Michigan’s Au Sable River has been a fly-fishing destination for a century or so, and Gates Au Sable Lodge was built on the Au Sable in 1970, so it’s a bit more than a half-century old. People go to the Au Sable to fish, or maybe when it starts to get cold they go there to hunt, but I’m not aware that there’s anything else that’s much of a draw. It’s not well-known for spa treatments.
The Lodge is a classic. When Gates Au Sable Lodge opened in 1970, “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” was the number one song. The Beatles released Let It Be in 1970, then they broke up the same year. I was a high school freshman. That’s old.
The fish we caught in the Au Sable weren’t big, most were only seven or eight inches, but they were very pretty and both of us caught a few larger rainbows. Ok, Kris caught two larger rainbows and I caught one, but who’s counting? In any case we caught a lot of fish. Michigan guides have to report fish counts to the state, so for once we kept count. Between us we caught 27 trout the first day and 15 the second half-day, more or less. Still, that’s a lot of fish, and on each day we each caught exactly the same number of fish, more or less.
The Au Sable was originally a grayling river, then the grayling died off from over-fishing and logging and were replaced by stocked trout. There’s no longer any stocking in the Au Sable, so even if today’s trout aren’t native, all of the trout are wild. We each caught brook trout, rainbows, and browns, so we each had an Au Sable slam. I guess the size of most of the fish made them more of petite slams than grand.
Our guide, Lance Nelson, guides for Gates Lodge. He had us fish a nymph dropper beneath a surface dry fly with 7x tippet, but we didn’t fish out of Au Sable boats. They’re pirogues adapted for Michigan lumbering by Louisiana lumbermen, and then re-adapted for fly fishing. Instead of being rowed or paddled they’re poled like a pirogue. The guide poles from the back seat, and the anglers sit in the middle and the front. Lance says he owns one, but that they’re not much fun for two anglers. The second angler in the center of the boat is pretty restricted, and sitting in the center makes it hard for that angler to fish.
I’m sure Kris wouldn’t have minded sitting in the center. And that varnished wood is very pretty
We fished out of a standard fiberglass drift boat, with the guide in the center and me in the worst seat regardless of where I was sitting. Kris caught more fish than me, though I’m certain we caught exactly the same number.
The 7x tippet deserves at least a passing glance. The leader goes between the fly line and the fly, and the tippet is the last bit of the leader that ties to the fly. Normally a trout guide would use 4x tippet for nymphs underwater, and 5x for dry flies on the surface. As far as I know, until the Au Sable, I had never fished with 7x tippet. It must have worked, because we caught a lot of fish. We each caught exactly the same number of fish, or maybe I caught a few more.
The leader, including the tippet, is usually about nine feet long. It gets progressively smaller from the fly line to the fly, so where it attaches to the fly line a trout leader might be 20 lb. test, and where the tippet ties to the fly it might be 4 or 5 lbs. For bass and redfish I normally fish about 16 lb. tippet, which is big stuff, but neither bass nor redfish are tippet shy. In very clear slow water trout can be very shy, and 7x tippet, which is about as fine as a fine hair, is intended for the shyest of trout. The 7x fluorocarbon is typically about 2 lb. test.
I don’t own any 7x tippet, and I don’t want to.
Michigan was our 42nd state to fish, so I ought by now to be better at describing things, but every place is different, and I really haven’t been unhappy anywhere. Still, fishing in Michigan made me very happy. Traveling state to state we’ve encountered places that surprised me, and places that were hard. We’ve fished places that met expectations, and places that inspired awe. Michigan wasn’t exactly any of those. We were in the Northwoods on an approachable river with a good guide at a good lodge and we caught fish. The leaves there were beginning to change, and the brookies were beginning to put on their spawning colors. Can something be a memory when you haven’t done it before? It wasn’t déjà vu, but more like Plato and that cave. It was like glimpsing the archetype of what fishing is supposed to be. Quiet, contemplative, friendly, a bit technical but not too technical. There was nothing between us and what God had made.
