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Packing List – Maryland

Carl Van Vechten, Billie Holiday, 1942, Van Vechten Collection, Library of Congress

We’re not good at traveling light, but when we went back to Maryland we traveled about as light as we ever have. I didn’t take a guitar. We took no fishing gear. We didn’t take anything we couldn’t carry onto a plane, which did include a book about Northwest salmon and an iPad.  I still managed to take one too many pairs of shoes.

We had trouble getting the car because I’d  changed the plane reservation but not the car reservation and came in seven hours late.  Not only did I change the plane reservation, I had us going home the next morning while we were fishing, but Kris fixed the plane while I waited for Budget to take care of the car.  I use Budget for the fast break, but this time it wasn’t very fast. The Budget counter beat us up for better than an hour.

We never made it to Annapolis for the crab cakes on the harbor side that I’d planned.

As for places in Maryland I’d still like to see, we got the water-side tour of Annapolis, which I figure took care of the Naval Academy, but I’d have liked to see the Antietam National Battlefield: there’s something holy about Civil War battlefields. Along with the civil rights landmarks of the South they may be our only real places of pilgrimage. We didn’t make Antietam, and someday I’ll go back for it.

Driving from Baltimore to Annapolis we realized that Barry Levinson made four Baltimore movies we should have watched: Diner (1982), Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights ( 1999).  Next time, or maybe this week.

We did manage to eat at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore for a second time. After we dropped off the car at the airport we took a beat-up and clanking metro train through the city, down past the 50s suburbs, past Camden Yards and the harbor into the hard part of town, the part of town that looks like a city with the nation’s highest murder rate, and finally to a stop in gentrifying Woodberry, one block from Woodberry Kitchen. The couple next to us at the restaurant said there were 220-odd separate neighborhoods in Baltimore, and we saw some from the train. After dinner though we took an Uber to our hotel by the airport. Chickens.

I’ve listened to the Maryland playlist now off and on for a year.  You can’t listen to enough Billie Holiday, and the Low Symphony by Phillip Glass is something special: it sounds like water.  I even liked Eubie Blake’s ragtime piano. Frank Zappa, on the other hand, is just not the thing.

I’m Just Wild About Harry, Eubie Blank and Noble Sissle, 1921, Indiana University.

  • Billie Holiday. Lots of it, but not nearly enough.
  • Bobby Bare, Streets of Baltimore. There’s also a nice version by Gram Parsons, with Emmylou Harris. It’s about an unhappy marriage.
  • Bob Dylan, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. It’s about the murder of a servant.
  • Bruce Springsteen, Hungry Heart. It’s about abandoning your family.
  • Counting Crows, Raining in Baltimore. It’s about rain in Baltimore, and the need for a rain coat.
  • Phillip Glass, Low Symphony. I meant to download more Glass.  It sounds like the Chesapeake.
  • Eubie Blake. Ragtime.
  • Frank Zappa. There was a lot of it, and I listened to it, and wondered why we ever liked him. I guess we were all more juvenile once.
  • Hoagie Charmichael, Baltimore Oriole. There’s also a version by George Harrison, of all people. It’s about a prostitute. It’s used as Lauren Bacall’s musical theme in Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not.
  • Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Baltimore Fire. It’s about Baltimore burning. Like all McGarrigle music it’s terrific.
  • Little Feat, Feets Don’t Fail Me Now. It may be the only happy song of the lot, but Baltimore only plays a cameo role.
  • Lucinda Williams, Trying to Get to Heaven. It’s a Bob Dylan song about desperation.
  • Lyle Lovett, Baltimore. It’s about death.
  • Nina Simone, Baltimore. Written by Randy Newman, and he’s got a version too. It’s about how hard it is just to live.
  • Prince, Baltimore. It’s about police brutality.
  • Talking Heads, Mommy Daddy You And I. It’s about a family car ride, or train ride, or bus ride, or something. It’s one of the sillier moments for the Talking Heads. I hope I never hear it again.
  • Tim Hardin, The Lady Came from Baltimore. It’s a love song about a thief and a lady. It really is a love song though. It’s about poverty and social inequality.

I think I lost my favorite Corpus Christi Hooks cap.

 

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Working Water

This was our third trip to Maryland in roughly a year. Last August we visited Camden Yard to see the Astros play the Orioles, and caught rainbows on a side-trip to the Gunpowder River.  In May we fished the Chesapeake for one day. We got blown off the water and caught nothing.

