trout fishing in Amer-
ica peace inducements, all following the Communist world
conquest line: the Gandhian nonviolence Trojan horse.
When these young, hard-core brainwashed members of
the Communist conspiracy reached the "Panhandle, " the
emigre Oklahoma Communist sector of San Francisco, thou-
sands of other Communists were waiting for them. These
were Communists who couldn't walk very far. They barely
had enough strength to make it downtown.
Thousands of Communists, protected by the police, marched
down to Union Square, located in the very heart of San Fran-
cisco. The Communist City Hall riots in 1960 had presented
evidence of it, the police let hundreds of Communists escape,
but the trout fishing in America peace parade was the final
indictment: police protection.
Thousands of Communists marched right into the heart of
San Francisco, and Communist speakers incited them for
hours and the young people wanted to blow up Colt Tower, but
the Communist clergy told them to put away their plastic
bombs.
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should
do to you, do ye even so to them . . . There will be no need
for explosives, " they said.
America needs no other proof. The Red shadow of the
Gandhian nonviolence Trojan horse has fallen across Ameri-
ca, and San Francisco is its stable.
Obsolete is the mad rapist's legendary piece of candy. At
this very moment, Communist agents are handing out Witness
for trout fishing in America peace tracts to innocent children
riding the cable cars.
poem by Richard Brautigan
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Part 2 of Trout Fishing in America
ANOTHER METHOD
OF MAKING WALNUT CATSUP
And this is a very small cookbook for Trout Fishing in America
as if Trout Fishing in America were a rich gourmet and
Trout Fishing in America had Maria Callas for a girlfriend
and they ate together on a marble table with beautiful candles.
Compote of Apples
Take a dozen of golden pippins, pare them
nicely and take the core out with a small
penknife; put them into some water, and
let them be well scalded; then take a little
of the water with some sugar, and a few
apples which may be sliced into it, and
let the whole boil till it comes to a syrup;
then pour it over your pippins, and garnish
them with dried cherries and lemon-peel
cut fine. You must take care that your
pippins are not split.
And Maria Callas sang to Trout Fishing in America as
they ate their apples together.
A Standing Crust for Great Pies
Take a peck of flour and six pounds of butter
boiled in a gallon of water: skim it off into
the flour, and as little of the liquor as you
can. Work it up well into a paste, and then
pull it into pieces till it is cold. Then make
it up into what form you please.
And Trout Fishing in America smiled at Maria Callas as
they ate their pie crust together.
A Spoonful Pudding
Take a spoonful of flour, a spoonful of
cream or milk, an egg, a little nutmeg,
ginger, and salt. Mix all together, and
boil it in a little wooden dish half an hour.
If you think proper you may add a few
currants .
And Trout Fishing in America said, "The moon's coming
out." And Maria Callas said, "Yes, it is."
Another Method of Making Walnut Catsup
Take green walnuts before the shell is
formed, and grind them in a crab-mill,
or pound them in a marble mortar.
Squeeze out the juice through a coarse
cloth, and put to every gallon of juice
a pound of anchovies, and the same
quantity of bay-salt, four ounces of
Jamaica pepper, two of long and two of
black pepper; of mace, cloves, and
ginger, each an ounce, and a stick of
horseradish. Boil all together till
reduced to half the quantity, and then
put it into a pot. When it is cold, bottle
it close, and in three months it will be
fit for use.
And Trout Fishing in America and Maria Callas poured
walnut catsup on their hamburgers.
PROLOGUE TO GRIDER CREEK
Mooresville, Indiana, is the town that John Dillinger came
from, and the town has a John Dillinger Museum. You can
go in and look around.
Some towns are known as the peach capital of America or
the cherry capital or the oyster capital, and there's always
a festival and the photograph of a pretty girl in a bathing suit.
Mooresville, Indiana, is the John Dillinger capital of America.
