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.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
putting it all into perspective
Let's see, there's Bozeman, Montana, Driggs, Idaho, Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Morehead City, North Carolina ... and Beaufort, South Carolina.
What do all those towns have to do with each other? They're the best fishing destinations in American. At least according to Field & Stream magazine.
Now, I don't know about you, but I think about fabled rivers, such as Henry's Fork and even the trophy waters of the Adirondack's AuSable River before I think about Beaufort.
Of course, these are my home waters. Or at least they have been for the better part of the last decade.
Fishing them and knowing the intimately are two different things. Now, I suppose a few editors and writers could come down to sunny old Beaufort By The Sea, where just about every day is a chamber of commerce day and the people are among the friendliest around the South or any other part pf the country for that matter, and you might even catch a fish or two, with or without a guide. If you bring the wife and kids and book a resort house or stay at one of the five-star inns, even if the fishing stinks, you'll have yourself a good time.
Here's a little something about the city of Beaufort and the outlying areas: It's among the most beautiful places in the country. The proof is in the demographics, which rarely lie. Folks are from all over the world, but more likely from Ohio or the Northeast.
When you get here, no doubt you will check into an inn, sip cold Chardonnay from the balcony, roam the quaint shops downtown, ride the carriages through the stately historic neighborhoods and grab a burger at Luther's by day and dine at Saltus by night. In short, you'll understand why so many magazines have named Beaufort in the top 5 whatever places in the country.
It's why my wife, Robyn, and I moved here in the first place. Looking for newspaper jobs after a few sweltering years in Florida, we were among the J-curve types — folks who move from the Northeast to Florida, then halfway (or so) back to the Northeast.
The next thing you'll find is that folks who have spent a good long weekend or more here will eventually start looking at their portfolio and housing market to see if they can sell the place and move down here.
Now, Beaufort isn't terribly expensive, but it is coastal, and you'll pay dearly for that privilege. I've seen too many visitors come down here and not later end up moving here or pining about it. It's that nice.
Those who don't move here tend to talk very fondly of it. I guess I'm lucky in that regard. I got to live here. It was just out of dumb luck, though. You see, while looking for jobs, the paper here was the only one that offered both me and my wife, also a writer, jobs. Other papers wanted one or not the other, or neither, I don't know, because we took these jobs almost on spec. How? Well, the jobs were on Hilton Head Island, which everyone has heard about at some point of their lives. But the town itself wasn't really for us. It's all golf courses, manicured lawns, gated communities and strip malls. And I don't drive a Mercedes, so I'd be in the minority with my pickup. Sure there are beaches and rivers too, but most of them you needed to be behind a gated community to access them. We didn't really fit in. We're Yankees, after all. We like downtowns.
But I got on the horn with a buddy of mine who did his Marine training on Parris Island, which is a stone's throw from Beaufort, and he told us to go check out the city just to the north.
We did. It was a Sunday afternoon, sunny, breezy, beautiful. In short, it was just about every day in Beaufort. We sipped drinks on the river, ate at a trendy café, found an apartment over an antiques shop downtown and have been here ever since.
You'll hear this story from all the new residents of Beaufort: "We fell in love with the place," or "There's just something abut Beaufort..."
We can't go wrong, so it seems. So, not only will you find the best weekend getaway, the best romantic jaunt, the best historic tours, the best eco-vacations, you'll now find the best fishing here.
Next year, I imagine it will be the best seafood, the best ice cream and the best Wal-Mart.
As for the fishing: It's pretty good. It's no Outer Banks, and I'm sure it can't match Henry's Fork, but overall, it's decent. You'll catch fish. And if you're like me, from places where the fish are a whole different bag of ticks, then it might take awhile.
And when you're serious about it, you might head north to the Outer Banks to fill up the cooler.
What do all those towns have to do with each other? They're the best fishing destinations in American. At least according to Field & Stream magazine.
Now, I don't know about you, but I think about fabled rivers, such as Henry's Fork and even the trophy waters of the Adirondack's AuSable River before I think about Beaufort.
Of course, these are my home waters. Or at least they have been for the better part of the last decade.
Fishing them and knowing the intimately are two different things. Now, I suppose a few editors and writers could come down to sunny old Beaufort By The Sea, where just about every day is a chamber of commerce day and the people are among the friendliest around the South or any other part pf the country for that matter, and you might even catch a fish or two, with or without a guide. If you bring the wife and kids and book a resort house or stay at one of the five-star inns, even if the fishing stinks, you'll have yourself a good time.
Here's a little something about the city of Beaufort and the outlying areas: It's among the most beautiful places in the country. The proof is in the demographics, which rarely lie. Folks are from all over the world, but more likely from Ohio or the Northeast.
When you get here, no doubt you will check into an inn, sip cold Chardonnay from the balcony, roam the quaint shops downtown, ride the carriages through the stately historic neighborhoods and grab a burger at Luther's by day and dine at Saltus by night. In short, you'll understand why so many magazines have named Beaufort in the top 5 whatever places in the country.
It's why my wife, Robyn, and I moved here in the first place. Looking for newspaper jobs after a few sweltering years in Florida, we were among the J-curve types — folks who move from the Northeast to Florida, then halfway (or so) back to the Northeast.
The next thing you'll find is that folks who have spent a good long weekend or more here will eventually start looking at their portfolio and housing market to see if they can sell the place and move down here.
Now, Beaufort isn't terribly expensive, but it is coastal, and you'll pay dearly for that privilege. I've seen too many visitors come down here and not later end up moving here or pining about it. It's that nice.
Those who don't move here tend to talk very fondly of it. I guess I'm lucky in that regard. I got to live here. It was just out of dumb luck, though. You see, while looking for jobs, the paper here was the only one that offered both me and my wife, also a writer, jobs. Other papers wanted one or not the other, or neither, I don't know, because we took these jobs almost on spec. How? Well, the jobs were on Hilton Head Island, which everyone has heard about at some point of their lives. But the town itself wasn't really for us. It's all golf courses, manicured lawns, gated communities and strip malls. And I don't drive a Mercedes, so I'd be in the minority with my pickup. Sure there are beaches and rivers too, but most of them you needed to be behind a gated community to access them. We didn't really fit in. We're Yankees, after all. We like downtowns.
But I got on the horn with a buddy of mine who did his Marine training on Parris Island, which is a stone's throw from Beaufort, and he told us to go check out the city just to the north.
We did. It was a Sunday afternoon, sunny, breezy, beautiful. In short, it was just about every day in Beaufort. We sipped drinks on the river, ate at a trendy café, found an apartment over an antiques shop downtown and have been here ever since.
You'll hear this story from all the new residents of Beaufort: "We fell in love with the place," or "There's just something abut Beaufort..."
We can't go wrong, so it seems. So, not only will you find the best weekend getaway, the best romantic jaunt, the best historic tours, the best eco-vacations, you'll now find the best fishing here.
Next year, I imagine it will be the best seafood, the best ice cream and the best Wal-Mart.
As for the fishing: It's pretty good. It's no Outer Banks, and I'm sure it can't match Henry's Fork, but overall, it's decent. You'll catch fish. And if you're like me, from places where the fish are a whole different bag of ticks, then it might take awhile.
And when you're serious about it, you might head north to the Outer Banks to fill up the cooler.
i should at least be tying flies
Sitting here on a rainy day, my mind tends to drift.
Since nothing is happening, my mind has leaned toward the possibility that I will be catching fish this weekend.
Now, the weather has been lousy: Rain, 45 degrees and wind. But I guess it's better than ice fishing on Lake Champlain or whether the ice will even hold you off Rouse's Point. Still, I'm recuperating from a week-and-a-half-long flu that left me flat on my back for most of that time.
And for most of that time, that meant my wife was stuck doing to full shift of duties around the house and watching the baby, which is a full-time job for two people (three would actually work better).
So will I actually load the kayak onto the Blazer, get the rods and reels set, dig out my waders and life vest and hit the rivers? Doubt it.
But it's nice to think about it anyway.
Instead, I'll be making up for lost time with my boy, which is fine. We end up talking about fishing a lot anyways. Well, I do, and he listens. At least I think he listens. He doesn't seem to mind. And occasionally, I get a giggle.
I guess I'll wait another week. Of course, the following week, my mom will be in town. So, there's no fishing then, either. Maybe the week after that. Is that when we go to Florida? I can't remember.
See, winter gets like that. So does life. Before the baby came (and believe me when I say I'd give up fishing for the rest of my life to spend just one afternoon with that incredible little boy), I was out just about every weekend. Saturdays were the day, generally. And sometimes other days, or nights, too. It's true what they say, that once that baby comes, you'll never see another movie at the theater, go to dinner (that doesn't involve at least a high chair and kiddie menu) or go out, just the two of you.
Well, all and all, it's been 24/7 baby.
We even talk about the baby when he's sleeping, or, like we did on New Year's Eve, when he was with a sitter (my mother-in-law).
I often dream about fishing with him, and I wonder how he'd do in a Baby Bjorn strapped to my chest as I waded into Johnson Creek...
He'll be one year old this summer, and that means he should be walking soon after. Which means it's time to teach him to fish.
But this is all in the planning stages right now. I hope to God he enjoys the sport, but if he doesn't, well, that's the way it goes.
For now, though, I should at least be tying flies.
Since nothing is happening, my mind has leaned toward the possibility that I will be catching fish this weekend.
Now, the weather has been lousy: Rain, 45 degrees and wind. But I guess it's better than ice fishing on Lake Champlain or whether the ice will even hold you off Rouse's Point. Still, I'm recuperating from a week-and-a-half-long flu that left me flat on my back for most of that time.
And for most of that time, that meant my wife was stuck doing to full shift of duties around the house and watching the baby, which is a full-time job for two people (three would actually work better).
So will I actually load the kayak onto the Blazer, get the rods and reels set, dig out my waders and life vest and hit the rivers? Doubt it.
But it's nice to think about it anyway.
Instead, I'll be making up for lost time with my boy, which is fine. We end up talking about fishing a lot anyways. Well, I do, and he listens. At least I think he listens. He doesn't seem to mind. And occasionally, I get a giggle.
I guess I'll wait another week. Of course, the following week, my mom will be in town. So, there's no fishing then, either. Maybe the week after that. Is that when we go to Florida? I can't remember.
See, winter gets like that. So does life. Before the baby came (and believe me when I say I'd give up fishing for the rest of my life to spend just one afternoon with that incredible little boy), I was out just about every weekend. Saturdays were the day, generally. And sometimes other days, or nights, too. It's true what they say, that once that baby comes, you'll never see another movie at the theater, go to dinner (that doesn't involve at least a high chair and kiddie menu) or go out, just the two of you.
Well, all and all, it's been 24/7 baby.
We even talk about the baby when he's sleeping, or, like we did on New Year's Eve, when he was with a sitter (my mother-in-law).
I often dream about fishing with him, and I wonder how he'd do in a Baby Bjorn strapped to my chest as I waded into Johnson Creek...
He'll be one year old this summer, and that means he should be walking soon after. Which means it's time to teach him to fish.
But this is all in the planning stages right now. I hope to God he enjoys the sport, but if he doesn't, well, that's the way it goes.
For now, though, I should at least be tying flies.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
everything is bigger in the south
It's true what they say, that everything is bigger in the South.
Well, most things.
The roaches are way bigger. And they fly. The oaks are bigger, too. And, as this is a story about fishing, the fish are way bigger.
Which means the gear is way bigger, too.
Now, growing up in rural upstate New York, the trout rivers there are a good size, something I would call normal size. Not wide like the Western waters, and not tiny brooks like those in New England, but normal. You could swim across most of them. And you could float on an old Goodyear innertube for most of a hot summer day without finding the mouth of it.
