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Maine Packing List

Gear

We took 9-foot 5 weight rods with floating lines, which is sliced white sandwich bread, or a Toyota Camry, or a Wilson fielder’s glove. It’s so basic it almost doesn’t need to be said. If all I said was that we took fly rods, like as not you’d assume they were 9-foot 5 weight rods with floating lines. 

Rods get heavier than 5 weights, especially in salt water, and lighter, especially because once you’ve bought a 9-foot 5 weight, rod companies depend on you catching rod fever and buying more rods. And buying more rods will almost certainly make you a better angler. Really.

When Kris unpacked her rod the tip was broken. She vaguely remembered breaking it on our trip to California, and vaguely remembered forgetting breaking it. Luckily I’d brought a spare rod—I’m really good about packing a spare—except that I blew it and it wasn’t a spare Winston 5 weight but a Winston 3 weight. I had grabbed the wrong green rod tube. The 3 weight was a bit light, so Kris used the guide’s Orvis 5 weight all week, which was exactly the same model as her broken 5 weight. It’s a good rod.

Back at the lodge, Kris got on the Orvis website and ordered a new tip for her rod. It was waiting at the house when we got home. Kudos to Orvis for great service.

Hotels

In the North Maine Woods we stayed at Libby Camps. Food, lodging, and guides were all included in the trip price we’d paid six months before, so once we got there we only had to pay for alcohol, taxes, and tips. Paying for everything was long forgotten. It felt free!

After we left Libby Camps and the North Woods, we spent two nights on the Atlantic Coast, in Bar Harbor, and one night by the airport in Bangor. Staying in an airport hotel is convenient for early flights, but what can you say? Airport hotels aren’t known for their charm, because, well, universally they have none.

In Bar Harbor we splurged on charm, and stayed in a popular inn a block off of the Main Street, Bass Cottage Inn. We were three flights up with no elevator, but that was ok, or at least once we got our luggage up the three flights it was ok.

The next day while Tropical Storm Lee, née Hurricane Lee, blew through we mostly hung around the inn. This year on fishing trips we’ve survived a tornado in Little Rock and the remnants of a hurricane in Bar Harbor. Travel is so broadening.

Acadia National Park shut down for Hurricane Day, as did a lot of businesses in Bar Harbor. We went for a walk in the rain, and watched the wind and waves in the harbor until we were blown into the nearest place serving lobster and chowder. In the afternoon I played the guitar in our room while the weather reports reminded us it was wet and windy, and later we played cards down in the lobby. It was a nice inn, but by the end of the day even the weather reporters were a little bored.

I got scolded at the inn for entering the kitchen and putting a dirty cup in a dish tub. A staffer nabbed me on the way out of the kitchen, and made certain I knew that it was a working kitchen and that I didn’t belong. Do I seem annoyed? I was annoyed. It wasn’t like I had pranced into the heart of the kitchen to mingle maple syrup with the lobster. It was a mild scolding, maybe only an admonishment, but still. Kris would tell me I’m overreacting about something petty, but there you are. You take your victim as you find them.

It wasn’t even my cup. It was Kris’s cup.

The morning after the storm we drove through Acadia National Park, about 20 minutes from downtown Bar Harbor. There were lots of cute tourist lodges near the park, far from the Bar Harbor main drag, cute clapboard places that looked like they were built for auto trips in a 1968 Buick LeSabre, and I kept wishing we’d stayed at one of those. It would have been cheaper, and I’m certain no one there would have scolded me, no matter what I did with their damned ol’ cup.

Really. I’m over it.

Restaurants

There are four main food groups in Maine, lobster, blueberries, maple syrup, and chowder. While visiting Maine, we tried to keep our diet properly balanced. Outside of Libby Camp, we ate a lot of lobster, blueberries, maple syrup, and chowder, though not necessarily at the same time.

A few restaurants stood out. In Bar Harbor, we ate at Havana, which is a Cuban-tinged restaurant, and there was a good classical guitarist. He played a lot of things that I play, only better. I vaguely recall eating scallops, which aren’t very Cuban, but which are very Maine. I don’t remember seeing black beans and rice on the menu.