Recently a man moved there with his wife, and he discovered
hundreds of rats in his basement. They were huge, slowmoving
child-eyed rats.
When his wife had to visit some of her relatives for a few
days, the man went out and bought a .38 revolver and a lot
of ammunition. Then he went down to the basement where
the rats were, and he started shooting them. It didn't bother
the rats at all. They acted as if it were a movie and started
eating their dead companions for popcorn.
The man walked over to a rat that was busy eating a friend
and placed the pistol against the rat's head. The rat did not
move and continued eating away. When the hammer clicked
back, the rat paused between bites and looked out of the corner
of its eye. First at the pistol and then at the man. It was a kind
of friendly look as if to say, "When my mother was young she
sang like Deanna Durbin. "
The man pulled the trigger.
He had no sense of humor.
There's always a single feature, a double feature and an
eternal feature playing at the Great Theater in Mooresville,
Indiana: the John Dillinger capital of America.
poem by Richard Brautigan
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Part 8 of Trout Fishing in America
A RETURN TO THE COVER OF
THIS BOOK
Dear Trout Fishing in America:
I met your friend Fritz in Washington Square. He told me
to tell you that his case went to a jury and that he was acquit-
ted by the jury.
He said that it was important for me to say that his case
went to a jury and that he was acquitted by the jury,
said it again.
He looked in good shape. He was sitting in the sun. There's
an old San Francisco saying that goes: "It's better to rest in
Washington Square than in the California Adult Authority. "
How are things in New York?
Yours,
"An Ardent Admirer"
Dear Ardent Admirer:
It's good to hear that Fritz isn't in jail. He was very wor-
ried about it. The last time I was in San Francisco, he told
me he thought the odds were 10-1 in favor of him going away.
I told him to get a good lawyer. It appears that he followed
my advice and also was very lucky. That's always a good
combination.
You asked about New York and New York is very hot.
I'm visiting some friends, a young burglar and his wife.
He's unemployed and his wife is working as a cocktail wait-
ress. He's been looking for work but I fear the worst.
It was so hot last night that I slept with a wet sheet wrapped
around myself, trying to keep cool. I felt like a mental patient.
I woke up in the middle of the night and the room was filled
with steam rising off the sheet, and there was jungle stuff,
abandoned equipment and tropical flowers, on the floor and
on the furniture.
I took the sheet into the bathroom and plopped it into the
tub and turned the cold water on it. Their dog came in and
started barking at me.
The dog barked so loud that the bathroom was soon filled
with dead people. One of them wanted to use my wet sheet
for a shroud. I said no, and we got into a big argument over
it and woke up the Puerto Ricans in the next apartment, and
they began pounding on the walls.
The dead people all left in a huff. "We know when we're
not wanted, " one of them said.
"You're damn tootin'," I said.
I've had enough.
I' m going to get out of New York. Tomorrow I'm leaving for
Alaska. I'm going to find an ice-cold creek near the Arctic
where that strange beautiful moss grows and spend a week
with the grayling. My address will be, Trout Fishing in Ameri-
ca, c/o General Delivery, Fairbanks, Alaska.
Your friend,
Trout Fishing in America
THE LAKE JOSEPHUS DAYS
We left Little Redfish for Lake Josephus, traveling along the
good names--from Stanley to Capehorn to Seafoam to the
Rapid River, up Float Creek, past the Greyhound Mine and
then to Lake Josephus, and a few days after that up the trail
to Hell-diver Lake with the baby on my shoulders and a good
limit of trout waiting in Hell-diver.
Knowing the trout would wait there like airplane tickets
for us to come, we stopped at Mushroom Springs and had a
drink of cold shadowy water and some photographs taken of
the baby and me sitting together on a log.
I hope someday we'll have enough money to get those pic-
tures developed. Sometimes I get curious about them, won-
dering if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension
now like seeds in a package. I'll be older when they are de-
veloped and easier to please. Look there's the baby ! Look
there's Mushroom Springs ! Look there's me !