I could fish that river again and again and be happy.
I took a rod that was way too big for what I caught. Besides that I tied some 9 foot 3x trout leaders. I tied a lot of flies, including some almost perfect wooly buggers, which only took 30 years to accomplish. I also tied some Clouser minnows that I never used. My fly selection was fine, and really, for what I caught in North Dakota, they don’t make a rod that small.
Hotel
We stayed in downtown Fargo, in the Hotel Donaldson. The Donaldson is small, it only has 16 rooms, but its rooftop is a good place to sit in the evening, and downtown Fargo is a surprisingly lively place. It has a restored movie theater, and some good restaurants and coffee shops. It has stores. Where else can you find a downtown with stores?
There are more street people than one would expect, but it seems reasonably safe. I did have to skirt a couple of bodies on the way past the city library, but I think they were only sleeping.
Because we were downtown we drove a lot to look for fish. Over two days we put 450 miles on the rental car.
Donuts
There are three Sandy’s Donut shops in Fargo, though the one downtown isn’t open on Monday. They were oddly expensive, but they had a wide selection, and when you walked through the door the girl at the counter said “Can I help ya?” in a thick North Dakotan accent. Unlike, say, Ocean Springs, Mississippi, I wouldn’t go back to Fargo just for the donuts, but they made for a healthy pre-fishing breakfast.
Restaurants
Notwithstanding the one awful hamburger in Valley City, food in North Dakota was pretty good. My friend and former law partner Brian said that when he was litigating in North Dakota during the fracking boom he ate walleye at every meal, including breakfast, and that it became his favorite fish. To find walleye on a menu we had to go to East Grand Forks, Minnesota, to the Blue Moose Bar and Grill. It was good, and if I ever go back to North Dakota I’ll get North Dakota restaurant suggestions from Brian. Weirdly, in Minnesota they served the walleye without tartar sauce. Tartar sauce may be too picant for Minnesotans.
Back in Fargo, we went across the river to Moorhead, to the oldest existing Dairy Queen franchise. As a Texan, I was surprised that Dairy Queens exist anyplace but Texas. I was stunned that Dairy Queens actually originated in Minnesota, and that per capita the highest concentration of Dairy Queens is in Minnesota, not Texas. The Moorehead Dairy Queen franchise agreement dates from the 1940s, and they have strange things on the menu that newer agreements don’t allow. They have, for instance, the favorite of my childhood, cherry dip cones.
There’s no seating inside the Moorehead Dairy Queen, but there’s a big seating area on the patio. My guess is that it gets cold on that patio in winter. I had the cherry-dipped Dilly Bar because (1) cherry dip and (2) the Moorehead Dairy Queen invented the Dilly Bar. Kris had a chocolate dip cone.
Now if I could just find a K&N Root Beer Stand.
When we got to the DQ there was one youngish couple. By the time we left, the patio was packed with old people. I suspect they heard I was there.
I had read something on the internet about Fargo’s best knoephla soup. Knoephla is a German potato/dumpling soup that’s ideal for Fargo winters. According to the internet, the best knoephla was at Wurst Bier Hall, where the menu featured (1) various kinds of wurst, (2) braised cabbage, (3) knoephla soup, (4) spoetzle dumplings, and (5) beer.
There were four kinds of mustard to go with your choice of wurst.
The second placed knoephla was at Luna Fargo, which was high end in a low-key sort of way. It tended more to wine drinking than beer, and there was no knoephla soup on the menu the night we went. There was a pickle appetizer plate which seemed properly North Dakotan, and the pickled watermelon rind was brilliant.
Our last night in Fargo we ate at Mezaluna. We could walk there from our hotel. It’s the kind of place where one orders martinis, and I did. The fish was very good.
Where We Didn’t Go
We didn’t go to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park to see the Badlands. I would go back to North Dakota to see the Park, but not to fish.
