Another day, another struggle with notorious big smallies

The author caught his first steelhead on May 1.
Gary Dodson
The author caught his first steelhead on May 1.
Gary Dodson and I went to the Salmon River in Pulaski, N.Y. April 30 to May 1, to see if we could catch the tail end of the steelhead run and maybe annoy some smallmouth bass.
I’ve only been once before, 20 years ago, and I forgot that the name of the town is pronounced “Pulask-eye,” NOT “Pulask-ee.” Yes, this would come as news to the Polish general whose name adorns the landscape in at least 17 places in the U.S.
We stayed and fished the Douglaston Salmon Run, where we had a nice little house to ourselves.
We dined on successive evenings at the bar of the Tailwater Lodge in nearby Altmar, where I continued my study of the American cheeseburger platter. While I still maintain that the World’s Greatest Restaurant is Mizza’s in Lakeville and the runner-up is the Roscoe Diner, I can report that the best cheeseburger platter yet is at the Tailwater Lodge. At 18 smackers, it is also the most expensive, but only by a few bucks.
Gary said there was another, earthier option with excellent chow, but the last time he went there it was Lynyrd Skynyrd Karaoke Night, and the peril was too great to risk another visit. Personally, I thought it sounded amusing, and was willing to brave the peril, but Gary said no, it was too perilous.
Day One: After leaving Lakeville at 4 a.m. and driving to Gary’s in East Jewett, N.Y., arriving at 6 a.m., the result was predictable. I forgot several key items when transferring my gear to Gary’s truck.
This is called “Paging Dr. Boing-Boing.”
The doctor makes an appearance every time I (or you) forget something, or lose something, or some other issue of fishing logistics comes up.
Dr. Boing-Boing can and will strike at any moment. Eternal vigilance is the only answer.
We found a serviceable wading belt at Fat Nancy’s; the single biggest tackle shop I have ever seen. And it was only ten bucks.
Monday afternoon we fished down where the Salmon River widens out into an estuary before it segues into Lake Ontario. I caught the first of several smallmouth bass that were all roughly double the size of the biggest smallie I have ever pulled out of the Housatonic.
It doesn’t look so hot in the photo, a combination of giant net and moderate wide-angle lens. So I put the net over my extra-extra large head (I wear a 7 7/8 hat) and Gary took a photo for comparison.
Some necessary context: The stretch of river we were concerned with is only about seven miles or so, from the lake to the hatchery. DSR has 2.5 of those miles locked up; anglers pay a daily fee to fish there. There is also a lot of public access, which gets pretty nuts in the peak salmon and steelhead periods. This was the off-season.
Apart from a small population of resident rainbows, the river is home to migrating fish: two kinds of salmon, steelhead and smallies.
The salmonids are headed home. Home is the hatchery. I don’t know what the smallies are doing.
I had to throw pretty much everything I know about fishing out the window. For starters, almost everybody I saw was using a two-handed fly rod or a center pin rod. My nine-foot eight-weight single hand fly rod was an outlier.
Second, even though I was standing in the middle of some sort of hatch, the fish ignored the bugs as far as I could tell. What they wanted was something large and hairy. The initial smallie took a size 6 conehead olive Wooly Bugger with rubber legs, and Wednesday’s steelhead obligingly chomped on a black version of the same.
Tuesday morning began with a Boing-Boing moment, as I managed to sprain my left wrist trying to operate the shower controls. Such is the price of cleanliness.
That ruled out fooling around with the switch rod I brought along, to see if I could puzzle it out.
We fished all day Tuesday, except for a much-needed siesta mid-afternoon. All we encountered were smallies.
Wednesday morning neither one of us could face trudging the mile or so down to the estuary again, so instead we trudged a different mile or so upstream.
I got my steelhead on a different single hand rod, a 10 foot seven weight that fishes better with a number eight line. It was a floating line, with a short leader consisting of about four feet of butt section and two feet of 1X fluoro tippet.
With some coaching from Gary, I managed to land the thing without a net.
In fairness, the steelhead seemed a little out of it. It dove, it tugged, it jumped once. It went this way and that.
But that first smallie put up much more of a fuss. Probably because it hadn’t been milked at the hatchery and wasn’t stumbling back to the lake.
Three days in Western N.Y. state was a serious dose of America. Rolling back into Salisbury Wednesday afternoon was like entering a theme park — Disney’s “New Englandland” or something.
