Month: June 2023

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Rhode Island Packing List

Gear

We took three rods, two 9-foot 8-weights with floating lines and a 9-foot 9-weight with an intermediate line, a line that sinks just a bit below the surface. Mostly we fished with the 8-weights, but I used the 9-weight some in the fog when I was blind casting in deeper water. I caught my fish on my 8-weight, and the fish was strong enough to make me think a 9-weight might have been better.

Our guide, Ray Ramos, had suggested that we bring waders and boots in the likely event that the weather stayed bad. If it stayed bad we were going to try a bit of coastline casting. The water is still pretty cold in Rhode Island, and we’re not much used to cold, so we would have needed the waders. We never used them, which is good. No matter what Mr. Simms and Mr. Patagonia and Mr. Orvis tell you, waders are a nuisance.

When we left Ninigret Pond the second day, the pretty day, a UPS driver in shorts kidded us about our cool weather clothes and asked if we thought it was cold. We told him that we were from Houston, and that it was freezing. He told us we’d never survive the winters. I’d guess that’s about right.

A Word About Phil

Phil Shook writes about fly-fishing, and wrote Flyfisher’s Guide to Texas and Flyfisher’s Guide to Mexico, and co-wrote Fly-Fishing the Texas Coast. Phil also wrote Flyfisher’s Guide to the Northeast Coast, which covers New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, right next to Rhode Island. Last week he sent me a photo of a clip from an article he wrote in 2010 for Eastern Fly Fishing, now American Fly Fishing, about fly fishing Ninigret Pond. I should have known to talk to Phil first.

From Phil Shook.

Hotels

The first time we went to Rhode Island we were in Newport on the weekend of the boat show. Newport is an upscale East Coast tourist destination, and it is the home to The America’s Cup. I reckon it’s the center of the sailboat universe. Every recreational sailor in North America was in Newport for the boat show, and it was tough to blanch for all the tans. Because of the crowds, prices were jacked, rooms were hard to come by, and there were people everywhere. It was a terrible time to be in Newport unless you sailed, and we paid an extravagant amount of money for a depressingly mediocre hotel room.

The second time we went prices were calmer, and we found a great old refurbished motor inn, The Sea Whale Motel. It was kinda cool and not too funky, reasonably central, and so much more likable than the first place we had stayed. For this trip I booked us again for the Sea Whale.

Except I didn’t. I booked us for the Blue Whale. You see what I did there? Sea Whale? Blue Whale? See how anybody could make that mistake? Well, I certainly see it.

I was a bit surprised when we followed the GPS directions from the airport and ended up an hour across Block Island Sound from Newport. The Blue Whale was tiny, and our room was a tinier part of that tiny. It was great though, and in that tiny room I did some world class sleeping. From the Blue Whale it was a quick, calm drive to Ninigret Pond, and much more convenient than Newport would have been. Prices at the Blue Whale were even cheaper than at the Sea Whale–of course it was a bit early for beach-goers, and beach-goers are the Blue Whale’s clientele.

I’m a great planner, and from now on I’m making all my lodging choices based on whether or not there’s a whale in the mix.

Restaurants

I’ve already written about the magnificence that are clam shacks: lobster rolls, fried clams, picnic tables, chowder . . . And we ate at two that were a stone’s throw from The Blue Whale Inn, Monahan’s and Salty’s. At Salty’s, Kris asked the girl at the counter what she liked best, and the girl said the hot lobster roll, at least she sort of said that. She actually said the hot lab-sta roll. I made her say it again it was so wonderful, but I had embarrassed her and she Midwesterned her accent.

I vaguely recall that there’s some reason that we’re not supposed to be eating lobster, over-fishing probably, but I figured eating lab-sta just once was ok.

My college roommate, Robert, had sent us a photo of the Matunuck Oyster Bar, ((At least that’s what I think Robert sent us. I couldn’t find the original email, but on my possibly-flawed memory of his advice we went to Matunuck Oyster Bar and it was great, so whatever he sent Robert gets the credit.)) and we made a reservation there for our first night. We almost canceled when saw their wall of advertising in the Providence airport–airport advertising isn’t something I’m prone to trust–but the place was wonderful. Northeastern oysters are different than our Gulf Coast oysters, smaller, firmer, brinier . . . I love Northeastern oysters. Of course I also love Gulf Coast oysters, Northwestern oysters, French oysters, McDonald’s French fries, and fried bologna. You can take my judgment for what it’s worth.

