Moose held the MacKenzie driftboat lightly in the smooth current of the Battenkill, while Cootch and I stumbled into our respective positions.  Cootch took the center, oarsman's seat, an ingenious design using a rope strung back and forth to provide a sort of butt cradle.  I plopped down in the bow; neoprened, vested, belted, and completely overdressed.  Moose jumped into the stern.  The river  pulled us easily along, like another piece of flotsam; a stray leaf.

The covered bridge replete with the requisite swimming kids faded behind us as we rigged up our fly rods.  An old cast iron safe, lying on its side, jutted out of the water ahead of us.  Solid, formidable, yet still elegant, it looked quite at home.  Cootch pulled us around it with a few strokes, as the water slid beneath the ample rocker of the boat.  The Battenkill deepened and pushed us toward the outside of the first bend.  

While a driftboat might be considered overkill on a stream of this size, Cootch and Moose occasionally build them over in nearby Victory Mills, between other occupations and interests.  So it seemed like a nice way to spend a few hours and try out the goods.  This was Cootch's personal boat, and a real sweetheart, forest green trimmed with varnished oak ribs and gunwales.  Originally designed for the wild waters of the West, with a high bow and high sides, MacKenzies are showing up on Eastern streams due to their incredible stability and comfort.  On an easy stream like the Battenkill, it's like fishing from a sofa.  

The Battenkill is holy water to fly fisherman.  To float it is a religious experience akin to riding one of those Pacific rim deity barges that are always sinking in ceremonies, overloaded with worshippers-cum-martyrs.  It is historic, enigmatic, beautiful and God-damned difficult.  Oh sure, it will gladly yield up dozens of little stocked fish and a few smaller natives, but you'll pay your dues before you ever land a big native Brown Trout.  Maybe that's the draw.  As a fly fisherman grows in the sport, the levels change, too.  You begin to seek larger fish under more difficult circumstances.  The late Lee Wulff was the embodiment of this philosophy, spending much of his later life pursuing larger salmon on smaller and smaller flies.  Lee also knew the Battenkill, and kept a home on it.
 This level of difficulty enhances the Battenkill's reputation, and makes it a must-fish destination for any serious fly fisher.  It is among a handful of watery Meccas whose names evoke a certain magical spell:  The Madison, the Au Sable, the Big Hole, the Yellowstone, and, of course, the Battenkill.  These are the rivers where nature has combined cold, clean water with abundant insect life and lots of interesting places for trout to fin, feed, and fornicate.  As a result, these streams are populated with lots of fat, happy trout.  And a few fat, happy fly fishermen.  

These sacred rivers are best fished with fly fishing gear.  Not because it's currently fashionable, but because it works.  Insect-rich waters create trout that primarily eat insects.  On these waters, even the old, wise trout will come up for certain hatches.   With the proper gear and flies, you can actually outfish spin and bait casters on the Battenkill.  And although you can fish it with spinning gear, make no mistake, it is a fly fishing river.  It offers fast pebbly runs, deep undercut meadow banks, shady overhangs of hemlock and maple, in short, classic fly fishing water.   

If the idea of fly fishing a stream like the Battenkill intrigues you, that's all the incentive you need to pursue it.  Fly fishing doesn't have to be difficult, although it can be.  And more importantly, it doesn't have to be expensive, although tackle shops may convince you otherwise.  With a few bucks and a little practice, you can have a helluva fun time catching fish.  And it only gets better.

The transition from bait or spin fisherman into fly fisherman is a mysterious journey that one takes without full cognizance of its meaning.  One day, perhaps baiting a dough ball on a treble hook for carp, you think "Maybe this is barbaric."  Or you watch a fly fisherman quietly stalk and cast to his quarry, as you just blast away blindly with your plug.  You understand the difference between you, and you feel a little twinge.  It has to do with sportsmanship, ethics, and a higher understanding.  

For me, it was a long and gradual journey.  I grew up on the edge of a huge, watershed property that was posted "NO TRESPASSING".  It contained two large reservoirs surrounded by hundreds of acres of white pine, swamp maple and hemlock.  And, of course, footpaths made by little boys.  The lower reservoir was referred to simply as "The Res", while the upper one enjoyed the richer name of "Hidden Lake".  The signs only added the element of danger that we craved, and the privacy we prized.  
 Almost daily, a loose knot of neighborhood kids, my brothers and I would form to make forays through the dark woods to fish our private water.  We were dedicated spin fisherman; the preferred reel, the Garcia Mitchell 304, The preferred lures included Abu's, Mepps, Hula Poppers, Jitterbugs and Rapalas.  We caught Largemouth Bass, Chain Pickerel, Yellow Perch, Bluegills, Pumpkinseeds, even the occasional Bullhead.  When things slowed down, we caught frogs and turtles, or we just went swimming.  

