Mornings, fish, and other small things. — Tom Hadley
April 14, 2026
First light over the upper cove was a hard, white kind of cold — the sort where the dock creaks before you've even put weight on it. I lost two flies in the rushes before nine and caught nothing worth keeping until eleven. Then everything happened at once.
A two-pound smallmouth, a hand off the gunwale to steady the boat, coffee that had gone room-temperature without anyone noticing. The bass went back. The coffee stayed.
March 30, 2026
Late frost again. The redbuds were trying around the boathouse last Tuesday, and now half of them are brown at the edges. We've been through worse — '96, the year nothing bloomed until the second week of May — but it never stops feeling like a loss the first time you notice it.
March 9, 2026
Took the planks out at the third-from-the-end pile. Replaced four; salvaged six. The cedar I bought from McMurtry's mill held up better than the pine, exactly like he said it would, exactly like I refused to believe.
It was warm enough to work in shirtsleeves by mid-afternoon. A heron came down the shoreline and stood in the shallows for the better part of an hour, watching me hammer.
February 22, 2026
Mostly Wendell Berry this month. Some Bass Anglers Sportsman Society back issues my brother dropped off in a milk crate. One Annie Dillard I've read four times already and read again because the woodstove was warm.