We had Northeastern oysters. We had steamer clams. I had striped bass because, after all, that’s what I was in town for. The place was crowded and noisy and happy and the food was delicious. ((If you’re keeping track, that photo below is another lobster roll for Kris. We also split a lobster roll the next day for lunch. I don’t think she ate any lobster rolls for breakfast, but I can’t be absolutely certain. If the lab-sta fishery collapses, I’m blaming her.))

The next afternoon after fishing and clam shacking we drove into Providence, about an hour north of Ninigret Pond. Providence itself isn’t very big. The current population estimate is 189,692, but the population of the metropolitan area is more than 1.6 million, so there are plenty of people in the area. Providence is old, founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, and it’s the home of Brown University and The Rhode Island School of Design. It was once ground zero for New England’s Mafia.

We found a parking place where the parking meter didn’t work, but then we parked anyway. I figured that if it took them decades to clean out the Mafia, then I didn’t have to worry about a couple of hours of illegal parking. We walked around Brown and went through the excellent Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art–it’s small, but chock full of really great stuff. This, for instance, was the cover art on one of my college textbooks:

I think maybe it’s Roman, maybe older? Maybe Babylonian? I was excited to see it, but I was so worried that I had never finished my class reading that I forgot to check the signage.

Before we went back to The Some Whale Inn, we ate at Al Forno in Providence. In 1992 its chefs won one of the first Jame’s Beard awards, largely on the strength of their grilled pizza, and every few years like clockwork it gets a new nomination. Who doesn’t like pizza? And their grilled pizza is something strange and special. We ate grilled pizza. We split a roasted beet salad. We ate espresso-doused ice cream for desert. We watched the people around us eat other stuff and we envied them for what they’d ordered.

Playlist

The band Talking Heads came together at the Rhode Island School of Design, and I kept debating adding them to the Rhode Island playlist. I finally decided that each person is granted a certain measure of enjoyable Talking Heads listening, and after that the band passed their sell-by date. I think I passed my Talking Heads sell-by date somewhere in the early 80s.

You’d think that there wouldn’t be a lot of Rhode Island music to choose from, but here’s the thing; the Newport Jazz Festivals and Folk Festivals were incredibly influential, and if you just download a couple of festival compilations you’ll be set with a lot of great music. Somehow it is immensely satisfying to listen to “If I Had a Hammer” followed by Louis Armstrong singing “Mack the Knife.” I don’t care if any musician ever actually came from Rhode Island, so many musicians touched it that Rhode Island makes for a great playlist.

George M. Cohan was from Rhode Island, as were the Cowsills. On a side note, as a kid I saw the Cowsills at the Texas State Fair.

Guitar

I took a guitar, but I never played. Our hotel room was too small to open the case.

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Striped Bass, Ninigret Pond, Rhode Island, June 12-14.

State Number 34.

This was our third trip to Rhode Island to catch a fish. Kris caught a nice striped bass last year, but user errors have plagued me. I could hook fish, but then I couldn’t land fish. What I’ve learned though is that I really like Rhode Island. It’s good fishing, and you can’t throw a lobster roll without hitting a clam shack. Clam shacks are one of the best things going. Lobster rolls, fried things, chowdah . . . I could eat at clam shacks until my arteries clogged, which might not take long.

I may even prefer the clear Rhode Island clam chowder to the New England chowder with cream. I’m not much of a fan of Rhode Island clam cakes though–that’s the big lump of fried dough in the picture above. They are beloved by Rhode Islanders, but seem to have all the character of a sugarless donut, and I’m dubious that they include any clams. If I really need a cholesterol boost, give me a hush puppy any day.

The two prior times that we fished in Rhode Island, we fished from big boats–well, big for fly fishing–out from Newport where the Atlantic meets the Rhode Island shore. I usually fish inshore in saltwater, in shallow Texas bays with marshes and sea grass and, if we’re fishing really deep, two feet of water. Meanwhile New Englanders seem mostly to fish nearshore, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing nearshore about it. Fishing in Rhode Island, if you face north and look to your left, sure ’nuff you see a shoreline, but look right and there’s nothing but Atlantic Ocean between you and France. And I get seasick.