Playlist
If Utah is cursed by the Osmonds, North Dakota is cursed by Lawrence Welk. The guy started recording in the 30s, and it’s brutal that he never stopped.
There’s also Peggy Lee, but you can only listen to “Fever” so many times. Kris asked why there was so much Lynne Anderson on the play list. I like Lynne Anderson well enough but I thought it was obvious that there weren’t a lot of other choices.
Famous Actors
We stopped by the Fargo-Moorehead Visitors Center to pick up a highway map and to visit again with North Dakota’s most famous actor. He’s still there, still as handsome as ever, and he’s still autographed by the Coen Bros.
It’s too bad there’s not an Oscar for best portrayal of a wood chipper.
Guitar
I didn’t take one. I felt guilty about not practicing, and I may need to make some money busking before this is over, but it was liberating not having to haul it through the airport.
Lee’s Ferry is the only place in Northern Arizona where steep canyons don’t surround the Colorado River. In 1872, John D. Lee established Lees Ferry, also known as Lee’s Ferry (with an apostrophe) and Saint’s Ferry, at the direction of the Mormon Church. Five years later, in 1877, Lee was the only person executed for the murders by Mormon militia of 120 gentile men, women, and children at the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre.
In 1939, Lee’s Ferry was cinematically burned by Apache warriors in John Ford’s Stagecoach, though in the movie the ferry’s location had migrated to Southern Arizona. Stagecoach is a great movie, but its geography surely is imaginative.
Standing on the west bank of the Colorado and looking left upriver is Glen Canyon National Recreation Area topped by the Glen Canyon Dam, about 15 river miles away. To your right is the Grand Canyon, which continues for 277 miles. Everything left and right is steep canyon. Lee’s Ferry is the only crossing.
Lee’s Ferry isn’t usually spelled with an apostrophe, and Lees Ferry is how it appears on maps (if it appears at all). I recall that some Park Service signage uses Lee’s, but that may be wishful thinking, and Lees is far more common. I’m a stickler for apostrophes though, and its painful for me to leave it out.
Lee’s Ferry is the staging point for raft trips through the Grand Canyon, and it’s a busy place. It’s also popular for sit-on-top kayaks. Outfitters ferry boatloads of kayakers about ten miles upriver from the ferry past Horseshoe Bend, then drop off the kayakers who paddle home. This is not technical whitewater kayaking, and there’s a lot of traffic.
If you have good enough resolution on your computer, there are some little white specks in the river in Kris’s photo of Horseshoe Bend. The specks that aren’t rocks are kayaks.
Thirty years ago Lee’s Ferry was the Southwestern Mecca of big trout, lots of big trout. Wendy and Terry Gunn owned Lees Ferry Anglers and they were famous, at least among fly fishers. My friend Mark says he remembers an issue of Fly Rod and Reel–you remember magazines?–with Wendy Gunn visibly pregnant on the cover. Ladies could fly fish! Even pregnant ladies could fly fish!
Their son, who would have been in utero on the magazine cover, is now in his 20s and runs Kayak Horeshoe Bend, an offshoot of Lees Ferry Anglers. It’s a kayak ferry and rental service. He rescued us when the starter on our guide’s jet boat conked.
Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1966, and it was always controversial. The Sierra Club hates Glen Canyon Dam, Monkey Wrenchers plan to blow it up, and its success for water storage is dubious. It does, however, let trout thrive where no trout have thriven before. Fly fishers (who tend towards the environmental side of the ledger) may feel queasy about Glen Canyon Dam, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to fish it. Big wild trout? Lots of big wild trout? You gotta fish that.
Something happened though, and since its heyday the number and size of trout in the river have decreased. Terry Gunn speculated that trout sizes decreased because of the introduction of bad genes from stocked fish during the 90s, or maybe from the reduction of raw sewage from the Town of Page–there’s nothing like just the right dollop of raw sewage to boost insect life. Current studies posit that the drop in numbers of big fish is caused by increased water temperatures, reduced nutrients, reduced dissolved oxygen, and increased numbers of predatory brown trout. Some of the reduction may be drought related, some global warming related, or maybe those are both the same thing.