Of course, Southern rivers aren't much different. But there's this whole ocean to deal with, and the tidal creeks that rise and fall with the incoming and outgoing tides bring in monster redfish, sharks, rays the size of picnic tables, stripers and sea trout.
A number 16 wuldf on a 4 weight rod just isn't going to cut it.
So, the first thing I did was beg for a new flyrod: a saltwater flyrod to be exact: A 9-foot, 8 weight jobber that cost twice as much as my 5 weight and was so big, it had a fighting seat and butt. I should mention, too, that I've always been a believer in buying cheap reels, since I buy into the argument that reels simply hold the line. I strip a lot, and that means spending $530 on some multicolored anodized aluminum large arbor reel just means I've got a place to store my flyline.
Yeah, not so much when it comes to big fish. Drag is a serious issue, as is a material that won't corrode. I'm weary about cork drags in this salt, which I've on more than a dozen occasions watched it unweld the rubber soles of my shoes from their canvas uppers in a matter of an afternoon. So the drag had better be sealed, which only means it might last a season.
Of course, everything must be hosed down, taken apart, rinsed and wiped dry — some of it re-lubed — after each outing. Sometimes I'm too lazy. I end up having to unweld the metals the next time I go out.
The flies, well, let's just say I haven't mastered all the techniques yet. The rods are 9 feet, and I've witnessed crazy people waving them as large as 12 feet long. So false casting is kind of a burden. That and the wind. But back to the flies, we're talking big 1/0 and 2/0 hooks with synthetics the colors of rainbows and neons, with claws and curls and lumps and rattles.
They look more like toys than mock bait. Be that as it may, they work. Some of the time.
Redfish, or red drum, depending where you are, are wonderful fish good fighters and will eat just about anything you put in front of them. That's good news for a Southern novice fly fisherman.
And they're just about everywhere: jetties, open surf, tidal rivers, tidal creeks and even some lagoons, although I've never caught any in them.
Out on Pritchards Island, just past Hunting and Fripp islands in Beaufort County's famous Sea Island chain, I caught about a 20 incher. Good fish. It fed my wife and I for three dinners.
Tying saltwater flies is no fun. Well, let me take that back: It's fun when you don't give a hoot what the thing looks like, because chances are if it's bright enough and big enough, you're bound to catch something with it.
The flies of New England, for instance, have to be dead-on. They have to swim perfectly, look like the flies in a specific hatch (which, unbelievably, do vary from river to river), and act the part. Otherwise, the fussy old trout eschew the very thing you spend a rainy, cold Saturday afternoon tying.
Of course, big means more expensive. So buying the darn flies is lunch money for the week. And if you're tying, well, it's more money for the flashy materials. Can't just drive down the nearest country road looking for road kill, and the cat and the dog, well, their fur isn't chartreuse or silver, so that's out.
Come to think of it, I had a cat up north that I used to pinch once in a while. He had the perfect fur that resembled that of a light brown hare. Great for light Hendricksons or AuSable wulffs.
And forget the thick waders, heavy vests and wooden landing nets. Most of the time, it's too hot to be in anything more than a pair of swim trunks and a t-shirt (don't forget the sunblock). Vests work, but if there's any zippers on them, you won't get them off at the end of the day. Ditto for any metal D hooks, etc. They will corrode, and you'll be stuck wearing a fly vest with a bunch of gear hanging off it on the ride home or until you cut it off.
Lastly, there are the river banks. Before setting foot down into the river, you have to be aware of three things: gators, snakes and plough (pronounced "pluff") mud. The first two could kill you, and so could the third, come to think of it.
Gators are sneaky beasts, and if you think they don't head down into salty water, well you'd be mistaken. Granted, they don't exactly relish the salty water, but believe me when I tell you that I've seen an alligator in brackish water the size of my kayak (I mistook it for a log; then it submerged...) and even saw one in the surf (I wasn't alone at the time, so, yes, I do have a witness).
Mostly, they'll just dive and get the hell out of your way, but it's the equivalent of seeing a bear on the far bank while casting for trout in the Adirondacks.
Snakes? They are good swimmers, too, even the non-water moccasin types that really have no business in the water. I've seen too many copperheads dropping off the banks and skimming the surface to believe otherwise.
The worst of it, though, is the plough mud. Now, it might look solid enough, but I remember my fist encounter with it. My wife and I were sailing on our little blue boat when the tiller busted and we were left to steer with the grace of the wind and the current alone. We missed the dock by a good twenty feet, but I was proud that I even got us that close.
I hopped out when the boat grounded toward the bank and submerged up to my knees in what I thought at the time must have been quick sand. I made it out somehow, but I lost my Nikes and filleted my foot on an oyster. Buddy, those things are sharp.
The thing about plough mud, beyond that it's super soft, is that it stinks, it's nearly impossible to remove from clothes and there is only one way through it: You step on the tufts of spartina grass that grow in it. This isn't guarantee that it will get you from your truck to the river, but it should get you closer. The thick root system, which must handle ebbing and flowing tides of eight feet twice a day, is pretty tough.
Still, the banks, where the fish tend to converge to pick at the bugs, bait fish, oysters, crabs and shrimp, are best accessed by skiff or kayak. I prefer a skiff, but I use a kayak most of the times. That's because I don't own a skiff.
And kayaks don't get hung up, and they're a lot less menacing-looking from a fish's point of view. At least that seems to make sense.
Of course, you can't stand on most of them, and those you can, well, it's a balancing act. But either way, you can get to the remote bank, find and oyster rake that's above the tideline and jump out to fish if you don't feel like doing so seated.
Most of the time, I imagine I'll get to a bank, get out and fish. But then I'm so taken with the slow drift of the tide, that I'll sort of just trawl up the river or down the lagoon until I feel like paddling again or run out of rising fish, or at least, bugs on the banks.
Or the sun runs out.
Which takes awhile, because even the days are bigger here in the South.
Well, most things.
The roaches are way bigger. And they fly. The oaks are bigger, too. And, as this is a story about fishing, the fish are way bigger.
Which means the gear is way bigger, too.
Now, growing up in rural upstate New York, the trout rivers there are a good size, something I would call normal size. Not wide like the Western waters, and not tiny brooks like those in New England, but normal. You could swim across most of them. And you could float on an old Goodyear innertube for most of a hot summer day without finding the mouth of it.
Of course, Southern rivers aren't much different. But there's this whole ocean to deal with, and the tidal creeks that rise and fall with the incoming and outgoing tides bring in monster redfish, sharks, rays the size of picnic tables, stripers and sea trout.
A number 16 wuldf on a 4 weight rod just isn't going to cut it.
So, the first thing I did was beg for a new flyrod: a saltwater flyrod to be exact: A 9-foot, 8 weight jobber that cost twice as much as my 5 weight and was so big, it had a fighting seat and butt. I should mention, too, that I've always been a believer in buying cheap reels, since I buy into the argument that reels simply hold the line. I strip a lot, and that means spending $530 on some multicolored anodized aluminum large arbor reel just means I've got a place to store my flyline.
Yeah, not so much when it comes to big fish. Drag is a serious issue, as is a material that won't corrode. I'm weary about cork drags in this salt, which I've on more than a dozen occasions watched it unweld the rubber soles of my shoes from their canvas uppers in a matter of an afternoon. So the drag had better be sealed, which only means it might last a season.
Of course, everything must be hosed down, taken apart, rinsed and wiped dry — some of it re-lubed — after each outing. Sometimes I'm too lazy. I end up having to unweld the metals the next time I go out.
The flies, well, let's just say I haven't mastered all the techniques yet. The rods are 9 feet, and I've witnessed crazy people waving them as large as 12 feet long. So false casting is kind of a burden. That and the wind. But back to the flies, we're talking big 1/0 and 2/0 hooks with synthetics the colors of rainbows and neons, with claws and curls and lumps and rattles.
They look more like toys than mock bait. Be that as it may, they work. Some of the time.
Redfish, or red drum, depending where you are, are wonderful fish good fighters and will eat just about anything you put in front of them. That's good news for a Southern novice fly fisherman.
And they're just about everywhere: jetties, open surf, tidal rivers, tidal creeks and even some lagoons, although I've never caught any in them.
Out on Pritchards Island, just past Hunting and Fripp islands in Beaufort County's famous Sea Island chain, I caught about a 20 incher. Good fish. It fed my wife and I for three dinners.
Tying saltwater flies is no fun. Well, let me take that back: It's fun when you don't give a hoot what the thing looks like, because chances are if it's bright enough and big enough, you're bound to catch something with it.
The flies of New England, for instance, have to be dead-on. They have to swim perfectly, look like the flies in a specific hatch (which, unbelievably, do vary from river to river), and act the part. Otherwise, the fussy old trout eschew the very thing you spend a rainy, cold Saturday afternoon tying.
Of course, big means more expensive. So buying the darn flies is lunch money for the week. And if you're tying, well, it's more money for the flashy materials. Can't just drive down the nearest country road looking for road kill, and the cat and the dog, well, their fur isn't chartreuse or silver, so that's out.
Come to think of it, I had a cat up north that I used to pinch once in a while. He had the perfect fur that resembled that of a light brown hare. Great for light Hendricksons or AuSable wulffs.
And forget the thick waders, heavy vests and wooden landing nets. Most of the time, it's too hot to be in anything more than a pair of swim trunks and a t-shirt (don't forget the sunblock). Vests work, but if there's any zippers on them, you won't get them off at the end of the day. Ditto for any metal D hooks, etc. They will corrode, and you'll be stuck wearing a fly vest with a bunch of gear hanging off it on the ride home or until you cut it off.
Lastly, there are the river banks. Before setting foot down into the river, you have to be aware of three things: gators, snakes and plough (pronounced "pluff") mud. The first two could kill you, and so could the third, come to think of it.
Gators are sneaky beasts, and if you think they don't head down into salty water, well you'd be mistaken. Granted, they don't exactly relish the salty water, but believe me when I tell you that I've seen an alligator in brackish water the size of my kayak (I mistook it for a log; then it submerged...) and even saw one in the surf (I wasn't alone at the time, so, yes, I do have a witness).
Mostly, they'll just dive and get the hell out of your way, but it's the equivalent of seeing a bear on the far bank while casting for trout in the Adirondacks.
Snakes? They are good swimmers, too, even the non-water moccasin types that really have no business in the water. I've seen too many copperheads dropping off the banks and skimming the surface to believe otherwise.
The worst of it, though, is the plough mud. Now, it might look solid enough, but I remember my fist encounter with it. My wife and I were sailing on our little blue boat when the tiller busted and we were left to steer with the grace of the wind and the current alone. We missed the dock by a good twenty feet, but I was proud that I even got us that close.
I hopped out when the boat grounded toward the bank and submerged up to my knees in what I thought at the time must have been quick sand. I made it out somehow, but I lost my Nikes and filleted my foot on an oyster. Buddy, those things are sharp.
The thing about plough mud, beyond that it's super soft, is that it stinks, it's nearly impossible to remove from clothes and there is only one way through it: You step on the tufts of spartina grass that grow in it. This isn't guarantee that it will get you from your truck to the river, but it should get you closer. The thick root system, which must handle ebbing and flowing tides of eight feet twice a day, is pretty tough.
Still, the banks, where the fish tend to converge to pick at the bugs, bait fish, oysters, crabs and shrimp, are best accessed by skiff or kayak. I prefer a skiff, but I use a kayak most of the times. That's because I don't own a skiff.
And kayaks don't get hung up, and they're a lot less menacing-looking from a fish's point of view. At least that seems to make sense.