I was game to go to the big water again–we certainly saw plenty of fish on our prior trips, and last year with Captain Rene Letourneau Kris caught a fine striped bass–but Kris wouldn’t let me. She loved it, but she didn’t trust me. She had read somewhere that there was flats fishing in New England, and shallow water was the only thing she would agree to if I was along. No more mister nice girl for her, no more overdosing on scopolamine for me.

Read the directions. Don’t replace the patch with another when the first patch falls off. And that advice about looking at the horizon to calm your nausea? It’s nonsense. The horizon is tilted.

We booked two days with Captain Ray Ramos. Ray fishes Rhode Island salt ponds from a Mitzi Skiff. If you saltwater fly fish inshore, you know about skiffs: they’re the antithesis of big water boats. They’re built to fish the shallowest possible saltwater, and if you fly fish for bonefish or redfish you either wade or kayak or fish from a skiff.

Ray’s Mitzi Skiff is 17 feet long and 6 feet wide, which is pretty normal for a flats boat. Compared to most New England saltwater boats, it’s tiny. Ray estimates that there are maybe ten flats skiffs in New England, and that his is the only Mitzi Skiff.

We fished two days with Ray. Ray warned us that the weather reports were terrible, and that rain was forecast both days, but what can you do? We went, and we got lucky. The first day it didn’t rain, but there was heavy fog. I spent the morning blind casting to likely spots along the shoreline. I’d cast, then I’d cast some more, and then I’d cast some more. Kris wanted to make sure I caught a fish, so she left me on the bow to cast until my arm fell off, and it did! Ok, not really, but it was a near thing, and I didn’t catch anything either.

Conditions have to be reasonably favorable to sight fish anywhere, and none of the favorable conditions include fog. You need sun. If the sky is hazy or cloudy or if it’s foggy, it’s hard to see into the water even when the water isn’t cloudy. With fog all you can do is blind cast to likely spots and hope you get lucky. I did a lot of unrequited blind casting.

Of course as soon as we stopped fishing the fog cleared. It was clear, bright, sunny, perfect . . . And miracle of miracles the great weather held for our second day.

Where we fished, Ninigret Pond, is about 1500 acres, which is about the same as a medium-sized freshwater lake. Big lovely New England coastal homes surround a lot of Ninigret, and all those homeowners own big lovely New England boats. The mean depth is 4.3 feet, but of course the depth isn’t uniform. There are channels so the big boats can reach the big water, and there are acres of shallow sand flats, at most a couple of feet deep. In the late spring, schools of striped bass come into the ponds to eat cinder worms, and then for the rest of the season big stripers come onto the flats chasing bait.

We were after big stripers chasing bait.

You see that right there, right in that next photo? That’s a ball of a thousand sand eels in Ninigret Pond. In the water from a distance they look like clumps of weeds, except that they mosey across the flat like they know where they’re going. That’s what our flies mimicked. Striped bass believe them delicious, though I never much cared for them. I guess I’ve never had a batch fried up at a clam shack.

We were fishing floating lines on 8-weight rods with 16-pound leaders, and the retrieve was relatively short strips with a pause to let the fly dive. Stripers are picky fish though, and at least twice we got follows from good stripers that wouldn’t take the fly. We could see them follow the fly, and then just when we thought things were going to happen the fish would turn. Both times the fly had picked up a bit of grass, a tiny, insignificant, soupçon of eel grass caught on the hook, and that was enough.

But even the failures are great when you sight-fish, and we couldn’t have asked for better than Ray at spotting fish. Once he told us where to look we could see it all. We could watch the big dark stripers move across the flats, sometimes straight at us. Even when they were too far away to see in the water we could see them explode the surface crashing bait. They seemed different in the pond than nearshore, and I kept comparing them to other fish I knew. They shied from the boat and were picky about flies like permit; they crashed the surface like jack crevalle; I could watch them glide through the water like bonefish, but really big bonefish. . . .

It was thrilling. Every fish we saw in the water, every surface explosion we heard was thrilling. Frankly, I don’t know why Rhode Islanders ever fish anywhere but those salt ponds. It’s a good thing they don’t though, because if they knew what they were missing the ponds would be packed. I’ll leave them the big water, and I’ll borrow their ponds.