We fished in May with Captain Tom Hughes.  It was terrible weather, but that’s what you get sometimes, particularly fishing with the Thomases, and allowing only one day for a place doesn’t always work, particularly in saltwater.  Captain Hughes told us to come back and fish a half-day for the cost of gas. We split the difference and booked a whole day.

Fishing once with a guide is kind of random. You don’t know the guide and the guide doesn’t know you. Fishing the second time with Captain Tom was fishing with a friend. First thing he said was we’re getting your fish. We started north up the bay, a big working waterway like our home Port of Galveston, to where the freighter UBC Sacramento was anchored under load. There were birds working and bait popping, and for the next three hours we fished, both of us with his 9-weight Orvis Helios rods, fine rods, but me with a 350-grain Orvis Depth-Charge line and weighted Clouser and Kris with a popper on a floating line. In 50-feet of water she was fishing poppers. It didn’t matter though what we were fishing: we both caught fish.

I had fished freighters once before, offshore from South Padre Island just north of Mexico, where freighters stacked up for the Port of Brownsville. We were fishing king mackerel, called kingfish in Texas, at 30 feet with 10-weights and for blue runners on the surface with a 6-weight. There were big rollers and I was seasick, really seasick, and the guide was annoyed that I didn’t know what I was doing with a sinking line, but who knows how to fish a freighter? Captain Tom knows. And unlike that South Texas guide Captain Tom knew how to tell us what to do.

Of course that South Padre guide may also have been annoyed that I kept throwing up over his boat’s gunnels. Mostly I made it over the gunnels anyway.

I was surprised how much I liked fishing the Depth Charge line. It was easier to cast than I thought it would be, and Captain Tom knows how to translate the screen of a fish finder into presentation of a fly at a depth. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it, and together with knowledge of structure (including the UBC Sacramento) and observation of birds may be the best way to consistently fish big water like the Chesapeake. Periodically he’d tell me fish were stacked around 20’ and 40’, and to let the line sink for a 12-count, about a foot a second with the heavy Clouser. I asked him why if the fish were at 20 feet he didn’t tell me to let the line go for a 20-count? These fish, he said, are aggressive. These aren’t lazy fish. They’ll come up to the fly if they’re feeding. If they won’t come up to the fly don’t bother.

Sometimes when we were in a flock of working birds and there were stripers crashing the surface I stripped in the Clouser as soon as it hit the water. I was fishing poppers too.

Captain Tom has to report to Maryland how many fish are caught out of his boat when he guides, and he somewhat conservatively came up with 56, all in the first four hours. All of us thought he under-counted a bit. It was hard to keep up, and and in addition to the fish landed Kris and I both missed plenty of strikes. The fish weren’t giants, the smallest few were not much more than a pound and the largest probably three, but there was nothing tentative about them. They were saltwater-bright and strong even at a pound, and whatever: I know I caught my fish. I caught my Chesapeake rockfish. That’s the right color of fish for Maryland.

When I go back to fish stripers again maybe I’ll want to hunt for larger fish. Or maybe not. 56 fish is anybody’s good day.

By the end of the day we covered 35 miles of water, and when the fish finally shut off Kris and I were worn out. We ate lunch drifting in the bay. Later I napped a bit while Captain Tom explored the bridge pilings, but there was nothing there, at least nothing worth breaking out the rods for. Kris said she never got to nap because I wouldn’t shut up. Later still Captain Tom gave us a water-side tour of the Naval Academy and the Annapolis waterfront. There are lots of sailboats in Annapolis.

It was a good day. Every angler should fish the Chesapeake, it’s quintessential American water, and anybody who’s interested in fly fishing big water should fish the Chesapeake with Captain Tom. It’s pretty great fly fishing, fish or no fish.

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I Got Speyed

So in our last episode, Mark Marmon had asked me what was I going to do on the Deschutes for a rod and I’d said that the outfitter had rods we could use and Mark said that was smart and we should use them and I said it surely was smart and that we would and I knew, even as I said it, that I was lyin’ like a big dog. I was going to buy a Spey rod. This wasn’t about smart. This was about fly fishing.

I don’t remember whether it was the next day exactly that I started looking. It  might have been two days. The problem with buying a Spey rod in Houston is that there aren’t any.  While there are five or six places I could go for strong and excellent opinions on rods for redfish or bonefish or tarpon, the number of places where I could get credible Spey rod advice is pretty limited.  I like our local shops, and that includes Orvis, but there’s not a lot of demand for Spey rods here in Harris County.  We don’t have steelhead. We don’t have salmon. The River Spey don’t run through it.