Of course, you can't stand on most of them, and those you can, well, it's a balancing act. But either way, you can get to the remote bank, find and oyster rake that's above the tideline and jump out to fish if you don't feel like doing so seated.
Most of the time, I imagine I'll get to a bank, get out and fish. But then I'm so taken with the slow drift of the tide, that I'll sort of just trawl up the river or down the lagoon until I feel like paddling again or run out of rising fish, or at least, bugs on the banks.
Or the sun runs out.
Which takes awhile, because even the days are bigger here in the South.
Monday, January 14, 2008
getting there is half the fun
I was born in upstate New York, at the foothills of both the mighty Adirondacks and the legendary Catskills.
I learned to fish as a very young boy. My dad used to take me all over God's creation known as central New York to every trout stream and bass hole in front of and behind barbed-wire fencing, and in these parts, there are more cows as people, so you work out the problem.
We've never been shot at, but more than a couple of farmers have gave us a piece of their mind.
Blame it on the insurance companies and slick lawyers. If I tripped in a pile of cow shit and sprained my knee, it's my own damn fault. I'm not going to sue the farmer, and I'm sure as hell not going to go after the cow.
Regardless, most farmers will let you on to their property for the asking, and maybe even the promise of a cleaned largemouth or rainbow should the taking be good.
Dad liked to fish as much as the next blue-collar guy. And I'm glad for that. Although he never fished with a fly, at least since I've known him, he fished when he could. Which meant just about every Saturday that he could convince my mom that she'd be better off without us in her hair all morning.
Now, I don't know a lot of dad's favorite streams or ponds; I often wonder if he did. Usually getting there was half the fun. And it should be. Put it this way: I get lost when I'm driving around for no good reason except I want to. That's a gift from Dad. Getting lost is the best way to learn about your environment and the geography — the lay of the land, so to speak. Not that he was planning on it anytime in his life, but if Dad was ever kidnapped, blindfolded and stuffed in the back of a Cadillac, driven around endlessly for hours and dumped off on the side of a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere, not only would he know where he was when he managed to slip the blindfold off, but he'd know where the nearest farm was as well as the name of the farmer.
We'd drive through the most tobacco road of places. I remember one place we passed in the countryside named Poverty Flats. Another was Yosts. Then there was Stacy Basin. At some point in my twenties, the county decided to erect a new sign that said "Stacy's Basin." That screwed everyone up for some time.
There was Constableville, Northern, Booneville, and Turin, along with a host of Indian names that not only can I not spell, but I can't pronounce too well, either. Kayaderosseras, for one. At least I think that's Indian. May be Greek. Anyhow, there was never a shortage of fishing.
On a map, most of these rivers and ponds are named. New York is an old state, and there isn't an square foot, even up here, that hasn't been scoured by geographers and cartographers, let alone developers and farmers. And Indians, I suppose.
So it's no surprise that if there's a river, there's a road nearby. Or an old grist mill or former lumber yard. Be that as it may, Dad didn't like the main roads. Like a moonshiner on a sunny afternoon, Dad preferred the back roads to the highways, or even the paved ones.
He'd somehow recall once we were in the car that "there's this great little diner that serves the best breakfast," and that was the stop either before or after the fish were caught, depending when we got out of bed or convinced mom to let us out of the house.
In most cases, there were a few dead flies under the glass of the donut covers on the counter, the cook looked like he just broke out of prison the night before and the waitress, like a woman who didn't give a rat's ass whether or not you were paying for service. Come to think of it, she didn't.
In short, the place was perfect.
Generally, there were no menus. "How do want your eggs?"
It was assumed you'd get toast, home fries, bacon and strong coffee whether or not you wanted it or were old enough to drink it.
But Dad wouldn't let me drink it, and I didn't put up a battle. He would, however, let me bypass the OJ or milk for a morning and go with Coke or Mountain Dew (the true breakfast soda).
Wait, it just came to me: Jet Diner. That was the place. Don't sue me. I loved the bacon-cheeseburger with the egg on top.
Dad also didn't care much to listen to the radio while driving, and for the love of Pete, I have no idea what we used to talk about. I was 5 or 9 or 14. I do remember that I'd roll my eyes a lot, stupid, but abundantly normal, kid that I was, as he would tell me "legends," as he called them.
Now, with Dad, you never really knew what was fact and what was fiction. He'd make up stories about fighting tigers in Borneo or being held prisoner in Saskatoon. On fishing trips, he'd tell me about great Indian battles that happened right over that hill there. Of braves who fought the Englishmen with nothing but bows, arrows or their bare hands. At some point, inevitably, while on the river bank, he'd reach down and grab a piece of slate in the shape of an arrowhead and tell me, as if I was going to have an epiphany, that, see! There were Indians here.
For all I know, there might have been, and the dozens of arrowheads I collected as a young boy, then, a little older, tied to long, thin sticks and launched with a homemade bow at the neighborhood squirrels and crows, might have been, as he would have said, for real.
There were tomahawks, too, by the way.
By the time we had gotten to the river bank or pond, however, we lost half the morning. I can remember only a few mornings that it was early enough to see the fog burn off the surface. But there were a few. We'd fish for a few hours, and generally catch stuff — bass, sunfish, trout, walleye pike..., eat some sort of wild black- or blueberries at the river bank, and then head back on the road.
As the crow flies, we might have been an hour away from home. But as Dad drove, it was usually three times that. Of course, there was lunch with which to contend.
Now, the thing you've got to know about Dad was that his favorite sandwich in the whole wide world was the Western egg sandwich. With coffee. Nothing else came close. Except a hot dog, but then again, that's not really a sandwich, is it? So, being that McDonald's or Burger King doesn't make this brand of lunch, it was back to another greasy spoon. So now that I think about it, the river was certainly the destination, but the routes to and from (never the same, mind you), were taken because of their blue-collar cuisine.
Dad was pretty much a child of the Great Depression, but worse: His father was a penny pincher, God rest his soul. So the fare set out on his dinner table was bread and oleo. Sometimes there would be potatoes, other times anchovies on pasta. This tasted good to him. So it stands to reason that hot dogs, Western egg sandwiches and a vile weed he called "roppies" were sort of delicacies.
I never quite got it, but it didn't bother him too much. Army food must have felt like down-home...
Me? Well, to this day, I can't eat a Western egg sandwich, let alone an omelet, without thinking of Dad. Heaven forbid if Mom went out and left us two at home at lunchtime. He'd whip up his "famous" sandwiches. Onions, peppers and eggs on Italian bread.
By the time we made it home, half the day would be gone, and it would take another hour or so to gut the fish and clean off the picnic table. In hindsight, I figured Mom was a sport, so long as Dad and I kept out part of the bargain and cut the grass and trimmed the hedges afterward.
When I think back on those lazy Saturday fishing jaunts, it's funny that I don't remember the fish; I remember the company.
I learned to fish as a very young boy. My dad used to take me all over God's creation known as central New York to every trout stream and bass hole in front of and behind barbed-wire fencing, and in these parts, there are more cows as people, so you work out the problem.
We've never been shot at, but more than a couple of farmers have gave us a piece of their mind.
Blame it on the insurance companies and slick lawyers. If I tripped in a pile of cow shit and sprained my knee, it's my own damn fault. I'm not going to sue the farmer, and I'm sure as hell not going to go after the cow.
Regardless, most farmers will let you on to their property for the asking, and maybe even the promise of a cleaned largemouth or rainbow should the taking be good.
Dad liked to fish as much as the next blue-collar guy. And I'm glad for that. Although he never fished with a fly, at least since I've known him, he fished when he could. Which meant just about every Saturday that he could convince my mom that she'd be better off without us in her hair all morning.
Now, I don't know a lot of dad's favorite streams or ponds; I often wonder if he did. Usually getting there was half the fun. And it should be. Put it this way: I get lost when I'm driving around for no good reason except I want to. That's a gift from Dad. Getting lost is the best way to learn about your environment and the geography — the lay of the land, so to speak. Not that he was planning on it anytime in his life, but if Dad was ever kidnapped, blindfolded and stuffed in the back of a Cadillac, driven around endlessly for hours and dumped off on the side of a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere, not only would he know where he was when he managed to slip the blindfold off, but he'd know where the nearest farm was as well as the name of the farmer.
We'd drive through the most tobacco road of places. I remember one place we passed in the countryside named Poverty Flats. Another was Yosts. Then there was Stacy Basin. At some point in my twenties, the county decided to erect a new sign that said "Stacy's Basin." That screwed everyone up for some time.
There was Constableville, Northern, Booneville, and Turin, along with a host of Indian names that not only can I not spell, but I can't pronounce too well, either. Kayaderosseras, for one. At least I think that's Indian. May be Greek. Anyhow, there was never a shortage of fishing.
On a map, most of these rivers and ponds are named. New York is an old state, and there isn't an square foot, even up here, that hasn't been scoured by geographers and cartographers, let alone developers and farmers. And Indians, I suppose.
So it's no surprise that if there's a river, there's a road nearby. Or an old grist mill or former lumber yard. Be that as it may, Dad didn't like the main roads. Like a moonshiner on a sunny afternoon, Dad preferred the back roads to the highways, or even the paved ones.
He'd somehow recall once we were in the car that "there's this great little diner that serves the best breakfast," and that was the stop either before or after the fish were caught, depending when we got out of bed or convinced mom to let us out of the house.
In most cases, there were a few dead flies under the glass of the donut covers on the counter, the cook looked like he just broke out of prison the night before and the waitress, like a woman who didn't give a rat's ass whether or not you were paying for service. Come to think of it, she didn't.
In short, the place was perfect.
Generally, there were no menus. "How do want your eggs?"
It was assumed you'd get toast, home fries, bacon and strong coffee whether or not you wanted it or were old enough to drink it.
But Dad wouldn't let me drink it, and I didn't put up a battle. He would, however, let me bypass the OJ or milk for a morning and go with Coke or Mountain Dew (the true breakfast soda).
Wait, it just came to me: Jet Diner. That was the place. Don't sue me. I loved the bacon-cheeseburger with the egg on top.
Dad also didn't care much to listen to the radio while driving, and for the love of Pete, I have no idea what we used to talk about. I was 5 or 9 or 14. I do remember that I'd roll my eyes a lot, stupid, but abundantly normal, kid that I was, as he would tell me "legends," as he called them.
Now, with Dad, you never really knew what was fact and what was fiction. He'd make up stories about fighting tigers in Borneo or being held prisoner in Saskatoon. On fishing trips, he'd tell me about great Indian battles that happened right over that hill there. Of braves who fought the Englishmen with nothing but bows, arrows or their bare hands. At some point, inevitably, while on the river bank, he'd reach down and grab a piece of slate in the shape of an arrowhead and tell me, as if I was going to have an epiphany, that, see! There were Indians here.
For all I know, there might have been, and the dozens of arrowheads I collected as a young boy, then, a little older, tied to long, thin sticks and launched with a homemade bow at the neighborhood squirrels and crows, might have been, as he would have said, for real.
There were tomahawks, too, by the way.
By the time we had gotten to the river bank or pond, however, we lost half the morning. I can remember only a few mornings that it was early enough to see the fog burn off the surface. But there were a few. We'd fish for a few hours, and generally catch stuff — bass, sunfish, trout, walleye pike..., eat some sort of wild black- or blueberries at the river bank, and then head back on the road.
As the crow flies, we might have been an hour away from home. But as Dad drove, it was usually three times that. Of course, there was lunch with which to contend.
