Small trout, big lasagna and bad movies

I recently convened the fall meeting of CACA, which stands for Cinema, Angling and Culinary Appreciation.

This takes place in Phoenicia, New York. We fish all day, make a bountiful dinner, and watch the world’s worst movies.

CACA was founded about 25 years ago, back when we had to worry about the elderly VCR eating the tape of “Death Race 2000.”

Attending this year were Steve DeSimone, who I met in the sixth grade, and my itinerant attorney Tom Gallucio.

Steve is gainfully employed and could only manage a few days. Tom wanders the nation with a small camper, so he was underfoot the entire week.

When the cool weather begins, he knows it’s time to head south. So this was his last hurrah in the Northeast this year.

The culinary appreciation began when Tom made a 15 pound lasagna. We weighed it to be sure. It lasted all week.

On the cinema front, the big discovery was John Boorman’s 1974 ode to weirdness, “Zardoz.”

Whatever you do, do not Google the words “Zardoz” and “Sean Connery” and then select “images.”

If you do you will see something that cannot be unseen. And because this is a family newspaper, that’s all I have to say on the subject.

The angling was so-so. The Esopus was suffering from turbidity, so we concentrated on tributaries, which ran clear.

What we were hoping for was brown trout ready to put on the nosebag.

What we found were small wild rainbows.

I caught my fish on Leadwing Coachmen wet flies and small, heavy Bread and Butter and Surveyor nymphs.

Here in Connecticut, the stocking trucks have been rolling and a trip to the Blackberry, Housatonic or Farmington will probably be rewarding.

And fly-fishers can come to the Autumn at the Town Farm event in Falls Village on Saturday, Oct. 17 (1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Recreation Center on Route 63) to watch Greer Sallick tie flies and yours truly attempt to teach people to cast.