Some Thoughts

[Mike Ormsby]

JC ("Castwell") will be missed....not just for the excellent forum he and Deanna (Lady Fly Fisher) have provided for us all here....I never got the chance to meet JC....but believe I got to know him through his past articles....and the type of place FAOL is....we're a family and we've all suffered a loss....so my thoughts and prayers go out to Deanna and all of the extended FAOL family.

Let me share some words of the late Greg Clark (a Canadian humourist and storyteller, besides being a very dedicated fly fisherman who once wrote: "I know nothing as instantly pleasurable as the bulge and boil of a trout rising to a fly, with the immediate consequence of the curiously senuous tug on the rod tip." ). Any way Greg described his wish to be buried in a favourite fishing hole in a story "Everybody Happy" (co-authored by Charles Vining):
" I want to be dressed in my fishing clothes, waders, and jacket. Then I want them to lay me out with a rod in my hand and all my other rods and flies and reels spread around me. Then I want them to cremate me and all my things and put the ashes in the centre of a great big concrete boulder. The boulder will be dumped in the Hawthorn pool on The Mad River (Greg's favourite spot to fly fish). My fishing friends will come along and see the boulder and say, 'There's Greg out there....let's try a cast there.' "

So when it's my turn, I'd put my boulder in a nameless pool on the Credit River where I learned so much about fly fishing (and losing flies on a certain "tree of knowledge"). The plaque would read, "Here lies a fly fisherman. Tight lines to you hopefully. But if not, try not to get your line tangled up on this boulder (like the one who lies here would have). And watch out for that tree over there too."

For me now whenever I think of logging onto FAOL, I'll think "There's JC out there....let's cast over there". And every time I'm on FAOL I'll think of the fine man who gave us this great forum.