Now, the thing you've got to know about Dad was that his favorite sandwich in the whole wide world was the Western egg sandwich. With coffee. Nothing else came close. Except a hot dog, but then again, that's not really a sandwich, is it? So, being that McDonald's or Burger King doesn't make this brand of lunch, it was back to another greasy spoon. So now that I think about it, the river was certainly the destination, but the routes to and from (never the same, mind you), were taken because of their blue-collar cuisine.
Dad was pretty much a child of the Great Depression, but worse: His father was a penny pincher, God rest his soul. So the fare set out on his dinner table was bread and oleo. Sometimes there would be potatoes, other times anchovies on pasta. This tasted good to him. So it stands to reason that hot dogs, Western egg sandwiches and a vile weed he called "roppies" were sort of delicacies.
I never quite got it, but it didn't bother him too much. Army food must have felt like down-home...
Me? Well, to this day, I can't eat a Western egg sandwich, let alone an omelet, without thinking of Dad. Heaven forbid if Mom went out and left us two at home at lunchtime. He'd whip up his "famous" sandwiches. Onions, peppers and eggs on Italian bread.
By the time we made it home, half the day would be gone, and it would take another hour or so to gut the fish and clean off the picnic table. In hindsight, I figured Mom was a sport, so long as Dad and I kept out part of the bargain and cut the grass and trimmed the hedges afterward.
When I think back on those lazy Saturday fishing jaunts, it's funny that I don't remember the fish; I remember the company.
beaming in eastern tennessee
Romantic an idea as it sounds, here’s the way to not catch fish in eastern Tennessee: Find a rustic, utilitarian cabin amid a braid of mountain-fed streams and stocked rivers in April and automatically assume that you will.
That's where this trip begins.
And, as misery anticipates its company, I invited my father-in-law down from upstate New York to join me.
Tom Rydzy is a very good fly-tier. It's a gift. Since I got hold of a proper fly-tying kit in my early 20s, to this day I can’t tie with a quarter of the passion or an eighth of the patience that Tom has — and he's a guy who took it up more or less as a hobby over the past few years.
And that’s precisely why my flies are about half as good as his.
That he out-ties me really doesn't bother me, so long as he shares the flies. He does. I'm impressed, and he knows it. So every so often, he'll bring me a little bag of nymphs or some really nice dry flies. I can tell they weren’t tied by some kid chained to a desk in a developing nation mostly because there is some extra glue here or there or a hackle isn't clipped to some obscure metric scale. That's OK, because they look pretty good. Good enough to fool most trout, anyway.
And, of course, they last more than a season.
I called Tom a few weeks before the trip. I had told him I found these cozy little cabins just outside of Bristol at a family-run KOA in Kingsport and eastern Tennessee has a lot of rivers and dams. “Ever hear of the Tennessee Valley Authority?” He answered that he had. “Fish tend to congregate heavily near the dams; we can’t lose.”
So eastern Tennessee in early April, well, what could be better?
I brought my dog, and that was the last time the two of us fished together. Sadie, so it seems, is more a catch-a-Frisbee dog than a catch-and-release fishing dog. I should have kenneled her, but call it Catholic guilt or what have you, I just didn't have the heart.
However, she was decent enough company on the six-hour ride out of coastal South Carolina. At least if you have a dog in the car, folks don’t look at you as totally nuts for talking to yourself, or even singing for that matter, while barreling down the highway. Some might even smile.
Hey, dogs are people, too. I saw that on a bumper sticker, so it must be true.
The road to Kingsport is pretty much a straight-shot, unless you count the uphills and downhills through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Interstate 26 will take you into Bristol from I-95 near Charleston, S.C., in under 300 miles, give or take a stop or two at Hardee’s. Then it’s a right on I81, the very road Tom would be traveling down, to the exit.
The highway that started an hour from my house more or less deposited me no more than 10 minutes from the campground. I couldn't get lost if I tried.
Windows down, appropriate bluegrass blasting and the dog riding shotgun sort of put me in the right mood for a four-day trip such as this. It was trout season in the rest of the free world, and I would be free from the warm saltwater reds and stripers that I try to catch on the coast. Just think: wading in running water! Rocks! Streams! No gators!
Sounded like nirvana.
Tom was already at camp when I pulled in. He had every door and the hatch in his VW opened wide, the little blue bug belching more fishing and camping equipment than a Cub Scout troop could carry on a weekend sleepover.
He was smoking his corncob pipe, sitting on a picnic table and tying a fly that the campground owner told him might work.
The same campground owner told us that there was a cold front coming in, so get while the getting’s good.
That afternoon, we scouted out a spot on the Holston River, just under I-81, in the shadow of a decent-sized dam, so we geared up like impatient teenagers and waded in, trying not to spook the fish. The area looked peaceful enough. On one side, there was a road with a small dugout where we parked. On the other, a very tall bank, practically a gorge, with bare trees of all sorts plumb to gravity.
There was an amazing great blue heron community — nests, probably 25 of them — in a few of the tip-tops of the trees. It was quite a sight, and noisy once they got to stirring.
But I was there to catch fish, and so was Tom. I waded up the shallow bank closer to the damn. The water wasn’t terribly cold. The sun was still up, and the temps were in the upper 40s. There was a path above from which bait fishermen, I imagined, plunked their clumsy white bass lures or worms. I saw no rise or fall of bugs, nor did I see any fish nuzzling up to the surface. Why would they? It was still early April, and that's when bugs are still wingless and submerged and, well, cold.
So I tried a few brown and black patterns, but I didn't get so much as a tepid interest. The fish had to be there, I thought. The sun would be dropping very soon, so maybe there would be a rise of some foreign insect. We were standing in pretty decent shadows from the large banks, as to be stealth, but the fish weren’t buying what we were selling.
Just down the river, Tom was retying, too. He had gotten out under a tall bridge and was fishing, wisely, close to the bank.
It was then that I heard someone whistling, as if they were calling their dog, from above. Turns out it was a local retiree, and he was whistling to me. I wanted to ignore him — I was just settling into a groove. He exaggeratedly pointed to the dam, and it was right then that I noticed that the current was running a little stronger than it had been when I waded in. And the water was a little deeper, too.
Interesting, I thought. I knew I could get out of the river, but I didn't know if I could alert my father-in-law in time. He couldn't hear me, what with the river’s increasing noise, and he looked very intent on getting that fly onto his tippet.
I scrambled up the bank and headed down over him. I would say that it wouldn't take more than a subtle expression for him to know something was up, but when you're fly fishing, you sort of get into a zone, a peaceful, tranquil Zen-like state. Clearly, after driving 15 hours through all sorts of odd directions, he was in the zone. So his eyes met mine, then he looked down and saw that the water was rapidly rising (it's amazing how fast it does rise when even those small gates open at the bottom of a dam). By the time he climbed onto the bank, the water had risen 2 feet or so.
As we were chuckling and chatting with our guardian angel on the bank, it became apparent that if we waited in the water for our own epiphanies to strike, I would have had to explain to my wife, had I survived the rush of current, that I had, indeed, took her father to beautiful eastern Tennessee to drown him.
I thought there would be some alarm, some signal... Not so, the angel said. Instead, the locals know that at certain times of the day, the dam opens. There are numbers to call before you get in the river, I was told, you know, if you’re not a local.
Dams, after all, open...
This man walks his dogs each evening and scans onto the river. Seems we weren't the first anglers he's beckoned to.
We ordered a couple of burgers in town after we stripped off our waders and gear, then we headed back to camp to warm up. We built a small fire in the tire ring, cracked open a bottle of Jack Daniels (when in Rome...), and reclined in our bag chairs. Aside from a few campers passing through in their land yachts, we were about the only souls in the place. There was a TV on somewhere in the distance, and the tone of the anchor sounded serious enough. So whoever was watching turned it up. It was the weatherman, and he was discussing the gale that would be passing through the region, well, any minute now.
Now, I’m used to a stiff breeze and torrents of rain, having lived on the coast of South Carolina and Florida over the last dozen years, but the mountains, even in April, well, that’s a whole other can of worms. It could, after all, snow at the this elevation.
As promised, in an hour or so the storm of the decade forced us into our shed-sized cabin, and the dog was the only being in this bunkhouse unafraid to mask her bravado. The lightning was constant and the thunder that followed within the time you could gasp sounded like we were being shelled. The rain came down in sheets, sideways of course, and we wondered if the rivers and creeks would rise to claim us in our sleep.
The next morning, the rain, just above freezing, continued and muddied up all the rivers. The Arctic burst came through like a runaway freight train, covering the mountains with a fresh coat of powder and ice and driving our fish deep down into the rivers.
We fished in full rain gear nonetheless under a pall of low gray clouds and fog. The dog barked miserably on the banks, and later, from inside the truck. And it was god-awful chilling.
Rather than keep running to the truck to thaw and calm the dog, we decided to skit around the mountains and try our luck in a host of rivers and streams. We drove down just about every dirt road in eastern Tennessee that day, and at one point, crossed into North Carolina. We put 250 miles on the truck. We ate well, frequently drank black coffee, got more wet than I could remember in some time and thought, well, maybe it will be better tomorrow.
That night, while we shared the rest of the bourbon, we decided to ask some locals how we’d catch a fish in their wonderful waterways.
Most folks gave us the crazy eye. We even got the stink eye from some others. Polite enough, though, they told us to wait until the weather warmed. We explained that we were here for a long weekend, and, well, our fishing permits would expire by then.
They said they’d see us, then, in May.
But one local at a combo gas/grocery/tackle shop said he’d seen guys waving “fly sticks” near a dam just outside of Kingsport: the Fort Patrick Henry Dam.
It was worth a shot.
The directions were cryptic, but after a few wrong turns, we passed over the river, headed toward it, found the parking lot that led to a path that led to a beautiful wide section of the South Holston. It was spectacular. Bridge overhead, fish ladder just up the river.
The South Holston begins in Virginia, ekes its way into Tennessee and skirts west of North Carolina by just a few miles. It's one of the handful of fantastic rivers that you could need more than one fishing license to be legal in — depending on which state your waded or drifted into — along with the Clinch and Watauga rivers. The French Broad, Little Tennessee and Hiwassee rivers also branch out from the 652-mile-long Tennessee River, and some even spill on into Georgia.
The Patrick Henry Dam, named after a colonial fort that took its name from the famous American patriot, was a two-year project that was finished in 1953. It’s 95 feet high and spans 737 feet across the South Holston River. TVA boasts that the dam generates 59,400 kilowatts of electricity. I don’t know how much that really is, and really don’t care. What I do care about is that in the gurgling water below the dam, there are some big trout. And the fish are there because of some pretty careful monitoring of the rivers and oxygenation techniques that enrich the aquatic environment and, in a nutshell, make the 10-mile stretch up to Boone Dam (named after Daniel...) some of the best tailwaters in eastern Tennessee.
As we were getting in our waders, a young man with an ear-to-ear grin saw us gearing up. We couldn't help but notice the happiness and clarity that was emitting from his soul. He said he caught a couple of 15-inch rainbows on No. 16 hooks with a little black ball on them — wound tightly in black thread.
He gave me one of his and told me. “Have a blast,” he said.
Now, being on the receiving end of advice is one thing I’m not terribly used to in South Carolina. When you ask someone where they caught that redfish, they generally like to get a chuckle out of grabbing their upper lip and saying, “Right about here,” mimicking the fish on the hook. Receiving an actual fly, well, that was a first for me. I vowed right then and there on that riverbank that from this moment on, I would hand out successful flies to those who asked. Assuming I have another copy or two in the box...
