Tippet & Leader

Keeping it reel

2010-08-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

What exactly does one really need, equipment-wise, to fly fish?
Will we really be more successful with a $500 Tibor reel or a $600 Orvis rod?
We've been stunned by the dumb ray of consumerism.
If we spent more time on the river and less window shopping, we'd not only catch more fish, but we could sock that money away toward a charter out to an Alaskan fishing camp or at least a new tie rod for the F-150.
When I think of the legends of fly fishing in the golden age of bamboo Grangers and bullet-proof Hardys, I can't help imagine what they'd say about us dandies with our featherlite waders, titanium gadget yokes and $200 eco-friendly nets.
A man needs but a decent rod and reel and a willingness to listen to the river.
It's no wonder people scoff at fly fishermen as if we were golfers sporting plaid knickers. What's next, fish finders?

Completing the circle

2010-08-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Like the realization of following a sticky compass toward an errant direction, I changed my plans from planning an early-autumn fishing trip to the Catskills to head up to the Adirondacks to fish the Au Sable River with my buddy, Jerry.
It's been years since I've fished either branch. And since moving back to the Northeast from South Carolina two years ago, I figured why not take the opportunity to get back to the waters in which I had learned to fly fish more than 20 years ago?
Then it hit me: It will have been a year, nearly to the day, since legendary fly tier and fisherman Fran Betters passed.
And when Jerry and I slip quietly into the river amid the pall of toolie fog and scent of fresh balsam and stream-wet rocks, I will fasten the same Au Sable Wulff that Fran tied for me not quite two months before his death.
It's amazing to me all the people I've told this story to, about how Fran tied some of his famous Wulffs for me more than 20 years ago and pointed me in the right direction. You can read that story at http://tippetandleader.blogspot.com/2009/07/for-better-or-for-worse.html, along with some other thoughts.
It's also amazing to me that what I have along with a handful of Wulffs, a hand that still remembers Fran's gentle handshake, and the joy that my oldest boy, Kostyn, got to meet the legend, that this story will nearly complete its full circle in a couple of weeks.
Like the gentle ripple from softly cast fly, so is Fran's legacy.

Ghosts of anglers past

2010-05-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

Many men have trodden upon these creekside paths long before I. They've kicked the very same sand on the beaches I've surf-cast from. They've waded the very same waters, ate from the same blackberry bushes and looked up over the very same mountains to see where the wet balsam-soaked breeze was coming from.

Did they use a blue winged olive or a was it the light Cahill? Did they cast right off that eddy, or did they let their line float gently through it? I wonder if they sat on this bank, watching the beauty and grace of a 12-inch brown between the flecks of light shining through breeze-blown maple leaves.

Sometimes I'm there with them. They are casting perfectly above me, and I'm OK with that. The water doesn't move around them. They are unnoticed by everyone. Sometimes it's an old man with a split-cane rod propped upon a rock. Or a young boy with a creel full of rainbows for his mama to make for supper. Sometimes it's my father, who's looking deep into the riffle to see what's stone and what's flesh, and who's face he sees in the reflection.

I talk with them, I do. I write notes to them with my cast. "It's amazing, isn't it?" They never answer, but they smile back, proud like the father of a boy who's learned and is carrying on tradition, if not his legacy.

A shout out to a new friend with a lot in common

2009-09-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

...and a shameless plug to myself:
http://tippetsandleaders.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/tippet-and-leader-blog-no-not-this-blog-by-another-guy/#comment-235

Passing down gifts from one father to another

2009-09-02T11:29:00.001-07:00

Note: This blog was published Sun, Jun 15, 2008, in The Beaufort (S.C.) Gazette

I don't know how old I was or whether I opened a suspiciously long package tied up in gift wrap one Saturday morning. I don't know if the rod and reel inside that wrap was new or used, if it was old and had been polished by my dad or whether he bought it one night while he moonlighted selling lawnmowers at the Montgomery Ward just up the road from our house.

I don't remember the first time I cast it or the last time. I wish I knew where it was today.

But I do know the reel was a Johnson Skipper 125 with closed bail and the little thumb trigger on it, and it was green and sort of an off-white with a white handle.

The rod it was attached to might have been 3 or 4 feet. It was a two-piece, though; I remember this because Dad had shown me how to rub the tip of the ferrule behind my ear to get it good and greasy so that it would slide into the female end. It, too, was sort of an off-white with a tint of green to it, like an Easter egg that was taken from the green food-coloring dye way too early. It had red threaded wraps around the shiny steel guides.

As I sit in my office writing this, I can occasionally glance at an old photograph of that rod and reel in the small and clumsy hands of maybe a 5- or 6-year old boy. But the rod is holding steady because my father's right hand is gently guiding it as we fish off a small bridge over the Erie Canal near a place called Poverty Flats in central New York State.

Although I can remember my first open bale reel — a brand called Match, which my dad must have thought was "Mitchell" when we bought it from an old fly-tier who worked out of his garage a mile or so from our house. It was green, just like a Mitchell, and the style of lettering was very similar. Of course the price was far cheaper, and Dad thought we got a great deal on it.

I couldn't tell you how happy I was to have a better reel than the Montgomery Ward Speed-King my dad used. He often reminded me.

It's been years since I had replaced the Mitchell — or Match — but I never noticed that it wasn't the real deal until a year or so ago when I pulled it from an old fishing box that my dad gave me and looked at the label. I was half expecting to find a vintage Mitchell from 1972 or so. I found a Match.

I never bothered to search for the brand on the Internet; 35 years later, it hardly matters. I still have that reel, and it means the world to me, even though it doesn't work anymore.

The box in which it sits is of old wood, a bit bigger than a shoe box, with a picture of a tall ship shellacked onto it. Inside are several old reels; Shakespeares, Speed-Kings, Pfluegers and the old Match. Each reel has a story, and none ever worked for me except the Match, which, of course, no longer works, either.

The Shakespeare is the one my dad used for years and years as we plunked from stream to river to pond to lake all over the wilderness of my childhood. The Speed-Kings are baitcasters, and I never recall my dad fishing with those. They make great paperweights, though. The Pflueger "was retired," my dad used to say. It was a present from his bride. That one's very special to me.

The one reel that's not in the box, however, is the Johnson. Why did I memorize that model? Why can I close my eyes and feel it in my hand? Why do I feel very close to my dad when I think about it? He's been gone from this good earth for more than a decade, and I hadn't fished with it since I maybe I was 6 or 7.

