On Double Acres Blog on Fly Fishing

Hey, Double Acres, I enjoy your stories. This one reminded me of my aversion to fly fishing. To me, when I was younger, fly fishing was like that pretty girl who was just out of reach for a guy like me. Then, when I finally got the the nerve and asked her out, the date …

Revelation at Cockroach Bay and the Skyway Fishing Pier

I’m getting ready for another fishing trip. I’m at that stage which might be the best part of the trip, and I haven’t even left the house. It’s the anticipation that makes every trip good. Even when it turns out miserable, and it often does when you’re in the wild chasing something, which for it …

Learning the Language

Do you hear what I hear? Do you see what I see? Evidently not, or you would be catching more fish, I muse to myself as I reel in another big smallmouth. My wife Mary lived in Venezuela until she was 40 yrs. old.  She knows Spanish like I know English.  And she’s fluent in …

Spring in West Virginia

Spring in West Virginia. It’s the middle of April and there’s 2 inches of snow on the ground. This is not the trip I envisioned. March is supposed to be the windy month, but the wind has blown hard every day we’ve been here. It blew the canoe against the current and up into the …

Alternative to Strife in Politics

When I was younger, like my parents and the majority of other West Virginians, I was a Democrat. The first time I voted was in the primary of 1976. My mother got a job for me driving those without transportation to the poles. The organization I was driving for was one of the democratic factions. …

Hindsight Is 20/20

In 2016 an angel could have visited me and said, “Oh, you who are highly favored, you have been blessed with stage IV lung cancer” and I would have said, “What!”

The Mockingbird and the Great Egret

they’ll have this written bit of history to rely on as the story gets retold in the future when the number of squirrels killed and the size of the trout will likely grow exponentially with each retelling

Truth Found in the Turkey Woods

As the whole world goes crazy, and for once that’s not an exaggeration, I prepare for the third day of Georgia’s Spring Gobbler season.

Tater Wagons in Heaven

My wife found this long lost poem when cleaning out a drawer filled with old papers. I wrote this during my first semester in college.

The Saga of Mary’s First Turkey

And for one brief shining moment all the worries and troubles of the world were gone. The picture of our smiles says it all.