But that's all I needed to hear: “Have a blast.” I left Tom in the parking lot and practically dove into the water. I looked anxious, one of the fly fisherman’s cardinal sins. Keep a poker face if not to scare the fish then to at least look to the other fly fishermen as if this stuff is routine. Three days freezing in some pretty terrible conditions, and I could see fish on the horizon.
I carefully waded up the rapids to where a couple of guys were fishing, and they gave me a wide berth, which was good, because I hadn’t cast such light tackle in some time. I noticed the fishermen weren't exactly beaming, but they looked peaceful enough. Somewhere between “I’m trying to put dinner on the table” and “at least I’m not at work.” They were fishing what looked like black eggs. I gingerly cast and waited. The fly came back empty. Tom was just getting into the water. The sun was setting. He gave me the sign that he was going to fish downstream a bit — the old pointing of the finger while nodding the head. I nodded back and cast again. Nothing. And again. Nothing.
More nothing.
I so badly wanted to feel that good vibe, wear that smile, beam as if my soul had been baptized.
Nothing.
So I settled into my usual relenting, shoulders-down fishing routine when I begin telling myself that it's better to have fished and lost than not to have fished at all. I took a few deep breaths and soaked in the scenery. It was really great to be on a real trout stream again. But, on my last night of the trip, it sure would be great to catch a fish.
I even said a little prayer, barely audible. “Dear God, even a little rainbow.”
I turned in time to see Tom getting a hit, but he lost it trying to set the tiny hook. Right about then I felt a tug, which stands to reason because, like watching a pot boil, it happens when you least expect it or when you’re busy doing something with your hands, such as blowing your nose or turning and balancing to see if your buddy is doing any good.
It was a good tug, too. Maybe not a 15-inch fish, but something — anything. I tried to set the hook but realized the fish had already begun his run toward the dam where the water was crazy and the holes were deep. I let the line out and the drag up easily, instead giving the reel some friction with my gloved hand. Then I decided the line was getting too close to the backing and gave it a yank.
He was gone.
The next morning while driving back to South Carolina, the sun was out in all its springtime glory. It was still unseasonably chilly, but the sun through the windshield warmed the truck enough that I could turn off the heat.
Tom would take I-81 straight up the ridge and into Virginia. I wanted just one more day.
The snow was so bright on the mountain tops, it looked as if there were mirrors reflecting the sky right back into heaven. The rivers below rushed with the snow melt and rainwater. And the fish, maybe the fish were hungry today, who knows?
I scratched the dog behind her left ear, swung up on the highway and let out a big sigh. But as I was scouting the majestic Blue Ridge horizon, I caught my own reflection in the rear-view mirror.
I was beaming.
That's where this trip begins.
And, as misery anticipates its company, I invited my father-in-law down from upstate New York to join me.
Tom Rydzy is a very good fly-tier. It's a gift. Since I got hold of a proper fly-tying kit in my early 20s, to this day I can’t tie with a quarter of the passion or an eighth of the patience that Tom has — and he's a guy who took it up more or less as a hobby over the past few years.
And that’s precisely why my flies are about half as good as his.
That he out-ties me really doesn't bother me, so long as he shares the flies. He does. I'm impressed, and he knows it. So every so often, he'll bring me a little bag of nymphs or some really nice dry flies. I can tell they weren’t tied by some kid chained to a desk in a developing nation mostly because there is some extra glue here or there or a hackle isn't clipped to some obscure metric scale. That's OK, because they look pretty good. Good enough to fool most trout, anyway.
And, of course, they last more than a season.
I called Tom a few weeks before the trip. I had told him I found these cozy little cabins just outside of Bristol at a family-run KOA in Kingsport and eastern Tennessee has a lot of rivers and dams. “Ever hear of the Tennessee Valley Authority?” He answered that he had. “Fish tend to congregate heavily near the dams; we can’t lose.”
So eastern Tennessee in early April, well, what could be better?
I brought my dog, and that was the last time the two of us fished together. Sadie, so it seems, is more a catch-a-Frisbee dog than a catch-and-release fishing dog. I should have kenneled her, but call it Catholic guilt or what have you, I just didn't have the heart.
However, she was decent enough company on the six-hour ride out of coastal South Carolina. At least if you have a dog in the car, folks don’t look at you as totally nuts for talking to yourself, or even singing for that matter, while barreling down the highway. Some might even smile.
Hey, dogs are people, too. I saw that on a bumper sticker, so it must be true.
The road to Kingsport is pretty much a straight-shot, unless you count the uphills and downhills through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Interstate 26 will take you into Bristol from I-95 near Charleston, S.C., in under 300 miles, give or take a stop or two at Hardee’s. Then it’s a right on I81, the very road Tom would be traveling down, to the exit.
The highway that started an hour from my house more or less deposited me no more than 10 minutes from the campground. I couldn't get lost if I tried.
Windows down, appropriate bluegrass blasting and the dog riding shotgun sort of put me in the right mood for a four-day trip such as this. It was trout season in the rest of the free world, and I would be free from the warm saltwater reds and stripers that I try to catch on the coast. Just think: wading in running water! Rocks! Streams! No gators!
Sounded like nirvana.
Tom was already at camp when I pulled in. He had every door and the hatch in his VW opened wide, the little blue bug belching more fishing and camping equipment than a Cub Scout troop could carry on a weekend sleepover.
He was smoking his corncob pipe, sitting on a picnic table and tying a fly that the campground owner told him might work.
The same campground owner told us that there was a cold front coming in, so get while the getting’s good.
That afternoon, we scouted out a spot on the Holston River, just under I-81, in the shadow of a decent-sized dam, so we geared up like impatient teenagers and waded in, trying not to spook the fish. The area looked peaceful enough. On one side, there was a road with a small dugout where we parked. On the other, a very tall bank, practically a gorge, with bare trees of all sorts plumb to gravity.
There was an amazing great blue heron community — nests, probably 25 of them — in a few of the tip-tops of the trees. It was quite a sight, and noisy once they got to stirring.
But I was there to catch fish, and so was Tom. I waded up the shallow bank closer to the damn. The water wasn’t terribly cold. The sun was still up, and the temps were in the upper 40s. There was a path above from which bait fishermen, I imagined, plunked their clumsy white bass lures or worms. I saw no rise or fall of bugs, nor did I see any fish nuzzling up to the surface. Why would they? It was still early April, and that's when bugs are still wingless and submerged and, well, cold.
So I tried a few brown and black patterns, but I didn't get so much as a tepid interest. The fish had to be there, I thought. The sun would be dropping very soon, so maybe there would be a rise of some foreign insect. We were standing in pretty decent shadows from the large banks, as to be stealth, but the fish weren’t buying what we were selling.
Just down the river, Tom was retying, too. He had gotten out under a tall bridge and was fishing, wisely, close to the bank.
It was then that I heard someone whistling, as if they were calling their dog, from above. Turns out it was a local retiree, and he was whistling to me. I wanted to ignore him — I was just settling into a groove. He exaggeratedly pointed to the dam, and it was right then that I noticed that the current was running a little stronger than it had been when I waded in. And the water was a little deeper, too.
Interesting, I thought. I knew I could get out of the river, but I didn't know if I could alert my father-in-law in time. He couldn't hear me, what with the river’s increasing noise, and he looked very intent on getting that fly onto his tippet.
I scrambled up the bank and headed down over him. I would say that it wouldn't take more than a subtle expression for him to know something was up, but when you're fly fishing, you sort of get into a zone, a peaceful, tranquil Zen-like state. Clearly, after driving 15 hours through all sorts of odd directions, he was in the zone. So his eyes met mine, then he looked down and saw that the water was rapidly rising (it's amazing how fast it does rise when even those small gates open at the bottom of a dam). By the time he climbed onto the bank, the water had risen 2 feet or so.
As we were chuckling and chatting with our guardian angel on the bank, it became apparent that if we waited in the water for our own epiphanies to strike, I would have had to explain to my wife, had I survived the rush of current, that I had, indeed, took her father to beautiful eastern Tennessee to drown him.
I thought there would be some alarm, some signal... Not so, the angel said. Instead, the locals know that at certain times of the day, the dam opens. There are numbers to call before you get in the river, I was told, you know, if you’re not a local.
Dams, after all, open...
This man walks his dogs each evening and scans onto the river. Seems we weren't the first anglers he's beckoned to.
We ordered a couple of burgers in town after we stripped off our waders and gear, then we headed back to camp to warm up. We built a small fire in the tire ring, cracked open a bottle of Jack Daniels (when in Rome...), and reclined in our bag chairs. Aside from a few campers passing through in their land yachts, we were about the only souls in the place. There was a TV on somewhere in the distance, and the tone of the anchor sounded serious enough. So whoever was watching turned it up. It was the weatherman, and he was discussing the gale that would be passing through the region, well, any minute now.
Now, I’m used to a stiff breeze and torrents of rain, having lived on the coast of South Carolina and Florida over the last dozen years, but the mountains, even in April, well, that’s a whole other can of worms. It could, after all, snow at the this elevation.
As promised, in an hour or so the storm of the decade forced us into our shed-sized cabin, and the dog was the only being in this bunkhouse unafraid to mask her bravado. The lightning was constant and the thunder that followed within the time you could gasp sounded like we were being shelled. The rain came down in sheets, sideways of course, and we wondered if the rivers and creeks would rise to claim us in our sleep.
The next morning, the rain, just above freezing, continued and muddied up all the rivers. The Arctic burst came through like a runaway freight train, covering the mountains with a fresh coat of powder and ice and driving our fish deep down into the rivers.
We fished in full rain gear nonetheless under a pall of low gray clouds and fog. The dog barked miserably on the banks, and later, from inside the truck. And it was god-awful chilling.
Rather than keep running to the truck to thaw and calm the dog, we decided to skit around the mountains and try our luck in a host of rivers and streams. We drove down just about every dirt road in eastern Tennessee that day, and at one point, crossed into North Carolina. We put 250 miles on the truck. We ate well, frequently drank black coffee, got more wet than I could remember in some time and thought, well, maybe it will be better tomorrow.
That night, while we shared the rest of the bourbon, we decided to ask some locals how we’d catch a fish in their wonderful waterways.
Most folks gave us the crazy eye. We even got the stink eye from some others. Polite enough, though, they told us to wait until the weather warmed. We explained that we were here for a long weekend, and, well, our fishing permits would expire by then.
They said they’d see us, then, in May.
But one local at a combo gas/grocery/tackle shop said he’d seen guys waving “fly sticks” near a dam just outside of Kingsport: the Fort Patrick Henry Dam.
It was worth a shot.
The directions were cryptic, but after a few wrong turns, we passed over the river, headed toward it, found the parking lot that led to a path that led to a beautiful wide section of the South Holston. It was spectacular. Bridge overhead, fish ladder just up the river.
The South Holston begins in Virginia, ekes its way into Tennessee and skirts west of North Carolina by just a few miles. It's one of the handful of fantastic rivers that you could need more than one fishing license to be legal in — depending on which state your waded or drifted into — along with the Clinch and Watauga rivers. The French Broad, Little Tennessee and Hiwassee rivers also branch out from the 652-mile-long Tennessee River, and some even spill on into Georgia.
The Patrick Henry Dam, named after a colonial fort that took its name from the famous American patriot, was a two-year project that was finished in 1953. It’s 95 feet high and spans 737 feet across the South Holston River. TVA boasts that the dam generates 59,400 kilowatts of electricity. I don’t know how much that really is, and really don’t care. What I do care about is that in the gurgling water below the dam, there are some big trout. And the fish are there because of some pretty careful monitoring of the rivers and oxygenation techniques that enrich the aquatic environment and, in a nutshell, make the 10-mile stretch up to Boone Dam (named after Daniel...) some of the best tailwaters in eastern Tennessee.
