by Tom Reed

New country and old friends. A foundation, a beginning. An idea. Each year we’d each pick a stream on our borders, a thin blue line of water splashing from high mountain hold in country without roads, and few trails. If it were easy, we thought, anybody could do it and the fishing would be a thin soup, or polluted with brook trout, cutt-bows and the like. No, our targets would be wild and pure, the waters crystal, as they were and as they are.

And so began the border wars, the years of scrambling into the vehicles with 2-weights and wire-thin triple oughts, one of us pointing south, the other north, a rendezvous. A tradition. Men need tradition like they need oxygen, a reason. A tradition builds parameters and goals. Can’t skip tradition. I’ve been Nevada chukar hunting every Thanksgiving for a decade: “Sorry, no I can’t come to the nutty family Thanksgiving in the city. I’m in Nevada. It’s tradition.” We’d fish places with names, but names that will never find the light of cyberspace, for they are to be discovered and half the adventure is in the discovery. Good fishing needs to be earned and thus earned, is owned. Those who have earned know.

To read more, go to oursportingheritage.org

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