I do remember the day that picture was taken, although, for the life of me, I can't remember who took the picture. Girls weren't allowed, so it wasn't one of my four sisters and definitely not my mom. It could have been my Uncle Fritz. Or it could have been my dad's best friend, Lenny.

Man, that photo — my dad's grin is ear to ear. It's the way I most remember him: A smile as though it started somewhere far down deep in his soul, gained steam in his heart, and, like a full-body exhale of pride and satisfaction, lit up his face. Even the bushy 1970s mustache couldn't hide it.

The love for the outdoors and fishing had been instilled in me one Saturday morning at a time. And even walking into the garage to look at my fishing tackle hanging from the wall on any given day sparks feelings of pride — a strong connection to my father.

A social psychologist may link it to the ritual of hunting and gathering, a skill and art passed down from father to son, instilled young as we watch and learn to survive. Maybe that's bunk. Maybe it's just the enormous and swollen pride that my father felt as we hopped in the car on a Saturday morning to adventure off to uncharted territory, free to eat cheeseburgers at greasy diners, listen to the radio loud and bang on the dashboard, trespass on property and fish in rivers that only the Mohawk Indians every fished in, so he'd tell me as he kicked the shale underfoot to uncover a genuine Mohawk arrowhead, as if on cue.

I can honestly say that I couldn't have written this memoir a year ago. While the reel has been on my mind since the day it was presented to me, I didn't know the feeling of pride that it was packaged with — that is until I had a boy of my own one year ago.

Kostyn Orrie shares the middle name of my dad's first name by no mistake. I have plans for us. And they involve retelling the tales my own father told me when I was just a boy. They involve us ramrodding the unpaved roads of this world until they end at a trout stream or a bass hole where we will fish, eat wild berries and catch fish.

So one day recently, out of these fond memories and the promises of days fishing together, I searched and searched and found what I was looking for.

A Johnson Skipper 125.

There it was, sitting behind the glass of an Internet shopping store. It was listed under the vintage items, and I would have paid $300 for it in a second.

It was, however, not quite 5 bucks. The postage was another $4. Funny thing is that it was only barely used, still with the box. And it's the same exact model that I had back in 1970.

Despite that my son is too young to use the reel — and even when he is old enough, he might not understand the significance of an old green reel when all his friends have bright gold Penns — my heart will glow.

He may not cry when it breaks, and someday he'll probably forget he even held it in his hands.

But maybe he will remember.

Either way, I'll make it a point to keep it running, just like my dad did, and when he retires it, I'll put it in that old box, and maybe someday he'll pick it up, spin it in his hands a few times and smile.

As I celebrate my second Father's Day, it's impossible not to tie the intangible gifts that were handed down, those that stay within us, and those that we pass down to the next generation.

PMD hiaku

2009-09-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

Pale morning dun glows bright,
stuck in a spider’s web
The cycle of life.

Saturday stream

2009-08-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Saturday, and I’m planning on waking before dawn, schlepping on the rain gear and heading out to the stream just across from my house. The fish here are spooky. In fact, their spookiness is legendary. The Letort Spring Run is a limestone spring-fed creek with all sorts of natives and stockies that tend to hug the underbrush of the banks and flat-out refuse to take a fly if you, your reflection or your shadow are anywhere in sight.
A buddy of mine who’s fished this stream all his life tells me that while he’ll show up in his hip waders, he doesn’t usually enter the water at all. He fishes from the bank. He’d know. Like I said, all his life, and judging from the looks of him, I’d say that’s probably around 30 years. He actually gave me three spots on the creek that he’s had some degree of success on. One right near his grandparents’ farm, one down the road from a supermarket, and the last, near and adult video store.
I’ve not been on Letort. See, I just moved to this town from about 20 miles up the road, and there was plenty of good fishing in that neck of the woods. But who can pass up a renown stream such as this, often called “the birthplace of American flyfishing?” Not me. Five-hundred yards away, the stream runs from my front door, right near an abandoned railbed, so public access shouldn’t be a problem.
It’s one of the three places Mark told me about; but I could wade up stream to the one near the grocery store.
I’ll let you know how I do, but I’m not expecting much.
Hoping, sure, but not expecting.

Hackle up

2009-08-24T07:03:00.000-07:00

Some of the best fly-tying I’ve done has been sitting at someone else’s kitchen table the night before a journey to a new trout stream. Or in the way back of the SUV, rushing to figure out that pattern of that rust-colored caddis or bright sulfur dun.
I’m not one of those guys who packs the tying kit into his vest or even leaves it in the SUV, but I will bring it along for a long weekend of fishing, especially in places that I haven’t fished before and mostly in odd geographies.
I remember bass fishing in a series of central Florida lakes not too long ago with my father-in-law, Tom. You could kick a pebble into the lake and these ugly lunkers would eat it, but cast a dry fly above it, and for get it. They’d nuzzle it, and not liking the tickle on their noses, turn away, one by one. I’m sure if I have a hotdog or some popcorn, I’d have been all set.
The bass, however, were eating these small dragonflies, so dark blue they were black.
So that night, knowing that we’d be back fishing the next morning, we tied a couple of these things over a couple of Samuel Adams and slices of pizza. Not much too it: Take a streamer hook, spin some black muskrat onto the thing, section off the body with black thread, leave a nice long “tail” hooking up, bead the head and tie in a couple of small black mallard wings, and poof, the perfect little dragonflies.
I thought that was pretty cool. They were astonishingly lifelike creatures and sat nicely on the table.
The next day, we went back to the lake, tied on the dragonflies, but the bass had moved on and were no longer interested in the dragonflies. First of all, we were fishing in the afternoon the day before, and you couldn’t cast without almost hitting a dragonfly. But the next morning, the dragonflies were nowhere to be found.
(We ended up using some colorful dry flies, and did OK. But I have to say it was a little disappointing to not have caught a five-pounder on a home-tied and concocted dragonfly pattern.)
Then there was the time Tom and I fished the Holston River in eastern Tennessee while the snow was still dripping off the Blue Ridge. We had a load of nymphs, and it poured rain most of the time we were there. Except one night, near the Holston Dam, as we were heading in, a man who looked like an Orvis model walked out, beaming ear to ear. Most folks were getting out of the river, and we had merely come down to see what the access was like, to return the next morning.
The man clearly was happy to be back in the river after what was probably a long winter, even for eastern Tennessee. I had to ask how he did. He said great. Then he handed me a No. 20 hook with a bead of brown thread woven around it. “I caught a few monsters on this.”
I took the gift, thanked him, jumped into my waders and sprinted for the dam.
With about a half-hour of daylight left, I made a cast, felt a tug, set the hook and pulled. The tipped snapped, and the fish took off with the gift. I tried some other small nymphs, ornately tied. Nothing.
Raging against the dying of the light and Tom waiting patiently on the bank, I felt my way back to the bank and told Tom, “Let’s go tie a bunch of these tonight.”
We ate a couple of greasy cheeseburgers, headed back to the cabin, got out the beer and the kits, and tied caviar.
That night, a cold front rolled through like a hurricane, and brought with it torrential downpours. The rain was so cold, it should have been snow. It stung our faces and numbed our hands, but there we were, back on the river waist-deep, shivering and throwing copper eggs at inactive fish.
Skunked again.
Weather changes, fish change, streams rise and fall. Sometimes they ice over, sometimes they warm up. Hatches change. Sometimes they look more brown, other times more gray. You just don’t know. Fly tiers, then, have to be prepared and willing to walk out of the river, sit down on the bank or back in the way back of the SUV, and spend a half hour or hour tying the insect du jour. Not everything exists in a fly box, although I’ve seen men with libraries in their vests.
It’s easy to catch fish on your home waters, and it’s easy when a guide points you in the right direction or a buddy has done his homework. But to be truly prepared, well, that takes the ability to shift gears and hackle up.