As we were getting in our waders, a young man with an ear-to-ear grin saw us gearing up. We couldn't help but notice the happiness and clarity that was emitting from his soul. He said he caught a couple of 15-inch rainbows on No. 16 hooks with a little black ball on them — wound tightly in black thread.
He gave me one of his and told me. “Have a blast,” he said.
Now, being on the receiving end of advice is one thing I’m not terribly used to in South Carolina. When you ask someone where they caught that redfish, they generally like to get a chuckle out of grabbing their upper lip and saying, “Right about here,” mimicking the fish on the hook. Receiving an actual fly, well, that was a first for me. I vowed right then and there on that riverbank that from this moment on, I would hand out successful flies to those who asked. Assuming I have another copy or two in the box...
But that's all I needed to hear: “Have a blast.” I left Tom in the parking lot and practically dove into the water. I looked anxious, one of the fly fisherman’s cardinal sins. Keep a poker face if not to scare the fish then to at least look to the other fly fishermen as if this stuff is routine. Three days freezing in some pretty terrible conditions, and I could see fish on the horizon.
I carefully waded up the rapids to where a couple of guys were fishing, and they gave me a wide berth, which was good, because I hadn’t cast such light tackle in some time. I noticed the fishermen weren't exactly beaming, but they looked peaceful enough. Somewhere between “I’m trying to put dinner on the table” and “at least I’m not at work.” They were fishing what looked like black eggs. I gingerly cast and waited. The fly came back empty. Tom was just getting into the water. The sun was setting. He gave me the sign that he was going to fish downstream a bit — the old pointing of the finger while nodding the head. I nodded back and cast again. Nothing. And again. Nothing.
More nothing.
I so badly wanted to feel that good vibe, wear that smile, beam as if my soul had been baptized.
Nothing.
So I settled into my usual relenting, shoulders-down fishing routine when I begin telling myself that it's better to have fished and lost than not to have fished at all. I took a few deep breaths and soaked in the scenery. It was really great to be on a real trout stream again. But, on my last night of the trip, it sure would be great to catch a fish.
I even said a little prayer, barely audible. “Dear God, even a little rainbow.”
I turned in time to see Tom getting a hit, but he lost it trying to set the tiny hook. Right about then I felt a tug, which stands to reason because, like watching a pot boil, it happens when you least expect it or when you’re busy doing something with your hands, such as blowing your nose or turning and balancing to see if your buddy is doing any good.
It was a good tug, too. Maybe not a 15-inch fish, but something — anything. I tried to set the hook but realized the fish had already begun his run toward the dam where the water was crazy and the holes were deep. I let the line out and the drag up easily, instead giving the reel some friction with my gloved hand. Then I decided the line was getting too close to the backing and gave it a yank.
He was gone.
The next morning while driving back to South Carolina, the sun was out in all its springtime glory. It was still unseasonably chilly, but the sun through the windshield warmed the truck enough that I could turn off the heat.
Tom would take I-81 straight up the ridge and into Virginia. I wanted just one more day.
The snow was so bright on the mountain tops, it looked as if there were mirrors reflecting the sky right back into heaven. The rivers below rushed with the snow melt and rainwater. And the fish, maybe the fish were hungry today, who knows?
I scratched the dog behind her left ear, swung up on the highway and let out a big sigh. But as I was scouting the majestic Blue Ridge horizon, I caught my own reflection in the rear-view mirror.
I was beaming.
Friday, January 11, 2008
good fishing cars
I never really got to thank my father properly for teaching me to fish and passing down his love for American cars to me. But I bet he knows.
And the two often go hand in hand.
I know this because there is nothing greater than the smell of a musty old car that no one else sees the beauty in, except for maybe you.
Fishing, like driving, is mostly that of utility. Now, my dad had some nice cars. family cars, most of them, but still lurking under the hood was a V8. There is no better motor than a Chevy 350, he'd tell me.
He's right, and to this day to boot.
Here is a list of cars my dad had since I can remember (which means from birth until I was 26, the age I was when he left for Heaven).
• Chevy Impala. This one was enormous, with the round taillights and the blue vinyl seats to match the exterior. Four door. Four of my sisters in the back, and I was anything but wedged between my parents in the front.
In fact, there was all sorts of elbow room.
My dad would drive with his arm around me or on top of the seat.
He could reach back quickly to backhand anyone who was getting mouthy. It wasn't that big a car, after all.
• Chevy Impala. He liked the last one so much, he bought another one. This one in green.
Mind you, none of the cars he bought were brand new. At least not until the girls grew up and moved out on their own, but we'll get to that in a minute.
• Chrysler Newport. For some reason, my dad ad a serious lapse in judgment, and he bought this land shark of an ugly car. It looked straight off "The Brady Bunch," and it might have been. It made the Impalas look like Volkswagens. It was copper-tan with a black interior that would take the skin right of you on a hot summer day. Here's what I remember most about it: My mom leaving me in the car in the middle of an intersection while she found a pay phone or a house phone to call for help. The Newport broke down again, she'd say. She hated that car, she told me.
• Chevy Malibu Laguna. My dad tricked my mom here. This one had the 350 package in it, the white stripes on the sides (over the wheel wells) and it had a snazzy blue interior. He would argue that it was, in fact, a family car, simply because it had four doors. I don't think she ever really bought it; my mom liked big cars, not small ones. I loved it, and this car sparked my love affair with them, especially American muscle cars.
• Chevy Caprice Classic. Mom won. And this was their first new car. I remember it well: two-tone blue, with spoked hubcaps and a cloth interior, AM-FM Cassette, AC and cruise control. It was a '79 in the same year — that never happened in the Passante household, nor would it every again. It was my mom's favorite car, and she told me so just a few years ago.
This was the first (Passante) car on which I learned to drive (Truth is, Uncle Richard forced me to learn to drive by putting me in behind the wheel of a '72 Buick station wagon roughly the size of New Hampshire. It was Buffalo, he was quite occupied with boat repairs and the paint store was only a couple miles away... I had no license. I was 15.) It's also the first time I learned that 350s were really fast. But God has forgiven me for that, I'm fairly sure. I'll tell Dad over a beer in Heaven someday. We'll laugh about it (I pray).
• Volkswagen Jetta diesel. Why my dad bought this was sort of beyond me. But I was wicked happy about it. See, I was into a huge VW phase as I bought my first car (a VW Dasher, bumble bee yellow and black with a four speed). My sister, Michelle, also bought a Dasher (her's was red). So my dad, thinking he needed a second car, plunked a few bills on the table for this used car. And he fell in love with it. So much that when he came to his senses that he and Mom didn't need two cars, what with all my sisters out of the house and me with my own ride, they sold the... wait for it... the Caprice.
Go figure.
• The VW did well for a few years, but I think my mom was underwhelmed, being the big-car gal that she was. So one day, my dad went out and bought a Chrysler LeBaron (back to the Chrysler brand, for whatever reason. At least he can say he never owned a Ford). This car was barely used, but used, and in beautiful shape. Cloth, 8 eight-speaker Bose system, electric everything. It was the two-door version, and it was sporty. So much, in fact, that Dad took to wearing leather driving gloves (the kinds with the holes in the knuckles). It was a nice ride, Chrysler or not.
Dad passed while owning the Chrysler, and it had a few years on it, so Mom gave it to me for something like $800, and I can't remember now if I actually ever paid that debt. Probably not. At the time, I was driving my sister's refrigerator-white VW Fox. A car designed for the Third World, it barely kept the pace of American driving. It was a death trap, and she'd often have dreams of dying in it. (I don't know how these things ever passed inspection. Think Yugo with a thicker bumper.)
I did too. Because after a while, there were no brakes, no accelerator, and there were always antifreeze fumes coming from the heater ducts that put a silt on the windows and dashboard, which leads me to believe that's why I battled a bout with cancer some years later. Come to think of it, so did she. I should call the pizza guy I sold it to. I sincerely hope he's well.
But there's one car I've failed to mention. I'm not sure what year it was, but when Dad bought the LeBaron, he, not long after, bought an old station wagon — It was the Oldsmobile version on the Chevy Caprice, and I guess that made it a Delta 88. It was creme colored with wood on the sides. It had a vinyl interior and an AM radio. He bought it from a buddy of his named Charlie Circle, I kid you not.
Mom didn't know what to think of it. Dad buffed it up, polished the "wood" and Armor-Alled the tires. There were four unmatched hubcaps on four unmatched tires. It was a beautiful car.
Not that it was, but it served this great purpose. It got him from Point A to Point B, but if Point B was to the dump, the fishing hole, or do my grandfather's house in Utica, what with the lawnmower in the back, then it was the perfect car. In essence, he didn't have to worry if it smelled bad after fishing or hauling some lawn clippings, or if the mower spilled a drop of oil or gas. He didn't have to keep it washed (but he did), and my mom would never ride in it.
It was HIS car, plain and simple. No one wanted it, no one would steal it or vandalize it. His kids didn't want to borrow it. He had nothing to prove in it. It was the perfect car. It did everything he wanted it to do. It was a sanctuary of sorts. It was full of hopes and dreams.
It was my least favorite car of his, and he knew that. That was A-OK with him. Ironically, I was in college far away from home when my Honda bought the farm. I needed a car in a pinch, and Dad drove the wagon up to Plattsburgh and let me borrow it for as long as I needed.
Luckily, I didn't need it more than a couple of weeks. I bought a Subaru. It had four-wheel drive. And I drove the wagon back to Rome, where he was happy to be reunited with it.
But, it was funny. When driving it, I felt like a total geek. Like I was driving my dad's car. I was, after all. But it was comforting. Once you resign to understanding the beauty of utility, well, it hits you. That utility is a beautiful thing. I guess that's the reason so many Volvos were sold in the '80s and '90s. Bordering on status, but, damn, they were humble boxes.
Today, I drive an old Blazer. Not old enough, of course, but maybe some day it will be.
I don't know what year it is, and that doesn't bother me at all. I sold my old pickup just before my boy was born, thinking I'd have to cart him around to daycare. My wife decided to stay home, so I really didn't need to sell it after all.
That's okay, though; it was sort of a single man's car. But it oozed practicality. Much like the Blazer does. Sure, on a good day, when the black paint is washed and the steel rims are polished, it's a fairly good-looking ride. For me, though, it's a way to hope, of days ahead. Of trips into the woods, down old logging trails. Of camping in the back, maybe, the kayaks on the roof or the pop-top camper attached to its hitch. It's a truck that will get Robyn and Kostyn, as well as the dog, back and forth to the mountain cabin or to the sandy beach, where I don't much care how many pounds of sand build up in its rug.
And I can haul stuff in it. Stinky stuff, too. Such as fish and bait and smelly old waders.
And the two often go hand in hand.
I know this because there is nothing greater than the smell of a musty old car that no one else sees the beauty in, except for maybe you.
Fishing, like driving, is mostly that of utility. Now, my dad had some nice cars. family cars, most of them, but still lurking under the hood was a V8. There is no better motor than a Chevy 350, he'd tell me.
He's right, and to this day to boot.
Here is a list of cars my dad had since I can remember (which means from birth until I was 26, the age I was when he left for Heaven).
• Chevy Impala. This one was enormous, with the round taillights and the blue vinyl seats to match the exterior. Four door. Four of my sisters in the back, and I was anything but wedged between my parents in the front.
In fact, there was all sorts of elbow room.
My dad would drive with his arm around me or on top of the seat.
He could reach back quickly to backhand anyone who was getting mouthy. It wasn't that big a car, after all.
• Chevy Impala. He liked the last one so much, he bought another one. This one in green.
