HART ISLAND, CONNECTICUT RIVER, NH – I’ll tell you: I’ve been pampered occasionally on guided fishing trips, but this is ridiculous! It’s a bit past three in the afternoon. About half an hour ago our guide, John Marshall, pulled his McKenzie drift boat into a little beach out of the current on Hart Island, not far downriver from Hartland, Vermont. My fishing partner, Loye Miller, and I creaked stiffly ashore, and John began unloading the boat. It seemed like one of those circus cars with a dozen people inside; he had everything in there!

First came two bundles resembling Roman fasces that unfolded into saggy-bottom lawn chairs. Loye and I lowered ourselves into them. John set up two rolled-up tables and covered them with a white linen tablecloth. This was getting interesting. He set the table with company china and sterling silver and set out a platter of iced jumbo shrimp and cocktail sauce. We two long-over-the-hill, chino-clad, sweaty fishermen were about to enjoy what the upper classes in the Old Country used to call “low” or “afternoon” tea. How elegant!

As Loye and I luxuriated in the shrimp and sauce, John opened a package of thin-sliced smoked salmon, cut the slices into cracker-sized squares, and laid them on a plate with strips of cold onion and crumbles of Cabot’s sharp cheddar. We built little sandwiches with cocktail crackers and washed them down with iced tea. John expertly cut a melon into cool slices and laid them on another plate. After half a century of gorp, ham sandwiches, salted cashews, and – at best – shore dinners of walleye or hamburgers, I actually felt guilty enjoying this so much. I half-expected a red stocking-capped French rabble to come raging down to the opposite bank of the river, shouting loudly for the end of the Bourbons and for limbering up the guillotine.

It’s always a pleasure to work with someone who likes to do things just right, be it a plumber, editor, roofer, or cook. John, I would say, is one of those people. Just as I was thinking what a lovely repast it had been, he finished with yet another flourish. He brought out three cream biscuits he’d made that morning and smothered them with fresh strawberries. Then, from inside an insulated bag he produced a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, split it three ways over the strawberries, covered that with cream that he’d whipped that morning, and topped each dessert with one huge, perfect strawberry. I can’t imagine that the Queen herself, taking tea at Epsom Downs, could possibly enjoy herself more royally than we did. How he keeps everything cool, icy, or frozen on such hot days is amazing – though it gets a little less mysterious when you learn he’s a long-ago graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.

A few minutes later everything disappeared into bags and coolers and was restowed aboard. Loye and I swapped ends for the rest of the float, and we were off down the river.

I’ve long felt that the Connecticut River is one of the best-kept secrets and most underutilized natural resources anywhere in the Northeast. That’s fine with me; it would be far less attractive and productive than it is if it were lined with camps and swarming with powerboats. We’ve seen only two kayakers so far today, paddling lazily in the afternoon sun; so we’ve had the riverbanks, where the bass lie in the shade along the edge of the current, all to ourselves.

The fish are against the shady banks for several simple reasons: The water’s cooler there on hot afternoons; there’s more food to be scrounged there, especially when the dam upstream is reacting to a surge in electrical use by turning on another turbine; and there’s more protection there from eagles and ospreys. We’ve seen two adult bald eagles so far on this float, and John says there’s been at least one young one recently fledged.

John owns a guiding business appropriately called River Excitement. His vehicle for this gentleman’s afternoon is, as always, his 18-foot heavy-duty aluminum McKenzie River drift boat. Developed in the late 1920s in Oregon and becoming popular in the West during the years after World War II, it’s the perfect vessel for drift-fishing. Ungainly-looking with its heavy rocker, it nevertheless can spin on a dime and run huge rapids with hardly a drop coming aboard. Its hull is designed to be the same shape as the troughs of waves in a large whitewater river. Fishermen can sit in padded seats at bow and stern, or stand braced against thigh-high supports to cast farther.

No whitewater today, just a few gentle riffles and a mild current that’s increasing slightly as the afternoon dam release comes through. The smallmouth bass have been lethargic lately, according to John, because they were spawning; but as they’ve returned their attention to the everyday activity of getting food, they’ve come back to life. I’ve been casting my Gaines Dixie Devil rubber-legged popper as close to the bank as possible, with pretty good results. Loye got one almost as soon as we started, a nice husky three- or four-pounder. Smallmouths have an attitude problem: They either don’t know or refuse to acknowledge that they’re licked before they start when they tangle with ancient experts like us. Instead, they fight all the way to the net as hard as in the first moment they hit. John handles each as gently as a newborn child, asks whether you want a photo taken with it, and then lowers it back into the river to fight again another day.

John has the gift that good teachers possess, of making positive remarks about your worst screwups. Just now, as I struck a moment too soon at a bass I spotted rising through a backlit pool to my popper, I could have been embarrassed or grumpy. But whatever John said, he turned it somehow into the fish’s fault. We really must do this again. It’s lovely being treated like royalty.