I finally did catch my Rhode Island fish. It was one of those amazingly stupid bits of business when you get lucky, and you can pretend that you planned it all along. A fish crashed close behind me, and I made a short over the shoulder fling, almost directly backwards, and it worked. Ray could see it all from the platform, and he said that as soon as the fly hit the water the striper hit it.

Like I said, I planned it all along. And big stripers on the flats fight like redfish.

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Delaware Packing List

Gear

We used rods and flies from our guide, Terry Peach.  We took our waders and wading boots, but otherwise we used Terry’s stuff.

On Brandywine Creek we used Terry’s two-handed rods. Casting two-handed rods is a peculiar exercise. I’ve done it some, and I’m not much good at it.  I don’t fish much in the rivers where they’re used, and in most rivers I use single-handed rods. Without practice, I’ll never get better, but if it’s done right you can cast a lot further than with a single-handed rod. It’s also supposed to be less strain on my aging body.

Those are good things, but the big advantage is that there’s no back-cast. To cast in front of you with a Spey rod, you don’t need to stretch the line out behind you first. Without a back-cast, you miss all those excellent opportunities to entangle your line in bank-side trees. Every fly angler has invested considerable time and effort into untangling flies from back-side brush, and if they haven’t they must fish in the desert. Even then I suspect I’d get tangled in the cacti.   

Don’t get me wrong, though.  There are plenty of unique and painful ways to screw up casting double-handed spey rods.  With Spey casting, the technique is to put your left foot out, and then your left foot in, and after you turn yourself about your line magically puddles somewhere. I have seen good Spey casters, and it’s a beautiful thing, but with me even on my best day it ain’t so pretty.

Still. It is really fun, and just getting to Spey cast is reason enough to go to Delaware to fish for shad.

Before we fished the Brandywine with the big rodsTerry took us to a DuPont pond so that he could be sure we caught a fish. We fished single-handed 6-weights on the pond, and with a single-handed rod I can’t plead lack of practice for my screw ups. Kris used a 6-weight rod built by  Waterworks/Lamson. That rod, a Center Axis, incorporated the reel into the reel seat.  Kris loved it.  I tried it and it made me nervous.  I did get Kris out of Terry’s shop without buying a new rod, though it was nip and tuck.

Large, zoomable image of Waterworks/Lamson Lamson Center Axis Rod & Reel System. 2 of 15

Lamson recently quit making the Center Axis, and I think it almost broke Terry’s heart. I suspect he’s got a lot of the remaining stock stowed somewhere. He really likes that rod, and so did Kris.

We took our own boots and waders. When you fly somewhere to fly fish, carrying wading boots comes right after delayed flights and missed connections as a source of misery.  Even without boots there’s a lot of gear.  There are reels, rods, waders, nets, some more reels and rods, wading staffs, some extra reels and rods, nets, fly boxes, wading packs, and then there are boots.  Here’s the thing about boots. When you pack your boots they weigh about 2 pounds, 5 ounces.  They are the incredible lightness of being. Then you get them wet.

A boot will absorb 72 times its weight in water, and take two months to dry. Wet boots will inevitably boost your luggage above the checked bag limit of your air carrier. When there were still newspapers, you could stuff your boot with newspapers and that would soak up some of the water, but those days are done.  Just try to find a newspaper anymore. There was something very satisfying about stuffing the style section and the news of the day into wet wading boots. It almost felt like performance art. I might like to stuff my boots with Fox News, but it don’t hold water.

In another kind of performance, I’ve driven highways at 70 mph with our boots tied to the rental car roof. It helps, but it makes Kris nervous. I guess it probably isn’t very smart. Sixty-five would be safer, and the boots might make less racket when they flopped around. 

Phillies Fans

To get to Wilmington, we flew into Philadelphia, then drove to the Phillies’ stadium and watched part of a day game between the Phillies and the Diamondbacks. I like to visit baseball stadiums. The Phillies stadium, Citizens Bank Park, is relatively new, and because of the open food courts behind center field it’s oddly reminiscent of the Twins stadium. Twins fans though are among the politest people on earth.  Phillies fans are not.

