I actually have been fishing since the last post, just not much.
See, the house is for sale, layoffs are looming and my wife and I are expecting another baby.
When those ominous planets line up, well, it's tough to justify bugging out at the roll call of dawn and selfishly suiciding myself from the rest of what matters most.
Fact is, the last time I did, I nearly killed my best friend down here. I told him to head up the bank, but he ended up waist-deep in mud. It wasn't until the good Lord intervened that he corrected that misstep in both my directions and, well, Ian's direction.
But we fished with shaky knees and caught nothing all morning.
That's karma.
I wonder if I'll fish again in the Lowcountry. At least anytime soon.
Most of the gear is stowed for when the house sells. Oh, sure, my primary flyrod, reel and vest are handy, as are my mud boots, but sticking close to home seems like the rule now.
It's not that I don't want to fish; it's that I don't want to leave the tumult, or at least be away from it for even three or four hours.
Even though that's exactly what I need to center myself.
The answer that Nature provides is one that we shouldn't close our ears to. It's in her roaring brooks, screaming oceans and whispering trees that the answers reside.
And they are loud and clear.
It's in the texture of the fish's scales, in the sharpness of the billions of tiny shardlike reflections of the sun on the surf, and it's the horizon that quits some 30 or 40 nautical miles out to sea.
It's the smell of the plough mud, the salt, the fish slime, the wooden dock, the musty lining of the bamboo rod.

homeward bound

Checklist:
Light hip waders.
Shorts with a zillion pockets.
Long-sleeved shirt to keep bugs off.
Wide-brimmed hat.
Bandanna.
Sunglasses.
Bug spray.
Bamboo fly rod.
5-weight reel w/weight-forward floating line.
Graphite fly rod.
4-weight reel w/ floating line.
Extra tipped and leader material.
Cheat sheet for tying said tippet to leader.
Box of Yankee flies.
Trout net.
Fly vest, fully equipped.
Fly-tying kit.

I'm good to go at this very moment, but there are still 14 days before the trip.
Now, this isn't a fishing trip. Just ask my bride. But it's not very often that we get back to New York State, and the rivers of the backyard of my youth.
I'll spend sometime with Tom up in the North Country. Last we talked, while getting skunked in 20-knot wind here on the South Carolina coast, he said he knew a couple of good places that he wanted to trek to. I can't wait. I bet his fly box is teeming with the correct bugs. Me? I have some old stuff and some new stuff, but after living a dozen years in the South, the Adams and Wulffs get dusty. I can still tie them, though. And I had better get started.
Before he North Country, I'll venture down to the end of the road where my Mom's house still stands, the gem of Riverview Parkway North. There at the end of the road, the dead end sign and a pile of dirt to keep the motorbikes out. Ironically, it only serves as an awesome little jump to kick-start the dirt-biking.
And there, through the pine and maple and pebbly trail, the sound of the Mohawk River lazily moving by.
Much of the river was polluted for years — garbage and chemicals — but it's been cleaned up a good deal, although I don't keep the fish, so it doesn't really matter in an eating-chemicals sort of way.
The Mohawk's checkered past notwithstanding, it's a pretty river. It's gentle, has it's shallows and there are fish in it. Trout, as a matter of fact. The best spot on the river is right at its source, the Lake Delta dam. Right below the dam, the trout can travel no farther. So they just pool up at the enormous concrete structure and grow fat and old.
Occasionally, they get caught.
Like the year before last when I corralled my brother-in-law, Bobby, to come out and fish at 6 a.m. I was using a 5-weight — a little seven-and-a-half footer when something probably in the 8-pound range grabbed my fly, tore my tippet and left me skunked before I could even think to let out the drag. I really don't think my hand was even remotely close to the reel.
I tried more and more to get that rascal to come back, but he had me figured out. So I moved to the other side and came home with a goose egg but a neat little story about how I should have brought the bigger gear.
Or develop more skills.
Live and learn.
There are several stops along the way on the Mohawk. It's astounding to me, however, that I rarely see any fishermen out on the water. Another year, I fished three spots that I used to fish as a boy. Some are pretty rapid and technical, and I've never done well. Others, well, they were decent, but the years and the development have caused a rise in the water's temperature, and that's that.
The important thing is that I'll be able to fish a couple of times in my home state, and if Providence smiles upon me and graces me with a fish, then it will be well worth the walk along the banks.
If not, well, it will still be worth it.
Which leads me to another point: No fisherman enjoys being skunked. I've read countless times about how fly fishermen don't wade into a river with expectations of actually catching fish.
I suppose some of that's true. It's merely reality: It's hard to find fish on some rivers, and even if you do, you can't just plunk in a worm on a hook and catch them.
Well, actually, you can. But you can't throw an imitation worm on the end of a fly hook and just expect the fish to be sold. The presentation, the equipment, the current, the temperature, the time of the day or year, the fish's disposition (yeah, there, I said it) and a number of other factors weigh heavily on whether Mr. Trout will play along.
That right there is the science of it. In other words, not only do you have to be a student of "the game," you have to commit yourself to being near the fish at the right time.
You hear of anglers waking at the crack of dawn, heading out to the river before the sun comes up, taking water temperature reads, scouting the hatches and going through a whole smattering of details before the fly is cast. And coming up with a goose egg.
Then you hear of the guy whose been fishing the river for years, and he strolls down at 11, just when you're packing it in, and he managers to land a 15-inch rainbow on the first cast with a dark Adams.
That's because he's a student of the river. He knows when the hatch is, what the trout eat, and what time of the day all this happens.
Dumb luck aside, you're not going to catch very many fish if you just show up at the river on your schedule and not the fish's.
The problem is that most of us have jobs, and can't simply duck out because there's a sulfur hatch on the east fork or camp out for three days to fish two or three elbows for 18 of the 24 hours each of the three days.
That's where guides come in. But not all of us have that luxury either.
So, what it's about is convincing the bride and those you are visiting that you'd love to get a couple of hours in on one of those streams of nostalgia and you'd be back definitely before lunch, or sooner.
Sometimes you make bargains to do this. In fact, you do whatever it takes.
But the hatch will be three hours after you leave the river to get back home by your bargained deadline. Or, worse, the hatch happens just as you're taking off your waders.
Chances are, it will rain very hard, or flood, or snow or someone will need to go to the hospital, God forbid, and there's that. You've packed up 2o pounds of gear just to haul it in the back of the SUV across 14 states.
And that's exactly why we say it's not about catching the fish; it's about getting out in the river, and nothing more.
And if there are no fish to be caught, it will still — it will always — be worth it.

