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Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia

 

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So far Florida and Louisiana have been pretty interesting, but a bust when it comes to fishing.  But our son Andy finishes his masters in May in Washington D.C., and we’ll hit graduation and three states, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.

We were in Maryland last year to watch the Astros play the Orioles and poke around Baltimore.  Astros won, and we fished a lovely little tailwater below the Baltimore water supply called the Gunpowder, which is the best river name ever.  We both caught small rainbows, didn’t take any pictures, and liked Baltimore well enough.  This time though we’re fishing the Chesapeake near Annapolis for whatever saltwater stuff happens to be going on in mid-May.

I’ve been to Virginia twice, once to interview students at the University of Virginia–who sticks a university in such a hard place to get to?–and once to have Thanksgiving in Jamestown.  I had all sorts of ancestors in Jamestown and thereabouts 400 odd years ago, and it seemed right to go see it.  We stayed on the Chesapeake but didn’t fish, but this time we’ll go inland. We’ll try for trout I think.

I’ve never been to West Virginia, and only know that it split from Virginia during the Civil War, and is famous for coal miners and voters for President Trump and John Brown’s raid.

Meanwhile our skiff’s still in the shop and I’ve been fishing a lot for bass and sunfish.  Kris birdwatches every day on the Coast: it’s the annual warbler migration.  I can’t manage a decent picture of sunfish because the little devils flop and flip, but Kris has taken some great photos of warblers.  They’ll have to do.  She could even tell you what kind of warblers they are.

And she did.  The first is a Baltimore Oriole, the second is a Summer Tanager, the third a thrush of some sort, or a thrasher, and the final an Indigo Bunting.  But they all come with the warblers.  I’ve heard the warblers migrate from the Yucatan across the Gulf of Mexico–800 miles?–where they fall into Galveston, rest a bit (and by a bit I mean hours) then take off for further north. Some will migrate as far as Alaska.  If you’ve ever seen the movie The Big Year where all the birdwatchers show up in Ohio? They’re there for the warbler fall. Paparazzi.

In addition to birds, in our photo files we also have thousands of interesting photos of sticks and leaves.

Autofocus and burst photography has its downside.

 

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Tenkara-san

Kris gave me a Tenkara Sato outfit from Orvis for Valentines Day.  I gave her more or less the same thing, a Temple Fork Outfitters SH 11’6”. She tried hers on the Guadalupe but didn’t catch anything. I tried mine for the first time Sunday, fishing along the banks at one of Damon’s 7 Lakes for sunfish.  I only had about an hour, and kept meaning to switch to a popper but never did. I didn’t see many sunfish, but I caught one small bluegill and three smallish bass.

It took me a while to set up the rod and line, and my set up was . . . creative. Ignoring the instructions I tied some perfection loops and stuck things together. It was close enough to the picture, with the line that came off the rod dangling off the rod tip and a bit of standard leader attached to that. The booklet informed me that Tenkara was fly fishing, not dapping or cane rod fishing. From what I could tell it was about as much like dapping or cane rod fishing as it was like fly fishing, but I fished with a Damon’s owner’s favorite fly, a BBB. “BBB” stands for something, of which “bitchin” and “bream” are part, but I never have had it straight. They’re pretty easy to tie though, and they catch fish.

For me the 10’ rod had a range of 10-15 feet from the rod tip, plus or minus, but it was easy to cast and reasonably accurate.  Tenkara rods don’t lend themselves to long stillwater retrieves, but in a way they’re perfect for spring bass and bream in shallow water.  Every fish I caught hit while the fly was sinking through the water column, not while it was moving.  Toss, wait, toss again, wait. it’s intimate, visual, almost as good as dapping: all but the sunfish was caught when I set the hook after watching the fish take. If I hadn’t just  blundered down the bank not paying much attention, if I’d used just a modicum of stealth, I probably could have done much better, and caught more fish. Of course if I’d switched to a popper I might have caught more fish.

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Dave Robicheaux: Sex, Drugs, and Other Such

“Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.”
James Lee Burke, Pegasus Descending

I’ve been listening to James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels. Other than Ann Rice ( who I find unreadable), they’re perhaps the most popular novels out of Louisiana. I read most of the novels the first time spaced over the years as they were published, but I’ve been listening to them in bunches. In bunches they’re relentless.

Burke was born in Houston, and still has ties here.  I went into Orvis once to buy something, tippet or leaders probably, and the young woman behind the counter had a name tag, Alafair. I told her I was reading a novel with a character named Alafair and she said that it was a grandmother’s name and that Burke was her great uncle. Even before Orvis I had linked Burke with fly fishing; I started reading Burke after a local bookshop, Murder by the Book, recommended  Black Cherry Blues as reading material for a fly fishing trip to Idaho, and Burke’s main characters, Robicheaux and Cletus Purcell, fly fish. In Black Cherry Blues a serial killer runs over Purcell’s fly rod with a car. Dang. They’re violent books.

There was another young woman in law school with me who I also think of when I think of Burke.  I didn’t know her, and never talked to her, but she was noticeable: petite, pretty, dark honey skin and lighter honey hair, and well-dressed for a student. Rich looking I guess. I remember a conversation about her once with other law students. Someone said her family was New Orleans’ mafia and to stay away. As far as I could tell most everyone did stay away. I’m sure there’s plenty of organized crime in Houston, but somehow New Orleans’ mafia just had that special ring.

Burke captures that special ring, that special Louisiana familiarity with prostitution, poverty, violence, drugs, alcoholism, murder, racism, gambling, corporate and environmental greed, and general depravity.  Laissez les bons temps rouler. Before there was Las Vegas there was New Orleans. Before there was online porn there was Storyville and Bourbon Street.

Mostly nothing good ever happens in a James Lee Burke novel. Made guys bring crime into Iberia Parish day-in, day-out, and then for the weekend Roubicheaux visits  New Orleans for some real violence. Wives get executed when the mob hit misses the hero.  Victims of childhood abuse nail their hands to the backyard gazebo.  The hero’s sidekick drinks Scotch in his milk and regularly goes off the rails.  Gun bulls rape the inmates, oil wells blow, Justice is not just. The only time that violence isn’t a breath away, the only time there’s anything like peace, is when Roubicheaux is in the natural world, watching gar turning in bayou currents under the green canopy of the Louisiana coast. The books ring true, unrelenting as they are, because we are certain that New Orleans’ mafioso and corrupt politicians and violence are the stuff of Louisiana. And it’s true. Louisiana routinely has the highest murder rate in the nation, more than twice that of Texas, which is not a place known for peaceful coexistence.

There are plenty of causes for Louisiana crime. U.S. News & World Report seems now to be mostly a publisher of lists: best of this, worst of that.  It ranks states, and of the 50 states Louisiana ranked last. I don’t know how they come up with their list, but they try to measure different weighted factors that are supposed to matter to people: health care, education, economy, infrastructure, crime and corrections . . . Health care? 47. Education? 49. Its highest ranking, 42, is for quality of life. You have someplace where everything else is bad, It makes sense crime is bad. Or maybe it’s just always been that way.

It does have good fishing though, and gumbo.