Tangled Lines looks back on 2024

Tangled Lines looks back on 2024

The Esopus Creek in the east-central Catskill Mountains

Photo by Gary Dodson

It rained a lot in 2024, and then it didn’t.

That’s the Tangled Lines 2024 recap in a nutshell.

With recent changes in angling regulations in my two main stomping grounds, Connecticut and New York, the idea of “trout season” is now more of an idea than a legal reality.

Poor conditions, not regs, keep me inside. This includes high water, low water, muddy water, and ice chunks floating in high or low, possibly muddy water.

Let us not overlook the angler’s poor condition. In 2024 the Tangled Lines medical beat was established, and how.

Out in 2024: Ice cream. Chips. Bread. Pasta, unless it is made entirely from chickpeas, comes in an orange box and costs a lot more than the regular stuff. (Also — don’t overcook it. The difference between al dente and al mush is about 12 seconds.)

In: Salad. Fields and fields of…salad.

It’s been a tough slog. I am considering starting a nonprofit advocacy group, the Society for the Suppression of Salad. We could march in the Memorial Day parade, waving styrofoam cheeseburgers.

But I did drop about 30 pounds, and kept it off.

A shout out to yoga mastermind Samantha Free of Millbrook Yoga. I described my lower back pain to her. She took one look at my feet and saw I was pronating.

Between deploying an inexpensive corrective insert in my shoes and the stretches and moves Sam showed me, I no longer stagger around like a decrepit man in his early 60s.

Now I lurch around like a klutz in his late 50s. Might not seem like much, but I’ll take what I can get.

The new and improved me voyaged into the wilds of western New York at the end of April, catching the end of the steelhead run in the Salmon River in and around Pulaski.

I managed to land a steelhead. The fish struck me as a little tired out but I put it in the win column anyway, if only because I did it in the most offhand manner possible short of sitting in a lawn chair on the bank with a bobber, a worm, and a piece of line tied to my foot.

I spent more time than usual this year prowling the Catskills outside of my usual Esopus watershed, with mixed results.

And then everything dried up, except for one quick blast of rain in early August that didn’t do much in Connecticut but brought the East Branch of the Delaware in New York up about three feet. This was not helpful.

Switching to bass lake mode for August, I noticed a persistent pain in my right (casting) shoulder.

At first I chalked it up to slinging gigantic, heavy flies such as the Chupacabra, which is like casting a wet sock.

But it soon became clear that something was wrong.

Hello, rotator cuff!

The doc sent me to another low-key miracle worker, physical therapist Mike Mangini in North Canaan, and I am pleased to report I can, once again, inform fellow motorists that they are Number One with a simple, rotator cuff-dependent gesture.

I don’t believe in setting goals or making elaborate plans for fishing. Too often the goal is silly, like catching a big lunker largemouth with a one-weight rod. (It could be done, like tap-dancing in roller skates, but why?).

Or the plan falls through because the fellow who was going to take me to the secret place disappears, leaving no forwarding address.

Instead, for 2025 I will concentrate on simple things. Getting better with longer, finer leaders. Learning some form of two-handed cast without getting buried in minutiae regarding shooting heads and grain weights.

And finding ways to do more with less. I am tired of rummaging around in the pack or vest du jour, looking for the only fly that will work.

Because they all work — if you do it right.

Latest News

Juneteenth and Mumbet’s legacy

Sheffield resident, singer Wanda Houston will play Mumbet in "1781" on June 19 at 7 p.m. at The Center on Main, Falls Village.

Jeffery Serratt

In August of 1781, after spending thirty years as an enslaved woman in the household of Colonel John Ashley in Sheffield, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mumbet, was the first enslaved person to sue for her freedom in court. At the time of her trial there were 5,000 enslaved people in the state. MumBet’s legal victory set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1790, the first in the nation. She took the name Elizabeth Freeman.

Local playwrights Lonnie Carter and Linda Rossi will tell her story in a staged reading of “1781” to celebrate Juneteenth, ay 7 p.m. at The Center on Main in Falls Village, Connecticut.Singer Wanda Houston will play MumBet, joined by actors Chantell McCulloch, Tarik Shah, Kim Canning, Sherie Berk, Howard Platt, Gloria Parker and Ruby Cameron Miller. Musical composer Donald Sosin added, “MumBet is an American hero whose story deserves to be known much more widely.”

Keep ReadingShow less
A sweet collaboration with students in Torrington

The new mural painted by students at Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut.

Photo by Kristy Barto, owner of The Nutmeg Fudge Company

Thanks to a unique collaboration between The Nutmeg Fudge Company, local artist Gerald Incandela, and Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut a mural — designed and painted entirely by students — now graces the interior of the fudge company.

The Nutmeg Fudge Company owner Kristy Barto was looking to brighten her party space with a mural that celebrated both old and new Torrington. She worked with school board member Susan Cook and Incandela to reach out to the Academy’s art teacher, Rachael Martinelli.

Keep ReadingShow less
In the company of artists

Curator Henry Klimowicz, left, with artists Brigitta Varadi and Amy Podmore at The Re Institute

Aida Laleian

For anyone who wants a deeper glimpse into how art comes about, an on-site artist talk is a rich experience worth the trip.On Saturday, June 14, Henry Klimowicz’s cavernous Re Institute — a vast, converted 1960’s barn north of Millerton — hosted Amy Podmore and Brigitta Varadi, who elucidated their process to a small but engaged crowd amid the installation of sculptures and two remarkable videos.

Though they were all there at different times, a common thread among Klimowicz, Podmore and Varadi is their experience of New Hampshire’s famed MacDowell Colony. The silence, the safety of being able to walk in the woods at night, and the camaraderie of other working artists are precious goads to hardworking creativity. For his part, for fifteen years, Klimowicz has promoted community among thousands of participating artists, in the hope that the pairs or groups he shows together will always be linked. “To be an artist,” he stressed, “is to be among other artists.”

Keep ReadingShow less