Mind you, none of the cars he bought were brand new. At least not until the girls grew up and moved out on their own, but we'll get to that in a minute.
• Chrysler Newport. For some reason, my dad ad a serious lapse in judgment, and he bought this land shark of an ugly car. It looked straight off "The Brady Bunch," and it might have been. It made the Impalas look like Volkswagens. It was copper-tan with a black interior that would take the skin right of you on a hot summer day. Here's what I remember most about it: My mom leaving me in the car in the middle of an intersection while she found a pay phone or a house phone to call for help. The Newport broke down again, she'd say. She hated that car, she told me.
• Chevy Malibu Laguna. My dad tricked my mom here. This one had the 350 package in it, the white stripes on the sides (over the wheel wells) and it had a snazzy blue interior. He would argue that it was, in fact, a family car, simply because it had four doors. I don't think she ever really bought it; my mom liked big cars, not small ones. I loved it, and this car sparked my love affair with them, especially American muscle cars.
• Chevy Caprice Classic. Mom won. And this was their first new car. I remember it well: two-tone blue, with spoked hubcaps and a cloth interior, AM-FM Cassette, AC and cruise control. It was a '79 in the same year — that never happened in the Passante household, nor would it every again. It was my mom's favorite car, and she told me so just a few years ago.
This was the first (Passante) car on which I learned to drive (Truth is, Uncle Richard forced me to learn to drive by putting me in behind the wheel of a '72 Buick station wagon roughly the size of New Hampshire. It was Buffalo, he was quite occupied with boat repairs and the paint store was only a couple miles away... I had no license. I was 15.) It's also the first time I learned that 350s were really fast. But God has forgiven me for that, I'm fairly sure. I'll tell Dad over a beer in Heaven someday. We'll laugh about it (I pray).
• Volkswagen Jetta diesel. Why my dad bought this was sort of beyond me. But I was wicked happy about it. See, I was into a huge VW phase as I bought my first car (a VW Dasher, bumble bee yellow and black with a four speed). My sister, Michelle, also bought a Dasher (her's was red). So my dad, thinking he needed a second car, plunked a few bills on the table for this used car. And he fell in love with it. So much that when he came to his senses that he and Mom didn't need two cars, what with all my sisters out of the house and me with my own ride, they sold the... wait for it... the Caprice.
Go figure.
• The VW did well for a few years, but I think my mom was underwhelmed, being the big-car gal that she was. So one day, my dad went out and bought a Chrysler LeBaron (back to the Chrysler brand, for whatever reason. At least he can say he never owned a Ford). This car was barely used, but used, and in beautiful shape. Cloth, 8 eight-speaker Bose system, electric everything. It was the two-door version, and it was sporty. So much, in fact, that Dad took to wearing leather driving gloves (the kinds with the holes in the knuckles). It was a nice ride, Chrysler or not.
Dad passed while owning the Chrysler, and it had a few years on it, so Mom gave it to me for something like $800, and I can't remember now if I actually ever paid that debt. Probably not. At the time, I was driving my sister's refrigerator-white VW Fox. A car designed for the Third World, it barely kept the pace of American driving. It was a death trap, and she'd often have dreams of dying in it. (I don't know how these things ever passed inspection. Think Yugo with a thicker bumper.)
I did too. Because after a while, there were no brakes, no accelerator, and there were always antifreeze fumes coming from the heater ducts that put a silt on the windows and dashboard, which leads me to believe that's why I battled a bout with cancer some years later. Come to think of it, so did she. I should call the pizza guy I sold it to. I sincerely hope he's well.
But there's one car I've failed to mention. I'm not sure what year it was, but when Dad bought the LeBaron, he, not long after, bought an old station wagon — It was the Oldsmobile version on the Chevy Caprice, and I guess that made it a Delta 88. It was creme colored with wood on the sides. It had a vinyl interior and an AM radio. He bought it from a buddy of his named Charlie Circle, I kid you not.
Mom didn't know what to think of it. Dad buffed it up, polished the "wood" and Armor-Alled the tires. There were four unmatched hubcaps on four unmatched tires. It was a beautiful car.
Not that it was, but it served this great purpose. It got him from Point A to Point B, but if Point B was to the dump, the fishing hole, or do my grandfather's house in Utica, what with the lawnmower in the back, then it was the perfect car. In essence, he didn't have to worry if it smelled bad after fishing or hauling some lawn clippings, or if the mower spilled a drop of oil or gas. He didn't have to keep it washed (but he did), and my mom would never ride in it.
It was HIS car, plain and simple. No one wanted it, no one would steal it or vandalize it. His kids didn't want to borrow it. He had nothing to prove in it. It was the perfect car. It did everything he wanted it to do. It was a sanctuary of sorts. It was full of hopes and dreams.
It was my least favorite car of his, and he knew that. That was A-OK with him. Ironically, I was in college far away from home when my Honda bought the farm. I needed a car in a pinch, and Dad drove the wagon up to Plattsburgh and let me borrow it for as long as I needed.
Luckily, I didn't need it more than a couple of weeks. I bought a Subaru. It had four-wheel drive. And I drove the wagon back to Rome, where he was happy to be reunited with it.
But, it was funny. When driving it, I felt like a total geek. Like I was driving my dad's car. I was, after all. But it was comforting. Once you resign to understanding the beauty of utility, well, it hits you. That utility is a beautiful thing. I guess that's the reason so many Volvos were sold in the '80s and '90s. Bordering on status, but, damn, they were humble boxes.
Today, I drive an old Blazer. Not old enough, of course, but maybe some day it will be.
I don't know what year it is, and that doesn't bother me at all. I sold my old pickup just before my boy was born, thinking I'd have to cart him around to daycare. My wife decided to stay home, so I really didn't need to sell it after all.
That's okay, though; it was sort of a single man's car. But it oozed practicality. Much like the Blazer does. Sure, on a good day, when the black paint is washed and the steel rims are polished, it's a fairly good-looking ride. For me, though, it's a way to hope, of days ahead. Of trips into the woods, down old logging trails. Of camping in the back, maybe, the kayaks on the roof or the pop-top camper attached to its hitch. It's a truck that will get Robyn and Kostyn, as well as the dog, back and forth to the mountain cabin or to the sandy beach, where I don't much care how many pounds of sand build up in its rug.
And I can haul stuff in it. Stinky stuff, too. Such as fish and bait and smelly old waders.
gearing up
I get these fishing catalogs in the mail darn near about three a week. Cabela's, Orvis, Bass Pro, or from more specialty shops (the good ones). In them are the latest titanium reels, anodized hooks, sta-dri, wix-away, H20Maxx gear running far higher than my savings account would afford.
Still, every once in a while, I get the itch. "I wonder what that disc drag would feel like with a five-pound redfish on the other end," or "I bet I could heave four ounces of mullet on that graphite composite past the third breaker with that rascal."
Then I'm again grounded in reality: My son, Kostyn Orrie, sits on a new carpet, playing with pricey Danish toys in an Egyptian cotton romper.
OK, maybe not. But I'd rather give him all those things than plink down $450 on the custom 10 foot graphite rod with the hand-painted topless mermaid just above the stock.
Of course, it would be good conversation on the beach.
But there's a point in a man's life, and maybe we get waylaid from it and have to come back to it, that comes like a rock flung from a slingshot that hits you squarely in the temple — just enough to buckle your knees, but not enough to take them out from under you: Less is more.
Catalogs are evil, pure and simple. They tell you what you need instead of you getting what you need.
Case in point always comes while I'm on the river or casting into the ocean. The gear I used during my first year to the outerbanks, let's recap:
• A 6-foot Shakespeare composite rod not made for saltwater ($8);
• A Shakespeare open bail reel with 10-pound test on it, and I should note that while everyone else was having the local fishing shop guide spin the new 10-pound line on their reels, I was too ashamed, so I used last season's line ($15);
• A Sears (I believe) 10-foot surfcast rod, complete with vintage cork, thread and eyes (free from Bob);
• A Shakespeare saltwater series reel (my big expenditure) with 20 pound line ($39);
• Assorted jiggs, hooks, spoons (okay, one), jigg heads, a free fillet knife (I'll have it for life, Bob), a tackle bag, free bag chair, five-gallon paint bucket, free color and beer (Bud, of course) and ice (We'll say $50);
• A pair of rubber pants tucked into rubber boots (I was soaked and miserable, and I don't mind telling you that the $100 I spent the next season on neoprines was the best investment I've made) ($20).
My return? A cooler full of speckles, one that was a trophy fish (in the 5 five-pound neighborhood) and a few spottails.
Since that first trip with Bob and BJ, my rate of return hasn't quite met my investment. Don't get me wrong, save for last year's hurricane that left us playing pitch via candlelight and drinking warm beer instead of fishing, I've done quite well with the bluefish. Enough so that each year I get the tattoo of two teeth in my left index finger. Sometimes more than once.
But that first trip was far and away the best as far as the fishing went.
But here's the thing: When you're out on the Outer Banks' beaches in November casting into the surf or standing waist-deep in an April river in Tennessee, the feeling overcomes a man: Simplicity.
There are folks fishing who are garbed up in the latest North Face wear, or in the trendy Orvis shirts or Cabella's fleece, but is this what fishermen really wear? It's one of the reasons I stopped playing golf after my dad passed (although, certainly, that had the most to do with it), was that you were expected to look the part — sort of like having a bumper sticker on your car to let the world know what brand of person you are.
If fishing is indeed the purest of sports (certainly hunting is up there, too; it's just that I don't hunt. Why would I when I could be out fishing?), then why tarnish it with commercialism and the magnetic draw that those magazines have over us; sort of like a crack dealer with his whores.
I read somewhere that a flyrod is, indeed, an important tool, and that while you could fish and catch with something bought at a garage sale or at the local Kmart, it's not a good idea. Simply put: You won't catch as many fish because you won't be able to deliver the fly where it's needed. True words.
Then again, there's no reason to spend $500 on a rod; $100 usually does the trick.
And a fly reel that costs more than $50 is just silly. After all, they simply just hold the line. Whoever thinks that you reel in a fish while flyfishing is just silly. Drags? Barely need them.
You walk a fish out, tire it, then bring it to you, plain and simple. This isn't bass fishing on Lake Nitro...
And, again, after a good set of waders, a pair of jeans, flannel shirt and rubber raincoat is about all you need.
Probably a hat, too. Just not one of those green felt Orvis ones...
Still, every once in a while, I get the itch. "I wonder what that disc drag would feel like with a five-pound redfish on the other end," or "I bet I could heave four ounces of mullet on that graphite composite past the third breaker with that rascal."
Then I'm again grounded in reality: My son, Kostyn Orrie, sits on a new carpet, playing with pricey Danish toys in an Egyptian cotton romper.
OK, maybe not. But I'd rather give him all those things than plink down $450 on the custom 10 foot graphite rod with the hand-painted topless mermaid just above the stock.
Of course, it would be good conversation on the beach.
But there's a point in a man's life, and maybe we get waylaid from it and have to come back to it, that comes like a rock flung from a slingshot that hits you squarely in the temple — just enough to buckle your knees, but not enough to take them out from under you: Less is more.
Catalogs are evil, pure and simple. They tell you what you need instead of you getting what you need.
