#fishing waltons favorite rivers

“The fish jumped, a foot of gleaming silver, arched for a long moment in the soft, summery air, hit the surface hard in an effort to shake the feathered Judas lodged in its jaw. Quickly it drummed upstream, reaching for the fast water washing below a stone dam, where it jumped again, slim and perfect, a brown trout with an I-say-there English accent.

The brownie stunting in the picture river was not the biggest I have ever hooked, precise specifications of which I refuse to divulge for fear my career trophy might not sound as epic as it ought to, but it was not the smallest either […] Besides, the game was far from up. After all, I was fishing fairly fine, with a number 16 Cockwing Dun knotted to a twelve-foot 5x leader, which can add a shiver of suspense playing even small fish due to my boyish tendency to overreact before things have reached a proper boil.”

Robert Deindorfer, opening lines to “Fishing Walton’s Favorite Rivers,” from The Armchair Angler, ed. Terry Brykczynski and David Reuther (Scribner, 1986)