when i grow up

I now know what I want to do with my life.
It's taken me the better part of 41 years to realize it, and with a simple click of a mouse while looking for an old influence, I found the road map.
In the spring of 1989, I drove up Route 86 just outside of Lake Placid, N.Y, and parked my Subaru on the side of the road where there was a clear, but adventurous, path down past and between a few boulders so colossal that only God Himself could have rolled them into place on the fabled Au Sable River. If I slipped, I not only would have lost the first fly fishing rod I ever owned (an old fiberglass Fenwick), I would have lost my life.
At the time, it didn't seem to matter much. I was in my early twenties and recently divorced. I was flunking several courses in college, and because of the tumultuous one-year relationship that technically ended with a priest from her church annulling it — as if it never happened — I had to forgo an internship at Adirondack Life magazine, which, at the time, epitomized the my goal in life: to write about life in a natural place.
And that morning, as the sun strained to eclipse the tall peaks and the river was separated from air only through a thick silt of gray fog, I slipped into the river as gently as a great blue heron stalking his prey.
In my ten dollar Kmart rubber boots and a green felt Orvis hat that I couldn't have been more proud of, I waded close to the bank, but just far enough to avoid getting my fly line hung up in the trees above.
These are trophy waters, meaning no trout under a foot long could be kept. That didn't matter to me because the last thing I would expect to happen to a novice such as me would be that I would catch any fish in the raging spring trophy waters of the most prolific trout stream east of the Mississippi, but even if I did happen to graze dumb luck, the ideal conservationist that I was wouldn't have allowed me to keep the fish, legal or not.
But God decided to begin my love affair with the river where another such relationship dried up. At the end of my line, a pretty little rainbow, a foot long, give or take an inch.
I didn't know how to land him. Born into a family of bait-casters, I reeled the fish in. Somehow, the barbless hook held and into my hand was the spectacular fish.
I removed the hook with little damage, held him in the water to keep his gills pumping, smiled and let him go.
That was the first and last trout I'd catch on the mighty Au Sable. It was dumb luck, I know, but all the same, it was one of the greatest fishing memories in the North Country.
I, fingers frozen, toes numb, spirit resilient, was victorious, maybe even invincible.
After a few hours more of swatting at the water, I climbed the boulders back out of the river in which I was just baptized a fly fisherman, and headed back to the little four-wheel drive Subaru.
I slipped out of the waders, got dry, hit the engine and turned on the heat. I flipped a Gordon Lightfoot tape into the cassette deck. I was genuinely happy.
And hungry.
I decided I'd take the long way back to my apartment near the college campus. The route would take me to Lake Placid, the site of the 1980 Winter Olympics — the one known for the Miracle on Ice. I might stop for a beer, then head north toward Saranac before hanging a right on Route 3 back to Plattsburgh. It was a long trip, but I love adventure, and if adventure means driving through mean, snowy terrain, so be it.
Just outside Placid, Route 86 winds along the edges of Whiteface Mountain. It splits some of the tall peaks of the Adirondacks, and is flanked by gorge on one side and the most breathtaking stands of white birch I've ever seen.
This is what the road to Heaven looks like, I'm convinced.
But up on the left with a clear view of the Au Sable, a kitschy little roadside fly shop stood, inviting passers-by to stop in. On the side of the building, someone had made a humorous mural of a woman in a short, pink skirt and cowboy hat fishing, but the fly hook had caught the back of her skirt, and, well, you can imagine the rest.
As I strode through the door still high from the trophy fish I caught, a man sat in a flannel shirt hunkered over a table where a number of flies and hackle lay.
By nature, I'm an introvert. I'm not the guy who strikes up witty conversations or brags about the fish he's caught. I'll talk, and I'll talk about the fish even, but I'm pretty low key as far as being the initiator of a conversation.
Fran Betters is, however, and it wouldn't have taken a clairvoyant to know that I was fresh from the Au Sable. Hell, the only folks who probably wandered in were fresh from the river. Or they were looking for a bathroom.
He asked if I did any good, and I told him I got one and threw it back. He nodded. I didn't tell him it was my first time in the river, but I should have. From the stories I've heard, Fran is a very paternal sort of fellow. One who takes time to give advice and feed your addiction. He's got a whole fly shop, complete with custom rods, namesake flies and a shelf of books that he authored himself to prove it.
I left the shop with a handful of Au Sable Wulff flies that are his patent and a book, "Fly Fishing in the Adirondacks." He autographed it for me, and today, it sits on a shelf with all the other fishing books I own, but his is pretty special, and not simply because he signed it.
The book sparked sort of a revolution in me, one that was culminating in that day or at least fixing to erupt. It was an independence I could experience only in nature, and one that was personified greatly standing in a river with a fly rod. For if bait casting is checkers, then fly fishing was chess. It was a game, one that moved very slowly, that took a great deal of thought — and not just when you're waist-deep in technical waters; but when you're driving around listening to Gordon Lightfoot on your way to or from the river, near the river, or anywhere that reminds you that this invisible shadow we call our souls is, indeed, a fisherman.
My father was this man. And that apple, which had rolled some three-hundred miles from that tree, was too.
So on April 30, 2008, not quite a month before a spring jaunt back into the Adirondacks to visit family, my father-in-law and I will venture out into the still-cold streams, rivers and lakes to maybe or maybe not catch a fish. It's a ritual at least once a year that I fish when we visit the in-laws. There are a lot of good bodies of water up that way, after all.
But it's been awhile, and I thought I'd check in with some local fly shops to see what patterns I either need to buy or tie, depending on the extra time I may or may not have in the next week or so.
So I searched for Fran's shop online. Now, I haven't been to his store since the late 'eighties, and not that he was old when I met him, but years that go by have a cruel way of erasing people and places if you lose track of them. Living in South Carolina for the past nine years, it was safe to say that I'd lost track of Mr. Betters.
But there he was, online, a picture of him flanked by the typical buttons of an online shopping page. Flies, custom rods, books, tips, charts and such. But there was a note that sort of troubled me. After 44 years, Fran was getting out of the Adirondack Sport Shop. I was troubled because I probably wouldn't have the chance to drive up and see him, not that he'd remember me. My son, who is nearing one year old, wouldn't remember it if I brought him. I probably couldn't buy one of Frans custom poles or one of his own hand-tied flies, which, no joke, are collectors' items.
Then I noticed that Fran was selling the place. The whole thing: the shop, the restaurant, the lodge, the apartments. Now, all I remember was the tacky fly shop — nothing more. But it seems in that time lost, Fran had relocated just up the road and had acquired the other outposts.
I could do this, I thought to myself. In fact, it would be perfect. I could run the shop, learn to tie the flies and build the rods (Fran, himself, offered to do just that in the ad) and in the winter, I could write. My father-in-law could help tie flies. Other family members could help run the place. My bride could continue her free-lance writing career. My son could grow up on the banks of a fantastic river. Maybe he'd take over the shop one day. I could cook. I could have money pouring in from the lodge and apartments. I can't lose.
Of course, there's the capital investment part... My 401(k) and savings account probably isn't enough to do the trick.
But in my heart, I know I could do this.
Now, if I could only get an investor...

johnson skipper 125

I don't know how old I was, or whether I opened a long package tied up in gift wrap one Saturday morning. I don't know if the rod and reel inside that wrap was new or used, if it was old and had been polished by my dad or whether he bought it one night while he moonlighted selling lawn equipment at the Montgomery Ward just up the road from our house.
In fact, I don't remember the first time I cast it or the last time. I wish I knew where it was today.
But I do know the reel was a Johnson Skipper 125, closed bail with the little thumb trigger on it, and it was green and sort of an off-white with a white handle.
The rod it was attached to might have been 3 or four feet. It was a two-piece, though; I remember this because Dad had shown me how to rub the tip of the ferrule behind my ear to get it good and greasy so that it would slide into the female barrel. It, too, was sort of an off-white with a tint of green to it, like an Easter egg that was taken from the green food-coloring dye way too early. It had red threaded wraps around the shiny steel guides.
On my desk at work, there is a photograph of that rod and that reel in the small and clumsy hands of maybe a five- or six-year old boy. But the rod is holding steady because my father's right hand is gently guiding it as we fish off a small bridge over the Erie Canal near a place called Poverty Flats in Central New York.
Although I can remember my first open bale reel — a brand called Match, which my dad thought was Mitchell when we bought it from an old fly-tier who worked out of his garage a mile or so from our house. It was green, just like a Mitchell, and the style of lettering was very similar. Of course the price was far cheaper, and Dad thought we got a great deal on it.
I couldn't tell you how happy I was to have a better reel than the Montgomery Ward Speed-King my dad used; he even told me so.
It's been years since I had replaced the Mitchell, or Match, but I never noticed that it wasn't the real deal until a year or so ago, when I pulled it from an old fishing box that my dad gave to me, and looked at the label. I was half expecting to find a vintage Mitchell from 1972 or so. I found a Match.
I never bothered to search for the brand on the Internet; 35 years later, it hardly matters. I still have that reel, and it means the world to me, even though it doesn't work anymore.
The box in which it sits is an old wooden box, a bit bigger than a shoe box, with a picture of a tall ship shellacked onto it. Inside are several old reels; Shakespeares, Speed-Kings, Pfluegers and the old Match. Each reel has a story, and none every worked for me except the Match, which, of course, no longer works either.
The Shakespeare is the one my dad used for years and years as we plunked from stream to river to pond to lake all over the wilderness of Central New York. The Speed-Kings are baitcasters, and I never recall my dad ever fishing with those. They make great paperweights, though. The Pflueger "was retired," my dad used to say. It was a wedding present from Mom. That one's very special to me.
The one reel that's not in the box, however, is the Johnson. Why did I memorize that model? Why can I close my eyes and feel it in my hand? Why do I feel very close to my dad when I think about it? He's been gone from this good earth for more than a decade, and I hadn't fished with it since I was maybe six or seven.
I do remember the day that picture was taken, although, for the life of me, I can't remember who took the picture. Girls weren't allowed, so it wasn't one of my four sisters and definitely not my mom. It could have been my Uncle Fritz. In fact, I'd bet my life that it was. Or it could have been my dad's best friend, Lenny Sasso. He had a daughter, so, naturally, she never came.
Man, that photo — my dad's grin was ear to ear. It's the way I most remember him: A smile as though it started somewhere far down deep in his soul, gained steam in his heart, and like a full-body exhale of pride and satisfaction, lit up his face. Even the bushy mustache couldn't hide it.
A little boy's memory of such an occasion shouldn't be messed with. So if anyone reads this and remembers something from that day, don't bother telling me; I don't want to know. Because today, it's as close to a perfect memory — one of millions — that I have. It's a close a reflection as heaven as I can imagine.
The love for the outdoors and fishing had been instilled in me by Saturday mornings such as these. And even walking into the garage to look at my fishing tackle hanging from the wall on any given day sparks feelings of pride — a connection to my father that is so strong, it's profound to even discuss, let alone write about.
A social psychologist may link it to the ritual of hunting and gathering, a skill and art passed down from father to son, instilled young as we watch and learn to survive. Maybe that's bunk. Maybe it's just the enormous and swollen pride that my father felt as we hopped in the car on a Saturday morning to adventure off to uncharted territory, free to eat cheeseburgers at greasy diners, listen to the radio loud and bang on the dashboard, trespass on property and fish in rivers that only the Mohawk Indians every fished in, so he'd tell me as he kicked the shale underfoot to uncover a genuine Mohawk arrowhead, as if on cue.
I can honestly say that I couldn't have written this memoir a year ago. While the reel has been on my mind since the day it was presented to me, I didn't know the feeling of pride and heritage that it was packaged with. That is until I had a boy of my own nearly 11 months ago.
Kostyn Orrie shares the middle name of my dad's first name by no mistake. I have plans for us two. And they involve retelling the tales my own father told me when I was just a boy. They involve us ramrodding the unpaved roads of this world until they end at a trout stream or a bass hole, where we will fish, eat wild berries and catch fish.
So today, out of these fond memories and the promises of days fishing together, I searched and searched and found what I was looking for.
A Johnson Skipper 125. There it was, sitting behind the glass of an Internet shopping store. It was listed under the vintage items, and I would have paid $300 for it.
It was, however, not quite five bucks. The postage is four bucks. Funny thing is that it's only barely used, still with the box. And it's the same exact model that I had back in 1969 or 1970.
Despite that my son is too young to use the reel, and even when he is old enough, he might not understand the significance of an old green reel when all his friends have bright gold Penns, my heart will glow.
He may not cry when it breaks, and someday he'll probably forget he even held it in his hands.
But maybe he will.
Either way, I'll make it a point to keep it running, just like my dad did, and when he retires it, I'll put it in that old box and maybe someday, he'll pick it up, spin it in his hands a few times and smile.

