Tag: Flies

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Another Interlude

On Thursday we leave for Hawaii, which for some odd and I suspect Southern reason I pronounce Huh-wah-yuh, which Siri can’t understand when I call up my playlist. We should spend today packing, which we won’t. What do we take? Some shorts, some shirts, some wading boots. The couple of 9 wt rods we gave each other for Christmas. A guitar. We fish with Captain Jesse Cheape of High Tide Fishing, a full day on Friday and a half-day on Saturday. After that we’ll sightsee. I think sightseeing is required by the nature of the thing.

It is the second farthest distance we’ll travel, closer than Alaska but further than Maine. I’ve actually practiced casting some, which is frustrating and unrewarding. I’m such a mediocre caster. I’ve tried to keep up my Hawaii reading, and have been through a couple of additional Hawaiian books–The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings, which was very likable, and Dreams from My Father by Barrack Obama, which was about his birth in Kenya.

I guess my thoughts have moved on to Mississippi, which I’ve been working on for May, and Florida which I have to go to in February. I’m beginning to despise Florida and its uncatchable fish, but the Astros open there in April, and if we fail again in February (with a one-day fishing trip to the Keys) maybe we’ll make a fourth trip in April.

Hawaiian music hasn’t really grabbed me: it’s melodic, sweet, all major keys and thirds and fifths and pure tones. I’ve been cheating on Hawaii with Mississippi Blues. It shares a slide guitar, but not much else.

Frontispiece, Life on the Mississippi, The Baton Rouge, 1883, Gutenberg.org.

I also cheated on Hawaii with Mississippi books, and re-read Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. It is such an essential book. It’s only a bit more than a six-hour (read eight-hour) drive from here to Vicksburg, and we could visit the battlefield memorial and the National Cemetery over the long Martin Luther King weekend. Of course with the government shut-down nothing at the National Cemetery would be open. It’s too bad all presidents aren’t required to be born in Kenya.

Early on Twain also traveled to Hawaii (née the Sandwich Islands) and wrote a series of letters from there for a San Francisco newspaper. I didn’t find the letters particularly illuminating, though Twain liked the place immensely and always talked of going back.

I’ve tied some leaders which won’t turn over, and some flies which won’t catch fish. I’ve also bought some flies, almost all of which are some kind of spawning shrimp, which is the only fly I can ever seem to remember on Captain Cheape’s list. I do own a bunch of bonefish flies, almost none of which are on said list. I’ll haul them along anyway.

Meantime the weather here in Houston is as good as it gets: clear, windless, dry, and cool, 61 degrees this morning with a high of 71 degrees. There’s a mockingbird singing through the open door to the porch. Maybe I’ll go look for black bass this afternoon, or spawning crappie. Yesterday we took the skiff out on Galveston bay, and the combination of cold weather and still air left the water clear. We saw some redfish, too.

Didn’t catch those either. We did get some excellent oysters and ceviche at the Black Pearl Oyster Bar on 23rd Street.

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No Muskie, No Cry

We fished the Wisconsin River near Stevens Point, mid-state in Wisconsin, on the last two days of September. The night we got to Wisconsin it froze for the first time this year, months before we could realistically expect a freeze at home. During the day it stayed in the 40s, cold for us, cold for the smallmouth too. Some of the leaves had already changed, but we were told the rest would change and begin to fall during the week after the freeze. Our guide, Abe Downs, said that all but confused smallmouth had migrated for the winter to deeper lake water, and that the fish left in the river were muskie.

That was ok with me.  If the smallmouth were gone so were the summer crowds, and while the trees weren’t the brilliant fall-colors I’d hoped for, there was some color, and plenty enough trees, particularly when measured against the treeless Deschutes we’d fished two weeks before. From what I’d read I figured it was likely we wouldn’t catch a muskie, and I honestly didn’t expect to see fish.

We didn’t catch a muskie. We did see fish.

We fished out of a drift boat and covered a lot of water. It was a big open river lined with trees just starting their change. Off the river in Stevens Point Wisconsinites were friendly even when I couldn’t understand their accents. I think before we return I’ll buy some language tapes.