I caught the limit of trout within an hour of reaching Hell-
diver, and my woman, in all the excitement of good fishing,
let the baby fall asleep directly in the sun and when the baby
woke up, she puked and I carried her back down the trail.
My woman trailed silently behind, carrying the rods and
the fish. The baby puked a couple more times, thimblefuls
of gentle lavender vomit, but still it got on my clothes, and
her face was hot and flushed.
We stopped at Mushroom Springs. I gave her a small
drink of water, not too much, and rinsed the vomit taste out
of her mouth. Then I wiped the puke off my clothes and for
some strange reason suddenly it was a perfect time, there
at Mushroom Springs, to wonder whatever happened to the
Zoot suit.
Along with World War II and the Andrews Sisters, the
Zoot suit had been very popular in the early 40s. I guess
they were all just passing fads.
A sick baby on the trail down from Hell-diver, July 1961,
is probably a more important question. It cannot be left to
go on forever, a sick baby to take her place in the galaxy,
among the comets, bound to pass close to the earth every
173 years.
She stopped puking after Mushroom Springs, and I carried
her back down along the path in and out of the shadows and
across other nameless springs, and by the time we got down
to Lake Josephus, she was all right.
She was soon running around with a big cutthroat trout in
her hands, carrying it like a harp on her way to a concert--
ten minutes late with no bus in sight and no taxi either
poem by Richard Brautigan
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Gone Fishin
When good ole spring comes rollin’ round
And the trout are in the brook,
A longing comes over me with a bound
To cast my feathered hook.
Then I get all my tackle out
My rods and reels and roundabouts
To go fishing for those trout
That I’ve read so much about.
There’s monsters here the circulars say
But every cursed day
That I go fishing out that way
Those monsters all go in to stay.
I never saw the sun once
During all my stay
But I’ll go home and tell everyone
‘Bout the big ones that got away.
poem by George Hunter
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Part 1 of Trout Fishing in America
THE COVER FOR
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
The cover for Trout Fishing in America is a photograph taken
late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin
statue in San Francisco's Washington Square.
Born 1706--Died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a
pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture.
He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other.
Then the statue speaks, saying in marble:
PRESENTED BY
H. D. COGSWELL
TO OUR
BOYS AND GIRLS
WHO WILL SOON
TAKE OUR PLACES
AND PASS ON.
Around the base of the statue are four words facing the
directions of this world, to the east WELCOME, to the west
WELCOME, to the north WELCOME, to the south WELCOME.
Just behind the statue are three poplar trees, almost leafless
except for the top branches. The statue stands in front
of the middle tree. All around the grass is wet from the
rains of early February.
In the background is a tall cypress tree, almost dark like
a room. Adlai Stevenson spoke under the tree in 1956, before
a crowd of 40, 000 people.
There is a tall church across the street from the statue
with crosses, steeples, bells and a vast door that looks like
a huge mousehole, perhaps from a Tom and Jerry cartoon,
and written above the door is 'Per L'Universo.'
Around five o'clock in the afternoon of my cover for
Trout Fishing in America, people gather in the park across
the street from the church and they are hungry.
It's sandwich time for the poor.
But they cannot cross the street until the signal is given.
Then they all run across the street to the church and get
their sandwiches that are wrapped in newspaper. They go
back to the park and unwrap the newspaper and see what their
sandwiches are all about.
A friend of mine unwrapped his sandwich one afternoon
and looked inside to find just a leaf of spinach. That was all.
Was it Kafka who learned about America by reading the
autobiography of Benjamin Franklin..............
Kafka who said, 'I like the Americans because they are healthy
and optimistic.'
poem by Richard Brautigan
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Fishing For Something
Fishing for something, On a lake out west,
But; the only thing biting, Mossies are a pest;
I really came to catch a dozen or so trout,
But had to stop, There's a storm come about.