Back in New Englandland, after disposing of some work chores, I ambled over to the Blackberry on a sunny and almost hot afternoon and had a good time catching a bunch of normal, unexciting regular trout that eat bugs.
This was promising enough that I inveigled a friend to give it a shot the next day.
You know what’s coming.
She hopped out of her car, only to discover she had remembered her waders but forgotten her boots.
“Allow me to introduce you to Dr. Boing-Boing,” sez I.
Luckily she had a pair of muck boots, which did the trick.
And then, after observing small children training to be Jedi knights at a “Star Wars” activity, I made my way up to one of my secret brook trout streams and found that the winter’s incessant rains and subsequent high water had reconfigured the brook, mostly for the better. I landed several and tickled more wild char, most of them attacking a size 8 Stimulator that was bigger than their heads. Some less ambitious fish hit kebari soft-hackles and the always-reliable Bread and Butter nymph.
There was no sign of Dr. Boing-Boing.
Author and cartoonist Peter Steiner signed books at Sharon Summer Book Signing last summer.
The 27th annual Sharon Summer Book Signing at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon will be held Friday, Aug. 1, from 4:45 to 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Aug. 2, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; and Sunday, Aug. 3, at noon.
Friday’s festivities will honor libraries and the power of the written word. In attendance will be 29 locally and nationally recognized authors whose books will be for sale. With a wide array of genres including historical fiction, satire, thrillers, young adult and non-fiction, there will be something for every reader.
The event will include a selection of hors d’oeuvres and drinks, followed by eight festive author dinners where writers will read and discuss their work one-on-one with attendees.
Saturday will feature a new Page to Plate program that merges the literary and culinary worlds. Just as writing is a practice of patience and love, so too is the art of cooking. Cookbooks and food writing make cooking teachable to those excited to learn and celebrate the art of a perfect meal.
Through a combination of demonstrations and conversations, acclaimed cookbook authors and chefs will cover a variety of delicious topics. Highlights include a discussion with Chris Morocco, food director of “Bon Appetit” magazine and “Epicurious.” Sharon resident and chef Jessie Sheehan will demonstrate recipes from her cookbook “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes: 100 Easy-Peasy, Savory Recipes for 24/7 Deliciousness.”
With the combination of vetted recipes and thorough discussion from food experts, attendees are sure to leave knowing how to cultivate the ultimate act of service: the gift of a full stomach.
Sunday will be brunch at a private Sharon residence hosted by Graham Klemm and Cody O’Kelly to celebrate author Carolyn Klemm and her cookbook “Culinary Collection: Favorite Country Recipes.”
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit hotchkisslibraryofsharon.org
All proceeds support the programs at The Hotchkiss Library of Sharon.
Ukraine Emergency Fundraiser at The Stissing Center in 2022 raised over $120,000 for Sunflower of Peace.
The spirit of Ukraine will be on display at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains on Sunday, July 27. Beginning at 5 p.m., the “Words to America from Ukraine” fundraiser is set to showcase the simultaneous beauty of Ukrainian culture and the war-time turmoil it faces, all the while fundraising in support of Ukrainian freedom.
“Words to America from Ukraine” aims to remind and spread awareness for the suffering that often gets forgotten by those who live in comfortable worlds, explained Leevi Ernits, an organizer for the event. “We are trying to make an attempt to remind people that we are human, and we are connected with human values,” she said. “With very few words, poetry can express very deep values.”
Sponsored by the Town of Stanford, Friends of Ukraine, L.E. Design LLC, Bartelby & Sage, Oblong Books and Borshch of Art, the fundraiser will host the recitation of war-time Ukrainian poetry. Readings will include the works of Vasyl Sagaydak, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Serhiy Zhadan, Victoria Amelina, Marjana Savka, Ostap Slyvynsky, and Mariana Harahonych.
“Poems are fishhooks into our souls,” added Mark Lagus, another event organizer, explaining why poetry was chosen for the main event.
Guests will also enjoy a performance by Ukrainian Village Voices, a New York City- based band dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional Ukraining Folk music. The evening will also feature speakers Jed Sunden and Maria Genkin, along with a live auction. Food and drink will be provided by Bartelby & Sage, a sustainable, local and female-owned company.
All ticket proceeds, bids, and donations will go directly to Razom for Ukraine, a U.S.-based nonprofit. Razom, meaning “together” in Ukrainian, has the mission of “contributing to the establishment of a secure, prosperous and democratic Ukraine,” through “creating, inspiring, and collaborating on initiatives that motivate people to think, partner and do.”
