Monthly Archives: January 2013

… snores contentedly in the safety of His bosom

It’s become quite plain that God adores big fish and cares not at all for me … I suppose it’s because there are so few truly big fish, and there are so many aging and overweight atheists, that the planet could do just fine with less …

My early morning foray was premature in the least, what with Winter only half done and ice crunching underfoot. Nothing stirred in the pre-dawn chill, yet each big flood requires me to inventory 22 miles of river, and with couch-riveting NFL madness some hours distant, I figured to work up a sweat and earn some spinach dip.

Each year the Winter cataclysm reveals itself to be “cleanse” or “cover” flood – moving many hundreds of tons of gravel from upstream to deposit all over the the watershed. Sometimes the gravel removed restores deep water – and in other years covers what used to be a deep run or pool.

Naturally I’m pouting when a favorite spot disappears under a gravel bar, but on occasion during a cleanse, an old hole emerges – or a new hole is formed.

This being a “cleanse” year, I was getting fairly excited, numerous deep slots had appeared in the shallow stretches, and the former “Big Fish” stretch, which had been ankle deep last year, was now 5-6 feet deep and liable to hold considerable fish this Spring.

Then I thought about Old Logjam, that hoary and ancient Largemouth that I’ve been battling with all of last year. His hide-a-way being on the far side of an underwater timber, recessed in a 10 foot deep pool at the roots of an old willow tree, partially submerged.

I can get a fly in there from above, but the doing exposes me to him – and he giggles while pretending to flirt with whatever I toss his way …

… I’d guess Old Logjam to be about seven pounds, and if we were keeping score, which we aren’t, I would run out of fingers quickly … in his favor, naturally.

Old_Logjam

While most of the river is still too deep for hip boots, I slipped and slid my way across loose gravel and heavy current so I could see whether this year’s battle had been made any easier.

… instead, I got a newly scoured twenty foot deep pool, with twenty feet of logs and branch overburden stacked on his protective root ball, ensuring Old Logjam gets even Older …

With us aging fatties gnashing teeth while we donate yet another awesomely tied, impeccable minnow-Crayfish imitation, while Old Logjam snores contentedly in the safety of His bosom …

There’s more to a Crow than feathers

Eating Crow is the toughest dining there is – made especially so by the number of “soapbox sermons” I’ve delivered on the topic of foppish thousand dollar rods and how there was no place in fly fishing for that kind of cash outlay, unless there was a bet involved and this being the bar tab that resulted.

… and while I remain adamant on the subject of fly rods and the usurious dollars being charged, I have found a fishing accoutrement that’s worth a grand and cheap for that price …

 

It’s the Gibb’s Quadski, and while your toes curl at the idea that your fishing is liable to add to the earth’s burdensome carbon footprint, I say it’s time you shuddup and grew a pair.

Forty five miles an hour means never having to buy a fishing license, waders, or a float tube again. It’s immunity to “No Trespassing” signs and angry landowners, and bestows on its owner the awesome knowledge that you can kick sand in the face of interlopers in YOUR riffle.

Watch the angry warden pound the hood of his sinking truck, laugh at the landowner who’s sure you used his cow pasture to access his pristine trout creek, and thumb nose at the violently gesticulating float tuber as your wake pitches him overboard where the weight of his vest drags him under …

To hell with global warming and the price per gallon of dinosaur, with each passing day the best fishing is growing further from your home – requiring you to consume more gallons, spend additional cash, and endure litter, traffic jams, and the occasional movie theatre shootout.

The Quadski becomes your personal equalizer, the ability to tame any environment, pack exotic beer into the most hostile, pristine, or inclement environment, and leave your empties scattered about like D. Boone and his bear offal …

Uh, it’s $40,000 … but what price to outrun a radio?

… and the New Year is like the Old Year, only dirtier …

It was our love of Frappachino that likely proved our undoing …

While engaged in another heated discussion on where to fish this weekend, I mentioned that I had produced some out-of-the-way spots that all had appreciated – and perhaps it was their turn (being natives to the area) to show me some of the watering holes known only to the hardened local fishermen, those willing to trade a little sweat-equity to scramble furthest from the beaten path …

… and all I got were blank looks and how’d they’d rather pay then walk. Coughing up twenty or forty bucks to lounge on the bank of some hatchery embankment isn’t liable to put the bark on anything.

… which is their way of saying that “bark” ain’t what it once was …

As I watch the Oft-Crapping-Pooch snarl menacing at darkened underbrush, I am reminded there are fishermen in the older “Pioneer” vein, and there are those that claim the heritage, but lack the urgency to blaze trail, preferring to wait until there is a taco truck in the parking lot or neon sign pointing at the Really Good Fishing.

Which is not a condemnation of the current Outdoorsman, rather it’s my observation of the perils of continuing gentrification, evolution of the species to a higher order and calling.

Little Meat and I delight in braving thorns and barbed wire, thumbing our nose at “No Trespassing” signs, medical waste, law enforcement, and illegal agricultural chemical dumps, but only because we know the Really Good Fishing isn’t some pristine stream or icy blue lake, rather it’ll be some overlooked freeway off ramp graced by some fetid trickle and punctuated with rotting couches.

… and a Happy New Millennium to you too …

The Undiscovered Continents of our youth no longer exist, most have been uber-marketed to guys with a taste for mortgage debt and umbrella drinks, which used them shamelessly. Many are already decline, some gentle and some precipitous.

The Outdoorsy-types that follow in our footsteps will have to embrace the sprawl of the rural-urban interface, and find their sport where others fear to look or tread.

For the observant angler, evidence is everywhere

Unspoiled isn’t in the urban dictionary, rather the best fishing will be limited to those spots impossible to reach, smellier than most, sports a homeless encampment, or patrolled by law enforcement, everything else being  exploited by the urbane “glamper” crowd.

Anglers will have to hone skills tainted by exposure to the Pristine, as the clues that line the banks of your rapidly-warming, icy trout stream are not shared by the valley floor.

Empty Pautzke’s jars, the whitened carapace of Styrofoam worm containers, the snarl of tippet caught in the underbrush, and omnipresent energy drink containers, all give testimony to quality fishing in trout country.

But the Rural-Urban Interface lacks these tell-tale clues, and those seeking the best fishing must be able to read “sign” – the litany of naturally occurring floating debris that a man-made water flow leaves in its wake.

Above is the rotting corpse of a 15” sucker – which you would have missed except for the skinless tennis ball that caught your eye …

… and while you mentally wondered which court was upstream and whether it was an unruly forehand lob or simply a bad serve that sent “Mr. Wilson” into the creek, that dead fish proves Fish Live Here.

ThinBrownLine on a Map

“Here” being another unloved thin brown line on your freeway map, likely not having seen an angler in two or three decades.

Nameless_Forebay

Likewise for this nameless little depression, now swollen with rain water and agricultural runoff, and in need of a thorough working over with a sink tip and some flies that push a lot of water.

I know how these warm water, dirty venues cause the Frappachino Fisherman to blanch, but in 2013 and beyond, riffle water will come in many shapes and sizes, and the only truly important thing is that it imparts lots of oxygen into the flow – ensuring the environment is capable of supporting the “clean” bugs like stoneflies and their ilk …

I got your riffle water right here, Mr Bead Head

… the valley version of riffle being about four feet long – and a mile wide.

Wonder what lives here …

One thing is certain however, I’m done sharing with pals, as these unloved gems that I’m visiting can only support a rarified few – those willing to suffer scorn and fingerpointing, those few stalwarts that recognize adding chocolate to coffee is the first in a long line of genteel sins leading to soft couches, saran-wrapped trophies, and the stern admonition of their physician.