Bob Romano

Ask the trout of Bonnie Brook about their politics and they might tell you they are of the conservative persuasion. They’ll proudly describe growing up from eggs spread naturally by their parents. No hatchery trucks pulling up by the side of the road. No official opening day or closed season. No need for state interference. What they don’t tell you is...

It was the mid-eighties. I was dating this blue-eyed beauty who accompanied me on a nine-hour drive from our suburban homes in New Jersey to the western edge of Maine’s North Woods. Turning off the macadam and onto dirt and gravel, we caught glimpses of a lake, mist swirling over its surface. I navigated around exposed rock, over rusted culverts, and...

The long-handled net leans in the corner of the porch. Our fly rods lie snug in their tubes, the reels in their cases. The old Grumman is chained to the spruce tree. The outboard winterized. The generator has been stored for winter, water drained from the cabin’s pipes. Sheets hang from the windows. Back home, snow spits down from a leaden sky. Trish...

The previous evening the old man had sat on a bench while watching a black bear, a little one and most likely born the winter before last, wade into the pond beside his cabin.  The young bear sought to escape the humidity and rising temperature. With water rippling around its neck, it also found temporary refuge from a cloud of flies, gnats, and...

I first saw the fish the previous summer. It was on a Monday night, Memorial Day. Caddis had begun hatching a little before seven. Small fish splashed throughout the pool as they followed the tan-colored insects toward the surface.  Caddis are one of nature’s more curious creatures. Larvae of these insects build homes of tiny branches, stones, and other...

Bonnie Brook is as much a state of mind as it is a clear running stream that is home to a wild strain of trout. It is always with me. Perhaps after all these years, it’s become a part of me. Lying in bed, I can sometimes hear the roar of its current after an early-spring spate, or the cheerful laughter of its runs when the lilacs are in bloom. Sometimes...

As I grow older the winters seem to last longer. With the temperature rising into the forties on this first week of February, I tramp through melting snow in my Sorrels, the hood of a sweatshirt pulled tight over the tattered bill of my baseball cap. While collecting an armful of billets, I hear the patter of water dripping off the roof of the lean-to...

Seated here beside the woodstove, rain mixed with hail pinging against the windows, I’ve been thinking about Thoreau’s statement that “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” Izaak Walton certainly knew this. That may be the reason his book has endured down through the centuries. Perhaps John...

As a young man, I read Hemingway and Steinbeck, Harrison, and McGuane. Along the way, the fly-fishing raconteur Richard Brautigan brought tears to my eyes while the rabid environmentalist Edward Abbey had me raising my fists in outrage. I took to heart the words of Gary Snyder, the acclaimed poet-turned-Buddhist, found in his thought-provoking book...

The skies have remained gray all week. They match the landscape as well as my mood. Juncos flit among the cedars like the first snowflakes of the winter that looms ahead. A few sparrows shuffle over the lawn. They’re searching for seeds scattered by the chickadees and titmice visiting the feeder that hangs from a metal post outside my window. Even with...