I could have mail-ordered a rod, but that seemed wrong. I owe a duty to my local merchants, I don’t want to see them Amazon’d or WalMart’d, and if I am going to buy a rod I should seek local advice, even if that advice was from a local shop in Oregon.  Here’s the problem though. On the internet it seems that about 9/10ths of the Oregon economy is fly shops. It’s amazing that with all those fly shops they can find pinot vintners, or marijuana confectioners, or indie musicians.

So I finally turned to Yelp*. I don’t usually find Yelp* useful.  You will never convince me that, notwithstanding the excellence of its burgers, a place called Pop’s Seafood is the best high-dollar restaurant in Houston. But I was desperate, and when I searched for Portland fly-fishing shops, the place with the best Yelp* rating was The Portland Fly Shop. I didn’t care that there aren’t many reviews and that the place is pretty new. Drowning man. Rope.

“My wife and I are going to fish the Deschutes with an outfitter in September. We are accomplished flyfishers, particularly when it comes to fishing bluegill on stock tanks, but don’t know nothin’ about (1) two-handed rods, (2) skagit-skandi lines or polyleaders or sinktips, or (3) steelhead. . . . You know what? None of our local flyshops know much either, except for one guy who sometimes fishes the surf at Galveston with a backcast. . . . We need (1) some suggestions on rods, spey not switch, reasonably fast and light . . . I’m guessing around a 7 wt; (2) lines; and (3) to book a guided trip September 8 to actually fish the rods on moving water.”

Ok, I admit it. It was the next day. It took Jason Osborn nigh on forever, at least an hour, to answer.

“First off, you have made a great decision, and you have chosen the perfect time to chase Steelhead. The biggest factor in Steelheading is fishing when there are the most fish in the system, and September is prime time. . . . “

Well. That’s going to make me feel great when I catch no fish. Jason goes on to explain how hard the Deschutes is to wade, and how we needed barred wading boots and wading staffs.  Kris has now added wading the Deschutes to her standing list of horrors, right next to grizzly bears and alligators. She’s convinced that for it’s length and breadth it is bank to bank slightly deeper than 5-foot-4.

Back to Jason:

“Rods. It’s almost harder to find a bad rod than a good rod these days, but there are some great rods in each price range, and a few to really avoid. Here’s my suggestion

  • Top End:

  • Sage X 13′ 7 WT

  • Winston BIII-TH 12’9″ 7WT

  • Burkheimer 13’4″ 7 WT”

Ok, skip the top end. I want to retain some dignity.

 

  • “Mid Range:

  • Sage Pulse 13′ 7 WT

  • Winston Nimbus Spey 12’9″ 7 wt

  • Beulah Platinum 13’4″ 7 WT

  • Echo 3 13′ 7WT”

No reason to go further. I’m usually a Winston guy for trout rods, but I’m also a Southern Protestant kid of a certain age. He had me with Beulah. I had never heard of Beulah rods, but I know heaven when I hear it. “Beulah Land, I’m longing for you/And some day, on thee I’ll stand . . . “

“The lines will match the rod, skagit just means sink tip, scandi means full floating. Fancy words for basic stuff. You will want one of each, but wait until after the rod to buy them, to make sure they match correctly.”

Isn’t that lovely, clear prose about a difficult subject? I am so jealous. “Where my home shall be eternal/Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land.”

So Jason and I go back and forth for a bit: there’s a whole string of emails. I tell him I’m going to buy two rods, not realizing that Kris is going to find it impossible to commit to a rod without seeing it. Then fairly late in the day, after Jason has found me a guide and done all sorts of retail calisthenics to explain spey rods I get this:

“Great. I’ll email you in a bit, we’re closed today and I have some running around to do. I’ll get you all the info this evening.”

Well. Damn. I’ve been ruining Jason’s day off. This is not my finest moment. Damn. I ordered the Beulah Platinum because, well, Beulah Land, I’m longing for you, and a Hardy click and pawl Salmon 2 reel because, well, Hardy. I can not catch fish on a Hardy English-manufactured reel so much better than I can not catch fish on anything else.  The rod arrived a few days later with the reel lined with a skandi head. It’s a lovely thing, and I can almost roll cast with it. I even caught a fish.

Thanks Jason.