In Bernard at Thurston’s Lobster Pound the guy two tables over had on an Astros cap, and I told him that it was very stylish. He complemented mine right back. We had lobster there, and Thurston’s is now closed for the season.

The most popular restaurant in Bangor is the Timber Kitchen and Bar, located at the Embassy Suites. I’d never been to a restaurant at an Embassy Suites. It had the longest menu ever compiled, and the pizza was good. I could have done without the blueberry compote on the pizza though.((I’m lying. They served it on the side.))

Moxie

Moxie is the state soft drink of Maine. I asked our fishing guide, Jeffrey Labree, about Moxie, and he said it must be the greatest advertising campaign ever, because the stuff is terrible. He brought me one, and because it’s guaranteed to prevent softening of the brain I tried it.

Maybe it wasn’t quite the thing with red wine. A Mainer at the table asked if I’d ever had Dr. Pepper and said it tasted like Dr. Pepper. She was wrong.

Acadia National Park

What a beautiful place. It was closed the day of the storm, so the day we were supposed to go we spent in our hotel room in Bar Harbor playing card games and getting admonished for walking into the kitchen. The next morning we drove the national park loop. What a magnificent place. We didn’t stop at the park’s Jordan Pond House tea room because we didn’t have a reservation, but my sister told me later that they’d make room if you showed up, and that the blueberry popovers really are all that. I forgot to ask if they came with maple syrup.

L.L. Bean

We didn’t spend enough time in Acadia because we wanted to see Maine’s other national treasure, L.L. Bean. We had to drive out of our way, but how could we not visit L.L. Bean? Freeport is a shopping enclave, and everybody and their dog was there, literally, enjoying a beautiful post-storm day in the great outdoors by shopping indoors at L.L. Bean. It is a great place to dog watch and people watch on a sunny day.

There was a Vermont Flannel company store next to L.L. Bean, and I bought a red flannel shirt that promised it was Made in America. It’s so heavy that I’ve already scheduled the one day next February that I’ll get to wear it in Houston. Still. I’m now prepared for my future career as a Maine lumberjack.

Books

While we were driving around Maine, we listened to the new Steven King novel, Holly. Did you know that there is always a new Steven King novel? It’s almost like the plot of a horror novel. I’m guessing that it has to do with the long winters and not the supernatural, but if it turns out that Steven King sold his soul down on the crossroads, I’m not sure I’ll be surprised. Holly was as much mystery as horror, and it’s a good driving novel. I also re-listened to Salem’s Lot, which I first read in college. It holds up pretty well.

We visited Steven King’s house in Bangor, and were told by locals that sometimes he does house tours, and that when It was published he put a red balloon in an upstairs window. That’s mighty classy. It’s a scary neighborhood though: apparently Senator Susan Collins lives directly across the street. I wouldn’t go out at night. I’m certain she’s some kind of shape-shifter.

I’ve already mentioned that before we went to Maine I had read Thoreau’s The Maine Woods, and I was better for it. Because I read Thoreau I knew I needed a red flannel shirt.

There’s a series of Maine mysteries by Paul Doiron, the Mike Bowditch mysteries, about a Maine game warden. The books are great for local color, and a lot of fun to listen to. It was from the Mike Bowditch mysteries that I learned about Moxie.

There are two major poets from Maine, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edna St. Vincent Millay, neither of whom wrote about Moxie. I must have read some Longfellow at some point, but I can’t say I remember any. Weirdly, because of Evangeline, Longfellow is probably as well remembered in Louisiana as Maine.

Millay is mostly remembered these days as a bisexual free spirit and morphine addict, but I always pause when I come across one of her poems. There’s almost always something there to ponder:

And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

Renascence

Music

Patty Griffin. Sorry, that’s almost all I’ve got. Doris Day recorded “That Jane from Maine,” and Rudy Vallee was from Maine. Howie Day seems likable. Apparently the long winters are better for writing horror novels than for making music.