hoping for obx, already

After 42 years, here's what I learned about the difference between men and women:
Men hope and women plan.
I hope I can go fishing this fall. A woman would plan on it and make it happen.
Back when I was younger, I noticed that my girlfriends paid all their bills on time, made it through college (or hadn't dropped behind...) in four years (or less), drove solid cars and maintained friendships from birth, you know, they were born on the same day in the same hospital and they've been best friends for life...
Me? I came out of my $200 no-heat apartment one frigid Catskill day to find the repo man towing my Jeep, it took me six years at three colleges to rack up enough credits, I drove cars that afforded me the chance to hitch hike more than offer rides and I can't remember a soul from high school whom I've kept in touch with.
I hoped I'd have money to pay the next month's rent or that Jeep payment, and I had hoped to graduate from college before I turned 22, I hoped that CV joint would last just another six miles instead of braving some desolate old logging trail in the middle of the Adirondacks at sundown after a long, hard day of fly fishing and I hoped that when I went to my 25-year high school reunion (it's next year), that folks would remember me.
I probably won't go.
But I hope to.
So as I was carving up my three weeks' vacation from my job at the newspaper, I began figuring out which days I'd drag some friends back to the Outer Banks. I think I landed on October 16 weekend.
I e-mailed Jerry and Jim. Jerry's definitely in (I could tell him it's tomorrow, and he'd start driving today), and Jim is planning it. Even though it's only April.
This might be an odd year simply because none from the original contingent will be there. That is, Bob or BJ. Bob would probably go, but that's another story. BJ, well, he is choosing fishing in Belize for OBX. Can't say as I blame him. Then there's the second-generation folks, and Jerry definitely qualifies. Ian's out (another baby on the way). Thing about Jerry and Jim is that they'll be coming in from the North, and me, the South. So that means me driving alone.
Which is OK. I have enough Led Zeppelin to get me there. And, honestly, I like driving alone. A lot. I drove to New York by myself before, and down to Florida. I drove to Tennessee, too. It gives me a lot of time to think, pray, sing at the top of my lungs and just generally miss people.
And that's a good thing.
It's an eight-hour ride to the banks, and maybe I'll take the ferry. I'll go over my fishing gear head to toe and any other supplies I'm bringing. I'll wish that we were roughing it to make it more adventurous (then again, some of the roach motels we stay in are an adventure of their own. Pirates would call it them dives).
I'll leave butt-early. Butt-early is generally before 4 a.m. That way, the moon will be high, and although it will be maybe 55 degrees, I'll watch the moon through my open moon roof in the Blazer. I'll drink tankards of coffee. I'll get excited when the silvery dawn slices up on the horizon and the giant sun makes the Carolina morning golden.
I'll think that in just a few hours I'll have my line in the water, hoping to have landed a couple of nice striped sea bass or spotted sea trout or maybe a red drum or bluefish and a buzz before Jerry and Jim make it in.
"Where the hell you been?" I'll ask, telling them that there's beer in the red cooler, even though that's the fish cooler, so when they open it, they'll see they should have been here four hours ago.
"Where'd you buy these?" they'll ask.
Surf casting is an amazing time, except when there's a hurricane and the wind is blowing 50-plus knots in your face, sand notwithstanding. That was last year. It has to be better this year.
And there's nothing like landing some big red drum or bluefish, fighting the fish in the surf. Except for maybe the trout on a seven-foot light rig, 10 pound test. You're definitely going to eat the trout, so the 10 minutes it takes to land him isn't going to fight him to death.
After a solid day of fishing and more on the horizon, the first supper, consisting of fried trout, bluefish, red drum, whatever, is always the best.
Early to bed and early to rise, fish, fish, fish till the sun sets.
That's living.
When we've run out of time and/or money, we'll shake hands and hit the trail. That will be a very lonely eight hours back, playing the scenes from four days of fishing on the banks over and over in my mind, yet anticipating seeing my bride and baby boy back home.
And wishing I had four vacation days more just to spend with them.
And we'll talk about next year, where we'll stay, who will meet there, where we'll be.
And that right there is hope, and hope will turn into some sort of loose plan, and we'll make it there and back somehow, and, hopefully, for years to come.

fish and tell

I like talking with other fishermen. Some of them, anyway.
What I've found is that most fishermen around here don't fish and tell. Well, they tell you what kind of fish they caught, but when you ask them where they caught them, they'll pinch their mouth with their finger and say, "Right about here," simulating the hook in the mouth of the fish they just caught.
Fishermen can be really secretive to the point where you barely believe them. Then they show you the photo, or, worse, the fish.
Me, I like to share. And for a second, it pains me to reveal the fishing hole from which I plucked a very fine trout or redfish. Then I get over it. Quickly, too.
Why? Simple. Because anyone who thinks there is just one place on earth meant for him or her to fish, that one place where he or she just fits, connects, aligns, well, that's a pretty boring world, even if it is just a fishing hole.
I think what it comes down to is this: If I get out to a favorite spot and it's elbow to elbow, I've been sedentary too long. Just like in the workaday world, you snooze, you lose. If you do the same thing over and over, you're really not growing.
That may sound like psycho-babble, but I don't think it is. Fact is, someone took pity on me as I stood on the bank of a river void of life a few weeks back and told me of a place where the trout were hitting.
The following week, I caught a 16-inch spotted sea trout on a fly rod, and I was happy.
So I paid it forward, so to speak, and when a fishing buddy I only know from the Internet told me his family had a place on a nearby island, I let him know where that fish was taken and how to get to it.
I don't expect that he'll reciprocate — that's the whole point of karma, or at least giving selflessly, right? But if he does, well, I'd listen. Which got me to thinking. Each Saturday when I cruise out to that said fishing spot, I cross over another that's at least 10 miles closer to home and think, "Well, there are bound to be trout in there."
In fact, I know damn well that there are — I've seen them myself. I was kayaking with a buddy last summer and the trout were tailing in less than a foot of water. Our hulls were starting to get hung up, and when we looked ahead, we saw the fish going nuts on a school of shrimp that were flitting by, even landing in our kayaks.
A former boss of mine also told me he used to strike the motherlode on that very creek. So why haven't I fished there? You got it: I was too comfortable in the old spots. Maybe I'll get the kayak out next weekend...

So, last weekend, I brought my father-in-law, Tom, out to a place I hadn't fished yet, but was told there was some action. We went right at dead low tide — couldn't have timed it better — marched through a half-mile of plough mud, spartina and oysters, and we reached the bank.
The wind was blowing solid at about 20 knots, and out flies were being spat back in our faces. At one point, Tom hooked himself. Me, I lost two to brittle wind knots. And one was my favorite shrimp pattern.
Needless to say, we got skunked. Worse, we were sore as could be. Tom did almost hook a curious snapping turtle, but we're both glad that didn't happen. Not sure how we would have unhooked that without losing a digit or two.
After an hour and a half, we gave up, and went back to the fishing hole that I did all right in the week before.
The wind was still too big a factor, and after hiking nearly a mile, we were ready to pack it in. (Note: This story doesn't have a happy fish-catching ending, so if you want to skip to the next blog, I wouldn't blame you. There is, what I imagine, some intrinsic value coming up, but I wouldn't count on a life-changing experience.) The morning's coffee was cold. Tom drank his; I nearly gagged on mine.
We studied the landscape on the half-hour ride back to the house — the spartina was that early spring kelly green, the blue sky reflected in the water and the sun danced playfully on the wet plough mud, looking like billions of diamonds glistening. The windows were down, it was 80 degrees by 10:30 a.m.
And as we crossed the Chowan Creek, I said barely loud enough, "There's supposed to be some good fish in there, too."
Tom glanced off to his right and remarked that we could stop the truck and walk just a few yards down the bank and probably do all right.
Why push it, I thought. Maybe next weekend.

against all odds

I woke up at 6:55 on Saturday morning to slate-gray skies, tides higher than normal and 20-knot winds. I thought for a second of leaving the Blazer in the driveway, even if it was all ready to go, and sleeping in.
When I walked down the trail to a pretty easy-accessible fishing spot down on Hunting Island, I realized I was the first on the river trail, given that I was clearing all the spiderwebs with my face.
That's a dead-sure sign you're the first. And at 8 a.m. with a cup of coffee in one hand and my 9-foot, 8-weight in the other, I figured worse and better fishermen are getting coffee refills, painting the kitchen or rolling over in bed again, waiting for the weather to pass.
Me, well, I figured I might as well try.
It's the philosophy that drives pretty much everyone around me nuts, because when the weather's bad, the odds are horrible or no one's really into it, in some twisted way, that motivates me.
Every last time.
Motivate might be too strong a word for Saturday morning. My expectations were below low: No fish are going to bite, and I accepted that. But I also knew that there would be a great deal of frustration with casting into a hard wind, getting soaked, sinking into plough mud to get to the river bank (like I said, super-high tide) and probably being too cold or too warm.
Yeah, all of those things happened.
I lost a fly, about half of my leader, my shoulder — I believe — is swelling fro hurling a thread-bound wad of feathers into 30-knot gusts for three hours, my feet hurt from constantly balancing on the dead reeds of spartina that separated me from slipping into the river for a quiet death (who, after all, would ever find me way out here?) and I tripped upon a next of hornets (the kind in the ground) the size of kazoos. All 15 or so of them.
Luckily — no, amazingly — I didn't get stung (or bitten, I forget what hornets do). Of course, when they are 4-inch-long bees, they are bigger targets, and a fly rod can be a deadly weapon.
Trudging through the mud, I realized that I could get stuck on the way out if the tide came up another foot or so, which it was predicted to do.
But I made it to the bank, the wind picking up the salt off the water and whipping it in my face, and I had to let the line out on the back case, which I hate to do simply because there are obstacles behind me (shrubs, scrub, spartina and even a few craggy trees). For the next hour or so, I resolved that this was a practice run. I hadn't been down the bank this far before, and with my father-in-law coming up to visit next week, I figured I'd better scout a few new spots to fish with him, seeing as how we haven't been terribly successful at some of the scenic, yet fish-desolate places I've dragged him to over the years.
Again, if the odds are bad, my motivation increases. It's a sickness, I know this.
By 9 a.m., the tide had changed, the wind was still gusting, but gusts are sporadic, and fish gotta eat, right? I used just one fly all day (well, one fly pattern. As I said, I lost one), a No. 4 lime green and orange rattler minnow that I bought at the Orvis shop downtown. It's a noisy little bugger, and when you give it a good little yank, it becomes pretty spirited and trout are supposed to enjoy that.
And trout like to feed, this time of year, in the deeper troughs near the banks where the food comes to them.
And that's when it hit. I probably only had 10 yards of line out and was jigging the fly near the reeds when a gorgeous trout took it as he was rising. I set the hook like a pro (lucky, I guess), and wanted to take another step into the river, but with the tide spilling over the bank, again, it would have meant a very tough swim or a very easy death. (I wonder if I would have still been holding the fly rod, attached to the line, attached to the fish, when they found me. I'd have hoped so. I could see the coroner shaking his head, "Damned shame. That's a nice fish.")
I reached down with my net and scooped the fish out from the plough mud and reeds. He immediately spat out the fly and clamped down on the catch-and-release net, which got all caught up in his teeth until he started to run out of breath, or water, and finally began gasping.
For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to bring him home. But I picked him up by his gills out of the net, and he measured from the tip of my little finger just below my elbow. That's my unofficial 16-inch measurement, and he was good and plump. Would have made a nice dinner.
But, like I said, my father-in-law is coming up next weekend, and I better leave the fish in the hole for next Saturday.
###
I'm fairly certain that I was the only fisherman out that Saturday morning in Beaufort County. I mean, it looked like a hurricane was coming, and the breeze felt like it too. There were no boats on the horizon and none humming about the protective reeds. No shrimp boats, no crabbers. No one even sitting on a bucket, huddled under a bridge. The Saturday morning fishing shows had high ratings that day.
Me? I held a beautiful, fat trout in my right hand breathing the fresh salt air, looking over miles of marsh grass contrasting brightly against a wet gray sky. And released him.

