Category: Northeast

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Maine

We go to Maine on Friday, via United Airlines to Bangor and then north from Bangor by car, past Mount Katahdin and Baxter State Park, further into the north woods to Piscataquis County, about as far north as counties in the continental States dare go. I’ve never been to Maine, and we’ll be so far north that to our left, to our right, and straight ahead all the land will belong to Canada. It’ll be just like the Charge of the Light Brigade, though hopefully without the cannon.

Did you know that there’s more Allen’s Coffee Brandy sold in Maine than anyplace else? Did you know that there’s something called Allen’s Coffee Brandy? Until sometime in the early 2000s it was the most popular liquor sold in Maine, though now various vodkas are higher on the list. It’s still well up there. There’s also a popular regional soft drink called Moxie, and in Maine the mix of Moxie and Allen’s Coffee Brandy is called a “Burnt Trailer.” The mix of Allen’s Coffee Brandy and Diet Moxie is called a “Welfare Mom.” Even in the interest of science, I doubt that I’ll try either one.

Moxie, by the way, was originally sold as a tonic brewed to prevent softening of the brain, nervousness, and insomnia. I might could use some of that. Moxie and vodka, by the way, is a Moxie mule.

Maine has a population of 1,372,000, 92% Anglo, with a total area of 35,385 square miles. That puts it 38th on the list of states by population density, ahead of Oregon, Utah, and Kansas. Roughly 80% of Maine is forested, and most of it’s population is in the remaining 20%. It’s the largest New England state. With a few exceptions, Mainers cluster reasonably close to its coast, but even along the coast there aren’t large urban centers. Maine’s largest city, Portland, has a population of 68,424. Lewiston, the second city, has 38,493. In the north and west of the state there’s forest, and some mountains, too. The north end of the Appalachian Trail is Mount Katahdin, 5,269 feet. Then there’s some more forest.

About half of the population lives in the southeast corner around Portland. All of the reported vampire population is in Jerusalem’s Lot, and hopefully they’ll stay there.

William Bradford, The Schooner Jane of Bath, Maine, 1857, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago.

Reading Maine history is peculiar. Until the Civil War, Maine seems to have been the hottest thing going. They built ships in Maine. Maine’s captains sailed the world. Maine produced timber, and there was land to be had. That’s not to say that Maine didn’t have its troubles: the English were prone to try to move the border, and Mainers had to rid themselves of Massachusetts. There were always French folk trying to migrate south from Canada. Into the 20th Century though if you bought a shoe it was like as not made in Maine. If you bought a sailing ship it was like as not made in Maine.

Then winter came, and it wasn’t. L.L. Bean boots and Hinckley Yachts are still made in Maine, and there must still be a Bath Iron Works, but I think Maine’s most significant exports now are Steven King novels and potatoes. Even Allen’s Coffee Brandy and Moxie are made in Massachusetts.

Jacobson, Antonio N., S.S. State of Maine, ca. 1892, oil on canvas, Maine Historical Society. The S.S. State of Maine was built in Bath, Maine.

Before the Civil War Henry David Thoreau wrote three travel essays about Maine, two of which were published in periodicals during his life and collected after his death as The Maine Woods. His trips weren’t far from where we’re going. On one trip he climbed Mount Katahdin. On another a Native American guide took him and a companion by canoe to Moosehead Lake. Some of the essays are pure travelogue, but they’re well written and appealing, with enough wilderness spark to provide drama. Some of the writing is better than mere travelogue. From time to time in The Maine Woods you’ll find some of Thoreau’s loveliest observations about nature, and nobody ever did mysticism and nature better than Thoreau.

Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable was changed into a pine at last? No! No! It is the poet . . . . ((Thoreau, Henry David, “Chesuncook”, The Maine Woods at 112, Yale University Press 2009, New Haven, Ct.))

You’ll also find his god-awful attempts to reproduce the dialogue of his Native American guide. Tonto’s script writers produced less stilted vernacular. “Kademy . . . good thing–I suppose they usum Fifth Reader there . . . You been college?”((Thoreau, Henry David, “The Allegash and the East Branch”, The Maine Woods at 183, Yale University Press 2009, New Haven, Ct. Interestingly, “that looks like Ned and the First Reader” was my father’s standard description of messy work, as in “your casting looks like Ned and the First Reader.” I never knew there was more than one Reader until I read Thoreau. I still don’t know who Ned was.)) After reading Thoreau’s dialogues, you realize why his best work is about living alone at Walden Pond.

Paul Bunyan statue, Bangor, Maine. Paul Bunyan was also resident in Michigan, Minnesota, and Nova Scotia.

In The Maine Woods, Thoreau mentions the red shirts of the lumbermen several times. I thought certain that when we got the gear list for Libby Camp it would require us to bring red flannel shirts, but there was nary a one listed. These days anglers are more prone to camouflage than red, on the theory that fish will more easily spot threats who wear bright colors. Whatever the styles preferred by 19th century Maine lumbermen or 21st century fly fishers, it’s hard now to find a red flannel shirt, even with the help of the internet. The closest I could come was an L.L. Bean chamois shirt, probably made in China, and somehow the notion of buying a heavy shirt during the current Houston heat wave was just more than I could stomach. I’ll wear no red in Maine, and I apologize to Henry David and Paul Bunyan.