As an aside, the It Girl of popular music right now seems to be a guy from Vermont, Noah Kahan. It’s low-key stuff, with plenty of banjoes and fiddles, very likable, and a New York Times critic noted that one of the reasons for Kahan’s current popularity may be that New Englanders so rarely have a popular music icon to embrace, so they’ve embraced Kahan with a vengeance.

So we listened to Patty Griffin, who, last I heard, was living in Austin. Then we listened to more Patty Griffin. Luckily Steven King was there to take up the driving slack.

Guitar

Between the one day that Kris and I were sick and the day of the storm I played the guitar a lot in Maine. I think with the windshield washers slapping time I managed to play every song that driver knew, or at least most of the songs that I know. Libby Camps gave me a free sticker, and it’s now in a place of honor on my guitar case.

Great place, Libby Camps, and for at least part of the year it’s an excellent place to sit on the front porch of the lodge and play the guitar. I wouldn’t want to try it in winter, even in a red lumberjack shirt.

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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.

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Missouri Packing List

It’s been a few weeks and a trip to Cuba since we went to Missouri, but there are interesting things to add about Missouri, and by now the tornado is mostly forgotten.

Gear

We fished part of a day at Roaring River State Park. It’s a pretty Ozark mountain river, and it’s easy to wade. It was a bit crowded though. Why do I ever fish on a Saturday? Since Kris and I are both retired we don’t have to anymore, and having a place to ourselves is such a joy. Still, it was a pretty park, and we used typical trout set ups, 9′ 5-weight rods with floating lines. I caught two fish, both rainbow trout. We fished until the park trout permit pinned to my cap blew off and floated downriver.

The river is stocked from a nearby hatchery, and it was a mix of wild and stocked trout. For some folks stocked fish may seem like opportunity, but it’s always less desirable to fish for stocked fish than wild fish. I can’t usually catch much of either one, so I guess it’s not that one’s harder to catch than the other. Wild fish are just better.

I caught both trout on the Roaring River on a mop fly over a hare’s ear nymph, both fished under the surface. Mop flies are tied from one of those fuzzy mops, and are considered by some as a cheap trick. Don’t tell anyone that I used one.

I kinda like mop flies because you can get a lifetime supply of tying materials with a single trip to Walmart.

The next day we fished Crane Creek in Crane, Missouri, which is another pretty Ozark stream, and which is almost but not-quite famous. In the late 1800s, railroad workers dumped California McCloud River rainbow trout off of a railroad bridge into Crane Creek. Cane Creek hasn’t really been stocked much since, and the fish there today are the descendants of those original fish without significant interference. They may be the purest genetic strain of McCloud rainbows in the country, including those in the McCloud River.

Cane Creek

Stocking trout in rivers that support wild trout is controversial. It introduces non-native fish and diseases, and the stocked fish are just enough competition with the natives to hurt. The stockees don’t survive much either. The best-managed states, Montana for instance, have stopped stocking where there are wild trout, and a lot of the nation’s best rivers are never stocked. A creek that hasn’t been stocked, or a creek where stocking was abandoned, is a bit of a gem. That’s why a place like Crane Creek is someplace to look for.

We were there on a Sunday, and Crane Creek was also a little crowded, but I swear they were the nicest people I’ve ever come across on a river. We were at th park in the Town of Crane, population 1,495, and people invited me over to fish next to them. It was unnatural.

Crane Creek fish are small, and I fished with my tiniest rod. This is where I get goofy. Goofier. The truth is I buy fly rods and reels not because they’re better–almost every fly rod and reel is better than I am–but because they’re pretty. If I’m going to buy a reel, I don’t go in thinking that I want this reel because it has the very latest drag system and faster line retrieve, I buy it because I think it looks good. Of all the fly fishing gear I own–and I own a stupid amount of fly fishing gear–this is my prettiest rod and reel:

It’s an 8 1/2 foot Winston Boron IIIx 3-weight rod made in Montana, a rod that is way too lightweight for most of my fishing, and it’s just the loveliest shade of emerald green, with nickel silver fittings and a burled maple reel seat. The reel is a tiny Hardy Marquis 2/3 reel made in England. Are they appreciably better than any other 3-weight rod or reel? No. Could I have found a perfectly decent rod and reel for a third of the price? Absolutely. Are there any rods that look better? Well, maybe some custom classic bamboo. My goodness they’re pretty, and when the fish are small enough it just makes me idiotically happy to use them.