wanted: boat that floats

The planets aligned last weekend: I'm finally buying a boat.
I've been a proponent of bank fishing, wading, fishing from a kayak or canoe and surf casting from some time now. And it's easier to be a proponent of such green and healthy measures when you don't have a boat nor can you buy one.
Screw that.
But let's back up a second.
I used to have a boat. In fact, I've had two now. Thing is, they were both sailboats.
And I love sailing. The last was a Marshall Sanderling — an 18-foot catboat. Picture a bathtub with a small cabin and a lot of cockpit with the mast at the very bow, gaff-rigged with one 256-square-foot sail.
It was gorgeous.
So gorgeous that some such-and-such stole it.
Now, I practice Christianity, but I will never for give the so-and-so who took my boat and left me to deal (for coming up on a year now) with the boat insurance company, which also is trying to rip me off.
But I'm trying to let it go.
You see, there's something so natural about sailing. To be able to hear the water as it laps at the waterline; to feel the wind as it fills the sails; to smell the old varnish, teak and mahogany, the bilge, the must from the cabin, the salt, the canvass (OK, Dacron).
Enough nostalgia.
Folks down here, well sailboats are called blowboats and aren't functional. I'd beg to differ. The catboat was the American pickup truck of the harbor. The wide and long cockpit was a work deck — for lobster and crab traps and fishing nets. A similar boat, the friendship sloop, was a bigger version, and it saw many a day towing fishing nets across the Chesapeake.
Have I fished from Desiderata? Yes. Often? No. Fact is, it was tough to swing a fly through the air and not get tangled on the mast, sheet or some other line. But I tried.
That was until the sonofabich swiped it from me.
###
But here I sit today with a different dilemma. See, I'm not getting a 17-foot center cockpit skiff (sure, I'd love one; I'm just not going to buy one and not be able to pay for food for my family). What I've decided to get is a jonboat. The pickup truck of motorboats. The 1974 pickup truck, that is.
And I want a small engine, not a large one. No more than 25 horse. I have an old 5 hp Tohatsu that used to push the sailboat right there in my garage. One five-gallon gas tank will probably push her around all summer.
My budget? $1,000 and not a penny more.
Oh, the dilemma? I can't find this boat.
A couple of months ago, I was scanning Craigslist, and there were at least 10 of them around.
Today, there are two: One that doesn't have a motor (but that's OK; like I said, I have one) which lists for $825; and the other, well, it's $1,500.
I'm planning on calling the guy with the $1,500 one and asking him if he'll take $1,000. He probably won't, so, assuming the lesser one is still available, I'll be the guy in the camouflaged fiberglass jonboat with the 5 hp longshaft plying the river banks in search for a trout.
Puff puff...
###
There is beauty in utility. I discovered this back in college when I traded a slick Honda Prelude for a Subaru 4x4. It was a former pizza-delivery car, and it was ugly. About the size of a loveseat with 13-inch white wagon wheels.
And it bounded through the snow like a snowshoe hare. And I fell in love with it.
Since then, I've been back and forth with cars (see bossanova for my love affair with the Ford Town Squire station wagon). And in all practical senses, I've stuck with my '01 Blazer simply because it's OK if it smells like fish, it gets me to where I need to go, it can pull a boat and, well, it's got a sunroof.
I don't think of it in the same beautiful utilitarian way that I did the Subaru or my old pickups. Or even the Honda Element that's our "good" car. That's because it breaks down with some degree of regularity, and I can't work on cars with on-board computers.
Now all I need is the boat.
I'm determined, and that counts for something with me. Because when I set my jaw, I'm pretty sure there will be the outcome I want, or at least in the ballpark of that trajectory.
I'll probably be on the boat solo most of the time. So I think I'll cover the front third of the boat in plywood and astroturf, so as to make a nice fly-fishing platform. That way, i can get into the reeds, drop the hook and fish standing up.
I guess that means I'll have to purchase a fishing license.
Other thoughts? I'll probably get a hold of some more sand spikes and fashion a rod holder, for both fly and baitcasters rods. I don't need a fancy live well. A cooler will be fine. There will be no radio, but I will need a dry spot to keep my cell phone in case I need a Coast Guard rescue.
No electronics, no fish finders. I have a hand-held GPS and the sun if I get lost. And I don't plan on being out after the streetlights go on.
I might paint over the camo, though... Just because I'm not that much of a redneck and, well, like I said, the Coast Guard might have to locate me from time to time.
Yep, spring is on the way.

retention pond, part two

Surprises come in small packages. Even big surprises. Such as the largemouth bass I caught in a retention pond right in my backyard.
Back up: I live in one of those cluster developments (I like to think it's because I'm into green living, but in reality, my wife loved the house and, well, I do, too), and it has dock access onto a tidal spill just off a pretty decent-sized salt/fresh water river. I kayak out there and fish when I can, mostly for trout and redfish.
But being a cluster development, which means there are common green spaces and lots of trees, but the houses are insanely close together with practically nonexistent yards, there was some mitigation to be done with the low-lying waters that once graced the woods that were there before the homes. Thus, there are four retention ponds on the property — one at each corner.
The two up front are purely retention; the two in the back are bigger and they have fountains.
I always heard they were stocked with bass, but why waste my time here, when I live in one of the most vibrant fishing areas on the East Coast?
My father-in-law, that's why.
See, while I was slaving away at my desk one Friday afternoon, he decided to take his fly rod and plink some bass flies into the ponds.
My wife called and said he'd caught three bass.
Now, I can't concentrate on work at this point, so I'm figuring out ways to get out of dodge and join him on the bank of a suburban development pond.
Fish are fish, after all.
I did, and as luck would have it, I got a half-hour or so to see what he was up to.
I didn't bring my own rod knowing that dinner was on the stove and we'd have to be back shortly, but when I got there, Tom handed me his rod with some sort of wooly bugger on the end. I plinked it in, jiggled it, and within a few minutes the bass (pictured above) was fighting for its life.
:)
The next day, we went out fly fishing on my favorite river just southeast of where I live on the Sea Islands. We were skunked — the river still wasn't warm enough for the reds or trout — but there were a couple of nibbles and some good conversations from folks who stopped by to see what we were in to.
The next day, when the baby was asleep and dinner was being prepped, Tom and I went back out to the retention pond.
We each landed a fish. This time, mine was a smallmouth bass.
But it was a fish.

