Tag Archives: Olive Leech

Go Deep and Sulk, Whiner

I’ve lost all compassion for the fish. Sure, they have a bit of Lactic Acid buildup and a sore lip, but I’m waking up with ailments more painful and more debilitating, while the fish find some hidden refuge to nurse lip and their wounded pride, I have to hobble my way to the coffeepot despite aching back, sore neck, sunburn, barked knuckles, blisters, and strained muscles.

I spent yet another weekend laboring on behalf of the fish and their watery environment, and while humping rocks and timbers into ever increasing mounds and pillars, I thought of past weeks and the rising damage to mine own limbs, and had the temerity to ask myself, “… but is it worth it?”

“Worth it” being less a question than a known constant, but when you have to manually remove your aching fingers from around the coffee cup handle, the metaphysical rumination of the question comes unbidden.

In retrospect, I started working on terraforming a piece of the lake a couple of months ago. As I am limited to about a day a week to work on the project, and while there is little shortage of woody debris and rocks littering the shoreline, it is still a two mile walk to get there, followed by hours of stoop labor carrying rocks, and another two miles back to parking area.

The 100 degree weather commensurate with a drought being merely a bonus.

That first weekend ended with sanded fingertips, what with all the grit and wet rocks slipping from my grasp. The following week it was work gloves to protect those precious fly tying fingers, but something I’d had for breakfast forced me to wobble back to the car dizzy and out of it.

With October came the winter parking area closure, which added an extra two miles to the hike round trip. That weekend ended with me dragging myself back to the car just prior to passing a kidney stone, so all the suffering endured during the ride home was a preamble to the welcome tinkle of stone colliding with porcelain.

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I did manage to complete three 30’ walls of rock, complete with timbers and ancillary connected debris – designed to give bait fish a hidey hole, and allow prowling bass to secret themselves in ambush. The timber and reclaimed Christmas trees I’ve imbedded in the rock work give me the opportunity to collect all manner of free fishing lures, which I consider payment from you fellows for all the sweat equity I put into the area.

Now that we’ve seen the temperatures start lower and have seen our first real rain, most of the lake is fishless. Bass slide deeper as the shallow water cools, and fishing is less of an option.

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Then again, a  1/0 heavily weighted Olive Minnow, can occasionally yield something attempting to pack on the pounds prior to snoring all Winter. This is the biggest bass I’ve landed on a fly this year, somewhere between six and seven pounds.

… and tomorrow at work, when I get up out of my chair and feel every spot of soreness in my pudgy deskbound frame – I’ll know this SOB is sulking with his sore lip,  while I move gazelle-like to the water cooler to add another pound to the re-telling.

Is it worth it? Silly question …

More Pain then Wadding a Sharp Hook through Gristle

With every Californian intent on their Memorial Day Exodus, I lounged against the garage jamb and waved as my neighbors wadded their protesting kids and worn camping gear into anything capable of towing something else, then followed their neighbors onto the Interstate, all in a mad rush for the woods.

Having competed with this angry mob many times in the past, and knowing the lack of water would compress anglers even further, we opted to splurge on the local private bass water . We knew the cost of a full day’s fishing was much less than the gas, food, and campground fees we’d absorb if we donned our “Mad Max” garb and chased Charlize Theron (and everyone else) up the interstate enroute to the Parched Pristine.

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… not that Miss Theron isn’t worthy of chasing, its the notion that frayed nerves, squealing tires, and campground backing accidents, resulting from too many people crammed into too small a resource, are never a recipe for decompression and relaxation, rather they have the opposite effect.

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But an entire lake filled with voracious gigantic bass, off-limits to kids, unruly pets, and powerboats,  and rimmed with wildflowers and framed by beautiful weather, followed by a fine meal of rice balls and grilled Spam, that’s the makings of workplace water cooler legend.

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To compound our good fortune, our guess as to the lake’s readiness was perfect, and “should’ve been here last week” was forgotten in the howl of,  “gotta be here goddamn right now.” No sooner then we were clear of the vehicle and armed, we were assaulted by hungry bass intent on eating flies, fingers, floating tippet spools, and anything else exposed to the water.