Kory Clemens, Roger Clemens’ son, is the current first baseman for the Phillies.  I am certain that notwithstanding the DWIs he is a fine young man, and of course he’s from Houston, so we paid particular attention to him.  He’s currently got an OPS of .797 or so, which isn’t scorching, but neither is it terrible. That afternoon he had one hit, a single, on four at bats with a walk and a strikeout. When he struck out, a guy behind us screamed–and I do mean screamed–“Clemens, you bum, why don’t you cheat like your old man . . .” 

It was a packed stadium, which surprised Kris, but then she never snuck off from work to go to day games. We didn’t stay for all of it. On the way out we were talking about the peculiarities of the fans (and there were some mighty peculiar peculiarities, not least of which was the guy sitting next to me who kept score and performed voodoo incantations).  Kris said that she was surprised that the Phillies fans let an Arizona fan heckle Kory Clemens without giving him grief.

Oh Kris. You innocent. That was a Phillies fan.  

As a postscript, after the same game (in which the Phillies overcame a 4-run deficit to win), shortstop Trea Turner’s mom left him a note in the clubhouse. “Good game, except for your fourth at-bat. I was booing you.” It must be tough when your mom’s a Phillies fan.

Wilmington, Delaware

Delaware produces two major commodities, corporations—more than 50 percent of publicly-traded corporations are incorporated in Delaware—and corporate bankruptcies.  If you’re a corporation and you’re going to go bankrupt, you file in Delaware.

My understanding is that you can pick up bankruptcy plans of  reorganization at the Wilmington Walmart.

Hotel And Restaurants

We splurged and stayed in downtown Wilmington at the Hotel DuPont.  It’s a beautiful 1913 hotel, nicely restored, and they were the friendliest of people. The place breathes Gilded Age elegance. The bathtub had a special rack just for reading, which seems to me about the peak of Western Civilization.

A tradition of uncompromising service and grand elegance dating back to 1913.

After we checked in we walked down to the park from our hotel. Driving around the next morning we discovered that had we turned right instead of left we would have made it to the old downtown, with lots of cute shops and many nifty bars and restaurants. It looked mildly Bohemian and very lively.

We ate dinner at Le Cavalier in the hotel. I don’t remember what we ate because I was too busy admiring the dining room.

In the morning we ate at a neighborhood diner, Angelo’s Luncheonette, which may be the best place for breakfast in the entire world. It was tiny and old, in a neighborhood of small old row houses, and everybody but us knew everybody else. A lady from across the street came in and asked if the waitress, Ann, would move the box off her porch to the back stoop when it got delivered. A guy came in from West Virginia and said he was making a special stop at Angelo’s because he had to move his mother out of the neighborhood to West Virginia. Everybody was greeted by name, and all the customers seemed to know each other. I felt like one of the chosen just being there.

We flew out again from Philadelphia, and it was complicated. We left the river late, and our flight to Houston was early the next morning. Philadelphia is at least semi-famous for pizza, so we called ahead to pick up a pizza from Pizzata Pizzaria near UPenn. It was out of the way, and then we had to fill the rental car with gas and get checked in at the airport motel. We managed all of this with only the statutory minimum of marital breakdowns.

I left Kris at the Hampton Inn and dropped off the rental car, took the rental car shuttle to the airport, took the airport shuttle back to the hotel, and devoured more than half of the pizza and a couple of beers. Even cold the pizza was delicious, but I was overeating pizza out of manic energy and nerves and by then it was almost midnight.

I didn’t sleep because of too much pizza and beer and too much muchness. We got up at 4 a.m. to go to the airport.

We had caught our fish in Delaware though.

Playlist

I put together a Delaware playlist almost two years ago, and it was short, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, David Bromberg, and the 70s New Wave band Television. That’s it. My friend Mark Marmon and I discussed it on the way to Port O’Connor a couple of weeks ago, and he said I had to have missed some jazz guy. I had, Clifford Brown.

I knew of Brown. He was born in 1930. He had tremendous tone and creativity, was a fine composer, and was the greatest trumpet talent of his generation. After he moved to New York in the early 50s he was an immediate star and played with everybody. Dizzie Gillespie and Miles Davis were admirers. He was an early member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and he was to be the co-leader of the Max Roach/Clifford Brown Quintet. His reputation today is of a brilliant talent, a hard worker, and an authentically nice guy. He was killed in a car wreck in 1956, before he turned 26.

Brown c. 1956

Guitar

I didn’t take a guitar, which goes against my rule of playing at least one chord every day. The trip was just too fast.