Fishing for something off their pier,
Up at ballarat. On wendouree weir;
Hope to catch some trevally for tea,
But all I caught was an old shoe, silly me.
Fishing for something, I'll need a net,
Try to catch lobster, if I don't I'll be upset,
So I let out the net, and to my surprise today,
5 lobsters, and 1 cheeky dolphin trying to play.
Fishing for something, a minister will do,
As he preaches to the people, the message so true;
About. Love, and kindness, and helping each other,
And telling them too, to help witness to a brother.
Fishing for something, is what we can do,
Help so many, find a way, and not be in a stew;
Don't judge others, and don't start to fight,
But be caring and sharing, lead them to the light.
poem by Margaret Haig
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The Lake Josephus Days
We left Little Redfish for Lake Josephus, traveling along the good names — from Stanley to Capehorn to Seafoam to the Rapid River, up Float Creek, past the Greyhound Mine and then to Lake Josephus, and a few days after that up the trail to Hell-diver Lake with the baby on my shoulders and a good limit of trout waiting in Hell-diver.
Knowing the trout would wait there like airplane tickets for us to come, we stopped at Mushroom Springs and had a drink of cold shadowy water and some photographs taken of the baby and me sitting together on a log.
I hope someday we'll have enough money to get those pictures developed. Sometimes I get curious about them, wondering if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension now like seeds in a package. I'll be older when they are developed and easier to please. Look there's the baby! Look there's Mushroom Springs! Look there's me!
I caught the limit of trout within an hour of reaching Hell-diver, and my woman, in all the excitement of good fishing, let the baby fall asleep directly in the sun and when the baby woke up, she puked and I carried her back down the trail.
My woman trailed silently behind, carrying the rods and the fish. The baby puked a couple more times, thimblefuls of gentle lavender vomit, but still it got on my clothes, and her face was hot and flushed.
We stopped at Mushroom Springs. I gave her a small drink of water, not too much, and rinsed the vomit taste out of her mouth. Then I wiped the puke off my clothes and for some strange reason suddenly it was a perfect time, there at Mushroom Springs, to wonder whatever happened to the Zoot suit.
Along with World War II and the Andrews Sisters, the Zoot suit had been very popular in the early 40s. I guess they were all just passing fads.
A sick baby on the trail down from Hell-diver, July 1961, is probably a more important question. It cannot be left to go on forever, a sick baby to take her place in the galaxy, among the comets, bound to pass close to the earth every 173 years.
She stopped puking after Mushroom Springs, and I carried her back down along the path in and out of the shadows and across other nameless springs, and by the time we got down to Lake Josephus, she was all right.
She was soon running around with a big cutthroat trout in her hands, carrying it like a harp on her way to a concert — ten minutes late with no bus in sight and no taxi either.
poem by Richard Brautigan
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The Ever-Diminishing Half-Life of Immortality
Being a famous author
certainly isn't
what it used to be.
In 1969, the term 'supernova'
best described Richard Brautigan.
In 1984, he was reduced to a twinkle
in the smog-choked sky.
In 2019, when the last remaining copy of
Trout Fishing in America is sold
for a quarter at a Friends of the Library sale
in Yakima, Washington
he will officially be designated
as a black hole.
poem by David Kowalczyk
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Lady Of The Lake
Today I talked
to the old lady
who lives across the way
she said she died
a hundred years ago today
She told me
of the time she saw me
fishing in the lake
I had to laugh
I said
if You've been dead
for a hundred years
it couldn't have been me
you saw fishing in the lake
I'm not even fifty yet
She said
have you ever seen me
walk out of this garden
or talk to anybody else
I said
you've got me there
but like I said
if you died a hundred
years ago today
it couldn't have been me
you saw fishing in the lake
She said
a hundred years ago today
you drowned trying to save me
now it's time to except
that you are dead
poem by Dave Alan Walker
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Hook, Line And Sinker
I have always wondered what it means
when someone using oral means
says something so colloquial
that it is understood by all
except us foreigners of course
yes language, it is such a force!