Anticipating the season's end

2009-08-20T12:58:00.000-07:00

Here it is, mid August, 91 degrees, a thick haze cloaks downtown Harrisburg.
And all I can think about is winter.
Am I nuts?
I’ve often written and spoke about the seasons, how they force you to uproot routine, adapt, adjust... These are good traits to have. As a Northeasterner, you’re forced deal with uncertainty. Maybe not so much as an Alaskan or New Foundlander (although, there is a definite rhythm to their lives, because the alternative isn’t merely whether you can fish on a Saturday morning in the rain or snow, but whether you might actually live to tell about it). Spontaneity doesn’t just come from a serendipitous persona or a Picabo Street upbringing (although these things are important ingredients); you have to have an open mind and your fishing gear in a pile by the door (or better – already in the back of your SUV) so that when the thunderstorm stops, the wife takes the babies shopping with your mother-in-law on a Wednesday night, or the lawnmower won’t start on a Saturday morning, you can be in your waders, on the river, with the correct pattern all in about a half-hour.
But with the changing seasons, the weather, the type of precipitation, come changes in the way you fish, the flies you use, the rivers you chose.
Then comes winter, and, for the most part, you’re replacing the rods, waders and vest in the back of the SUV with sandbags and an emergency shovel. You start thinking more about clearing off the desk, maybe moving it back under the window so that you can gaze across the road, field, mountains in between adding a band of elk hair to a caddis or tinsel to a coachmen. There’s all the hope that comes with a new season, although it may still be months away from opening day. You’ll fish: Down South, or when you feel pent up enough to venture into the frigid streams on a balmy winter day. Your fly inventory will grow, as will your skills. Most importantly, you’ll become a better fly tier and take some time to think rather than do. Meticulously plan. Take apart ever gear in each reel. Pore through catalogs for that perfect five-weight.
You’ll think back on all those little weekend jaunts or big fishing trips. Maybe even those perfect river days with a buddy or by yourself. That huge brown, that fighting rainbow. The mountains, scent of balsam, sting of cold morning that changes so sudden into a warm summer day. The blooms that weren’t that just last weekend. The school of fish that are getting smarter, bigger, stronger.
You’ll go over your favorite spot on your favorite creek and wonder how the ice, the strong spring currents and the winter storms will change it. How you’ll adapt.
It’s a seasonal meditation, and it’s something I long for.
I used to have an old sailboat. She was a beauty – a real Yankee catboat. She was eighteen feet, eight at the beam, with the most gorgeous lines. I secretly loved the comments that I would get when I passed by fellow sailors on their gargantuan yachts or folks on the dock saying how lovely she was. I knew it. I loved her, too. It’s why I acquired her in the first place. She was art on the water. Brightwork and brass.
And I loved to sail her. To feel the spray from her bow, to smell the salt and spartina on the rivers and sounds, to hear the water lapping at her hull.
But as much as I loved sailing her, I loved sanding and stripping the boat each spring, varnishing the brightwork, polishing the brass, painting the hull, oiling the teak. Setting her slowly in the water, and she’d reflect hard.
See, the planning, the preparation, the purchasing of the right materials. Spending time on the craftsmanship of it. Improving her. Anticipating what she’d look like when the last of the bootstripe was painted on, when the great white sail was hoisted, when she cut the first wave under sail.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I believe this of just about anything we do. Sure, you don’t want that absence to be so long that you forget; but just long enough to allow you to appreciate what you’re missing. It’s a good discipline, and it translates well into fly fishing.
So, sure, it’s mid August, and the rivers are warm and the evening hatches are abundant. But there’s anticipation for the end of the season, and the beginning of a new one.