It was my fault I didn’t catch a fish. I got five strikes and a follow over two days, which for muskie is apparently great fishing. I had expected to deep dredge the flies, but instead they retrieved pretty close to the surface. The water was clean but it wasn’t clear enough to see a fish until it hit the fly. We weren’t sight-casting.

Along with steelheading it was as  repetitious and brutal as fly fishing gets. I would cast and cast and cast, an hour or two of casting, and then while I was daydreaming about cheese curds and beer a fish would violently collapse onto the fly. Being a cool, collected guy I’d freak out and jerk the fly away. Did I know better? Of course I knew better. For me the gap between the knowing and the doing was wide and high.

The rods were industrial Orvis Recon 10 weights, necessary for big flies and big fish but not the delicate whispy wands fly rods are expected to be. The leaders were a few feet of straight 60 pound fluorocarbon attached to a heavy wire bite tippet, attached to a snap swivel, which is the fly fishing equivalent of a steel cable. The flies themselves were huge, gaudy things, close to a foot long with tandem 6/0 hooks. It’s the only time casting a fly rod that I’ve felt like I was throwing a lure, not the line. Soaked muskie flies are heavy. Shoot, the flies were heavy when they were dry. They hauled the line with them, not the other way around.

Abe and Kris talked politics and birds. They both agreed on politics and both were interested in birds, and Abe rowed while we cast, pounding the bank, casting near structure. Abe was an interesting guy, a chemist in his day job, with degrees in mathematics and physics. He also liked bird hunting, which it was the season for, and he liked dogs. He kept us casting, and by the end of the first day my left hand ached from the line retrieve. By the end of the second day my right shoulder ached from casting.

The final muskie, the last one on the second day, struck sideways to the boat. For the first time I saw all of a muskie. It was thick-bodied, and Abe guessed it was about 42 inches long. That’s a big fish. I didn’t jerk the fly away and for a second the fish was on the line, but I needed to strip-set hard, and then strip-set hard again, and I didn’t do it. As fast as the fish struck and I failed to strip-set the fish came off and went back home to catch another re-run of Laverne and Shirley.

I don’t mind going back. Really.

The reels were Orvis Hydros reels with good drags, and I asked Abe if he played the fish on the reels. He said no, that they could be hauled in on the line. Muskie are big fish but I gather that the excitement is in the hook-up not the fight. I failed on the hook-up, but at least I got some of the excitement.

I don’t think Kris is unhappy going back to Wisconsin either. Really. We had a great dinner in Milwaukee with friends at Three Brothers, a Serbian restaurant. I had my first ever goulash, and Kris had the stuffed cabbage. The restaurant was what Milwaukee should look like, old and ethnic. We talked with our friends, Tom and Sal, about dogs and Wisconsin alcoholism and how they met and other stuff, but not much about politics and none about fishing. We would have forced Tom and Sal to look at our fish pictures if we’d had any. Since they probably didn’t want to see fish pictures at least somebody had complete success with our fishing.

That day the Brewers tied the Cubs for the National League Midwest Division, with a one game tie-breaker scheduled the next day to decide the season. Bernie Brewer was with us at the airport, and the Brewers ultimately won. Driving to the airport we wished we had time to go church to church just to see them. To us they were exotic, not the largely functional Baptist churches or mildly British Methodist or Episcopal churches of home. Kris asked me if next time we could fish for something easier than muskie and I said yes, and we will. We’ll go to the driftless region in the southwest to fish for trout, or we’ll come to the Wisconsin River in the smallmouth season.  Meanwhile I’ll think about those fish I didn’t catch. I’ll think about that last fish, the fish I got to see, flashing in the river when I failed to set the hook.

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Oregon Packing List I

We didn’t take many clothes to Oregon, and that was just about right.  Ok, we may have taken a few too many layers of polypropylene, and I took a pair of shorts I never wore, but here’s the most important thing you need to know about Portland: You can wear your nylon fishing pants into any restaurant in the City and fit right in. If the only clean shirt you have left for that elegant tasting menu restaurant s a mid-weight Patagonia underlayer pullover, it’s ok. It’s stylish. Stylish. One pair of Keene sandals, my running shoes, and a pair of wading boots would take me anyplace in the state unless I needed some other kind of technical sports shoes. Hiking boots, skiing boots, cycling cleats; those I might need. I wouldn’t need a dressier pair of shoes.

