River of Death

It was to be my first kayak fishing adventure since April, 1959. “I don’t want to go,” I told my wife. “I’m 76 years smart, if not old.”

Fifty-five years is a long hiatus to recover from a near-death kayak experience. In ’59, the kayak advantage in reaching untouched trout streams as they unlocked from winter ice in western Massachusetts was too much for a college freshman to resist. One-man Klepper kayaks seemed just the ticket back then when we pool-hopped and fished our way downstream on the North Branch of the Deerfield River. Kayaks were just entering the vision of boys (and a generation) who had more guts than brains.

No sweat....