We could go to Maine to fish the seacoast. It’s a drowned seacoast, a seacoast that because of rising oceans after glacial retreat left a rugged and interesting shore. This time of year there should be not only striped bass but migrations of bluefish and false albacore. I do get seasick though.

Cornelia “Fly Rod” Cosby, the first registered Maine guide.

There was also a time when you could go to Maine to fish for Atlantic salmon, but through a combination of dams, pollution, and over-fishing we’ve done an excellent job of eradicating U.S. Atlantic salmon runs. Maine is the last North American place south of Canada where there are Atlantic salmon, but they’re critically endangered.

There are largish native wild brook trout left in Maine, when they’ve otherwise disappeared from the rest of their U.S. native range. Generally they can’t compete with rainbow trout introduced from the Pacific Northwest and brown trout from Europe, so outside of Maine they’ve been marginalized into smaller streams, and there’s not sufficient food in the streams to grow big fish. But in Maine for whatever reason they’re still the inland fish of choice.

Along with the brook trout there are also landlocked salmon. Landlocked salmon are Atlantic salmon that at the end of the last glaciation were cut off from the ocean. Apparently they make their spawning runs from lake to river in September, and they’re absolutely right to do so. September is always the best time to travel, when temperatures are starting to cool and the kids are back in school.

The last of the large native brook trout in the U.S. are a good enough excuse to see the Maine woods, but there’s also a sporting tradition. Train travel opened the Maine woods to both Henry David Thoreau and lots of traveling fishers and hunters. By the end of the 19th century, Maine fishing and hunting camps were scattered through the far Maine woods, and they were the very thing. We’re going to Libby Camp, which can trace it’s ancestry to the 1880s, but there are plenty of others. There are few things as iconic to a fly fisher as a Maine camp.

We know there can’t be a fish because the angler is wearing a red shirt. He must have dropped his hat.

In other matters, Mainer’s didn’t vote for Donald Trump in either 2016 or 2020, voting 48.2%, or 357,735, for Clinton, and then 51%, or 435,072, for Biden. Interestingly–and this is repeated in other states as well–there is more than a 3% drop in votes for the Libertarian candidate between 2016 and 2020, from 5.09% for Gary Johnson in 2016 to 1.73% for Jo Jorgensen. One supposes two things, that about 2% of the population really does vote Libertarian, and that in Maine in 2016 about 20,000 voters wouldn’t vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. In 2020 most of those 20,000 voters were either more enthusiastic about Biden or less enthusiastic about Trump.

There was 73% eligible voter turnout in Maine in 2016, then 78% turnout in 2020. That’s huge turnout. To put that in perspective, turnout nationally in 2020 was 66.7%.

Maine 2020 presidential election results by county, Wikipedia. That would also double for a pretty good population map.

Maine does something peculiar with its electoral college votes in presidential elections that I don’t think is done anywhere else. Instead of all or none, it splits two of its four electoral college votes by congressional district, so in 2020 Trump took one electoral vote and Biden three others. That was the only electoral vote for Trump from New England. It’s not a bad way for the electoral college to work, though unless other states did the same thing it only hurts Maine’s overall majority.

Neither of Maine’s Congressfolk are Republican, though one of its senators is a moderate Republican, which along with Atlantic salmon is a critically endangered species. Unlike the rest of Mainers, she doesn’t have a reputation for being particularly independent. The other senator, Angus King, is in fact independent, but caucuses with the Democrats.

Both Maine’s state senate and house are mildly Democratic. Its governor is Democratic.

One last note on fly fishing in Maine. Mainers created some of the most beautiful streamer flies in the American catalogue. They’re simpler variations of classic British salmon flies. I tried to tie some, though it was hard, and my results were decidedly mixed. I’m sure they’ll look a lot better in the water, and just fishing them is enough of a reason to go to Maine, whether or not I have a red shirt.

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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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Shad, Brandywine Creek, Delaware, May 25, 2023.

We were in Delaware last Thursday to try again to catch American shad. We fished in Brandywine Creek in Brandywine Park, only a mile or so from downtown Wilmington, with two-handed rods, long 11-foot rods that don’t require a backcast. Shad are anadromous fish, just like Atlantic and Pacific salmon, only not so glamorous. From northern Florida to southern Canada, in rivers all along the East Coast, American shad migrate into freshwater rivers and streams to spawn. Each spring in Delaware the shad run into the Brandywine from the Atlantic. Unlike Pacific salmon, American shad don’t necessarily die after spawning, and most will return to saltwater. They’re not as big as spawning salmon, but in the Brandywine a hen might reach eight pounds.

At least according to those who know they are great fun to catch. I’m assured that there are those who know.

In the ocean shad are planktivorous, which is an extravagant way to say that they live on plankton with a smattering of insects and tiny fish and crustaceans. Like salmon, when shad reach freshwater what they eat doesn’t matter. They stop eating. They will take a fly, maybe out of anger, maybe habit, or maybe just to show off. Who knows? But they will take a fly.