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Speycasting for Grass Carp

Last August we booked a Spey casting lesson with a local TFF instructor, but it was canceled because of Hurricane Harvey.  Meanwhile our friend Mark Marmon said that he’d learned to Spey cast for Salmon in Iceland and that he’d give us a lesson. We had to have a lesson because when we go to Oregon we have to Spey cast, it’s like a law or something, and we don’t want to break any laws. Everything else is legal in Oregon, but they’re serious about Spey casting.

That’s Mark in the photo above. I stole that photo off his website, so he can sue if he wants. I’m not certain but it doesn’t look like the photo was taken in Houston. He’s sans pony-tail these days, but I always liked that photo of Mark. I don’t know if he lost the pony-tail when he became an Episcopal priest, but it’s a better story that way, sort of an Episcopalian version of God’s Wrath.

I knew Mark first through local fly shops, Angler’s Edge I think but it’s been a long time. Mark chose and sold Kris one of my favorite Christmas presents ever: a 5-weight Winston matched to an Abel click-and-pawl reel. About the time Kris bought that rod I ran into our friend Shelley.  I’d known Shelley since law school, and Kris and Shelley were even better friends than Shelley and me. Shelley said she had taken up fly fishing and that also oh-by-the-way she and Mark were getting married. Houston is a big city, and the chance that Shelley would know Mark, much less marry him, was pretty remote. I figured whether they knew it or not we were the common thread. They might see it differently, but I’m a firm believer that coincidences never happen, except by accident.

There were entire years when you couldn’t open a Houston Chronicle on any given day without reading a story about Mark. Every other guide in Houston (and that was pretty much Chris Phillips) was obsessed with saltwater, but Mark fished fresh. He fly fished the inner city bayous, and the Chronicle couldn’t get enough of it. Still can’t. Mark fished in the bayous mostly for grass carp, but he was also fishing for trout on the Guadalupe and for local bass: Mark introduced us to Damon’s Seven Lakes. Mark says his largest grass carp out of Braes Bayou was 48 pounds, which would be a state all-tackle record. Braes Bayou is less than a mile from our house.  He had found big fun fish that he could sight cast to, even if the fishery was decorated with abandoned grocery carts.

Mark met us at Meyer Park Duck Pond to teach us what he could on stillwater about Spey casting, and it turned out that it’s the place to be on a Sunday evening.  Stacy was there from Bayou City Anglers giving casting lessons to a family.  Gretchen from Orvis (who ties the best doubled Bimini twists I’ve ever seen) showed up to meet Stacy and go for Margaritas and Tex-Mex.  I’m pretty sure they looked at us and the Spey rods and laughed and laughed and laughed.

It was nice of Mark to give us the lesson, but Mark is a really nice guy. I once mentioned to Mark that my second-ever fly rod was a Shakespeare Wonderod that my mother bought when I was 14 with S&H Green Stamps, and that while I had the Pflueger Medalist reel I’d long ago lost the rod and wished I still had it. The next week Mark brought me a circa 1970s fiberglass Shakespeare Wonderod.  I’ve fished with it some too. It’s heavy as a horse and casts like a slug, but it’s great fun in small doses, as most memories are. My 12-weight is lighter than that Shakespeare. Modern spey rods are lighter than that Shakespeare.

 

Mark’s only flaw, really, is that he doesn’t like the Beatles. Personally I think he’s enjoying some mild perversity, which after all I know a good bit about. I’m the one learning how to Spey cast.

When we went to the pond, Mark had three Spey rods of various weights, two Thomas & Thomas and one Echo. Mark also had some great second-hand reels for his rods that he’d apparently found the same place that he’d found that Shakespeare Wonderod. We fooled around for a while, and I got to where I could do a roll cast that didn’t always end in a puddle 30 feet out.  The rods were heavier than I expected, in part because of the need for a heavy reel to balance the rod, plus the surprisingly heavy lines.  They were also really, really long.  They’re magnitudes longer than 9-foot rods, nearly half again as long.  Kris of course was a natural, though Mark was giving her workout advice for upper body strength by the end of the lesson. I offered to loan her my Shakespeare Wonderod.

Mark pointed out that you could in fact overhand cast with Spey rods, just like you would normally cast a single-handed rod. Since that lesson it’s been easy for me to shoot 100-feet of line casting overhand, though where it lands is not real precise. They never tell you about overhand casting in the online videos, but that’s because overhand casts are also illegal in Oregon. They’re serious about Spey casting.

Mark asked what rods we were going to use in Oregon, and I said that the outfitter had rods. He said that was smart and did I want to borrow his to practice with? I said maybe.

The next day I went rod shopping. This has nothing to do with smart.