They should think about adding some raw sewage. It’d probably be good for all those kayakers too.
There are still a whole lotta fish, and fish or no fish, it’s beautiful, with clear green water surrounded by steep red canyons. I can kinda understand why most of those kayakers forgot their fly rods. By all reports there are still big fish in the river. The fish we caught were somewhere around 16 inches or a bit north, and they were solid, healthy wild rainbows. We caught plenty. I caught the first fish early, and Kris caught the last fish late, and we caught a bunch in between. We never worried we wouldn’t catch our Arizona fish.
We fished with Natalie Jensen of Lees Ferry Anglers, who started working for the Gunns in their fly shop in 1995, and started guiding at Lee’s Ferry in 2006. Weirdly Natalie was only our second woman guide. We actually delayed our trip a day to fish with Natalie.
Guides use jet boats on the Colorado. There has to be some kind of motor to get upriver, and jet boats work better than propellers in rocky water.
Natalie’s boat was big, heavy, aluminum, with a Ford inboard V-8. It had a Bimini top, because in Arizona bringing along some shade is a brilliant idea. One of us stood at the back of the boat casting and singing hey-nonny-nonny, carefree as a meadow lark, while the other stood at the front singing blow blow thou winter wind because he had convinced himself that he couldn’t clear the Bimini with his backcast. Which one of us was a walking breathing puddle of mess, unable to throw a fly line? I’m still traumatized.
Natalie would also say that I’m one of the most accomplished line tanglers who ever graced her boat. I spent a goodly part of the morning trying to untangle my line, and after I’d made the tangle worse trying to untangle it, I’d hand the whole mess over to Natalie. She’d keep the boat on track, clear my tangle, continue to give Kris advice, and make it all look easy. Good guides are born to multitask.
We were fishing a double nymph rig, with two flies under split shot and a bobber, so I might as well have been wearing my “Here to Tangle” tee shirt. Layering in my perfectly unreasonable phobia about casting over the Bimini just made things worse. I really should remember to take photos of some of my better tangles. You don’t get my full fishing experience without contemplating a really good tangle.
Natalie was patient though. By mid-morning I had settled down. I remembered that she had said to make a high lift off the water, and I changed my cast so I was making her high lift with a kind of big loop over my left shoulder instead of over the Bimini. It worked ok. I spent the rest of the day without tangles. Ok, mostly without tangles.
Early on I would try to set the hook by lifting my rod left upriver. Mostly Natalie used the oars to keep the boat drifting stern first, so on the bow I was at the back of the boat. We fished mostly to the right of the boat, and left was upriver. I don’t why, but that upriver strike seemed like a good idea, but it pulled the fly away from the fish. Natalie told me to strike straight up, which after the first few misses I managed. After that I still lost a few fish, but not many. I caught a lot more.
How many fish did I catch? Of course I have no clue. I can’t count past one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, and then I lose track. I caught a pretty good number of fish. Kris caught a pretty good number of fish. It was a day of a pretty good number of pretty fish on a pretty river.
Late in the day the boat’s starter died. It had been cranky all day, but it had the grace to wait to die until the day was almost over. Natalie rowed to keep us out of trouble, Kris kept fishing–now with a big foam cicada fly on the surface–and I daydreamed about the S.S. Minnow and how when we were marooned I’d have to be Gilligan. The Gunn’s son came to rescue us. We listened to the cicadas get active in the afternoon, and we could see them flying off the cliff face. We saw bighorn sheep on the shore. Kris caught a last fish, a brown trout on the dry cicada pattern. I put my rod away and managed to do it without getting tangled.