A lady fishing from the bridge
her husband though had climbed a ridge
they were in heated competition
and liked the thought of going fishing.
A tug was felt along her line
at first she felt she should recline
and pull until the fish came out
it probably would be a trout.
It did not work and hubby yelled
about the way his sweetheart held
the fishing pole, she called him 'stinker'
then she fell in, hook, line and sinker.
poem by Herbert Nehrlich
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America
(Francis Scott Key)
Oh, say, can you see
By the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched were so
Gallantly streaming?
America, America, America
America, America, America
And the rocket's red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there
Oh, say, does that star
Spangled banner yet wave
Over the land of the free
And the home of the brave!
America, America, America
America, America, America
America, America, America
America, America, America
America, America, America
America, America
ooohhh
song performed by by Lou Reed
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Yes, the Fish Music
A trout-colored wind blows
through my eyes, through my fingers,
and I remember how the trout
used to hide from the dinosaurs
when they came to drink at the river.
The trout hid in subways, castles,
and automobiles. They waited patiently for the dinosaurs to go away.
poem by Richard Brautigan
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Part 6 of Trout Fishing in America
THE HUNCHBACK TROUT
The creek was made narrow by little green trees that grew
too close together. The creek was like 12, 845 telephone
booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings and all the doors
taken off and all the backs of the booths knocked out.
Sometimes when I went fishing in there, I felt just like a
telephone repairman, even though I did not look like one. I
was only a kid covered with fishing tackle, but in some
strange way by going in there and catching a few trout, I
kept the telephones in service. I was an asset to society.
It was pleasant work, but at times it made me uneasy.
It could grow dark in there instantly when there were some
clouds in the sky and they worked their way onto the sun.
Then you almost needed candles to fish by, and foxfire in
your reflexes.
Once I was in there when it started raining. It was dark
and hot and steamy. I was of course on overtime. I had that
going in my favor. I caught seven trout in fifteen minutes.
The trout in those telephone booths were good fellows.
There were a lot of young cutthroat trout six to nine inches
long, perfect pan size for local calls. Sometimes there
were a few fellows, eleven inches or so--for the long dis-
tance calls.
I've always liked cutthroat trout. They put up a good fight,
running against the bottom and then broad jumping. Under
their throats they fly the orange banner of Jack the Ripper.
Also in the creek were a few stubborn rainbow trout, sel-
dom heard from, but there all the same, like certified pub-
lic accountants. I'd catch one every once in a while. They
were fat and chunky, almost as wide as they were long. I've
heard those trout called "squire" trout.
It used to take me about an hour to hitchhike to that creek.
There was a river nearby. The river wasn't much. The creek
was where I punched in. Leaving my card above the clock
I'd punch out again when it was time to go home.
I remember the afternoon I caught the hunchback trout.
A farmer gave me a ride in a truck. He picked me up at
a traffic signal beside a bean field and he never said a word
to me.
His stopping and picking me up and driving me down the
road was as automatic a thing to him as closing the barn
door, nothing need be said about it, but still I was in motion
traveling thirty-five miles an hour down the road, watching
houses and groves of trees go by, watching chickens and
mailboxes enter and pass through my vision.
Then I did not see any houses for a while. "This is where
I get out, " I said.
The farmer nodded his head. The truck stopped.
"Thanks a lot, " I said.
The farmer did not ruin his audition for the Metropolitan
Opera by making a sound. He just nodded his head again.
The truck started up. He was the original silent old farmer.
A little while later I was punching in at the creek. I put
my card above the clock and went into that long tunnel of
telephone booths.
I waded about seventy-three telephone booths in. I caught
two trout in a little hole that was like a wagon wheel. It was
one of my favorite holes, and always good for a trout or two.