On Crane Creek I caught two small trout on a size 16 hare’s ear nymph under a size 14 royal Wulff, and Kris caught another. I picked the hare’s ear and royal Wulff because, well, they’re classic flies and I thought they matched that rod and reel. I’ve got standards, and I’m not fishing any mop flies with this rod.

Royal Wulff

Branson

I don’t like Branson. Am I being a snob? Of course. I have friends and family who love to go to Branson. I don’t.

There is a Trump Store, and there are shows.

I can’t think of anything worse than going to a show, unless it’s going to a Trump Store. You say the word show to me, and I feel queasy. Las Vegas? Oh lord, don’t make me go. I don’t gamble, and in Las Vegas there are shows. My daughter says the shopping is great in Las Vegas, but how can that be? I don’t think there’s a single fly fishing shop. Las Vegas at least has a minor league baseball team. I don’t think there’s any baseball in Branson.

The last show I went to voluntarily was Cirque de Soleil some 15 years ago, and I know those performers were miraculous, and that there are otherwise rational people who think that Cirque de Soleil is the best thing going. I know in my heart of hearts that that very show I went to was in all ways wonderful, but me? I was bored out of my mind. I’m still bored just thinking about it.

Maybe I need to go to a show with some mostly-naked ladies. At least I’d like the costumes.

In Branson, there are shows a-plenty, and what’s worse they’re all shows that revel in clean living. There’s Dolly Parton’s Stampede Dinner and Show, Hamners’ Unbelievable Magic Variety Show, WhoDunnit Hoedown and Murder Mystery Show, the Grand Jubilee Show, All Hands on Deck Show, Legends in Concert Show, Shepherd of the Hills Outdoor Drama Show . . . The list just won’t stop. You think you’re on a river in the Ozark backcountry away from all the shows, and you come across a flier for the Amazing Acrobats of Shanghai Show.

I’ve got nothing against clean living, and I consider myself a reasonably clean liver. I know and love several devout Baptists, and even some vegetarians, but clean living commodified into a show? I can’t think of a less appealing combination. Branson is one of those rare places where a soupçon of depravity would improve the moral tone.

I guess they do fish with mop flies, and plenty of people consider that depraved.

Donuts

We found two donut shops, though I’m sure there were more.

Parlor Doughnuts was a bit off the beaten path in a strip center. They sold gourmet donuts,((I’ve created a donut shop classification system, and there are four categories. Traditional shops include Houston’s Shipley’s, Krispy Kreme’s, Dunkin’, or the very best donut shop in the world, Ocean Springs, Mississippi’s Tato-Nut Doughnut Shop. Parlor Doughnuts is a chain in the Gourmet Category, and gourmet donuts are a bit more creative, with upscale whatnots coming to the fore. Portland’s Blue Star or Albuquerque’s Rebel come to mind. Experiential donut shops have let creativity run amock, and they are my least favorite kind of donut shop–I’m talking to you, VooDoo. A Cambodian donut shop is a clean, well-lighted place that is almost certainly located in a strip center. Everything is basic but good enough, and the owners are at the counter. Cambodian donutries can have flashes of brilliance–the boudin kolache was invented in a Cambodian donut shop and that deserves a Michelin star, or at least a James Beard nomination. It’s fusion cuisine at its finest.)) and the donuts were a bit elaborate for my taste, but I’d go back. I’d certainly go back if the choice was the other place we tried, Hurts.

Hurts is experiential. It’s next door to the Trump Store on the main drag, and it’s huge for a donut shop. There was a long line for the donuts. There were flavors like cotton candy, and cookie monster, and dirt worms, and every donut seemed created for a 9-year old, which I’m not. When I got to the counter, they were out of plain glazed.

