Somebody somewhere serendipitously caught three different fish in a day and called it a grand slam, probably over beers that very evening. Grand slam, of course, is a baseball term, meaning that one is spectacularly off the schneid. It’s usually a tarpon, a bonefish, and a permit caught on the same day, but there aren’t a lot of places north of the Florida Keys to catch a tarpon, a bonefish, and a permit, so in Texas saltwater it’s a flounder, a redfish, and a speckled trout. For Western trout it’s a cutthroat, rainbow, brown, and brookie. For Eastern trout it’s the same sans cutthroat. It’s all nonsense, but it’s gratifying nonsense.
I caught a rainbow, brown, and brookie on the same Wednesday in West Virginia. I caught the rainbow and the brown in less than 30 minutes after breakfast before we met Randall the guide.
Earlier at breakfast we sat on the porch at the restaurant and watched this guy on the far side of the river catch and release at least six fish.
Meantimes while he was fishing I had the blueberry pancakes. I suspect that both of us, the guy fishing and me, were satisfied.
The people we talked to in the restaurant were all from West Virginia and Pennsylvania. When we said we were from Texas it was like saying we were from France. Elk Springs seems to be a local draw. It shouldn’t be. It’s a good place, and the blueberry pancakes are outstanding.
I hadn’t taken my camera, so I took no pictures of the first two-thirds of my slam. I was startled by the brown, and kept looking at it in the net for confirmation, but there it was. I wish I had a photo just to prove that I wasn’t lying to myself. It was a brown though, and I’d already caught the rainbow.
I caught the two of ‘em on squirmy worms. Not very orthodox, but fine with me.
Kris and Randall conspired again and took me away from the Elk River to Kumbrabow State Forest. It’s a beautiful place, deserted on a Wednesday in May except for the three of us, and a group of state highway workers who got lost looking for a highway. We fished a bit of stream and I came to a pool, a tiny pool, a pocket pool, maybe four feet deep and blue as a Caribbean sea. I put on a weighted nymph to get the fly down and hooked my grand slam brookie. Randall and Kris were standing there watching so I yelled “fish on” and they laughed.
But it was as lovely a fish as ever I caught. I won’t say though that even on a three weight there was much of a battle.
Tiny. Perfect.
We moved to a waterfall where I promptly fell down in the pool below the falls. Kris and Randall were chattering away and paid me no mind. Did I say Randall was terse? Kris was chattering and Randall was talking almost as fast–ok, nobody can chatter like Kris in high gear. And she loves a story, both to tell and to hear. Randall and his family and his fishing were to Kris a good story.
And Kris also caught her Appalachian brookie. Who wouldn’t be thrilled?
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We piled our rods in the car and left the mountain at three. The lodge had been great, the fishing was great, the staff had been accommodating, friendly, and knowledgeable, the food had been lovely, thoughtful, and well-prepared, and I caught my West Virginia fish. Plus there was a washer-drier. Only 47 more states to go.
The brook trout, by the way, is the the state fish of West Virginia.
One oddity about the Elk Springs Lodge. It is in the National Radio Quiet Zone, where radios, mobile telephones, and wireless internet nterfere with the National Radio Observatory. There is limited and sporadic cell telephone service. Internet is weak connections at the restaurant. If you buy a signal booster the federales will come to your door and make you remove it.
* * *
2015 median household income data shows West Virginia as third lowest, ahead of Arkansas (49) and Mississippi (50). It marches almost lockstep with life-expectancy data. The poorer you are, the shorter your life.
In West Virginia, we passed through nice towns, hamlets really, with nice houses, where I’d think I could live. The natural spaces between the towns were as often as not extraordinary, but there was also rural squalor dotted in and among the towns and countryside. I’ve seen rural squalor off and on all my life, and there’s plenty of hard-living in Houston, but in West Virginia it’s on Main Street, nestled up against the highway, not hidden down some side road. Heaven only knows what’s down the side roads.
In Paul Theroux’s Deep South he rails at the Clintons for abandoning the Southern poor. His anger startled me when I read the book, but it rings true. He suggests that the Clintons expect the devotion of the American poor without any skin in the game. Hillary didn’t get that devotion in West Virginia. Trump took West Virginia 69% to 26%.
During the 2016 campaign and its aftermath there was so much written about Hillary and West Virginia and Hillary and the white poor, but bottom line it came down to her disdain versus Trump’s bluster: I doubt if many people believed Trump would bring back coal or otherwise help West Virginia, but at least there was no talk of baskets of deplorables. Hillary, and maybe the Democratic Party, bring nada to America’s rural poor. Trump didn’t either. Maybe no one can.
Trump also carried Mississippi and Arkansas, 58% to 40% and 60% to 34%. Those are landslides where I come from.
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One last story about West Virginia. It’s a condescending, stupid story that could have happened anywhere but there you are. It happened in West Virginia, and I can’t resist.
On our way back to Virginia from Elk Springs we stopped at a gas station and I broke down the fly rods in the parking lot while Kris bought bean dip and Fritos in the store. A woman, maybe older than me but I suspect a good bit younger–you couldn’t tell by looking–got out of a beat up truck and said “you’re not going to catch any fish in this parking lot.” It was that dry, slightly aggressive humor that I grew up with in Texas, so I said something like I won’t know until I try and she grinned and laughed.
She had no front teeth.
West Virginia. You gotta go.