At least I’ve heard they’ll take a fly. This is a spoiler. We didn’t catch shad again.

You know what though? We toss the dice every time we go someplace to fish. There’s always a chance we may not catch fish. That’s ok. With Delaware shad we’ve tried to hit a window when the fish are in the creek. Last time we went, in May 2021, it was still too cold, and the shad stayed out of the creek in deeper water. This spring Wilmington hasn’t had significant rain. Unlike salmon, shad don’t jump obstacles, and when the water’s low the remains of the first Brandywine dam block the shad. Last year when we didn’t go the migration was reportedly great, and someday soon the Wilmington forecast is for rain . . . . Last year. . . . Someday . . . . We can’t control this year, this week. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

There are now lots of states, Maryland, Florida, Kansas, Hawaii, Delaware, where we’ve gone back to catch fish. Next month we’ll make our third trip to Rhode Island, and not because the fish weren’t there. Rhode Island is purely user error. Some day we have to go back to North Dakota, but then who doesn’t want to go back to North Dakota?

What I’ve learned is that every time I go back to a place, there’s something I like more about it, there’s something more to be discovered, and there are always other things I wish I had seen, or done, or eaten, or fished for. There are plenty of places where I secretly half wish I hadn’t caught a fish, just so I’d have an excuse to return.

And this time I really enjoyed going back to Delaware. I liked fishing for shad again, even if I didn’t catch one. Standing in a river practicing my spey cast makes a pretty good day, with or without fish, and we were standing in the middle of Brandywine Park, a park designed in consultation with Frederick Law Olmstead. I would cast my line across the current, trying to remember to quarter down river about 45 degrees, then watch the line arc across where the shad should be. Half the time I’d make my cast, then spend the drift watching joggers and picnickers and dog walkers, or a group of adolescents up to minor mischief, or a man throwing sticks to a dog. It is a lovely place, and it was a joy to watch people take joy from it.

And good guides bring such knowledge to the table. When I called Terry Peach a few weeks ago to set up our day, it was like talking to an old friend. He remembered us from two years ago. He was happy to guide us again, and when we fished last Thursday Kris and I talked to Terry about most everything open to polite conversation, and only 90% or so of our conversation was about fishing. Before we left Houston, Terry called me twice to warn us about the low water flows, and talked us into moving our trip around so that we could fish in the evening.

Terry didn’t sound too hopeful, but he thought our best shot would be after the Atlantic tide pushed the lower Brandywine up two or three feet, and that maybe that push would be enough to get the fish upriver. That evening it wasn’t enough, but it was our best shot at shad.

I did catch one fish in the Brandywine, a small yellow perch, 8 or 9 inches. I don’t know much about perch. I’ve caught one other, in Connecticut, but apparently the Delaware perch spawn happens earlier, in March, and according to Terry it’s a big favorite for local fly fishers. While the fish are small, there’s a mass of ’em, and they’re aggressive. Finding my perch in the creek so late in the season was peculiar, and I was too surprised to take a picture. It was pretty though, bright yellow, with dark vertical bands.

File:Yellow perch fish perca flavescens.jpg

Raver, Duane, Yellow Perch, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2016, public domain.

That yellow perch was enough to check off Delaware, but Terry had already taken care of that earlier in the day. Suburban Delaware may be one of the gentlest, prettiest places on earth. It’s pretty like Kentucky horse country, or the Connecticut second home region in full summer spate. It’s not wild, it’s in no manner rugged, it’s domestic and fat and happy. If you lived there you’d have to belong to a country club. You’d have to own a 1968 Chrysler Town and Country station wagon, or at least a Defender. You really wouldn’t be surprised to discover a mess of Hobbits living down by the Brandywine.

At the heart of suburban Delaware is the DuPont family, who began manufacturing gunpowder at a site on the Brandywine in 1804. There are numerous DuPont and DuPont kinfolk estates scattered here and about, with Winterthur being perhaps the most famous. Across the road from Winterthur is another passel of DuPont heirs–I never did get quite straight who or how they were all related. However they fit in, Terry had permission to take us there to fish their ponds, and before we went to Brandywine Creek we stopped off at a DuPont pond.

There are all sorts of exotic fly fishing destinations in the world, and all sorts of exotic fish, and for all of them I’m at best nothing but a duffer. Give me a pond, though, and I know how to fish. I may be one of the world’s premier bluegill fly anglers.

And during our hour or so on the pond we caught fish. We were fishing 6-weight single-handed rods with floating lines and various surface bass flies: poppers, sliders, gurglers . . . . Kris caught a crappie and a nice bass, maybe two pounds, or at least it might have been two pounds pre-spawn, and I caught a couple of crappie and a bluegill. Crappie, pronounced crop-ee, are what my parents loved to fish for, and the first fish I ever caught was almost certainly a crappie. Fishing a bass pond on a DuPont estate and catching crappie, I couldn’t have been happier. I may not have caught a shad, but I caught a crappie. I’m one of the world’s premier crappie fly anglers.