The donuts were cold and forgettable. Kris wanted to chuck them and go back to Parlor.

AirBnB

We stayed in a nice pet-friendly AirBnB on the lake on the edge of town. It was just far enough from Branson’s center to forget where we were, and the owner left us a plate of cookies. They were good home-made cookies, too. There was an old canoe and a beat up bamboo fly rod hung as decorations above the fireplace, and I took that as a good omen. I sat on the enclosed porch and read Huck Finn, and, notwithstanding the No Trespassing signs, took the dogs for walks down to the lake. I’m pretty certain those signs weren’t meant for me.

Fly Shops

There are at least a couple of fly shops in Branson, but we only went to one, River Run Outfitters. We were supposed to fish with guides from the shop, but they talked us out of going. It was cold, in the 40s, and all the floodgates on the dam were open. The wind was gusting up to 40 mph. It was dangerous, and what’s worse we weren’t likely to catch anything. They gave us free coffee and good advice on where to fish instead. I bought some mop flies.

Restaurants

Branson is not a restaurant town. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of restaurants, but they all seem to have names like Hungry Hunter or Pickin’ Porch Grill. There are lots of barbecue places, but I’ve made the mistake of eating Missouri barbecue once before, in Kansas City, and I won’t do that again. Those people eat melted cheese on brisket, which should only be done in leftover brisket enchiladas.

The Keeter Center at College of the Ozarks promised farm to table dining, and I guess it was, but mostly everything just seemed big. Big room, big appetizers, big iced tea. . . Big ideology. I don’t know, it just didn’t click.

See that dish right there? That’s the Brussels sprout nachos appetizer, which as i recall was a lot of chopped up Brussels sprouts and feta on a lot of fried wontons. Had they artfully arranged four or five of those on a plate and charged me $12, I would have eaten them and said that’s ok, but that pile of stuff for $12 was too daunting. All I could think was man-oh-man, that’s big.

All of the waiters at Keeter Center are students at College of the Ozarks, and the hostess told us all about it, and then the waiter told us all about it. It’s a free Christian college, well, free in exchange for work. I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t have gone there without lots of conversations with a dean.

The next night we played it safe and went to two of Branson’s sushi joints, Mitsu Neko and Wakyoto. They were fine, and there were no Brussels sprouts. There was some kale, but I think it was purely decorative.

Playlist

Missouri has produced some magnificent music, and I’m still listening to that playlist. Josephine Baker was from St. Louis, and maybe I might have enjoyed one of her shows. From Wikipedia:

Her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927 caused a sensation in [Paris]. Her costume, consisting of only a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.

Now that’s a costume, and there are some fun recordings of her singing jazzy French stuff.

Missouri had great jazz. You wouldn’t think it, would you? But in the 1920s, Prohibition wasn’t really enforced there, and 18th and Vine in Kansas City was as lively as anyplace in the country. The Kansas City Big Bands had their own style, blusier than New York or Chicago, with a frantic quality that makes you drive just a little faster if your foot’s on the peddle. There are great black big bands, Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra, Andy Kirk, George E. Lee, Count Basie . . . Two of the great jazz saxophonists, Lester Young and Charlie Parker, both came out of Kansas City.

There’s rock ‘n roll, too. Big Joe Turner is a joy, then there’s Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner, Sheryl Crow, Michael McDonald, and T Bone Burnett. The Beatles went to Kansas City, or at least they were going.

St. Louis Blues has been covered by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Louis Prima, Doc Watson, Herbie Hancock, Eartha Kitt, Art Tatum, and Ella Fitzgerald, and if your name is Louis, you can still meet Judy Garland there.

Ojon Mill, Photograph of Lester Young, 1944, Time Magazine, Volume 17, Number 13, Public Domain.

Guitar

I took my old Kohno classical, and spent some time at night playing. I don’t remember what, but I’ve been working on an arrangement of Gershwin’s Somebody Loves Me. That’s likely.

