Jerry Hamza - Outdoor Chronicles: True Tales of a Lifetime of Hunting and Fishing

Copyright 2015 by Jerry Hamza

Foreword copyright 2015 by Joseph B. Healy

Somewhere Down the Crazy River

Lyrics by Robbie Robertson

Copyright 1987 by Robbie Robertson

All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Reprinted by permission of Robbie Robertson

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hamza, Jerry.

Title: Outdoor chronicles : true tales of a lifetime of hunting and fishing / Jerry Hamza ; foreword by Joe Healy.

Description: New York, NY : Skyhorse Publishing, 2015.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015024675| ISBN 9781634504188 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781510701427 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Fishing--Anecdotes. | Hunting--Anecdotes. | Hamza, Jerry. | Outdoor life--Anecdotes.

Classification: LCC SH441 .H26 2015 | DDC 639.2--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015024675

Cover design by Richard Rossiter

Cover photo: Thinkstock

Printed in the United States of America

To my Dad
Through it all, we fished.

Contents

Foreword

A s I pass deeper into middle age and approach my fifties, I find myself getting more sentimental than I was in my roaring, invincible youth. I often think fondly (yes, sentimentally) of my preteen years in the Adirondack Mountains region and my teens growing up on the shores of Oneida Lake, outside of Syracuse, New York. Thats in the heart of New York State, quite distant from New York City, culturally. Syracuse is middle America, as is about 75 percent of New York State. You may have heard the term Upstate New York, which geographically is the region from Westchester County north to the Empire States capital city of Albany; however, Central New York is most of whats slightly north and west of there. Buffalo is Western New York, and so is Rochesterat least a little bit. However, I think of Rochester (where my mother was born) predominantly as Central New York. And that belief was confirmed to me when I got to know the writer Jerry Hamza.

This guy Hamza grew up in the Rochester, New York, area and writes about fishing and hunting in the Lake Ontario region of Central and Western New York, and also about his years at Hardwick College near the Catskill Mountains and the famous trout streams there. These are areas I know well, through family connections and life experience. When Jerry writes about fishing for Great Lakes steelhead, I get sentimental because I remember all the times Ive done it. Jerry also makes those experiences palpable and realwhich shows his value as a writer and storyteller. In a strange coincidence, as an adult I also lived in Coastal Maine and enjoyed visiting Grand Lake Stream in Down East, Maine. Turns out, Jerry has a house there and writes about GLS in this book, too. Weird, huh? Or fate that I got to know this guy Hamza.

Even if you didnt grow up in Central New York or fish Lake Ontario or the Catskills or Grand Lake Stream, Maine, there is much in these pages to keep you entertained.

Speaking of whichI also learned that Entertainment (capital-letter emphasis intended) was Jerrys business for decades as part of the management for the comic George Carlin. That experience opened doors of travel to Jerry, during which he carried fly tackle or a shotgun. He offers stories from those trips, too.

Rollicking fun, adventure, success or not so much, and most of all good thinking characterize these stories. They are the first installment of chronicles from a full outdoor life. Dive in and savor the leisure-time reading. And if youre like me, youll be waiting eagerly for the next book and the next adventures shared by this guy Hamza.

Joe Healy

Former Associate Publisher

Fly Rod & Reel

Waterford, Vermont

April 2015

Introduction

I spent some time recently in an introspective mood examining what I have become. Like many people, I see life as a process. After around fifty years, I have become a storyteller. Really, its not a recent happening. In fact, I have been telling stories all my life. The informal sharing of yarns and years of experience has happened for quite a while. Its easy to tell your children how you met the president or the time you shot the eye out of a partridge at hunting camp. In many families, the tales that get passed down from one generation to the next become the colorful oral history of that certain clan.

My transformation from casual fabulist to serious chronicler has to do with a kind of calling. In the past, this same calling led some to decide to become minstrels. In todays world, there are serious challenges to becoming a minstrelmore than finding a costume that fits, even. The best storytellers, such as Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, spin their tales in ways that leave you wanting more. They embed subtle anecdotal morals in their stories that sneak up on you and make you think as well as smile. This is the high watermark for which I aim.

It is my pleasure to pass along some of my stories about the human condition set against an outdoor backdrop. In todays world, where it is tempting to live in a virtual world where the electronic environment can isolate us almost completely, I try to refresh the idea that the natural world is beautiful, challenging, rewarding, and real.

It is my hope that you will laugh frequently and think occasionally and lose track of time as you read these stories. That my stories will incite and invite you to recall some of your own. That you will want to make some new ones. That the best revenge is living well, always.

Warmest regards,

Jerry Hamza

Pittsford, New York

Spring 2015

Chapter 1:
Prose to Poetry

Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.

Edgar Allan Poe

B ill and I had gone back further than each would like to admit. I really had to sit down and think about where our acquaintance began. It was in the mid-1980s. He had a fishing lodge in northern Ontario. It was a great place to catch giant northern pike on a fly rod and then pick up a few walleyes for shore lunch every day. I loved Bills place. I would go a couple times a year. It was solitude and isolation.