retention pond

I've gotten into this habit whereas when my wife and I plan a trip to visit folks, I'm eventually Googleing the terrain to see if there's any good fishing going on near were we'll be staying, and would I have a free couple of hours, usually at the crack of dawn while all are still asleep, to try my luck with the local salmonids.
Such was the case last weekend, when we loaded up the SUV with stuff — lots of stuff we never dreamed of ever having to take on a four-day jaunt to Orlando, Florida, that is since we had a baby last summer.
Now, I wasn't in charge of packing for the tyke, so I can't tell you what was in the eight or so extra bags (a four-day weekend!), but I can tell you that the car was completely loaded down.
The good news is that we were off to see her folks in their new winter home. The bad news is the fishing constituted retention ponds.
Now, let me back up a second. I prefer to fish with a dry fly, preferably on a river with moving water and no alligators, and preferably for trout. The holy grail of all places would be the quintessential trophy waters, tough enough to access as to leave all the weak at the more recreational streams, and one that is in a picturesque, soul-cleansing sort of place.
The dead opposite of that would be a retention pond in a condo development chuck-filled with blindingly white-skinned golfers from Sandusky, Ohio, and Poughkeepsie, N.Y., ponds where the golf-course run off seeps in to overfertilize the natural (natural?) vegetation, and one where golf carts packed with prospective timeshare buyers zoom behind you every 30 seconds with the agent asking how the fishing is all while hearing the din of roller-coaster riders from maybe 10 miles away screaming during the big drop, oh, and did I forget, getting a good line out on a fish only to be disrupted by a very bad golfer who smacked the Titleist right into the pond in which you were trying to fish (and then asking if there are any fish in the pond — the audacity).
Talk about a fish out of water. While all the snowbirds were walking around either on the front nine or heading out to play shuffleboard or hit the swimming pool, there we were, my father-in-law Tom Rydzy and I in full fly fishing garb. I even had the vest and the net. What was I thinking.
But a strange thing happened. There were fish. And they were huge.
The first pond we hit was a retention job just off the No. 5 pin on the golf course. We accessed it from the road on its east side only because while driving by, there were 16-inch shadows lurking, which turned out to be tailing browns.
OK, so they were stocked — who cares? I was planning on catching mutant sunfish, and there were some of the most beautiful browns I'd seen outside of a fish hatchery tailing in the crud vegetation lining the low banks.
We approached with precision, sun in our faces so that the fish wouldn't see the shadows, low and with stealth and with a quick scout of the hatch. OK, so there was no hatch, but what there was were dragonflies. Those beautiful little electric blue and soft black guys that flit over the water and drive trout crazy.
Yeah, I didn't have any of those. But I did have a wooly bugger and some other black and blue patterns, as well as several moths, nymphs, streamers, coachmen, Wulffs, bass poppers and saltwater deceivers... I list these because none of them worked. My guess was that had I a hot dog or some popcorn and a snelled hook, I'd have been fine. These were junkyard dogs, and they were used to humans, especially those with fishing rods. What they — or anyone else in the development for that matter — weren't used to were fly rods. And there were more than enough comments from passers by to not think otherwise.
But that's OK. A good fisherman doesn't care what's leering at him, unless it's a bear, a python or a gator. And speaking of gators, before trying the retention pond, we did in all earnest grab a GPS and found a native lake behind the local Wal-Mart (one of 52 on International Drive) that I walked down to and found tell-tale signs of bass — a few uprooted trees in the pond, clear water, lily pads and a tall wooded bank. But just as we were gearing up, a bagger out collecting carts gave us some advice.
"A buddy of mine was fishing there, and he caught a couple of really nice fish."
That was encouraging, so we then got huge smiles on our faces. But as is the way with Southerners, there's always a little more to the story if you're patient and polite enough to listen to it.
"But then he saw a couple of gators back there — one about eight feet, the other sixteen."
Now, an eight-foot gator poses a health hazard for certain, but chances are, he's going to be a bit intimidated by your size, too, especially if there are a couple of you. He's probably not going to get close enough to find out unless he's having a particularly feisty day.
A sixteen-foot gator, however, isn't intimidated by anything, and if he's lived long enough to gain such length, well, there are probably more than a few neighborhood dogs who didn't come home at his expense.
So, off to the retention ponds where nuisance gators, as they're called, are hauled off by the local critter management team.
After a few fruitless hours of smacking these hoggers in the nose, running the fly over their tails and even trying to foul-hook them with a fast-pulled streamer, we gave up. I did get an interesting strike just before I gave up for the morning in about four inches of water: One of the browns, maybe 18 inches, was chasing a dragonfly on the bank when I dropped a black moth in. Just before I cast, I pointed to Tom, just as the Babe pointed to right field, and I let it fly.
The fish grabbed the moth (I think mistakenly, but I was impartial) and came out of the water with it. Neat! Tom was even watching! Then he jerked it to the left and right, and spat it out.
That night, over a couple of Labatt's sitting around the dining room table, we each tied a couple of black dragonflies. I used a dark blue bead for the head, which really looked good. We tied them on No. 2 streamer hooks, smashing the barbs in the vice to play fair (or at least look like we knew what we were doing).
We went out the next morning to the same retention pond, but the browns were nowhere to be found. Phantom fish. They must have tailed through the culverts to the next retention pond — there are quite a few, after all.
So we went to an old standby, a stocked pond with a fountain in the middle and a tennis court at our backs. That's better than a golf course because the type of balls used are worlds apart on the pain scale, should one shell you, and tennis folks just seem more neighborly than the cigar-toting Tiger wannabes.
Anyhow, I tool the west side so as to not cast a shadow in the early morning sun. Tom went around the other side and blended in among the shrubs and trees. On my first cast, I had an amazing strike from maybe a 16-inch brown. I was late in setting the hook, probably because I had no idea I'd actually get a hit on the first cast (a coachman, even), and by the time I had tried to set it, he was off. He made such a splash that I figured I had fouled the pool. Besides, this pond was a pretty good size, maybe seven or eight acres, so there was a lot of bank to fish.
While I was moseying down the bank to cast into a nice patch of vegetation, I heard Tom make a sound, and he landed a nice little bass. Now, I didn't see it, but he said it was a decent size, and that's good enough for me. I drew out a couple of sunfish with some eggs and even a nymph, but they were spooky, and I couldn't get them any closer than to gum at my hook.
Now, I knew from that minute that I should just stop right now, pack up the gear and leave. If I couldn't get a sunfish to bite, it was going to be a long morning. Ever the optimist, I moved on down the bank to a neat little pool that proved to be as much a biology lesson as it was a smorgasborg of different species. For there, in the same big pool, were bass in the five-pound range butting heads with brownies up to 18 inches while guarding their spawning holes. There were also a few sunfish and some minnows glubbing by. I imagine the smaller fish were food for these hogs simply because the fish were huge compared to the size of the pond, and, well, there weren't a ton on minnows swimming like you'd normally see.
So, I set my rod to it. I fished from behind some tall weeds so as to not be seen. I was on the right side of the bank so as to not show my shadow. I cast perfectly, lightly. I had damn-near nine feet of tippet and leader. I even copied the insects buzzing around — white and sulfur months, hornets and even the dragonflies. Nothing. So I moved through my arsenal being extra careful not to spook the fish. I'd change flies, move up the bank, then come back.
Nothing.
During one of my trips through the fly box, Tom came by, seeing that I had been hogging this one small pool all morning, cast a honey bee in, and whack, caught a small bass. From the sunny side of the bank, too, in plain view of the fish.
Huh.
I cast again, fluidly, precise, had lured some fish from their holes. Nothing.
A few minutes later, Tom hooked another.
I walked over and asked him what he was using. He showed me his yellow and white bee pattern. I already tried that, I explained. He gave me one of his.
I got a bite, and it was a big smallmouth bass, but he spit it right back out.
The rest of the morning, as it waned, held much of the same for me. It wasn't in the cards.
I could have stayed at that hole all day and wouldn't have caught a thing. Blame it on bad mojo, but the fish were on to me.
I'm glad Tom got some, though.
We made it back to the winter house 45 minutes late for lunch, which didn't make the women happy, but they were sympathetic to my dilemma, and they weren't about to make me feel any worse.
Thing is, I didn't feel bad at all. I didn't expect to catch anything in a retention pond with a 5-weight flyrod. I didn't expect there to be a challenging sized fish in the pond.
What I did expect, however, was to have a blast fishing with a very good fishing partner on a few gorgeous mornings and to walk away refreshed, skunked or not.
And I sure did get that.

fish talk

I tend to fish alone. But I have some good fishing buddies, too: Bob, BJ, Ian and my father-in-law, Tom, to name a few. I've often thought about what makes a good fishing buddy. It's complicated. But the first rule is none of them jaw the whole time we're fishing. This is paramount. Because you're not going to catch fish if you're talking about what you watched last night on TV.
There is plenty of time to talk on the ride out and the ride back. And occasionally, to meet back at the truck or the tackle box to give a progress report:
"Lost one, but got a little speck."
"Thought I had one, but it was a skate."
"Beer?"
That's pretty much the size of it. Fishing is a tremendous feeling, it's really a stress-reducer, and, most importantly, it puts things into perspective. Some folks like to run 26 miles, others like to shoot pool or see a shrink. Me? Fishing. There is hardly a problem I can't solve while staring in to the sea or into a crystal clear brook. That's probably because I don't think of the problem while fishing. And some part of that logic translates to if I don't think about it, then chances are it's not really a big problem.
Now, if it is a big problem and my mind is set on mulling it over while staring out into the water, then chances are I'm praying about it at the same time, and that usually does a good job of taking care of things.
I remember taking two of my friends, Jerry, a cop from my hometown, and Ian, a guy I work at the paper with, to the Outer Banks in North Carolina for some bluefish, striper and whatever else we could catch. It was a four-day jaunt, complete with rundown old motel with a sink and a stove so we could eat what we caught in a little town called Buxton, which just happens to be close to the farthest point out on the Atlantic.
Needless to say, it's debatable who has more high-stress jobs, the cop or the editor. One thing's for certain: They're both very high-stress jobs. Somehow, the world seems all right once that line is chucked into the water. The sound of the surf pounding the sandbars, the crisp, slat-laced November wind rushing into your lungs, the sun and shore is better than the best massage or shrink money can buy.
I've done this a few times, but like I said, it was these guys' first trip out to the banks. I think they might have been a little worried when I was building up the trip as a change your life experience.
Either that, or it was me telling them that we'll fish a solid 12 hours a day up there. We'll be dead asleep at 8 p.m. and back up at 5 a.m. to do it all over. And we'll be on our feet the entire day, except when we kneel down to cut more bait.
That can be daunting. Because I remember my first trip with Bob and BJ (his first, too). We left right after work, drove through the night, slept for maybe an hour then went fishing. The time after that, instead of checking in at the lodge, we went right to the beach and fished. That was 2 a.m. and we didn't stop until 7 p.m.
Needless to say, having been awake for something like 36 hours, I was hallucinating.
I told Jerry and Ian these stories, after which, I thought I'd be fishing alone that weekend. But they were sports, and they came along.
They bought neoprine waders, bought or borrowed some fishing gear and hunkered down for three full days of being abused by the sea. I showed them the proper knots, what bait we use and what the rigging was, pointed to the ocean and we went our own ways.
Now, with 200 yards of line pounding in the surf, there would be a lot of untangling to do if you were shoulder to shoulder, chatting away about how the Patriots are going to do in the playoffs this year. So, naturally, we put our tackle and bag chairs way up past the high-tide mark (where they will still get swamped by the occasional rogue wave) and walk down to the water with our enormous rods, splitting up til we're just out of earshot, which is about 50 yards because of the pound of the surf.
We've developed a whole sign language of our own. Basically, if you need a beer, you fake like drinking a can. If you got something, you look at the guy excitedly. If you don't, but the rod's bent, you just shake your head. The only other signal I can think of is looking straight up and smiling. That means, "Dude, this is awesome."
On the first day out, we were loaded up on biscuits and gravy, had one cooler full of fresh mullet for bait and another with a case of beer (conservative guess here), and in one hand a cup of coffee, the other a 12-foot surf rod.
After we got our lines out, got comfortable in the surf and with the gear, I looked over to my right and saw Ian chilling out. Jerry was doing much the same on my left. I just smiled. In the next three hours, we might have said four words to each other. I landed a nice little puppy drum and Jerry got into a 3-foot black tip shark.
There were a few whiting hopping around in the surf. I threw my line in again, put the rod into a sand spike and walked over to Ian.
"How's it going?" I asked.
"Great."
"What are you thinking about?"
He hesitated, and almost sounded surprised to hear himself say, Nothing."
We smiled, and I said, "Exactly."
He just laughed.
I had the exact same conversation with Jerry not 2 minutes later.
Except he swatted me on the shoulder and chuckled.
See, there's really no reason to feel the need to converse endlessly. A good fishing partner understands this, too. It's as if we're there for support, as are they, and again to drink beer every so often. There's a whole different type of communication with nature, and we're all a part of it. I can experience that on any old trout stream or in the weeds trying to coax out stubborn reds. But the ocean has it's own song.
That's really what it's all about. Now, multiply that by three or four days of staring into the sea, listening to the surf, catching big fish, and you get the idea. You walk off the beach as if you were just born, or born again.
For the first time in a long time, you remember what it was like to be a boy, with no responsibilities, no deadlines, no pressure. Just fish.
Of course it ends, but that's OK, too. There's usually a nice, long drive or ferry ride home that serves as sort of a re-entry so that you don't hit the atmosphere too hard and burn. There are stories to tell, fish to keep frozen, plans to be made for the next time.
And that feeling of being on the beach sticks with you for some time.
And when you forget, you'll find traces to remind you: grains of fine sand lodged under your floor mat, salt spray stuck to the corner of your tackle box, the smell of the surf on a windbreaker.
And just when life again gets intolerable, well, that's when you start making plans for the next trip.