For trout in North Georgia we took 5-weight rods with floating trout lines. We used long 9-foot 4X fluorocarbon leaders with weighted nymphs. I took an Abel disc drag reel, kinda the pinnacle of obsessively over-built trout reels, but it didn’t get much of a workout. For all the trout I caught I could have used a spool of bright yellow sewing thread, or kitchen twine, or bailing wire, with any of them tied to a stick I picked up on the riverbank. It would have been harder to cast, but I would have caught just as many fish.
In saltwater we fished with 8-weight rods and floating redfish lines, with 7-foot 16 lb leaders. We used the guide’s flies, which if you squinted real hard looked a bit like tarpon toads. They were prettier flies than what I use at home for redfish. My redfish flies look like deformed bits of cotton plucked straight from the boll and colored brown with a Magic Marker. I forgot to take a photo of the guide’s redfish flies.
We could have used the guides’ rods instead of hauling our own to Georgia, but how could we ever amortize their cost if we didn’t haul them with us? We gotta get our money’s worth.
Barbecue
I found a list of Georgia barbecue places on the internet, and on the way to Savannah we stopped at one. Because I didn’t particularly like the barbecue, I’m not going to mention it’s name. Just remember, it’s somewhere between Ellijay, Georgia, and Savannah. I’m sure there are better places than the one I chose, but Georgia being Southern I expected anything that made a list to be quality barbecue. This wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Maybe I’ll try again someday.
We did get a pretty good Cuban sandwich in Blue Ridge, but as a Texan I have strong barbecue opinions but am mostly ignorant about Cuban sandwiches. I thought it could have used some pickles, but what do I know?
Donuts
We stayed in the northside Atlanta suburbs for wedding festivities. Two mornings we ate Atlanta suburban donuts, once at a utilitarian donut shop next to a gas station, Marietta Donuts, and once at an artisanal donut shop, Doughnut Dollies. Both had good donuts, and Doughnut Dollies managed to walk that fine line between too much imagination on the one side and boredom on the other. That’s not easy to do when you’re hawking artisanal doughnuts. I especially liked the frosting on Doughnut Dollies’ strawberry and orange doughnuts. All that fruit made me feel healthy.
Restaurants
Ok, so the barbecue we tried wasn’t great, but we otherwise ate a lot of good food in Georgia. In eight days I gained eight pounds.
The first night we went to a Korean place, Woo Nam Jeong Stone Bowl House, on Atlanta’s Buford Highway. Atlanta seems mostly to be either Anglo (50.7% in the metro area) or black (32.4% in the metro area), but that’s mostly. There is a Hispanic and Asian population, and Buford Highway is this strange culinary accident where a lot of Asian and Hispanic mom and pop restaurants have landed. I could have gone back to that Korean place for every subsequent meal. The food was so elegant but at the same time so homey and delicious that it was impossible not to be happy. All those dishes of pickled stuff couldn’t have been more beautiful. And all the bowls matched, which is more than you can always say at our house.
I suspect I could eat for days on Buford Highway.
Lunch Saturday we ate at Mary Mac’s Tea Room. It’s an Atlanta meat-and-three African American institution that serves huge–and I mean really really huge–portions of Southern food. Covering the walls they had photos of famous people who’d eaten there. There were several of Jimmy Carter and, of all people, the 14th Dalai Lama. I guess the Dalai Lama knows a good meat-and-three when he sees it. They didn’t ask for my photo for the wall, but I suspect that’s only because I couldn’t clean my plate.
Sunday evening we ate at a Vegan Mexican/Cuban place, La Semilla. Vegan Mexican/Cuban seems to me a strange combination, more because of the Mexican/Cuban than the vegan, but it was completely successful and very hip. I’m sure some of that hipness rubbed off, and you’re now reaping the benefit. Our friend Shelley can’t eat dairy, and she declared the vegan queso the trip highlight, because queso.