Puzzle pieces

2009-08-19T13:27:00.001-07:00

I’ve mentioned a couple things about my fishing or personal ticks a time or two, but it really takes going back through a year of one’s own notes to pluck out the really consistent ones – those that, if you were popular enough to whatever group, when mocking you, they’d personify these traits.
I’ve had reporters in my newsrooms do or say “Chrisisms:” Rubbing their foreheads with two hands while pretending to edit a particularly grueling story; saying, “Here’s the thing,” as they pretend to enlighten a reporter or just stand there with their hands in their pockets aloof, as if they’re a million miles away.
You get the idea.
But back to that list of ticks. And mind you, I’m not complaining.
I like to fish alone, generally. This way, there’s no one to perch upstream of me, no one to tell me when to go home (or the converse of that), no one to think I’m nuts for wanting to wade up the river a couple of miles or camp in a den of rattlesnakes.
Then again, there’s no one to carry me out of the woods after a rattlesnake bite or to cut off my waders when they’re filling up with water… I realize this, so I tend to be more conservative out there alone.
The second tick is that I tend to not be conservative enough out there. Oh, sure, I carry a first-aid kit, don’t go chasing bear cubs or throw rocks at copperheads, but I have an odd broken compass somewhere in my mind that always seems to point “through there,” or “just up over that ridge” or, worse, “just across that deep part there.”
I’m 43 and relatively healthy. I haven’t been bitten, attacked, mulled, shot at (well, once, but that was on a mountain bike in a farmer’s field in deer season), or drowned. I have two small boys and a lovely wife, and although my life insurance payments are current, I have no plans to not enjoy a long life with them.
I’m a bit antisocial. If there are 70 miles of river, and the first 10 are shoulder-to-shoulder, I’m going to hike or drive up to find the place that I don’t see signs of people or modern life for that matter. I don’t want to see another fly rod – or worse, a bait caster – upstream, don’t want to hear road noise, if there’s a power line, I’m out of there, and God forbid if there is a No Trespassing sign.
I know this: I need therapy.
But that’s exactly why I’m out here. The wilderness of it all, a simpler time (with the cushion of knowing modern life -- which include snake-bite units at the local hospitals, Dunkin’Donuts, a warm, dry bed – is about an hour from the trout stream) is what I’m after. That and trout, and both being equal to present the result of the perfect fishing spot.
I also prefer to listen to Gordon Lightfoot or some other sort of folky old music on the way to the stream – or nothing at all. I’ve been known to drive 1,000 miles at a time without so much as looking down at the radio or thinking about popping in a CD. I couldn’t tell you what’s in my CD deck right now. That doesn’t mean I don’t like music; it’s just that I relish silence. Like to hear the wind with the windows down, feel the rush of air, even if it’s cold, blowing against my face or elbow. I like my mind to wander over mountains, above the pines, over the ridges and out to that perfect 70-foot-wide river, just below the bend, where the silt’s built up on the near bank, and under the shade of the far bank, trout sit hungry, waiting for food to come downstream or fall from the rushes above.
It’s a selfish thing, I realize, but when putting oneself in nature, you want 100 percent on that connection.
As I’ve also mentioned, I have two boys, and I can’t wait for them to be old enough to join me streamside. I don’t know what it is, but I picture the three of us loading up the truck early on a Saturday morning, driving just long enough to be “out there,” and watching with pride as my two boys reel in the big ones much better and more skilled than their dad. What the heck, I don’t think I’ll even need to fish again. I might just sit on the bank and watch them as I make a pot of coffee or snap pictures.
And then there are the occasional fishing buddies (and I hope they’ve read this far. I fear they may not call me again). Jerry, Tom, Bob, Ian, BJ, to name a few. Folks I’ve come to enjoy fishing with over time, and have left me with a trove of great memories.
There was the time Ian got stuck in mud on a South Carolina riverbank, and I thought we’d have to call the fire department to run a line across the plough mug to pull him out (we were remote, so it would have been a very long line…). Or the time Bob and I had to be heli-rescued by the Coast Guard as the skiff’s engine refused to budge and the cold, February afternoon tides were lapping at us. That also was in South Carolina. There was the day Tom and I stood for hours waist-deep in a frigid east Tennessee river in a downpour worthy of the apocalypse with not so much as a snag. There was the great hurricane week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with Jerry, Ian and BJ, when we cast five-ounce British Sinkers and five ounces of mullet on thirty-pound test straight into a full gale.
Mind you, they weren’t all bad times – in fact, they were great. But, by and large, I had a hand in it. It was I who dragged Ian through the treacherous river banks. I who said we should leave the boat in the water rather than pulling it up on the bank (although it was Bob who left the key in the “on” position), I who said early March fishing in Tennessee would be warm enough, I who said, “screw it, let’s fish,” as the sand ripped at our clothing and stung our faces.
And maybe that’s another reason, or the whole reason, I venture off solo. Not that I mind taking grief for dragging people along on my hellish rides; that I feel guilty for doing so.
I apologize an awful lot to fishing buddies: “Sorry I dragged you through that muck; Sorry we walked all that way; Sorry I cast to your fish…”
And I’ve been doing it forever. This is the part of the story where I place blame, and it’s not at the hands of my parents. Well, my dad had an “adventurous” spirit, so it’s somewhat genetic. But it was probably my cousins, Cory and Stephen.
See, growing up, it’s not that we fished a whole lot together. But we got in trouble a lot together, and it was simply because: A. We were boys; and B. We had a lot to prove to ourselves and, mostly, each other. Stephen could climb trees higher than squirrels or ants. He’d get up so high, the tree would sway. Cory would climb down 200-foot waterfalls just to prove he was tougher than we were. I’d devise a cockamamie idea to traverse a busy two-lane road by running a rope from the top of one tree to the midsection of another across the way. Fortunately, we were busted before we could set sail…
These things tend to shape your personality, especially at such a young and impressionable age. And I realize, too, that one day, my boys are going to be padding over a small waterfalls, riding an ice slab down a half-frozen river, figuring out how to remove the expensive lure from a four-and-a-half-foot-long shark’s mouth or wondering if it’s safer to lie down flat on the ground or sprint the mile or two out of the woods to the car during the freak and powerful lightning storm (I vote run -- even in waders).
I wonder – and hope – whether they’ll want to fish with me.
But for some reason, and for all of that, my friends still want to fish with me, so maybe my kids will, too. Or maybe they’ll just feel sorry for me. Or maybe they go it’s because they know I’ll let them drink Mountain Dew and eat chocolate-chip pancakes for the breakfast that I’ll buy them, just as my dad did when I was a boy.
Jerry is one of my oldest friends, and he’s my newest fishing buddy. We were roommates in college a couple of times, and whenever we are sitting around a campfire, driving to a river, or retying tippets on the bank, I remember just how similar we are. That’s what brought me to being his roommate in the first place, thinking, “he’s kinda like the brother I never had” (without being too mushy). What I mean is that it’s like we grew up together. We had similar opinions of things, strong opinions, even. We understood the beauty of utility (although he recently bought an Audi that whenever we go fishing he regrets doing), we see through bullshit, although through different lenses: He’s a cop, I’m a journalist (and you’d think that would be a cat-dog thing, but we have a mutual respect for each other’s public service or gluttony for punishment), and, most importantly, we’re strong family guys with an enormous appetite, love and respect for the outdoors.
Which is why, while rifling through back roads between Coburn and Mifflintown, Pennsylvania as we sought the perfect – well, any good unposted – spot on Penn’s Creek, we drove a little slower as the clouds draped the Poe and Paddy ridges of the Alleghenies, took the foot off the gas pedal when we drove through a field of pre-dusk fireflies – thousands of them at chest-level, as if we were going through the time warp scene in the original “Star Wars.” Sitting around the campfire with a few ice-cold Newcastles, listening to the croakers on the pond. Staring up at the sharp ridge towering 1,000 feet straight up from Penn’s Creek, like the hand of a sundial blocking out the sun.
There were no fish that weekend. Too hot, perhaps, too something. The local fly shop owner was stumped. He told us there were something like 30,000 trout per square mile of river, square foot. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t have mattered. They weren’t interested in the array of flies I brought or bought at the shop, the array of presentations, the yellow pale morning duns landing on the water or the sulfurs hatching on the near bank.
I can’t say that it didn’t matter – it always matters. Catching fish is nothing short of opening presents under the Christmas tree. So despite all the festive lights, the snowfall, the fire in the fireplace, or the scent of fresh pastries wafting from the oven, getting a new Orvis reel is always a treat.
So is catching a brown in unfamiliar waters.
The other quality the Jerry and I share, even though we’ve never talked about it and I’m only assuming this: Fishing buddies shouldn’t be obtrusive. It’s like when someone’s trying to talk to you when you’re reading a good book or write a blog post.
I sound like a hermit, I know. The whole Man v. Nature thing is different. The rules aren’t the same. There are laws. Or maybe there aren’t, and shouldn’t be; just respect.
Respect or the peace and tranquility, for the connection. Despite all our wires and fast-food coursing through our veins, we’re as organic as the next oak or bullfrog.
So maybe they’re not really ticks at all, just, I don’t know, particles connecting like a missing puzzle piece.
You step off the bank and into the river, and the picture becomes complete.

