The Mill boys continue to crank out good work. In fact, to me, it's been a little bit better. Why? Because the people in it don't fish for bonefish, tarpon, permit and redfish. These are folks north of the Mason Dixon line. ( I'll throw Sarah Garnder in there as well.) The last three guests have been Gardner, Popovics and now Finn). It kind of sounds to me like The Fly Fishing Show in Edison trifecta.
After I retired from the Newark Fire Department with a subsequent divorce I needed a place. An escape place. My sister was living in Saranac Lake and I had discovered the Lake Placid area in 1987. So I took a ride up and started looking. I found the town of Ausable Forks and a house that sat overlooking the river. Fast forward I purchased that one, and the one next to it about 7 years later (after my neighbors murder-suicide). And that its how I met Rachel Finn.
One day I was working on the house over looking the river and heard some voices. I couldn't find the source until I looked down directly below the house and there was Rachel, puffing on a cigar of course, with two clients fishing the stretch below my house(s). It was then I knew I had some good fishing right "At Home", at least that was until the hurricanes that would come later and destroy that stretch, and my two houses.
The below picture was one I took of Rachel in the fall of 2003. I'm not sure who she is fishing with but it may be her late husband Jeff. After I listened to her podcast and knew I would be writing this post I went searching for the accompanying photos. Shot on one of the first digital 1.2 MB cameras and printed out at home. But you know what sometimes any photo is a great photo that helps tell a story.
Over the years I have made countless trips to the Lake Placid- Wilmington- Saranac Lake area and have crossed paths with Rachel up there and just about everywhere else. Either at the Hungry Trout, at the deli across from her house in Wilmington, on a buddies drift boat on the Upper Delaware, the same
but hang but out on the ocean, at the shows, and of course online, where her beautiful art always catches my eye. I am sure I will see her again up in the North Country as our daughter Lauren has been accepted and is considered attending Paul Smith's College in the fall.
She's a great angler guide, artist, and person. Take a listen. It's great.