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Bonefish Recipes

This was our second trip to Hawaii. I liked it well enough last time, but I wouldn’t have gone back, except, of course, it’s required. In 2019 I didn’t catch a fish, and I had to catch a fish. Maybe if I surfed I’d be more excited about Hawaii, but I’m not a beach guy, and the thought of me surfing is only amusing to everybody else, not me.

Hawaii is a trek from Houston; of the states only Alaska is further. It’s 14 hours of flights if you include the mandatory LA layover, and planes and airports and Covid travel entirely too well together. The combination brings out my inner compliance officer. When the government tells me to wear a mask at the airport, I’m all in, and the non-compliant lady next to me at the baggage claim makes me irrationally angry. She has an ugly nose, and I don’t want to see it. I really want to tell her that she has an ugly nose, but I worry that her husband with the even uglier nose might punch me, and notwithstanding my righteous wrath he might be justified.

Without the mandatory LA layover. It’s about 4,000 miles, and it’s a particularly unpleasant drive. From distance.to.

To top it off, except as a Christmas Island stopover, Hawaii isn’t usually considered a fly fishing destination.  I covet catching Christmas Island bonefish as much as I covet catching any saltwater fish, short maybe of Seychelles giant trevally, but the Seychelles (which are off the East Coast of Africa) are even harder to get to than Hawaii, or even Christmas Island. When my shoulder hurt last year, Mark Marmon told me about an orthopedic surgeon who fly fished—which seemed to me a reasonable basis on which to choose a doctor.  It turned out it was my neck, not my shoulder, but in addition to prescribing some stretches and a prescription for an anti-inflammatory, the doctor told me about fishing for giant trevally in the Seychelles. He said that he could only go every three years or so, because by the time he got there and spent a week fishing, the trip cost about $30,000.  I hope that included his flies.

The Seychelles, where the Giant Trevally roam. From Wikipedia.

In the same vein, at my annual check-up my cardiologist showed me pictures of the 28” rainbow he caught on his annual trip to Alaska, and the permit he caught last year in Belize. I didn’t share with either of them the photos of the bluegills I caught last year in Kansas. 

Relative to the Seychelles, Christmas Island is a bargain. There’s one weekly flight to Christmas Island from Hawaii on Fiji Airlines, not that I’ve looked, not very often anyway. Once you get there you’re stuck for the week, and the only thing to do is drink beer and fish. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? I guess if it’s good enough for Santa, it’s good enough for me.  

Christmas Island has a famous red crab migration, but as far as I know it has no red-nosed reindeer. Map courtesy of Google Earth.

Of course we didn’t go to Christmas Island, but to Molokai and Kauai in Hawaii, with an overnight in Honolulu on Oahu. I cashed in all of our accumulated credit card points so that we could fly first class to Hawaii on Delta. Except for the price, first class isn’t what it used to be—our snack on the flight from Houston to LA consisted of three kinds of pasteurized processed cheese food—designated as cheddar, smoked Gouda, and something called alpine-style, all three of which tasted exactly like Velveeta.  I like Velveeta, though I prefer it melted with a can of Rotel. Delta is missing a bet. If they had served queso and chips I’d be all in for Delta first class, even if the WiFi costs extra and the price of a first class ticket doesn’t get you into the Delta passenger lounge.

The problem with Hawaii as a bonefish destination isn’t the 14-plus hours of travel, it’s that it has the reputation of not having a lot of bonefish, and the fish it has are supposed to be  particularly skittish. Saltwater sport fish are different than freshwater fish. They’re stronger, and bonefish are built to outrun what ails ‘em—particularly sharks. They breed in deep water, but they come into the shallows to eat crabs and shrimp, and that’s where they’re targeted. Even in clear shallow water they’re hard to see, but with a sunny day, a good guide can spot the fish and tell you where to cast. I can see them sometimes, and Kris is better at it than me, but the guys who make a living spotting fish are amazing. All the angler has to do is cast where the guide says without spooking the fish, convince the fish on the retrieve that the fly is something it needs, and on the take remember to set the line—strip-set—not lift the rod. Of course lifting the rod fast and strong is the natural reaction to any take by a fish, and it’s what my momma and daddy taught me when first I caught crappie, so I’ve been doing it for a long time, but fly fishing for bonefish, if you raise the rod tip, you’ll never set the fly. The fish is gone and not coming back. You have to jerk the line straight back to set the hook.

