"Where's the bucket"? Don turned on his flashlight and gave me a sighting with his hand. Then it was black again. What happened next I still have trouble believing. Even I, who may be the only one to ever believe it happened, know I could never do it purposefully, or in the light of day when I could actually see my line while I cast. I was pumped. The whole aura of the situation, the size of the flies, the sound of the rolling fish, the hours of waiting and anticipating, was energizing. It had been years since the east coast striper fishing that I had last used a shooting head. I stripped off a lot of line. It seemed as though I should have reached the shooting monofilament by then. I began to false cast out into the blackness, expecting to work out to the head, lay it down, strip off more shooting line, and thus work out to real fishing distance. I false cast, stripped off line with the back haul, false cast again, stripped more line with the back haul. Where was that head connection? False cast, stripped more line. This is a goddamn long shooting head! False cast, stripped more line, false cast, stripped. On the fifth or sixth false cast I finally felt the connection in my left hand, and hung on an unseen shoreline in front of me. "Damn, I'm hung", I said into the dark. "What?", Don asked, unbelieving. "I hung up on shore false casting." Silence. "That's impossible. The shore is 120 feet away." The fly shop salesman had, in the confusion of requests, grabbed a full length weight forward line. And I had false cast the full length of it. Don clicked on his flashlight and there hung my line. He switched off the light, muttering. I hauled and tugged on the line against a yielding branch, and finally tore it down. About then the rythmic creaking of oars announced our first competitors. "Ho, who's there," came a strange voice. "Oh, Don, you're first again, eh? Where's the bucket?" A beam streaked along the shoreline. You're in it, huh? Someone new here? I'll just drop in next to you." Don's light went on now. He had just as much stake in getting the fellow anchored properly, so as not to interfere with his casting. Gunwales clunked and two anchors plunged into the water. More lights shown downstream on the bar as two more cars pulled in. I was introduced, then lay back again, lit up another cigar and listened to the banter, a recounting of which river four or five mutual acquaintences
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