Gingrich

2009-07-13T12:49:00.001-07:00

"A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it."
- Arnold Gingrich

For Betters or for Worse

2009-07-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

The first time I met legendary fly-fisherman, rod builder, fly tier and author Fran Betters, I was 20 years old and didn’t know a Wulff from a caddis. I also didn’t know that the west branch of the Ausable River in Wilmington, N.Y., or more specifically the trophy water stretch near Fran’s Adirondack Sport Shop, would come back to haunt me some 22 years later.
Yet here I am.
I spent my college years at Plattsburgh State studying journalism, environmental conservation and the rivers, trails, peaks and history of the Adirondack Park, a park so vast you could fit Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Glacier National parks into it and still have room left over. This place is familiar, if not sacred, to me.
Needless to say, perhaps, the park’s trout streams are also legendary, and none more so than the Ausable, which bounds along in two branches as it rushes its way into Lake Champlain nearly 40 miles east and over boulders so big and gorges so steep that only God himself could have created them.
Anyone who’s fought a brown trout in the blue ribbon waters or seen Fran cast a fly into a paper cup is probably a believer, too.
Some 23 years later, here I watch the mighty Ausable once more. June has given way to July, and the dry season has begun. The river’s level is by no stretch low, but the whitewater-adrenaline kayakers have long left the rapids brought on by the High Peaks’ snowmelt and spring rains.
Surprisingly, I don’t have a fly rod in my hand. Instead, I have a thought in my mind as my wife and two boys peer over the roadside from inside my slow-moving SUV up a 10 percent grade.
Could I do this again?

###

After a ham sandwich at The Evening Hatch, the restaurant attached to Adirondack Sport Shop, I chat with the eatery’s new owner, John. I ask him how business is, how long he’s run the joint and what the future looks like. Nine months in, he’s optimistic. But there is a little hesitation, because his landlord, Fran Betters himself, is approaching the end of his life. His heart is giving out.
I’d known this: It’s the reason I’m here, in a peripheral way. See, Fran’s selling his shop, and, although it still sounds a million miles away, I’m interested in buying it.
That is, me and just about everyone with a connection to this place.
Now, those of you who know me know I don’t have boatloads of venture capital, and I’m leagues away from being a trust-funder. But, as the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I walk back to the fly shop through a french door where Fran, now in his late 70s, occupies a chair at the opposite end, but stays still sort of in the middle of it all.
He doesn’t look too good. The first indicator is that he is half resting on a bed pillow, sort of propped up, and the second is that he is breathing somewhat laboriously through a tube. He also doesn’t look up from his fly-tying bench as I approach, but I pick up my oldest son, Kostyn, just a smattering over two years old, and tell him to say hello to Mr. Betters, thinking it will bring a smile to the old fisherman’s face.
It works. But I’m more than a bit taken aback by Fran’s condition. Admittedly, I choke. I want to tell him what an influence he was as a fisherman and a writer, and that, although he won’t remember me watching over his shoulder as he expertly tied his famed Ausable Wulff pattern or signed a copy of his book, “Flyfishing in the Adirondacks,” he is a giant. And although my son probably won’t remember this day either, at least he can say he met the man.
In the end, that’s good enough for me. Fran looks up from his chair, half-smiles and says, “I bet you’re going to be a fisherman someday,” or something along those lines, I don’t quite remember. It’s a nice gesture. I keep thinking that this might be the last time I come back to his shop, at least with him sitting here.