In Savannah we ate at The Grey, which is one of Georgia’s best-known restaurants. They priced accordingly, but it was worth it. If nothing else, it’s located in the old Savannah Greyhound Bus station, and who can resist repurposed 1930s streamlined modern art deco architecture? We couldn’t decide what to eat, so we copped out and ordered the tasting menu. They also had the greatest cop-out martini ever, named for one of the owners who could never decide what she wanted. It was advertised as a mix of curated gins and vermouths, with both a twist of lemon and olives. It was the perfect martini for the indecisive, and could only have been improved if they’d both shaken and stirred it. It was excellent, and if I’d drunk two it would likely have been more excellenter. I only had one and I could still barely speak English.
We ate at Common Thread, which was also highly recommended, expensive, and excellent, and we got ice cream at Leopold’s because we were walking down the street and there was a line. Who can resist a line at an ice cream parlor, and if you can, why would you want to? There’s a lot of good food in Savannah. There’s a lot of good food in Georgia, though the jury’s out on the barbecue. Did I mention I gained eight pounds?
The Civil War
Georgia was the industrial heart of the Confederacy. From 1863 to War’s end, Georgia was the final focus of the Union’s Western campaign. After the Confederates under General Bragg defeated the Union under General Rosecrans at Chickamauga, Ulysses Grant took charge of the Western campaign. Grant changed the War. Under Grant, General Sherman led the Union in two of the most important campaigns of the War, the Battle of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. I had three great-great grandfathers at Atlanta, two Confederate, one Union. Those Union victories cut off the Army of Northern Virginia, and with Grant’s Virginia campaign the War ended.
Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863, was a major Union loss, and the War’s second bloodiest battle. There were more than 34,000 Union and Confederate casualties, and more than 4,000 deaths. That means that over three days, 34,000 Americans, Southern and Northern, were shot, stabbed, or blown up, and more than 4,000 of them died. The Union fought at Chickamauga to capture the Chattanooga railroad hub and open Georgia for Union invasion. The South fought to destroy the Union’s Army of the Cumberland. The South won the battle, but under Bragg they didn’t cripple the Union army. Because the South failed, two months later at Missionary Ridge Chattanooga fell to the Union under Grant. That defeat at Chattanooga may well have ended the South.
We visited the Chickamauga battlefield, and weirdly it’s in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Congressional District. It’s odd that one small region could produce two such catastrophes.
Chickamauga National Battlefield. Apple Maps.
Back to Atlanta. In addition to wedding festivities and eating, we visited the Botanical Garden and the High Art Museum, but best of all we visited the strange Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama at the Atlanta History Center. The History Center has a solid presentation about the Battle of Atlanta, of which the Cyclorama is only a part, but the Cyclorama is its own attraction. It’s a 358′ x 49′ hand painted canvas, which is a painting longer than a football field. It may be the largest oil painting in the world.
Some interesting tidbits about the Cyclorama. According to the history center, Southern troops at the Battle of Atlanta outnumbered Northern, but the Cyclorama was painted in the 1880s in Ohio, a Union state. In the painting the South is vastly outnumbered. When the Cyclorama was first moved to Atlanta in 1891, many of the Union soldiers were repainted with grey uniforms to show the South winning the battle. It’s a problem with history. It’s hard not to slant the presentation.
Where We Stayed
In Atlanta we stayed in the Roswell DoubleTree. It was fine, but where we stayed was less important than that we were in the suburbs, and (except for the Atlanta Brave’s Truist Park), a lot of Atlanta eateries and attractions seem to be located centrally within easy driving range of downtown. Every time we went somewhere–well every time we went somewhere other than Total Wine, REI, or the wedding–we had to drive 20 miles. If I ever go back to Atlanta, I’ll stay somewhere central.
In North Georgia we stayed at a B&B, the Overlook Inn. If you’re going to some relatively remote mountain destination, you’re statutorily required to stay in a B&B. It was pretty, and on our second night we ate dinner there. Kris always complains about B&Bs because on the mornings we fish we never get to eat the breakfast, but she didn’t complain about this place, maybe because our friends the Marmons were there. And the dinner we ate there–all four of us had the smoked trout–was great. The Georgia mountain views were also great.