I'm not sure who bought the first flyrod, but it didn't much matter because kids are notorious copycats, and soon we were all sporting them.  None of us could cast for beans, and we were further hampered by unmatched, level lines that plaque most beginners.  But we caught a few fish, and all of us caught the bug.  And while we didn't give up spinning, we had turned a corner; we were fly fisherman wanna-be's.  The fly rods began to accompany us more frequently, and the minor arsenal of flies grew one by one, slightly faster than we could lose them.  

For a time, I was perfectly happy.  I could cast my Shakespeare fiberglass flyrod far enough to catch bluegill, and I caught prodigious numbers of them.  But I knew there was more.  The hook and bullet magazines that littered my room kept me awake at night with tales of Salmon and Trout; beautiful shimmering muses that rose from the depths to explode on the skilled angler's delicate presentation.  I could only dream of achieving that state of grace.   

Years later, I'm still infatuated with these muses, and have enjoyed the good fortune of achieving occasional moments of fly fishing perfection.  Evenings when the sunlight doesn't fade and the fish feed recklessly, perfect presentations that end in a casual sip of the fly by an unsuspecting trout.  Even a few big native Battenkill browns caught on dry flies.
   
Fly fishing is one of the most graceful of the predatory sports.  First, it takes you to beautiful, watery places; tumbling, wild rivers, bright, saline estuaries, hidden beaver ponds, even dark and mysterious swamps, where death looms large.  Then the motion of casting itself, where you must cast the line, not the lure, requires a certain fluidity of movement.  A good caster is a beautiful sight.  But perhaps it's the fact that you use artificial flies, tied to represent a particular insect, that sets fly fishing apart.  To really fish well, you must understand the environment of your prey.  You need to immerse yourself - literally - in the fish's world.  What insects are found on this stream?  What's hatching now?  What are the fish eating?  You come to relish this minutiae, and pride - or chide - yourself on your knowledge.  
 Later, the physical challenges will present themselves: treacherous whitewater, boat-swamping waves, swift tides, plus a host of wildlife hazards that you might or might not expect.   On Christmas Island, while fishing for Bonefish, I wandered out waist-deep on a flat and came face to face with a six-foot shark.  Maybe not a man-eater, but my testicles migrated quickly up into my body cavity just for good measure.  In gentrified southern Connecticut, I was chased out of a genteel little trout stream by a frothing, pissed-off beaver, that looked like some kind of crazed, aquatic attack dog.  Jimmy Carter is famous for the rabbit that attacked him while fishing.   

But this night, we were just a couple of good ol' boys floating the 'Kill,  drinking a few beers, catching a few trout.  The challenges or higher understanding part weren't really foremost in our minds.  Just downstream, Cootch rowed us up onto a pebbly beach, facing a nice trout pool.  We got out and I handed him a 4-weight graphite fly rod, with a #16 elk hair caddis, a good prospecting pattern.  Cootch is a recent fly fishing convert, so he got to fish first.  Moose headed down the run, grumbling something about little fish.  It was still early in the evening, and the hatch wasn't yet on, so the only fish rising were little.  "Got one!", Cootch yelled, as a little trout flew helplessly through the air, a tiny victim of overeactive reflexes.  "Nice flying fish, Cootch.", I said.  He laughed as he released the dazed but otherwise unharmed brownie.

Downstream, Moose and Cootch switched places, and Moose slipped into the role of the guide, which he does easily and naturally, as it's how he earns part of his living. Some caddisflies began to hatch and the trout chased them around the surface, betraying their locations.  We began to fish to the rises, where one casts only where a fish has fed.  It's a time-honored method that we imported (like so much else) from the Brits.

Silently, we drifted through gin-clear shallows, little trout darting out ahead of us.  An old railroad bed ran along the bank beside us, the tracks sometimes crossing the river on old iron bridges supported by heavy marble pilings.  The marble was imported from Vermont by rail, and there remain car-sized chunks of gleaming marble spilled down the banks and into the stream on the sharp curves; testimony to early train accidents.  The Battenkill embraces these manmade intrusions with dignity; no doubt some large fish make their homes under them.  One feels the weight of history here.  The struggle to chisel out a railroad along a winding river.  The back-breaking labor of clearing stones from modest fields, and more remarkably, creating miles of graceful stonewalls that stand today, dividing forests now instead of pastures.
 We took it all in, sometimes casting and catching fish, and sometimes just watching the hills float past.  I pointed out a spot where I had flushed four wild turkeys earlier this spring; inadvertently, out of season, and armed with nothing more than a flyrod.  The evening light made the water look like mercury, liquid silver and black, reflecting the banks, the trees, the sky.

"A little further upstream...you just hit him on the head." Moose directed Cootch on casting, presentation, drag, mending, and a host of other essentials that would eventually become intuitive in the mind and movements of any fly fisherman.  The lessons stuck well, and that night we brought another brother into the fold.  

As the evening drew on, we drifted over hundreds of rising fish.  We caught trout sipping flies in quiet slicks, trout dimpling in foamy backwashes, and the occasional little acrobat from fast, shallow runs.   Every fish was released to fight another day.  We drifted past a doe, drinking at the water's edge.  We didn't catch a single fish over 12 inches.  And somehow, it didn't matter.