###

As the story goes, when Fran was a young man with dreams of becoming an engineer, he was in a horrific car accident and suffered a broken back and some other bones. He was lucky to be alive let alone walk, and he was told he probably wouldn’t live into his 40s. In the mid ‘6os, he traded cut logs for the property that his former shop sat on -- less than a half mile up Route 86 from where the current shop is. For nearly 50 years, he has continued to inspire, teach and motivate thousands of fishermen -- like me -- as they plied the waters of the Ausable, Saranac and Bouquet, or some other waters around the planet.
He’s a master fly tier, and at least two of his patters, the Haystack and the Ausable Wulff made him world famous. Field & Stream magazine named his Wulff a top 10 pattern of all-time. That’s saying something in a fly fishing world that has literally thousands of patterns and variations, and more coming every day.
Fran likes to share his knowledge, holding clinics, classes, writing guides and books and just chatting casually from his helm in the fly shop. That’s where my education began. I flipped through a book in his shop one day after a unsuccessful jaunt on the river, and I decided I’d buy it. The author, after all, was sitting right there. The woman behind the counter told me he might just sign it for me, as if to help make the sale. He did. Then I asked about the river and the fly patterns. When I left, I had with me more than a few famous flies and a signed book; I had inspiration and a bit of knowledge I knew even then I probably would have to grow into.
It’s probably worth noting that I didn’t leave Plattsburgh that summer to go home like most of the other students did. Stupidly, I was married young, and I took a lot of the mornings I didn’t have to work and headed into the mountains to hone my fly fishing skills. Little did I know that learning to fish in the Ausable was at least as stupid as getting married as a college kid. No use in dredging that up, but I did have a lot of time in that short year of matrimony to fish and learn a lot about the area.
But once my studies ended, I left the region and never went back.
Here are some highlights from that time (out of order merely for effect):
1. Catching a 12-inch brown in the trophy section of the Ausable out of probably nothing but dumb luck;
2. Learning how to fish pockets and cast long in the Saranac;
3. Stumbling through logging roads and coming across the most beautiful stretch of the Bouquet River imaginable;
4. Learning to nymph in the early spring’s ferocious cold; and
5. Watching Fran Betters tie an Ausable Wulff.
Years later, I spent some time in the Catskills, then back up to Albany before leaving the Northeast for Florida then South Carolina. It was in South Carolina that I hit what may have been my midlife crisis, and wanting all things from my childhood and the glory days that followed, I bought an old hot-rod truck, started drumming again, plotted to move back to the Northeast and began fly fishing exclusively (except when I went to the Outer Banks, but I promise that this year, I’m bringing the 10-foot saltwater flyrod).
Now, back in the Northeast and fishing some pretty incredible waters in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area, and the Adirondacks closer within my reach, I find that, like a magnet, the peaks and the Ausable are tugging pretty hard. After all, this was the place this once-young idealist thought he’d end up. And maybe it’s not too late.
Or maybe it’s not meant to be, who knows? But it’s a load of fun to think about, and I’ll always have those memories and be building more as time and the good Lord allow.

###

As I leave Adirondack Sport Shop in the fog Fran leaves me in, I think about a life back near Lake Placid, in the shadow of Whiteface Mountain and the High Peaks. I think about mountain biking, hiking, skiing, snowshoeing and fishing. I think about my boys running around a lodge that I’d have built up with the help of family and friends. I think about the satisfaction of handing it down to those boys, who would grow up, much like Fran, solid and knowledgeable fishermen and all-around good men. I think about my wife, our families, working hard to build a dream, and that this dream wouldn’t be mine alone.
That’s all the stuff you think about when dreaming, isn’t it?
I wonder how many other folks who have been moved by Fran feel the same way. I wonder if they’re contemplating looking at his tax returns, what’s coming in, what’s going out. Talking to Realtors, banks, family. I wonder if it could work. Is it too much a gamble? Is the competition too great? Too emotional to be a good deal? How would I run a shop that a master fly tier and rod builder, a practical legend, built? Who would come to see me?
Maybe I can tie a fly that would make Field & Stream’s top 10 of all-time. Probably not. But maybe I can make a go of it.
God puts us all in places that we never know we’re going to be, and whether we’re OK with that idea or not, I tend to find comfort in that. Testimony: I’ve never found myself eating out of garbage cans or shivering under a bridge, for that matter.
So I’m doing three things this week (again, not in order, for effect):
1. Calling the Realtor to look at those returns;
2. Putting together a simple business plan; and
3. Writing a letter to Fran to properly thank him.

