An unnamed marsh around Boston.

In case you’re wondering: the striped bass are still not in Boston Harbor. As I wrote in a previous post, this is a hard time for fly fishermen. After a long, cold winter, a few months away from feeling the pull of a fish on a fly line can drive a fly fisherman to do things he knows are futile. And so, today, a few of us struck out to chase stripers in Boston Harbor.

The water was a good temperature: around 50 degrees. The skies were bright. And the tide was perfect. But there were no fish in sight.

What was there, then? People observing airplanes. Broken glass. Strong winds. Rusting cars. The strong scent of the tidal marshes. And strangers, warm in their cars, happy to tell us we were a few weeks early.

The herring, meanwhile, are running in the Essex, and other local rivers. The stripers can’t be far behind. They can’t.