Case in point always comes while I'm on the river or casting into the ocean. The gear I used during my first year to the outerbanks, let's recap:
• A 6-foot Shakespeare composite rod not made for saltwater ($8);
• A Shakespeare open bail reel with 10-pound test on it, and I should note that while everyone else was having the local fishing shop guide spin the new 10-pound line on their reels, I was too ashamed, so I used last season's line ($15);
• A Sears (I believe) 10-foot surfcast rod, complete with vintage cork, thread and eyes (free from Bob);
• A Shakespeare saltwater series reel (my big expenditure) with 20 pound line ($39);
• Assorted jiggs, hooks, spoons (okay, one), jigg heads, a free fillet knife (I'll have it for life, Bob), a tackle bag, free bag chair, five-gallon paint bucket, free color and beer (Bud, of course) and ice (We'll say $50);
• A pair of rubber pants tucked into rubber boots (I was soaked and miserable, and I don't mind telling you that the $100 I spent the next season on neoprines was the best investment I've made) ($20).
My return? A cooler full of speckles, one that was a trophy fish (in the 5 five-pound neighborhood) and a few spottails.
Since that first trip with Bob and BJ, my rate of return hasn't quite met my investment. Don't get me wrong, save for last year's hurricane that left us playing pitch via candlelight and drinking warm beer instead of fishing, I've done quite well with the bluefish. Enough so that each year I get the tattoo of two teeth in my left index finger. Sometimes more than once.
But that first trip was far and away the best as far as the fishing went.
But here's the thing: When you're out on the Outer Banks' beaches in November casting into the surf or standing waist-deep in an April river in Tennessee, the feeling overcomes a man: Simplicity.
There are folks fishing who are garbed up in the latest North Face wear, or in the trendy Orvis shirts or Cabella's fleece, but is this what fishermen really wear? It's one of the reasons I stopped playing golf after my dad passed (although, certainly, that had the most to do with it), was that you were expected to look the part — sort of like having a bumper sticker on your car to let the world know what brand of person you are.
If fishing is indeed the purest of sports (certainly hunting is up there, too; it's just that I don't hunt. Why would I when I could be out fishing?), then why tarnish it with commercialism and the magnetic draw that those magazines have over us; sort of like a crack dealer with his whores.
I read somewhere that a flyrod is, indeed, an important tool, and that while you could fish and catch with something bought at a garage sale or at the local Kmart, it's not a good idea. Simply put: You won't catch as many fish because you won't be able to deliver the fly where it's needed. True words.
Then again, there's no reason to spend $500 on a rod; $100 usually does the trick.
And a fly reel that costs more than $50 is just silly. After all, they simply just hold the line. Whoever thinks that you reel in a fish while flyfishing is just silly. Drags? Barely need them.
You walk a fish out, tire it, then bring it to you, plain and simple. This isn't bass fishing on Lake Nitro...
And, again, after a good set of waders, a pair of jeans, flannel shirt and rubber raincoat is about all you need.
Probably a hat, too. Just not one of those green felt Orvis ones...
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
fishing and fishers i have known
There isn't a lot of time to just sit and think anymore.
There was a time a bit more than seven months ago when the days were longer than I could fill with the tedious little projects in the garage, the paddling out on the river, the puttering around the yard, the poring over magazines only feared to someone, such as me, who lives within that niche.
That lost time in a day coincided with the birth of my first child, Kostyn Orrie — named after my Polish grandfather whom I never met but, according to my mother, was one of the strongest, proudest and true family men who ever walked the earth — and the middle name comes from my father, the most sincere, gentle, nurturing and genuine person I’ve ever known or even heard of. Kostyn, as an infant, is a very special little boy because I don't miss all that extra time that’s been sucked into the vortex known as parenthood: I long for his interruptions, I rush to get home from the office, I give up planning big fishing trips to faraway places and Saturday jaunts in the kayak amid a South Carolina summer sky that reflects in the braids of marsh rivers bigger than all of Montana, Texas and maybe even the Canadian plains.
Someday soon Kostyn will accompany me down to Harbor River or Johnson Creek for a few minutes of fishing the spartina for a wandering trout or brave redfish.I might fasten him to my chest or maybe onto my back with one of those baby-carrying devices that seem to be all the rage. The “father” on the box is some 21-year-old Swedish guy with a ripped six-pack and a full mop of hair, plying the French Riviera or some peaceful boardwalk a million miles away. My middle-age sprawl would probably put my boy in a somewhat-less-than-vertical position on my belly, but he might grab the fly rod should I strap him to my back.
It used to be a thing: Saturday mornings were for fishing. I'd set my Timex wristwatch, and, miraculously, a moment before it would chime the softest of chimes, I'd be awake, roll quietly out of bed as to not stir my bride, grab my gear without stirring the dog (too much) and jump in the truck before the sun slit the horizon out on the great Sea Islands.
And, inevitably, I'd forget something. Usually something in the way of a breakfast sandwich or bait, either of which I'd stop for with little hesitation or self-deprecation.
There was a blues program on the college radio station that probably started sometime after midnight for those Friday night partygoers and blue-collared crowd who had a few too many or planned on having a few more. The music accompanied me to the fishing holes. And it was appropriate, because it was natural — a one-off from bluegrass, in many respects.
I kept a journal for awhile, too. I lost it during a windy morning on the fishing pier.
But I've fished just a handful of times since June 2, 2007. And that's OK; there will be a lot more fishing in my, our, future. The cold Northern streams' water runs through my memory, although I haven't fished the Northeast but maybe once or twice a year since my 20s. But I've not lost the zeal for it, and I can spin the yarn with the best of them about the fishing holes found and the fish lost on the AuSable, Bouquet, Saranac or Mohawk rivers.
But times come when I run into old friends or acquaintances — or even family. I notice that we don't talk about fishing much anymore. At least not the way we used to. And that's a shame. See, they've also put their fishing on hold or just stopped doing it. I have a good friend here who only wants to fish for the big ones. That means a boat or a trip to a big-fish area. A full day and a lot of money. He's full of zeal, but there's not a lot of motion. In short, one foot on the bumper in the parking lot, he spins and re-spins the tales of when he used to fish more regularly.
Other friends used to be more religious about their fishing. They've lost the faith, and it shows. We talk about old times out on the islands or rivers, or we just avoid the subject altogether, like a particularly hard death of a close friend. I also know folks who talk about fishing or spent time darning their flies or polishing their reels, but the last time they fished was with me, way back, and I can't remember when...
What fishing does is remove one's soul from this grind of overworked and overindulged artificial life and brings us to the very natural and basic means of survival, where the simplicity is deafening and the reward astounding.
Even if there are no fish today. Or tomorrow.
The quiet time, that time to think or not think at all, to feel nothing but natural elements — cold, smooth stones underfoot, cold water compressing around my bare legs, veiled breeze only felt inches from the water's surface, the smell of salt, sand, dendrites on the banks, marsh air, pure air, fish oil, insect, animal, cork, steel, bamboo, wood. None of this exists in the manmade world in which we spend most of our lives.
Sometimes, it's hard to put my finger on it; but out on the water, I strip down to my shorts nonetheless just to fully feel those elements. I might not realize why, and the sunburn is a tattoo from that day.
There are promises of fishing. Maybe this Saturday; it’s supposed to reach 70 degrees. Or there’s the overnighter in the mountains once the snow melts. Or maybe it will be a short walk down to the end of the road while I’m visiting my mom, the place where I grew up. It might even be just down at the fishing pier for an hour and a half at lunch.
But it’s promise, and it’s hope. And it lives in me, and it will live on.
There was a time a bit more than seven months ago when the days were longer than I could fill with the tedious little projects in the garage, the paddling out on the river, the puttering around the yard, the poring over magazines only feared to someone, such as me, who lives within that niche.
That lost time in a day coincided with the birth of my first child, Kostyn Orrie — named after my Polish grandfather whom I never met but, according to my mother, was one of the strongest, proudest and true family men who ever walked the earth — and the middle name comes from my father, the most sincere, gentle, nurturing and genuine person I’ve ever known or even heard of. Kostyn, as an infant, is a very special little boy because I don't miss all that extra time that’s been sucked into the vortex known as parenthood: I long for his interruptions, I rush to get home from the office, I give up planning big fishing trips to faraway places and Saturday jaunts in the kayak amid a South Carolina summer sky that reflects in the braids of marsh rivers bigger than all of Montana, Texas and maybe even the Canadian plains.
Someday soon Kostyn will accompany me down to Harbor River or Johnson Creek for a few minutes of fishing the spartina for a wandering trout or brave redfish.I might fasten him to my chest or maybe onto my back with one of those baby-carrying devices that seem to be all the rage. The “father” on the box is some 21-year-old Swedish guy with a ripped six-pack and a full mop of hair, plying the French Riviera or some peaceful boardwalk a million miles away. My middle-age sprawl would probably put my boy in a somewhat-less-than-vertical position on my belly, but he might grab the fly rod should I strap him to my back.
It used to be a thing: Saturday mornings were for fishing. I'd set my Timex wristwatch, and, miraculously, a moment before it would chime the softest of chimes, I'd be awake, roll quietly out of bed as to not stir my bride, grab my gear without stirring the dog (too much) and jump in the truck before the sun slit the horizon out on the great Sea Islands.
And, inevitably, I'd forget something. Usually something in the way of a breakfast sandwich or bait, either of which I'd stop for with little hesitation or self-deprecation.
There was a blues program on the college radio station that probably started sometime after midnight for those Friday night partygoers and blue-collared crowd who had a few too many or planned on having a few more. The music accompanied me to the fishing holes. And it was appropriate, because it was natural — a one-off from bluegrass, in many respects.
I kept a journal for awhile, too. I lost it during a windy morning on the fishing pier.
But I've fished just a handful of times since June 2, 2007. And that's OK; there will be a lot more fishing in my, our, future. The cold Northern streams' water runs through my memory, although I haven't fished the Northeast but maybe once or twice a year since my 20s. But I've not lost the zeal for it, and I can spin the yarn with the best of them about the fishing holes found and the fish lost on the AuSable, Bouquet, Saranac or Mohawk rivers.
But times come when I run into old friends or acquaintances — or even family. I notice that we don't talk about fishing much anymore. At least not the way we used to. And that's a shame. See, they've also put their fishing on hold or just stopped doing it. I have a good friend here who only wants to fish for the big ones. That means a boat or a trip to a big-fish area. A full day and a lot of money. He's full of zeal, but there's not a lot of motion. In short, one foot on the bumper in the parking lot, he spins and re-spins the tales of when he used to fish more regularly.
Other friends used to be more religious about their fishing. They've lost the faith, and it shows. We talk about old times out on the islands or rivers, or we just avoid the subject altogether, like a particularly hard death of a close friend. I also know folks who talk about fishing or spent time darning their flies or polishing their reels, but the last time they fished was with me, way back, and I can't remember when...
What fishing does is remove one's soul from this grind of overworked and overindulged artificial life and brings us to the very natural and basic means of survival, where the simplicity is deafening and the reward astounding.
Even if there are no fish today. Or tomorrow.
The quiet time, that time to think or not think at all, to feel nothing but natural elements — cold, smooth stones underfoot, cold water compressing around my bare legs, veiled breeze only felt inches from the water's surface, the smell of salt, sand, dendrites on the banks, marsh air, pure air, fish oil, insect, animal, cork, steel, bamboo, wood. None of this exists in the manmade world in which we spend most of our lives.
Sometimes, it's hard to put my finger on it; but out on the water, I strip down to my shorts nonetheless just to fully feel those elements. I might not realize why, and the sunburn is a tattoo from that day.
There are promises of fishing. Maybe this Saturday; it’s supposed to reach 70 degrees. Or there’s the overnighter in the mountains once the snow melts. Or maybe it will be a short walk down to the end of the road while I’m visiting my mom, the place where I grew up. It might even be just down at the fishing pier for an hour and a half at lunch.
But it’s promise, and it’s hope. And it lives in me, and it will live on.
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