I only raised the rod tip once, I promise. That was one of the nine or so takes where I lost the fish. Ok, maybe twice, but not much more than twice. Certainly not more than three or four times.

If you or your guide sees a fish, and you do everything else right, then you hang on.  Bonefish are extraordinarily strong, and when hooked they run for the border. They’ll rip out a hundred yards of line before you’ve rightly figured out what’s happened. Think of it this way: if you hook the fish at 40 feet distance, then less than a 30 seconds later the fish will stop running 260 feet away. It’s just amazing. All of you focuses into hanging on and wondering if the fish will ever slow.

Molokai bonefish flat. See the fish? That’s Lanai in the distance, unless I’m confused and it’s Maui. They’re both about seven miles away.

Targeted Hawaiian bonefish, Albula glossodonta, aren’t the same species as targeted Caribbean bonefish, Albula vulpes, which is interesting, and they’re generally bigger, which is good, but Hawaiians eat every bonefish they can drag from the sea, which is complicated. Consumers can buy gill-netted shrink-wrapped bonefish in the markets. To prepare the fish (this is the recipe part) they scrape the meat from the bones, and fry up the mashed meat as bonefish patties. I don’t know if there’s ketchup involved, but I’m pretty certain there’s no cornmeal. This may seem like no big shakes to a non-believer, but for most fly fishers, it’s an article of faith that bonefish are inedible, and killing and eating a bonefish is only slightly more appealing to most of us than eating a puppy. It’s just not done, and I’m so programmed that just the thought makes me kinda queasy.

Flyfishers tend strongly toward not keeping and eating fish anyway. They like to torture the fish and then put it back in the water so that another flyfisher can torture it again later.

In most places where bonefish are fished, the Bahamas and Belize for instance, catch and release is the norm, but Hawaiians, particularly Native Hawaiians, eat bonefish. Couple the island’s taste for bonefish croquettes with its lack of bonefish regulations—Hawaii doesn’t recognize bonefish as a gamefish, and the only restriction on killing and keeping fish seems to be that you can’t keep a fish that’s shorter than 14 inches–and flyfishers blame Hawaiian overfishing on the sparsity of fish inshore on islands like Oahu. Now mind, Hawaii is the bluest of states, and there’s nothing the islands love better than a good regulation. There are, for instance, no free grocery bags in Hawaii. If you go to the grocery without a bag, you’ll have to buy one. Same vein, your mai tai straw will be paper: there are no plastic straws on the islands. For goodness sakes, they restrict the kinds of sunscreen you can wear. Just take a gander at Hawaii’s Covid entry restrictions to get a flavor of the place—they require either a recent test or a vaccination card—but if you want to catch and kill all the bonefish in the sea, get busy.

My wristband evidencing proof of vaccination. I passed!

Killing and eating bonefish is a cultural thing, I get it, and while for me eating a bonefish would be bad form, I’m not squeamish or outraged about other people eating them. Still, if they’re gonna, I’d rather Hawaii had reasonable limits for bonefish takes, and I’m not convinced that using monofilament gill nets to overfish bonefish is an important Hawaiian cultural tradition. Of course then I’m a Texan, and cultural insensitivity is an important Texas cultural tradition.

Texas banned gill nets for redfish 40 years ago and it was a memorable political battle, but for once we got something right. It protects our inshore fishery, and it converted a fish that was once viewed as a slightly trashy food fish into a gamefish—still a food fish, but no longer gill-netted into oblivion. Maybe it helps that redfish are widely farmed, and maybe it’s culturally insensitive to compare the Texas redfish fishery to the Hawaii bonefish fishery.  I just can’t help being a bit chauvinistic, plus I’m selfish. I want all the bonefish left in the sea for me to catch. 

Bonefish flies.

In case you were wondering, the chain restaurant, Bonefish Grill, doesn’t serve bonefish.