The Birthday Trout

2009-07-06T12:05:00.001-07:00

There are two types of old men in this world: Those with the patient, gentle-breathing tranquility and perspective only years of experience and perseverance can bring, and those too impatient to look behind them when they’re backing out of their driveways, blaming the kid who put his now-flattened bike beneath the grump’s Buick in the first place.
And it’s becoming more and more apparent to me that the older I get, the more I am in the former camp, but still have the tendencies of the latter.
Fortunately, though, and for the record, I am neither, simply because I’m a mere 43. I seem to be, however, at sort of a crossroads deciding which direction to take.
I know this because when Jerry and I made plans a month ago to fish on West Canada Creek, I had to hold back from telling him that I wanted to be on the river bank before the sky even considered graduating from coal black to that steely silver, you know, were you have to squint really hard to see where the land ends and the water begins.
“OK,” was all he said when I called when I got into town and asked if he wanted to pick me up at 6. It’s not that he didn’t flinch. It’s that he paused a second to calculate from 6 a.m. just when he’d have to wake up.
See, Jerry lives about a half hour from my Mom’s house in Rome, New York. That’s where I was staying along with my two sleepy kids and an even sleepier wife.
(Generally, when my fishing alarm goes off, the dog wakes up, which sets into motion a cadre of dog noises: the dog-collar jingle when she shakes off, grunts, groans and scraping her nails on the hardwood as she stretches, and the flit-flit-flit-flit-flit-flit of her scratching an itch on her belly. All of this, of course, wakes the baby, who begins to coo, kick and flail and, without fail, cry. Which wakes up the toddler, who roles over, asks for Mama or Dada’s hands, and when he doesn’t get them, moans, then cries, then sits up. Which means Mama is up with two crying boys and an itchy dog, and Dada is scooting out the door trying not to make eye contact with his bride.)
So Jerry had to get up earlier than I did, and, as unwritten home-rule protocol suggests, he had to stop at the coffee shop for both of us and also fill the Thermos with coffee for the rest of the morning. I do the same when he fishes my home waters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It’s a good system. All told, my guess is that Jerry had to get up at least 45 minutes before I did.
But, what I wanted to say on the phone the day before as we made plans was, “How’s 5 o’clock sound? (Or 4:30?)
I’m freakish that way. And it’s not as though I don’t enjoy sleeping. I do. Hell, I’m tired right now. And with a baby and a toddler, well, sleep is often hard to come by as it is, never mind waking up in the middle of the night to get to the river before anyone else steps foot in it or to get that extra hour in or just to have something to talk about in the off event that you didn’t catch a fish that day. Something along the lines of, “Oh, but you should have seen that osprey nest up there on the far bank. The chicks just hatched and were chirping up a storm.”
So I was patient as I waited in the driveway, gear in hand, for Jerry. And we drove the 20 or so minutes up into Trenton Falls to a place just up river from where the Cincinnati Creek tributary intersects with West Canada Creek.
And even as we drove by the dam, the Cincinnati and a few choice parking areas, I breathed easy. I knew we’d be on the river shortly. Even during these longest days of summer, when the sun rises at 5:30 and already it’s at a 30-degree arc. Soon, I thought. Soon.
So when we pulled up to a little-used trailhead outside of the trophy water section, I thought, “There are bound to be fish here, too. After all, we’re only a mile or two downstream from the dam and a mile from the tributary. We grabbed our gear and made our way down the trail to the river. Greeting us was a wide expanse that was nearly glass smooth and too deep to wade across. Upriver, though, there were plenty of riffles and some boulders placed by God himself. Good feeding channels. Problem was we’d have to huff it nearly a quarter mile along the rocky banks.
More time ticking off the clock.
But there is a correlation between fishing the right spot and catching fish, so the effort would more likely give us a greater return on investment if we could avoid spooking the fish and getting below them.
I should mention that it was my 43rd birthday, and Jerry let me wade in a few yards above him. I picked a good cut, got in to the top of my hip waders and began casting a No. 16 pale morning dun that I guessed would hold me over till I could better study the river’s bugs and, hopefully, hatches.
There were a few PMDs floating by, but more light drakes than anything else, so I retied the same size in that pattern and just like that, I had an 8-inch brown trout in the net.
Some of the fish on West Canada are stocked, and they have tags affixed to them. You’re supposed to write down the number and call the game warden to let him know how Fish No. 423785 is doing, length, weight, spunkiness, etc. This one didn’t have tags. The New York State Department of Environmental Control stocks the creek pretty hefty, which brings throngs of fishermen nearer to the dam upstream. We’ll call the untagged fish the “real” fish and feel a little better if it isn’t in the 12-inch range.
West Canada Creek starts in the southern Adirondack Mountain foothills and weaves its way to Herkimer, New York, where it empties into the Mohawk River At one point, a dam in Trenton Falls creates the Hinckley Reservoir, where camps and homes line the picturesque water body. If memory serves me, there’s even a beach. Interestingly, folks seem to think the West Canada Creek begins or somehow has a connection to the country to the north. Not so. “Kanata” means “settlement” in Mohawk Indian speak.
Though all that thinking, though, I realized that an hour had passed, and the fish were probably going to slow as occasional shower bursts let go from the low clouds that brought with them a steady 10 mile an hour wind and a few short bursts that squelched any ideas of fishing like a gentleman, into the current.
So I got just below and to the side of a nice-sized boulder and made my cast. The current was pretty strong, and the rain was steady, so I figured the fish wouldn’t notice me even if it wasn’t a great presentation.
Turned out it was good enough. Funny thing, though, the line went tight once it all was a good distance behind me, and I was just thinking of pulling it out to cast again. It felt good to have a little more heft on the end of the 3X tippet and the No. 16 Cahill. I felt as if this was a fair fight. I’d never fished this river before, I couldn’t get in any deeper without tea-bagging or, worse, drowning (you always hear about the poor guy who drowned on his birthday, or his honeymoon, or some repeating holiday that makes the untimely death all that more ironic or, at the very least, more sexy for the newspaper headlines). I also didn’t know what was in that deep green water that was muted by the overcast sky and rain. Might just as well have closed my eyes.
He did surface a couple of times, enough for me to see his head, brown belly and tail, all in that order, and after a minute or so of getting him close enough to the net, he was tired out, all but flipping futile just to see who was handling him.
We only kept him out of the water a matter of seconds to snap a few pics. I thought he was a foot long, but Jerry said 14 inches, and he’s a better judge of distance because he’s an investigator and I’m a writer, so I’ll give him that.
I set the trout back in quietly, pushed the currents into his gills and eventually scooted him away from the bank and into the current where he swam away, albeit dazed.
No tag, either.
After a coffee break and a bit of time to admire the irises along the bank, we fished another hour, which was largely unproductive. Another 6-inch untagged brownie, and we called it a day.
I wonder what another hour or two in the river would have gotten us. Probably just more soaking wet.
Then again, you never know, do you?
Still, on the ride back, there’s the usual reliving of the morning, the details, which we compared to how far you got with your prom date in high school. If you’re lucky, you have them, and if you’re really living right, there are a few swigs of coffee left in the Thermos.
Thing is, there are never any regrets. Sure, you could do this all day long, and you make plans, as we did, for the next time. Maybe in a canoe. Maybe back down in Pennsylvania. Maybe a fishing weekend, camping out, fishing the morning and the evening hatches.
Maybe, hopefully, all of the above.
Life is finite; it isn’t there forever. And you can’t depress yourself counting how many potential fishing weekends there are left in your life (believe me, I’ve done this. Tally up your life expectancy foregoing any accidents, such as drowning in a trout stream, figure out how many possible fishing weekends or Saturdays there are in a normal year, subtracting the winter months, of course, and time spent with family, at weddings, with the crud or watching Penn State play, and add it all together).
But you know there’ll be a few more, and although an hour here and an hour there may add up to a few days and a few fish, the important thing is that you enjoy the company and the time. And coming to grips that time isn’t really a unit of measure after all, but that it’s ethereal, and it allows us only a place to connect, and go in and come out of green-gray rivers, and fish among untagged brown trout.
At that crossroads, I prefer the gentle calm of that silver morning. So I think I’m heading in the right direction.

A trout bum once more

2009-04-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

The beginning of trout season is something that has rang through me like an alarm clock bell since the time I’d begun swatting the water with flies.

That came at a not-so-young age. I was, I think, 21, and I’d received the gift of a fly rod, reel and a vest from an old girlfriend who ended up being my ex-wife. It was a Fenwick rod, I think a 6-weight, with a crumby graphite reel. I still have the reel, which is no more than a paperweight, and probably shouldn’t have been anything but. The rod tip, however, skid unnoticed down the wall and right into the space between the door and the doorjamb just as she slammed the door to leave me for good.

The irony is no exaggeration.

We both heard the crunch, and she stopped on the outside doorstep, looked down, saw the broken tip, opened the door and apologized sincerely. She really meant it, I could tell.

At the time, she probably realized it although I didn’t: The rod meant a lot more.

Now, I was a young man, and had fished with my dad my whole life with the traditional-for-my-generation bait-casting method that I today have only rare occasion for (see Outer Banks/Surfcasting). And, of course, there was my dad and I each trout season opening with our bait casters shivering in the cold New York Aprils generally not catching fish but having a good time nonetheless.