fritz's vest

I love looking through fishing catalogs — Orvis, LL Bean, The Fly Shop, Cabella's, Bass Pro — that are among the regular mailings I get here at home.
I look at the fancy rods, the anodized reels, the boxes full of colorful flies, all symmetric and perfect. Toward the back, beyond glossy page after glossy page of fly fishers reeling in beautiful rainbows, browns or brookies from pristine waters around the country, there is the gear section. In these pages, you'll find all the stuff you must have to before you can call yourself a proper fisherman.
To me, it's not much different than the racks of crap you find right there near the cash register in the grocery store — things that you didn't really need, but on second thought, maybe I do need Chap-Stick or an eight-pack of AAA batteries or even a magazine on how to improve my sex drive or abs (speaking of which, I always wondered why they didn't sell six-packs of beer right there. Would seem that it would make some good profits...).
I can't imagine fishing in the late 1800s. A trout stream with no No Trespassing signs to snarl the day, a fisherman with a bamboo rod, a modest reel and some silk fly line.
Waders might have been optional, as was a proper landing net, vest, green canvas hat and titanium fly box. I think of how simple it must have been, and how we all long to get back to those simpler days. One look at eBay, and you'll find out just how badly fly fishermen want to get back to the old days, spending upward of $5,000 for an old Heddon rod or Hardy reel (and it's funny to think that these standard items might have cost under a dollar or so back when they were new, and that was a splurge...).
I have to admit, I scan the Internet for deals on a good split bamboo rod just like the next guy. Hell, I was in the Outer Banks last fall and was seriously considering asking my wife if I could buy a 1950s model Jeep wagon — you know, wood on the sides, clear glass, before they were called sport utility vehicles...
I love the fishing equipment that Dad passed down to me. It consists of a couple of not-so-classic fiberglass poles, great northern pike rigs, an old Sport King spinning reel, a box of bass plugs, two Shakespeare bait casting reels (neither works well but are great paperweights) an old Pflueger spinning reel that was an anniversary gift from my mom and, my favorite, an old fishing vest with the name "Fritz" written in permanent marker, of course, on the left, front breast pocket.
Fritz was my dad's older brother. They were tight, those two. Having grown up in Utica, N.Y., in the heart of New York state, my dad, Orrie, and his brother, Fritz, would spent much of their boyhood years scouting out good trout streams and bass ponds, and when I was finally old enough to fish with them, they'd tell me stories of the same waterways they had fished when they were my age or even older.
I could picture the two of them in their adventures. I couldn't fish with my dad without him bringing up some fish he or Fritz caught or the time they were chased though a cornfield by an angry farmer or bull or what have you on their way back from a lesser-known bass pond. And there was my Uncle Fritz tooling along in his khaki brown fishing vest, lures or flies hanging bobbing about, the pockets full of pocket knives, split-shots, a worm can and probably a screw driver (Dad always carried one, so I bet Fritz must have, too).
When I was 19, I was given, as a gift by an old flame, a fly vest. It was nice, and I still have it. It's the standard khaki, with several rings, pockets, clips and clasps. And I wore it for a few years. That is until my Dad passed and I was handed a box of my his fishing gear. After that day, the only vest I wore was Fritz's. Somehow, my dad acquired it along the way. Brothers share a lot, and I'd bet my Uncle Fritz offered it one day and Dad accepted. He probably accepted knowing that I could use it, since I tended to fish with a fly and he had little use for it. I'm glad about that. I never did see Dad wear that vest; he wasn't much of a fly fisherman (I've never seen him cast a fly rod...), and he wasn't big into being all dressed up just to go fishing. It was jeans, sneakers and a loose shirt, probably a ball cap.
Me, too. Sometimes I actually feel silly even wearing a fly vest. Waders, a fly vest and a wide-brimmed hat might put me over the edge. Still, all those pockets come in handy, and despite the red sunburn to the back of my neck, chances are, I'm going to wear a ball cap (although I did purchase a boonie hat at the local Orvis shop, but I still feel funny in it. I tend to wear it more while mowing the lawn.) and while the waders are fine, I don't so much require them once the water hits, say, 75, which is early March in South Carolina. Polarized sunglasses are a must, even on a cloudy day.
To me, hand-me-downs are the way to go. I have an old pair of cargo shorts, you know, the kind with the gazillion pockets. I got them at the Wal-Mart for maybe eight bucks. Most of the summer, this is what I wear fishing. I mean, I bring a shirt, but I don't so much wear it. Unless there are women around. I feel pretty good in my own skin when I'm waist-deep in the river, bronzing up. Dip the ball cap in the drink and it cools you right down. Man, I could spend all day along the Broad River banks or out on a sandbar at the end of Hunting Island.
The fly vest gives me a funky tan if I don't have a shirt beneath it. I saw, in one of those glossy catalogs, a mesh fishing vest.
Let me explain something here: Fishing in South Carolina can get pretty hot. Now, it's not the bone fishing of the keys or some Caribbean island, when there fishermen don aqua-colored shirts and proper khaki shorts, and sport long-billed hats, for whatever reason. They look like dandies on the bow of a skiff with some poor native poking the sea bottom with a long bamboo pole as they look for shadows in the water.
Seems like silliness to me, but I'm sure I'd try it, sans the attire. Funny to think that a fly fisher's wardrobe can rival even that of golf, but thank the heavens that Nike or Under Armour hasn't latched onto fishing yet... Which brings me to another point, why I could never be a competitive bass fisherman. For God's sake, must they look exactly like they're in a NASCAR jumpsuit? But that's another story.
I don't know why I'm this way, the worst-dressed fly fisher to ever roam the Eastern banks.
Fly fishing guru John Gierach repeats the line that fly fishers are a little nuts, a little antisocial... I think he's right.

The only problem with handed-down gear is that a lot of times, it doesn't work as well as the new stuff. I was surfing eBay the other day and espied a 1950s model South Bend automatic reel. It was still in the box, and I think the bidding was at $29 or something. I thought I should put a bid in, just because it was so beautiful. It even had the instructions! Then I thought better of it. I mean, I don't have one old fishing reel that's better than anything new I own, so chances are this one was more for a collector. What the hell would I do with an automatic, anyhow? But, there were some beauties listed. There was a Meek (No. 44!) that had a current bid of $9,500 (that ain't a typo, folks), and still had an hour to go. Just down the page was a Montgomery Ward Sport King fly reel with a bid of 99 cents (and no reserve!). Honestly, the Meek or Hardy might be amazing reels, and maybe it's like driving an old Rolls Royce, but I can't, nor will I, afford that, so the Sage 1600 I have will do the trick.
Confession: I also have a semi-old Granger (that's just a workhorse) on an 9-foot South Bend bamboo rod, and I even have a Pflueger Medalist that is on a 5 weight LL Bean rod for the little streams that I have to travel far to fish.
By far, the Sage is a much better reel, and the LL Bean Streamlight 9-foot, 8-weight is better than the bamboo. Again, I'm no connoisseur of fine fishing equipment, vintage or otherwise, but I do appreciate a good bang for the buck (if the Bean stuff breaks, they'll replace it forever), but I prefer to fish with the bamboo with the Granger reel either way.
Why? That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out.
The way I see it is that fly fishers are throwbacks to a time when life was more simple, or at least, it seems it was more simple. We're from a time when you put in an honest day's work, came home to family and fished on the weekends to blow off some steam. Today, many fly fishers are dandies. And that kind of makes me ill. It's not a fashion show; it's fishing, dammit. Imagine if farming got trendy all of a sudden (wait, what am I thinking. Gardening is a form of that, and they have all sorts of funny, rainbow-colored rubberized boots and wide-brim hats...). But could you see Old Farmer Brown out there on his tractor, plowing the fields in $175 overalls? (They have them, you know.) And while I'm on the subject, have you priced a pair of Dickies or a Carhartt lately? Sickening. When did work clothes become high couture?
Pickup trucks for that matter went mainstream — somehow — and now you have to shell out $40,000 just to get one with cold A/C.
Not me. Why? Fish are stinky creatures. So is half the stuff you cram into the back of a pickup or SUV. Plus, I don't know about you, but trucks get a bit scratched up in the woods and pine. I don't like to have to worry about putting spider web-like scratches (or worse) in the paint.
See, all this adds up to something of days gone by. On the river, maybe it doesn't matter if you're fishing with bamboo or some modern polymer; when the river's trickling past, the line flows out gracefully, the fly dances on the ripple and all around is the sound of nature — stream, birds, wind in the trees, locusts... it might as well be 1825. The rivers are still the same, well, most of those you'd care to fish in anyway, and the fish, let's face it, haven't changed much in thousands of years, if not millions.
And that instinct to catch is innate.
Somehow, though, it still feels better with a natural element in your hand or on your back. Especially if it's handed down.
The old aluminum tube that contains my South Bend spend a whole lifetime in someone else's hands, in his truck, in his house. It doesn't smell anything like my house or my garage or my truck. Then again, my truck doesn't smell like me, either. It, too, was pre-owned. But there's some great feeling knowing that the spirit of that thing, bamboo fishing rods especially, was nurtured in someone else's very capable and caring hands. The rod's in great shape, and it performs well.
And maybe it doesn't perform as well as the composite, but what it does give is something a little more intrinsic, romantic even. It's warm, it's comfortable, and it has a soul.