I always like to think of that hole as a kind of pencil
sharpener. I put my reflexes in and they came back out with
a good point on them. Over a period of a couple of years, I
must have caught fifty trout in that hole, though it was only
as big as a wagon wheel.
I was fishing with salmon eggs and using a size 14 single
egg hook on a pound and a quarter test tippet. The two trout
lay in my creel covered entirely by green ferns ferns made
gentle and fragile by the damp walls of telephone booths.
The next good place was forty-five telephone booths in.
The place was at the end of a run of gravel, brown and slip-
pery with algae. The run of gravel dropped off and disap-
peared at a little shelf where there were some white rocks.
One of the rocks was kind of strange. It was a flat white
rock. Off by itself from the other rocks, it reminded me
of a white cat I had seen in my childhood.
The cat had fallen or been thrown off a high wooden side-
walk that went along the side of a hill in Tacoma, Washing-
ton. The cat was lying in a parking lot below.
The fall had not appreciably helped the thickness of the
cat, and then a few people had parked their cars on the cat.
Of course, that was a long time ago and the cars looked dif-
ferent from the way they look now.
You hardly see those cars any more. They are the old
cars. They have to get off the highway because they can't
keep up.
That flat white rock off by itself from the other rocks
reminded me of that dead cat come to lie there in the creek,
among 12, 845 telephone booths.
I threw out a salmon egg and let it drift down over that
rock and WHAM! a good hit! and I had the fish on and it ran
hard downstream, cutting at an angle and staying deep and
really coming on hard, solid and uncompromising, and then
the fish jumped and for a second I thought it was a frog. I'd
never seen a fish like that before.
God-damn ! What the hell!
The fish ran deep again and I could feel its life energy
screaming back up the line to my hand. The line felt like
sound. It was like an ambulance siren coming straight at
me, red light flashing, and then going away again and then
taking to the air and becoming an air-raid siren.
The fish jumped a few more times and it still looked like
a frog, but it didn't have any legs. Then the fish grew tired
and sloppy, and I swung and splashed it up the surface of
the creek and into my net.
The fish was a twelve-inch rainbow trout with a huge hump
on its back. A hunchback trout. The first I'd ever seen. The
hump was probably due to an injury that occurred when the
trout was young. Maybe a horse stepped on it or a tree fell
over in a storm or its mother spawned where they were
building a bridge.
There was a fine thing about that trout. I only wish I could
have made a death mask of him. Not of his body though, but
of his energy. I don't know if anyone would have understood
his body. I put it in my creel.
Later in the afternoon when the telephone booths began to
grow dark at the edges, I punched out of the creek and went
home. I had that hunchback trout for dinner. Wrapped in
cornmeal and fried in butter, its hump tasted sweet as the
kisses of Esmeralda.
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Grandpa's Lake
He was sitting by himself all alone,
Down in a little corner.
Looking out of place, in the funeral home,
And away from all the mourners.
His dad walked up, and I heard him say,
Daddy can I go home?
I don't know why grandpa went away,
But he might be home alone.
I want to be there, when he gets back,
We were going fishing today.
He'll need his hooks and rods, and that burlap sack,
Where he puts the fish away.
His dad looked up, a tear in his eye,
And said 'grandpa's fishing now.'
But it's a great big lake, up in the sky,
And you can't go there right now.
He's fishing with his dad today,
They'll be fishing for some time.
They have a lot to do and say,
Cause to that lake it's a long steep climb.
They haven't seen each other,
In oh, so many years.
And grandpa's glad to see his father,
And both their eyes have tears.
And grandpa's a little boy again,
Just a fishing with his dad.
And on his face there's no more pain,
I hope for him your'e glad.
The little boy just smiled and said,
I guess I'm happy about that.
Yes for grampa I'm very glad,
But for me, I guess I'm sad.
I wanted to go fishing, with my grampa today.