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Morning till noon was the big meal bite, using larger, slow sinking flies resembling frogs or tadpoles. When that slowed the fish shifted to smaller food, Wooly Bugger style flies in drab colors. We caught fish all day long and yielded the water grudgingly around 5PM.

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I’ve seen plenty of manicured trout water; everything from the rough hewn management of a “sugar daddy” conservation group like Cal Trout, to clubs meant for wealthy capitalists like Rising River Lodge and the Bolibokka Club.  Each has its own personality and appeal, but grooming the lake to achieve a singular vision of bass fishing is  quite unique in my experience. Every bush, sapling, and flower individually planted to yield a specific effect when mature –including rafts of dead timber and tules planted around the periphery and lake center.

The notion of mixing wildflowers with fishing makes for an interesting duality. On the one hand the bright colors and gay borders are akin to fishing in a garden, but they assist in stabilizing the earthen mounds from eroding into the lake.

Most certainly the fishing takes priority in your enjoyment of your surroundings, as it is superb, but being able to take your spouse along without having to entertain her may be worth even more.

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I keep thinking that with this as the destination for the first exposure to fishing – wives and girlfriends might seriously contemplate the pastime versus their traditional baptism … shivering as mosquito bait.

No sympathy from me …

With all this amazing good fortune, I found my mortality by midafternoon. My host showed up in his truck and watched me land a fish, and commented, “…you’re doing pretty well, every time I see you – you’ve got a fish on.”

I showed him the left thumb, scraped raw from “lipping” bass, and then unglued my feet from the suction of loose mud at waters edge, avoiding pressure on the blister on my knee from crouching on the side of berms avoiding being “sky lined” so as not to alert my quarry,  and he chuckled. “You’ll get no sympathy from me …”

Can’t say as I blame him – nor was I looking for some, I just had the cathartic realization that fishless fishing has its share of aches and pains, yet even when moon’s align and the Cornucopia spills open, there’s blisters aplenty … and only the wound locations change.

That evening as I hobbled to the bathroom, I did some mental math. Landing a fish requires three squats; the first when kneeling on the berm when casting, the second when extricating your mending line from Poppies and bankside debris, and the last when you squat to lip the fish at water’s edge. Figure (with the Bluegill) you land 140 fish in a single day, and you’ve neatly explained the blisters on both knees and why you groan like Grandpa when you get off the couch.

So you like tormenting the fish then …

Back in the 1980’s I worked the night shift in one of those cold edifices that shadow Market Street. As I left one morning waving at my fellow workers, I noticed a quiet looking number with a shy smile in the company of one of my female coworkers.

The next day the lady I worked with asked if I’d consider a blind date with her pal, to which I readily agreed.

To make the story short, I found myself on an East Bay lake, with no fishing tackle, attempting to look interested  in my companion, while fish cavorted about thumbing their collective nose at me. She was a nice gal without any interest in the out of doors, and I tried my best to appear engaging and personable.

As I was wont to do, I attempted to couch my confession into my best “Mac Daddy” moment. I mentioned I enjoyed fishing and the woods, and spent lots of time there. She responded in Big City fashion, how, “.. she would never eat anything caught out of the water as it was likely unsafe ..”, unfazed by her ignorance about where fish lived, I opted for the “catch and release” gambit …

“Yea, I let them all go, actually.” As I pick an imaginary speck of lint off my sleeve, expecting her to think me a swell fellow and consummate sportsmen. Rather than swoon in rapture as I was expecting, she replies, “.. Oh, so you like torturing them?”

(No lady, that’s what this date is all about, really.)

This same scene played in my conscious mind after this weekend’s debauch. Realizing that age and overindulgence are combining forces to ensure that should the fishing be either good or bad, I’m taking more abuse; lumps, scrapes, contusions, and actual blood loss – than the goddamn fish are.

No. I don’t enjoy tormenting fish … I have a yen to be tormented by them. Through my own actions of pursuit and capture I inflict much more pain on myself than I ever do wadding a sharp hook through gristle.

I just … need a nap … before I do it again tomorrow …