the spring thaw

Spring is on the horizon, which doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot here in the South Carolina Lowcountry, but having been born a Yankee, I suppose there's some sort of biological clock inside of me that tells me that when the days get longer, I need to shed my winter fat, wash the truck, shave my beard and set my mind to catching trout.
The funny thing is that in these parts, a lot of the fish that were high up in the marsh creeks all winter are heading out to the deeper polls now in search of food and more comfortable water. That's tough to bear after spending 29 years of my life waiting for the spring thaw.
When I was a fisherman in New York state, I spent "the dark months" tying flies, polishing rods, cleaning reels and scanning any fly fishing magazine and catalog I could get my hands on. A few desperate days, when the sun poked out and maybe warmed a February day into the mid 30s, I might even head to the river with a light rod just to say I fished.
But this yearly metamorphosis was a good thing, despite it being two or three months too long. If you fish all year long, there's no time to really meditate on those intrinsics that make you reevaluate your technique, let alone tie flies. In essence, it's like putting the fields to rest over the winter. In the spring, the soil is again ready for planting.
It's a natural process; the divine Order of Things.
But not here in the South. No, we can grow a tomato year-round if we wanted to. And we can wake up on any given Saturday, assuming there's no gale or worse, hitch up the kayak, rig up the rods, kiss the wife and kid and head to the nearest creek, river, marsh, flat or what have you. Fish might be skinnier, but not always.
There needs to be downtime. I've realized this after somehow procuring back-to-back bouts with influenza that pretty much took me out of the rat race for a good part of January. I don't like being sick as much as the next guy, but it seems as if it's nature's way of telling you to chill out, lie down, catch up on your reading and let the leaves pile up in the yard (I'd use snow/driveway, but, again, the South...).
Winter is a time to recharge the batteries and rededicate yourself to The Cause, whatever it may be,
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so in that line of thought, I'm downright excited about the next day on the river. I've got it all planned: I've yet to coil some new weight-forward line on my 9-foot, 8-weight fly rod, I've got a box full of saltwater flies — some bought, some tied — and the kayak's under the side porch just waiting to be strapped onto the Blazer.
I'll automatically rise just before the silver hue bleeds into the cool nighttime horizon, grab a tankard of hot, back coffee and a buttery biscuit, chuck my gear sack in the back of the truck, zip on the musty Carhartt and begin the slow trek off to Harbor River.
I'll have listened to the waning minutes of the all-night blues station, then pull the truck off the roadside just beyond the bridge tender's parking lot, and off-load the old, grey roto-molded kayak.
There will be a few brown live oak leaves following a stray bead of bilge water, and for a moment in the early morning light, I'll wonder if they are scurrying palmetto bugs and that if I don't get them out now, I'll find one inside my waders just when the fish rise or some other sensitive time.
I'll strap the rod to the kayak, throw on the life vest, store my gear, tug on my gloves, then pull the boat through the spartina grass, down to the plough mud and oyster river bank.
Even for the cool weather, the unmistakable scent of grass, salt, mud and shellfish will permeate the air, seep into my clothes and even my skin if I'm lucky enough to be out here more than a couple of hours.
I'll slide the boat half into the water, then squeeze into the seat, grab the paddle and slice through the horizon reflected on the calm slack tide.
I've seen downhill skiers who, moments before their runs, close their eyes and envision themselves hurling down the giant slalom course, anticipating the turns, feeling the connection to the mountain.
I've not done this on the river (could you imagine if another fisherman came up on me? Not to mention an alligator...) but maybe in some strange way, I have. All winter long, that is.
I didn't fish a lot this winter, or any winter, because of that innate drive to hibernate. That, and it's cld out, even for South Carolina. I don't relish waking up to a 25-degree morning to get into a cold creek. I've done it, but on the coast, the wind can put a knot in your leader before you even make a cast.
I'm soft, I realize this, but I just chose to think it's my downtime.

It's one of the reasons that when Bob called to ask if I wanted to head out to Pritchards Island to fish for spot tails on a late February day, I jumped at the chance.
Plying the Machette Flats off St. Helena Island onto Skull Creek, through some of the most wonderful Sea Island marshes, the little 40 horsepower Mercury didn't move fast enough to blow the foam off my coffee, but it was enough to put some color in our cheeks and make me glad that I wore my bib waders.
I wanted to stop long the way, as trout were rising near the muddy banks. But that's not what we were fishing for. Besides, the tide was ebbing, which meant there'd be a chance that even the little 15-foot Carolina Skiff would get hung up, and, despite a flask full of Maker's Mark, neither of us wanted to sit in plough mud six hours waiting for the next rising tide, drunk or not.
We reached Pritchards Island, which can only be done so by boat or a very good swimmer and is maintained by the University of South Carolina Beaufort's environmental conservation program. On it is an observatory and old bunkhouse that you can sleep in should the mood strike.
We dropped the hook high on the island's easternmost beach so that when the tide came back in, the boat wouldn't be under water.
We trekked a quarter mile across the sand and dunes, stopping once to rescue a seagull who had managed to entangle her leg in some carelessly discarded fishing line and hooked herself on an old dock piling.
It took two of us to release her — one to put a fish rag over her wings, the other to snip the line. She flew away unscathed, and we felt as if the karmatic turn might deserve another in the way of some sizable spottails.
We waded into the water, past the first sandbar and cast between the next two. A good north wind was blowing, but once the sun was gaining strength on the horizon, it was clear that the temperature might climb into the 60s. Bob landed a nice spot tail on cut mullet on his surf rod and moments later, it was my turn. The difference was that instead of using a beefy 10-foot rod with a 3-ounce weight, I was using a once-piece 7-footer with a rubber jig in my hopes to get a few baitfish to cut up. The pole bent hard when he struck and I let the drag pick up a bit of the run.
Spottails go by a few different names. Among them are redfish, channel bass, red drums or simply spots. The Latin name, if we want to be stuffy, is the Sciaenops ocellatus. On the Sea Islands, we call them spot tails because of the big black spot right there on their tails. They range normally to about 12 pounds, but it isn't unusual to hear a local joe landing a 30-pounder. They're good fighters as well.
Spots are good fighters, too — especially in the surf. It's not uncommon for a spot to take a rest deep, then come up, dive and start running, and usually with some vigor.
I actually don't remember laughing so hard while catching a fish as I did that morning. I thought I might as well have fun as I was sure he'd break my line before I could get him over the sandbar, but the line held, the fish grew tired and I reeled in a decent spot — about 24 inches.
Primarily a fly fisherman, I love the feeling of playing a fish rather than simply hauling it in on a crane. However, catch-and-release fishers will tell you that it's probably worse for the fish, limiting its chances of a good recover tiring it nearly to death.
Keepers, though, are different, and so are big fish that just happen to hit your bait when you were trying to catch something considerably smaller.
Rescuing the seagull proved to yield some good results. We had a string of spots that were exactly what we set out for and even got some fresh air.
When the tide was good and on the rise again, Bob and I packed the gear in the boat, now bouncing in the breakers. He hit the start button, but nothing happened. Turns out someone forgot to turn off the battery, and it was dead. And no amount of pull-starting was doing the trick.
We were stranded, like the seagull, with the cold February wind coming as the sun waned. And we were tired from a full day in the surf.
As the boat bobbed and I grew pale, I thought of the bunkhouses in the woods and spending the night, but that wouldn't help start the battery even the next morning, and, besides, I wanted my own bed. So we dialed up the local marine rescue squadron, which just so happened to be engaging in a retirement ceremony the next island down. They sent out a couple of the sober members and they towed us back to the boat ramp, Coast Guard helicopter circling above, just in case the winter surf got a little out of hand.
Our rescue wasn't all that white-knuckled, but it did take several passes before we could gain hold of the towrope. The surf had swelled to about a 3- to 4-foot chop, and that's dicey in a 15-foot boat with no motor.
So much for karma.