But if you can take me,
To the lake, maybe the bay,
I'll go, my time is free.
I guess I'll wait to fish with grampa,
Till I can make it to his lake.
Maybe he'll find some secret spots,
I sure hope so, for my sake.
1/4/11 Alton Texas
poem by Juan Olivarez
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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First things first for my friend Ben
The moon is shining on the lake
where trout are rising after flies
this tells me that it’s time to fish.
The gentle art of casting flies
correctly as my father taught,
has filled full many a supper dish
A trout that’s fried in bacon grease
Has a unique taste all its own,
If I were hungry I would wish.
For a fresh trout upon my plate
A feast I would appreciate.
But first you have to catch your fish.
28-May-07
poem by Ivor .e Hogg
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The Idler’s Calendar. Twelve Sonnets For The Months. April
TROUT--FISHING
This morning, through my window, half awake,
I felt the south wind blow; and presently,
With a tumultuous thrill and then a shake,
The nightingale broke forth in melody.
I rose in haste, and looked at the grey sky,
And read an omen. From its corner next
A book I drew, blest book, where fly on fly
Are all the letters of its well--thumbed text.
I chose my cast, a march--brown and a dun,
And ran down to the river, chasing hope.
At the first throw a mighty trout was on,
A very Samson, fit to burst a rope,
Yet tamed by one sad hank of yielding hair
And Fate, the fisherman of King and Pope.
Upon the grass he lies, and gasps the air,
Four silver pounds, sublimely fat and fair.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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I love To Go Fishing
I love to go fishing everyday,
To the river or the lake.
Up in the morning without delay,
I go fishing soon as I wake.
Down to the water to wet my line,
My float bobbing up and down.
Fishing in the morning, is just so fine,
Your face will never sport a frown.
A big ole catfish, or a little bluegill,
I just don't give a hoot.
I love the way fishing makes me feel,
To me it's like forbidden fruit.
If I get lucky and get a bite,
Then the day is made.
I'll stick around till early night,
Just snoozing in the shade.
1/20/11 Alton Texas
poem by Juan Olivarez
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Pulicate Lake (Chennai)
A rollicking trip on a boat
we had through the Pulicate Lake.
The nests cast all along the creek
warn the boat-men take care.
Men, women and children
dip in and come up the water,
with pulsating trout in their palms
and dropp into the slinging bags and creels.
The weak and the old in loin-cloths
are holding the fishing-rods,
and peering at the wood pulp with eager
to lug up the unwary dab.
Some dogs are emerging out in knee-deep water,
with struggling dace between the teeth.
We looked at the scene with pity
though we had fried fish to crunch at lunch.
Oh dear! They're stone statues not birds
waiting to pick up the misled fish!
The scent of coastal stuff from my friends
drove away the shrimps from our way.
Ah! Some baskets and towels too swirl around
to catch the lusty wealth of the sea.
Never these fish roaming in the lake
could go back to the estuary.
poem by Rajendran Muthiah
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At Hout Bay the fishing trawler sails out
At Hout Bay the fishing trawler sails out
while the rain pours down
like water out of God’s hosepipe
with engines roaring in the ears
and clouds of smoke hang over the boats
with every fisherman for a moment being caught
in a own world while fog whirl about the boats
that rocks up and down to the harbour mouth.
The waves crash, the sea foams and bubbles
and “my girlfriend has a good lover, ”
is sung by one while the trawler sets its course
on the look out for barracouta, cod and sea trout.
“Look at the shining bodies, tons of trout, they are running free, ”
a fisherman shouts against the wind that pulls and pulls on the boat.
“Salmon man, salmon” roars the tiller man back and walls of water
roll past and the boat turns to get fishing gear ready.
“My girlfriend has a good lover and he’s a gelded goat, ”
the tune goes on and something clatters down
drawing the attention of the fishermen and the water shines
and when the boat is full they tell jokes that they guffaw at.
poem by Gert Strydom
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