And some 20-odd years later, opening day in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania also came. Although I didn’t reach the bank on opening day, I did so soon after. Good Friday, actually. (What better way to honor the Lord by spending a half day in His glory of solitude, nature and catch-and-release trophy waters?)

Turned out I didn’t need the alarm clock at all to wake me at 5 a.m. My oldest son, Kostyn, just shy of two years, was awake, and had crawled into bed with us pleading with me not to leave.

I said I’d be back, and I was, although that didn’t assuage the enormous pang of guilt that tugged at me for the 20-minute trip to Clark’s Creek and sporadically throughout the rest of that morning.

But the commonwealth had spent a lot of taxpayer dollars to both dedicate the 2-plus-mile stretch of the creek as restricted waters and stock it with a portion of the 150,000 trout it raised for just this occasion, and, by God, I should at least reap a return on my investment.

It rained, it was cold, the water was colder. Bone-chilling, really. And a little north wind was bearing down the 30-foot-wide creek, skirting between the tight canopy and high banks as a shivered like an old man in the green-black water.

It kept the crowds away, and that’s not a bad thing.

Unfortunately, it kept the fish at the bottom, and no nymph was going to draw it out.

At least none of mine.

Clark’s Creek is a great little spot. It’s probably eight miles from my house in Susquehanna Township as the crow flies, but since I’ve no wings, just a Blazer, it’s a good 18 miles down to the flats of the Susquehanna, than horseshoe it back around the Chinese Wall – a 1500-or-so foot Ice Age scar, and one of five or so between my back deck and the icy-cold Clark’s Creek.

One day, I hope to find an old logging trail that brings me to the near side, or to one of the other more rivers right in this region – Fishing Creek, Stoney Creek and Manada Creek. It looks like the Blue Mountain Parkway reaches the first. The others are a tad more remote, and I will explore them.

Which is exactly what I should have done with Jerry, who visited with his wife and two really fantastic 7-year-old twins. Instead, I thought I’d go for the sure thing (and glad I did, knowing that this little tick I have about exploring dirt roads might have meant we would have wasted precious fishing time in the Blazer … but there’s always that chance, right?)

Jerry’s new to the sport of fly fishing, he’s happy to be here, we’re happy to have him. He, like me and a good deal of my friends, has an inherent appreciation for Brother Wilderness. Of course, the last time this old college roommate of mine and I had hooks within a few hundred feet of us goes back to the banks of the Barge Canal under the rising moon on Muck Road in our hometown of Rome, N.Y. At least I’m pretty sure Jerry was there: There was a contingent of guys, a lot of car trunks filled with coolers and a campfire. The year, I’m guessing, might have been around 1985 or ’86 … before we both headed up to Plattsburgh State University.

If I remember correctly, we didn’t catch fish that day, either.

Clark’s Creek on Saturday morning, however, was colder than opening weekend and much colder than the late spring night air chill of central New York. We should have brought the Thermos of coffee down with us. Next time, I swear.

Within a few casts of sunrise, my feet and fingers were numb. I’m pretty certain Jerry’s were, too, because, despite his novice, tying a fly in the river took quite a few extra ticks off the clock.

We fished a good stretch of the restricted area – flies only, and catch-and-release – without catching a thing. Three times I had fish on my green weenies, and each time, they spit them before I could set the hook. That seems to be a recurring issue with me.

Half the battle of being transplanted back into the great Northeast streams, where weighted nymphs bolt and bobble among the rocks and pebbles, branches and dendrites of a river bed, and where the plentiful fish are just plain smaller and smarter than their Southern cousins, either everything feels like a strike or, in my case, nothing does.

I tug here and there, the electricity of the fish travels from fly to tippet to leader to line to backing to rod to reel to fingers to wrist to arm to shoulder to neck to God only knows where to my brain before I think, NOW!

It’s like trying to connect your bat to a softball when you’ve surpassed your limit of Budweiser.

We moved both up and downriver, and I hogged a hole that’s been heralded to be one of the best spots on the river (thus getting up an hour and 18 minutes before sunup to secure the spot: sort of the equivalent of waiting in line for Springsteen tickets…). After awhile, I climbed a steep bank, tied on maybe the 14^th pattern of the morning and set out for another riffle a thousand yards below Jerry.

When I climbed the bank just before noon in search of Jerry, I couldn’t feel three of my left toes, and my hands itched from being cold and wet.

Once I rounded the bend and convinced Jerry, who also wasn’t having much luck, to abandon his spot and join me for a mug of coffee back up at the truck, we felt a warm breeze blowing right down the stream. By the time we got back to the truck, we had taken off our jackets.

Ah, spring in the Northeast.

Another hour and a half north spent swatting rising gnats, watching the buds literally bloom on trees above as the sun warmed the air, we called it a day, drove back down the road that parallels most of Clark’s Creek and vowed to get together again soon.

Jerry guaranteed as much: He bought a year tourist license even though he lives four hours north and across the border in New York.

That’s a good fishing buddy right there.

2008-07-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

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

homeward bound

2008-05-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

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

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

when i grow up

2008-04-30T19:49:00.001-07:00

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

johnson skipper 125

2008-04-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

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

hoping for obx, already

2008-04-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

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

fish and tell

2008-04-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

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

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

against all odds

2008-04-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

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

wanted: boat that floats

2008-04-03T19:21:00.000-07:00

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

retention pond, part two

2008-03-25T07:03:00.001-07:00

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

retention pond

2008-02-17T19:06:00.000-08:00

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

fish talk

2008-02-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

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

fritz's vest

2008-02-04T19:11:00.000-08:00

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

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

the spring thaw

2008-02-04T12:48:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

baby, it's cold outside

2008-01-17T17:19:00.000-08:00

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.

putting it all into perspective

2008-01-17T10:59:00.002-08:00

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.

i should at least be tying flies

2008-01-17T10:59:00.001-08:00

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.

everything is bigger in the south

2008-01-15T16:58:00.001-08:00

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.

getting there is half the fun

2008-01-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

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.

beaming in eastern tennessee

2008-01-14T11:08:00.000-08:00

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.

good fishing cars

2008-01-11T12:27:00.001-08:00

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.

gearing up

2008-01-11T08:19:00.000-08:00

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...

fishing and fishers i have known

2008-01-09T09:15:00.000-08:00

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.