Tickets, donation opportunities, and more information are all available by visiting www.wordsfromukraine.org
Celebrating its 45th year, the Grumbling Gryphons will perform at HVRHS Friday, Aug. 1, at 7 p.m.
The Grumbling Gryphons Traveling Children’s Theater is preparing to celebrate its 45th year — not with fanfare, but with feathers, fabric, myth, chant, and a gala finale bursting with young performers and seasoned artists alike.
The Gryphons’ 2025 Summer Theater Arts Camp begins July 28 and culminates in a one-night-only performance gala at Housatonic Valley Regional High School on Friday, Aug. 1 at 7 p.m. Founder, playwright, and artistic director, Leslie Elias has been weaving together the worlds of myth, movement and theater for decades.
“We’re a touring company that is participatory,” Elias said with her trademark storytelling cadence. “Even when there’s no pre-performance workshop, it’s still participatory. Always.”
Founded in 1980 “in a little basement apartment on the lower east side with co-founder Vanessa Roe,” said Elias,Grumbling Gryphons (recipients of the 2003 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award) has long occupied a unique niche: part performance troupe, part educational outreach, part community ritual. Whether dramatizing Greek myths, Native American legends, or original tales about bees and bogs, the company’s ethos centers on inclusion, transformation, and hands-on engagement.
This summer’s camp offers children ages six and up five fast-paced days of storytelling, acting, mask-making, and rehearsal. The first three days will take place at Elias’s own home studio — a tucked-away space filled with costumes, puppets, and instruments — before moving into full performance prep mode.
“In the ideal world, we would have more time,” she laughed. “It’s a lot of pressure to be performing for the public after five days. But we’re going to do our best.”
The gala performance, she explained, is a kind of theatrical mosaic — scenes and excerpts from Grumbling Gryphons’ vast repertoire, some showcasing seasoned adult performers and others giving campers center stage. The cast will include returning campers, newcomers, and guest artists drawn from the Gryphons’ decades-spanning circle of collaborators including mask maker and artist Ellen Moon.
“We’re still figuring out exactly what we’ll do,” said Elias, “but it’s kind of like a smorgasbord… a celebration. And it’s open — if anybody wants to get their kids involved, or even volunteer, we welcome you.”
Photo provided
Elias’s own theater background winds through early improvisational schools, Viennese dance traditions, and experimental spaces like Henry Street Settlement. As a child on Long Island, she studied with jazz pianist Ivan Fiedel and dancer Rosalind Fiedel, eccentric mentors who nurtured her taste for the surreal and spontaneous.
“Mr. Fiedel was a character,” she recalled. “He would smoke a cigar… and take the cigar in his ear and the smoke would come out the other end. I don’t know how he did it.”
Elias built Grumbling Gryphons with this sense of magic — not as a traditional company, but as a living, evolving story in itself. Whether working with preschoolers or middle-schoolers, audiences in botanical gardens or historic town halls, the Gryphons invite kids to become creators — to chant, to improvise, to embody archetypes from ancient lore or environmental parables.
And that’s what this summer’s camp and gala are all about. “It’s more than theater,” Elias said. “It’s myth, poetry, movement — it’s about building self-esteem, imagination. It’s about transformation.”
For more information, to register a child for the 2025 Summer Theater Camp, or to inquire about volunteering, visit grumblinggryphons.org
Attendees practive brushstrokes led by calligraphy teacher Debby Reelitz.
Calligrapher Debby Reelitz came to the David M. Hunt Library to give a group of adults and children an introduction to modern calligraphy Thursday, July 17.
Reelitz said she was introduced to calligraphy as a youngster and has been a professional calligrapher and teacher for more than 25 years.
She said there is no age barrier to learning the basics. “Once children can hold a pen or pencil, they can do it.”
Reelitz said her 5th-grade teacher introduced her to the art.
Then her mother pressed her into service doing the lettering for “4-H certificates and gift cards.”
Reelitz handed out a sampler and blank sheets of paper and then turned to the easel for demonstration purposes.
She noted that the letters (I,T,H,L,E and F) on the top row of the sampler were not alphabetically arranged.
Rather, they comprised a “latter family” of similar shapes.
Soon enough the entire group of six adults and three children were concentrating and turning out decent versions of the letters
Reelitz alternately demonstrated and encouraged the novices.
“Remember, this is not an instant gratification skill.”