Oregon is an outdoorsy milieu. There are as many Subarus in Portland as there are F150s in Houston. There are a lot of Subarus.

Unlike New Orleans, I didn’t take a blazer, and unlike New Orleans I didn’t need one. I did worry that in a Nike town my New Balance running shoes might not be quite the thing, but Portland folk seem pretty tolerant.

The homeless like Portland, at least in the summer, but I don’t think it’s because they don’t need a blazer. Our first morning I took an early-morning run around the river. There were colonies of the young and ragged sleeping in doorways and camped on the riverside. Someone told me that much of Portland homelessness is about heroin, but I also think it’s some about accomodation. Portland has long been particularly tolerant of  the homeless.

When we first got to Portland we went to Portland Fly Shop. Ok, that’s not true. We first went and ate Pacific Coast oysters at Olympia Oyster Bar. For Gulf Coasters, Oysters on the West Coast are high dollar, about $3 each, but happy hour oysters were half price. They didn’t serve Saltines with the oysters, and I’m not sure they understood the value of salt and lemon or a classic mignonette, but the bread was good. The oysters were good.

So we went to Portland Fly Shop after the oysters and met Jason Osborn, who had helped me buy my 7 weight Beulah Spey rod long distance. Kris finally committed to a Spey rod, a Beulah Onyx 6 weight, and we bought some sink tips and some leaders. Here, though, is the bizarre thing about steelhead fishing:

To fish for steelhead, you honest-to-God could fish for days with two flies, one wet and one streamer.

If there are no tugs by the end of the swing, one doesn’t agonize about whether the fly is the very thing, you take two more steps downriver and cast again.  Changing flies ain’t in it. “Jason,” we insisted, “sell us some flies.” I’d tied a good two dozen flies getting ready for Oregon: multiple fish tacos in many colors, steelhead coachmen, skaters, black things, brown things, orange things. . . Jason seemed baffled that I wanted more flies. He clearly thought we had plenty flies enough. We insisted. He sold us some, but his heart wasn’t in it.

We only changed flies when the spirit spoke to us, or when the light changed.  In the morning or when it was overcast, we cast wets three-quarters downstream on Skandi lines. When it was full sun we cast streamers 90 degrees straight across the river on Skagit lines.  Then we did the two-step (or the four-step). The idea was to cover water. Maybe people who know what they’re doing change flies, but for us, what’s the point? Within the realm of decent steelhead flies one fly was as good as any other.

I was told that the Clousers I brought weren’t in the realm of decent steelhead flies.  What fish doesn’t like a Clouser?

As to other stuff we didn’t need, we took a bunch of trout rods. When we arrived at Maupin and met Travis Johnson, I said that I was in Oregon to catch one fish. He looked concerned and asked if I’d brought a single-handed trout rod, I think in part because trout are easier to catch than steelhead and in part because he worried that my casting would be even less competent than it was. Because I’d caught a Chinook the first day, I never took my single-handed rods or trout flies out of the suitcase. My fish was caught and everything after was gravy.

I took along a better guitar than usual, a 1973 Kohno, because I would be sitting by the side of a river for a few days and that deserves a better guitar.  The Kohno is a bit beat up, but has a lovely tone. My hands though were a wreck.  They were sore, I guess from the rod, and cracked and bleeding from the dry weather and the water.  I worked a bit on the Sor Variations on a Theme from the Magic Flute. I was playing it early in the hotel the first morning–we were running two hours ahead of everybody else on the West Coast–and the person in the neighboring room banged on the wall.  I’d never had that happen before, but they banged on the wall in the middle of the fast 6th variation, so maybe the song was a bit raucous.  Maybe they just weren’t Sor fans.

We spent a long time in Powell’s Books, which is one of the great bookstores. I bought Tom Robbins for Washington and Seattle, which isn’t scheduled, and replaced my copy of Sometimes a Great Notion. Mostly I was reading Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom, getting ready for Mississippi.

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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.