That night I thought how deceptive the winter water could be. Smooth as glass one minute, but with a tide change, a whole new bag of tricks.
I remember thinking that there's a price to pay when playing the odds of fishing in a remote place in an unpredictable time of year.
It's been a while since I've been out that far in the winter, but I wouldn't pass up another jaunt. Winter fishing on the South Carolina coast means a lot of species are hunkering down in the creeks, around the oyster rakes and near the sea grass banks. They're feeding less, but feeding nonetheless. Pulling a fish from the surf certainly has its merits, but so, too, does pulling them from the marsh on a fly rod.
I think about that a lot in this winter downtown, which really isn't downtime for many a fisherman born and bred here.
For me, though, well, I'll take a break, study my gear, maybe surf eBay for that deal on a bamboo fly rod or an old reel. Maybe not.
And maybe I'll get the gear ready for a Saturday kayak spin.
Just in case.

baby, it's cold outside

I won’t profess to be an ice fisherman. But I’ve gotten drunk in a shanty before.
It’s a dangerous thing, getting drunk while fishing in 10-degree weather. You shut the door, get a small stove going and sit on ice thick enough to drive a semi over, and the augered-out hole, which seems to keep freezing itself shut around your line, is your only hope of catching fish that rightfully should be hibernating or at least taking a good midwinter’s snooze. By the time you have to take a leak outside, the sun has dropped, you can’t see the bank and you’re in no condition to drive, even if there’s no other car or shanty on the lake.
So, in essence, you’re freezing your tail off and getting drunk when you could be getting perfectly shnockered from the comfort of your couch, maybe even watching the game with a Quarter Pounder in the hand opposite your beer.
Ice fishing is sort of like working out on an exercise machine — you know, a rowing machine, a treadmill, a stair-stepper... I’ve tried most of them. It’s too cold out, or too dark, or too windy, or too what have you, so I’ll usually end up getting on a pair of shorts and sneakers and pressing a couple of buttons to begin the monotony of waiting for a new beep or light to flash. By the time I’m 10 minutes into the workout, I’ve given up, thrown on a sweatshirt, hat and gloves and gone outside to do the real thing. In short, I’d rather run outside, row outside or climb outside than stare at a 2-inch screen for an hour (or, let’s be honest, less).
So, fishing in the cold? Bring it on. Actually, I’m the guy on the trip who will spite the weather and fish, or kayak or do whatever it is the inclement weather is trying to get me to stop doing.
"C’mon, we’ll use English sinkers," I’ve been known to say in 40-knot winds on the Outer Banks in November. Or, "We can paddle through this," leaving the beach in high surf on a kayak. Or, "What’s the difference if it’s 10 below or 50 below? Cold is cold! Let’s go, Sally!”
Yep, that’s me. Which is really funny because deep down, I’m pretty much a wimp. You can ask my wife. Except when I’m doing these things. I fret about bears before hiking, sharks before swimming, snakes before running the hidden trails. I once hopped a copperhead I swore was as dead as lunch. I later found out, and luckily not the hard way, that these things more or less can sit pretty still. It’s a good little trick. I wouldn’t have even ran the trail had I known it would contain slick snakes.
And I once ran a trail being chased by a wild hog. I thought the damned thing was a deer until it started taking out small trees in the path between it and me. I never ran so fast in my life. I’m pretty sure I was on pace to break the 4-minute mile...
Again, wouldn’t have done it if someone told me there were wild boars.
And there was that ugly barracuda who surfaced right behind me while standing in the Florida surf; I could have reached out and counted its scales. By the time I heard the splash, I caught a glimpse of the enormous fish, his eye like a coffee saucer, crazy and stinky.
In fact, my wife and I used to swim with the sharks off St. Pete Beach in Florida. We’d get out of work, get on our goggles and swimsuits and log a mile or so in waist-deep water. We’d be swimming then, bonk! Something would brush by your leg. It was something pretty large, pretty meaty. Something that could definitely knock you over. Of course, at the time, we didn’t really know that sundown was feeding time for most fish, and mostly sharks. At least not till we skipped an evening swim, but caught the local news. The traffic helicopter took a turn over the beach — our beach — and showed the water out to the breakers from above, where we swim. At first, we thought all the black spots in the water were just deep pockets and, you know, shadows of clouds or something. No, they were sharks. And there were hundreds of them.
I’ll never forget the look on Robyn’s face when the anchor noted that at this time of the day, you’re always within 3 feet of a shark. Which means stand in the water and reach out your arm... (Certainly, I’m not condoning that.)
I’ll never do that again.
So ice fishing isn’t really so much, what they used to call, extreme; fishing in the cold is.
That’s why on April 1, 1990 — the beginning of trout season in the New York Adirondack Park Wilderness Area — I was out in my waders with a 5-weight fly rod wondering what fly would best mimic whatever possibly could be active in 35-degree weather.
Of course, there were no bugs on the mighty Saranac River. There might not be any until May or August. Why I skipped my college classes that day and drove out more than an hour to fish on a half-frozen river, I’ll never really remember, except that if I had to guess, I’d bet on being able to say, well, I fished opening day.
But there I was anyway, ski parka, waders, ski hat, Gore-Tex gloves, casting what looked like a small ball of black yarn entombed in ice into frigid water 3 feet higher than it would be in a couple of months.
And I remember it feeling pretty good. I thought I would tell my English lit professor that while he was pontificating about "Moby Dick," I was living it.
Then I remember thinking that I wouldn’t live to tell the story: Just as my mind was drifting as it so often does when I’m at the good end of a fly line, I felt a bump, not unlike the shark, at about hip level. By the time I had looked at what was bumping me, I realized I was about to be taken out by an ice drift the size of a Buick LeSabre. The old kind.
My initial thought was to go underwater and let it pass. That was stupid, and I’m glad I didn’t trust my instincts. The second was to give the ice my best Hong Kong Phooey karate chop.
I did, and the tip of the iceberg miraculously broke off. Which was just enough to allow me a quickly deteriorating gap between the Goliath and the river bank.
I took a couple more steps toward the bank, and the ice sheet hit me with a convincing thud. I wasn’t enough to stop it, so naturally it won, but it wedged me clear into the bank, which, I suppose, was better than into icy the depths, and I only went under to not-quite-shoulder level. I was pinned momentarily, and still had a hold of my rod, a Fenwick, if I recall, and found that even big things with velocity on their side, such as river ice, can change directions if you push hard enough or your bones don’t all break apart.
I lumbered out of the river already shivering when I got into my Subaru — the passenger side — shedding clothes like a nerd with a drunken cheerleader. I wrapped up in an emergency parka and a pair of ski pants that I kept in the hatchback (for occasions such as this?) along with a little shovel and ice scraper, and opened the Thermos of coffee while waiting for the heater to warm up.
The near-death experience, if you can call it that, really made the trip worthwhile. Plus it gave me a good story to tell for a few days and a chance to eat bad food and drink lots of beer to comfort myself.
It beats sitting in an ice shanty, anyway.
I also remember the cold front that blew in November, 2005, off of Buxton, N.C., in an area most people know as the Outer Banks or simply, OBX. That front reached BJ and I the first night we drove into town. We were all rigged up for surf casting, and we’d not only brought a steamer trunk full of warm clothes, we actually hoped for severe weather like this.
Of course, we walked out to the beach behind the roach motel we were staying in, as it was too late to fish for the day. It was dark, and the air was frigid — maybe 40 degrees and dropping fast. So, we provisioned up, got drunk, played mini golf in the motel room, and woke up at 5 a.m. to a think blanket of snow and salty ice that you needed a chisel and hammer to break off your windshield.
We, instead, heated up the SUV, and simply waited for it to defrost as we got into our warmest gear. The checklist goes a little something like this:
• Neoprine bib waders
• Long johns
• Blue jeans
• Wool socks (the real kind, which, for some reason, are hard to find in the South)
• Three levels of long-sleeved shirt, the first insulated, the second a T-shirt that says "Stinky’s Bait" or something, and a turtleneck
• Waxed canvas Carhartt hunting jacket with hood
• Ski hat
• Neoprine gloves
• Sunglasses (for later, and not for the sun, but for the pelting snow and sand)
• Bandanna (ditto)
We looked like mummies walking onto the beach. But we were there, dammit. In one hand, screaming-hot coffee, and in the other, a surf rod handle, connected to a 10-foot pole, connected to an oversized reel, connected to 20-pound test line, connected to a drum rig (two hooks, a 4-ounce triangle sinker) connected to about an ounce of fresh mullet from the Red Drum Tackle Shop.
For a few hours, we didn’t catch shit. There was the occasional bluefish, and we caught a random sheepshead. BJ got into a puppy drum, but it was an inch or two under size, so, despite that we thought we wouldn’t be eating fish for dinner that night, assuming at least one of us wouldn’t be in the hospital getting a frost-bitten toe lopped off and eating unidentifiable hospital food with a hangover, he threw it back.
Now, the sleet hadn’t exactly stopped pelting our faces throughout the morning, but we kept on until lunchtime. BJ is a big guy, about 6-foot, 8-inches in his boot-foot waders, and he’s got about 100 pounds on me. He can block the wind like no one I’ve seen. But he gets hungry, and I do my best to keep up with him. The problem was that we had a great fishing spot, and the rule on the beach is simple: You don’t give it up. So one guy gets lunch and the other guy mans the poles.
I stayed in the elements and he drove into town.
When he came back, he had two things ... well three: two extra-cheese pizzas and a bag of artificial bloodworms.
While eating the pizza — which was the best I’ve ever had in my life, of course — BJ that he went over to the bait shop and pleaded with the owner to give him something that would catch fish in the late November snow.
It sounded easy enough: artificial bloodworm on the end of a light 7-foot pole. Two hooks, a 1-once weight. "Sit back and have fun," the guy said.
The only fish that would hit something that small in the surf was whiting. But we didn’t care. Hell, whiting are tasty, even if they’re in the 12-inch range, which they were, and we slayed them. We were catching them two at a time. They were hopping out of the snowy surf as if they hadn’t eaten in months. And the bubble gum-like bloodworm usually stayed intact once you pulled it from the tiny jaws, so you didn’t really have to re-bait with each fish.
By the end of the day, our sides were split from laughing from catching fish every 13.4 seconds, we were good and drunk (at some point, you stop feeling the cold. Again, I’m not condoning) and we had a Coleman cooler full of fish.
We laughed all the way back to the motel and began gutting the fish at the sink. Our hands were still numb, and I remember thinking that the beer was just slightly colder than the fish.
Later, BJ fired up a vat of oil, breaded the whiting in his famous catfish batter (he’s a Missouri boy, so he knows how to bread a fish), and along with some hushpuppies and a small salad (to keep us regular), we feasted on some of the sweetest, most tender fish in the ocean.
We smiled thinking that there were still two days of icy-cold fishing ahead of us.
While we had enjoyed some of the best fishing and best times out on the banks, others were huddled safely in their homes or the local movie theater, waiting for the sun..
The waders and our clothes were drying nicely over the baseboard heaters cranked all the way up to 95, there was plenty of beer in the cooler and, besides, we still had the mini golf set.