Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Ghosts of anglers past

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.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

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

...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

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Passing down gifts from one father to another

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.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

PMD hiaku

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

Friday, August 28, 2009

Saturday stream

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.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Hackle up




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.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Anticipating the season's end

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.