In Savannah we stayed at a restored 1960s motor lodge, The Thunderbird Inn. Who doesn’t like a restored 1960s motor lodge? This one had everything you could want except Magic Fingers, a swimming pool, and free parking. The turndown service was a Moon Pie and RC Cola, and there was 24-hour coffee and popcorn in the lobby. The rooms were small, the colors bright, and the sign was neon, so it was almost perfect in every way. It was also very central, but everything in Savannah seems reasonably central.
Where We Didn’t Go
When we fished in North Carolina we stayed with our friend Bryan, and his family had given him a week in Blue Ridge, Georgia, for his birthday. We went to Blue Ridge, and we had a good Cuban sandwich there, but Bryan didn’t go to Blue Ridge for the Cubano. Bryan went to Bill Oyster’s six-day bamboo rod building class. He hadn’t been yet when we stayed with them, but later he sent me pictures of the classes and the rod he built.
Now I can’t find Bryan’s pictures. They’re on my computer somewhere, probably under my virtual bed, or in a virtual drawer in my virtual closet. They were great photos, and I was jealous. Bryan made a beautiful rod.
Bill Oyster is famous for his rod-building class, and maybe more famous for his bamboo rods and his metal engraving. Bamboo rods aren’t explicable. They’re best compared to an old Jaguar E Type, or a 1956 Martin D-28, or a first edition of Absalom, Absalom. It may not be the most useful thing in the world, but it’s so . . . irreplaceable, beautiful, timeless . . .
One of Bill Oyster’s bamboo rods built for Jimmy Carter. Photo shamelessly cadged from OysterBamboo.com
And Bill Oyster makes some of the most beautiful bamboo rods in the world. He made two for Jimmy Carter, who was a serious fly fisher. They were gorgeous things, with gorgeous engraving. Oyster told a story to the American Fly Fishing Museum about how he made the first rod for President Carter, and how Carter was going to fish it a bit, sign it, and then it would be sold as a fundraiser for the Carter Presidential Library. Carter fished it a bit and then told the Library that they’d better buy another because he wasn’t giving back the first.
I remember talking to Kris after Bryan went to Blue Ridge, and she just didn’t get it. Why would somebody pay good money to build something, when for the same money they could buy a rod from a real builder? I’m still baffled by her response. Why wouldn’t you want to build your own bamboo rod? And also the prices aren’t the same. The rod class currently costs $2,950–and almost all the classes for 2024 are full. Oyster also has some fly rods listed for sale online, and an 8′ 5 weight lists for $5,760. The cheapest rod listed is a 8′ 9 weight saltwater rod for $3,320.
8 5-weight Bill Oyster Master, photo shamelessly cadged from OysterBamboo.com
Isn’t that rod-building class a bargain?
I don’t know though. That 8′ 5 weight looks pretty sweet. I might have to get a prettier reel though. And I might have to give up some stuff, like food.
Benedetto Guitars are made in Savannah, but I’m afraid they’re out of my league. I guess Oyster fly rods are also out of my league.
Playlist
Georgia had a great music playlist. Blind Willie McTell, Gnarls Barkley, Harry James, R.E.M., Cat Power, James Brown, Trisha Yearwood, Gladys Knight, Little Richard, Fletcher Henderson, Otis Redding, The Allman Brothers, The B-52s, Ma Rainey, Indigo Girls, Jessye Norman, Robert Shaw, Robert Cray, Kaki King . . .
There’s also Atlanta HipHop, plus there all those great songs about Georgia. I could listen to Rainy Night in Georgia once a day from here on out, and never get tired of it. There’s Georgia on My Mind, I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train, Midnight Train to Georgia, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and if you get tired of those there’s Moon River and Skylark.
That playlist is good enough to keep me happy on a six-hour drive, through Georgia, on a rainy night.
Blind Willie McTell
Guitar
I took the Kohno and practiced some. I should have found a transcription of Moon River.
