The mess was my inspiration. The first day I moved to Boston I lugged everything I owned up three flights of stairs into my new apartment and spread it all out on the living room floor. I spent the next week releasing my sorted clothes, disassembled furniture, and surviving dishes among the new space. When the dust cleared, only one chaotic pile remained.
While it had all miraculously made the trek, my cluster of fishing gear resembled a very expensive sea urchin with a core of backpacks, bins, and balled up waders broken up by rod tubes sticking out every which way. I’d been staring at the mess for days, and besides a few nights of tying, getting on the water had occupied a similar “packed up in a ball on my floor” area of my mind. Finally, after what seemed like my longest fishing draught of the year, I had a free evening. I picked a streamer wallet and my ten weight out of the cluster and headed to the Mystic.
Despite its uninviting industrial appearance on satellite, the lower river turned out to be an evening hotspot for the public. The day had been one of the warmest of the year so far and the shoreside park was alive with old men playing cards, running groups prepping their headlamps for after dark, and even a few fellow striper anglers rigging up their long surf casting rods. A friend of a friend had had some luck here that morning on spinning gear. I wasn’t sure how fly-friendly the area would be, but low tide revealed a damp beach firm enough to access via tennis shoes and make some casts.
The trip was as much for fishing as it was for scouting. I’d heard a lot about the underground urban fishing scene in Boston over the years, but had yet to give it a try despite having lived a few hours away from the city for a good chunk of my life. Now that this was home, it was a trial by fire.
The T rumbled overhead as I bombed casts into the rising tide. A small commuter boat ferried past a few times an hour, bikers blared music down the pedestrian path, and the wind died as the sun set. Getting skunked in the city is always an easier pill to swallow than when it happens in pristine wilderness (and trust me, I’ve done both). Out in nature, sometimes it seems deserved that you find something as wild and untouched as the landscape around you. In urban areas, it follows with the rest of the culture. Like every other measure of success in a metropolis, a win on the water usually needs to be sought out, chased, earned.
That’s where I find myself here. I feel that the true mark of a good angler is their ability to fish where they live. Almost everyone I’ve come to look up to in this sport doesn’t reside in a destination location with a high density fishery in their backyard. Their achievements in the most unlikely of locations inspired me to do the same growing up in New Jersey, and are likely the reason I stuck with a fly rod in my early years of angling. In most cases if there’s water, there’s a fishery you can become an expert in. Boston might not be a fly angler’s dream, but I already know it’s far from a nightmare.
I may catch a ton of fish over the next couple of years. I may also get my ass kicked. I’ll still travel far and wide to cast a fly, but I live here now, so here is where I must fish. There’s an endless stretch of rivers and coastline around this place, an inspirational mess of water to pick apart. Sounds like a fun project to me.
