Tag: Fly rods

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Hawaii Packing List

I took my board shorts to Hawaii. I’ve had a pair for more than a decade, but before Hawaii I’d worn them only once to a charity gala, along with a tuxedo shirt and jacket and a bow tie with little palm trees. The fundraiser was formal but Hawaiian-themed. In Hawaii I wore them wade fishing and Kris made fun of them, even though I thought them dashing. Maybe she was making fun of my skinny white legs. The board shorts will be at Goodwill soon.

We both took 9 wt. rods, Kris took an Orvis HD3 and I took a Loomis Asquith, our Christmas presents to each other. I liked mine better. The Asquith is nigh on to perfect, but I need to use the H3 a bit to get used to it. They had different lines, too, and I may have cast the Rio line better than the Orvis. No one was injured by my casting.

I took a pair of Patagonia flats boots, the neoprene kind Patagonia doesn’t make anymore. I’d read that coral was a problem on the flats, and that heavy boots were needed. The Patagonias aren’t really heavy, but I didn’t have any problems other than sand in the boot, even around the volcanic rock. The bigger problem was that there was no way to tie them to the roof of the rent car, and they didn’t dry before we had to pack. Do you know how hard it is anymore to find a newspaper to stuff into your booties?

The rental car was a Subaru with adaptive cruise control. I’d never used adaptive cruise control, and didn’t know the car had it. It also had lane drift correction. That’s some startling stuff when you don’t expect it.

Where We Stayed

We stayed three nights in an Airbnb. I had tried to book Airbnbs before, but it never worked out. We were in a 15th floor apartment in an older apartment tower, and the tower showed its age, but it was central, within walking distance of Waikiki shopping, and cheaper than any of the Waikiki hotels. I gave them a sterling review, and they gave me a sterling review, and I doubt that either of us were exactly misleading the public or exactly telling the truth. We weren’t in the apartment much, and the coffee pot worked. The sheets were clean.

I’m guessing that a lot of Hawaii is a resort economy, which means a lot of folk scraping by on service jobs, and things are expensive. According to Jake the guide Airbnbs pull a lot of available housing off the market, and drive up the cost of what’s left.

Honolulu from Diamond Head

We spent one night at the Turtle Bay Resort because I wanted to see the north side of O’ahu. There were fashion models hanging out in the coffee shop, at least I guessed they were fashion models: they were young, thin, remarkably tall, pretty, and armed with a photographer. There were C.F. Martin ukuleles in the gift shop, and bad karaoke in the bar. There was a nice weight room and huge breakers. We weren’t there long enough for any resort activities, but sitting on the balcony playing the guitar and drinking coffee and watching the breakers was worth the effort. There was no free coffee in the lobby. I am immensely fond of free morning coffee in lobbies, but if I’d had free coffee I would have missed the fashion models.

Our final night we stayed at the Best Western Palace Hotel Honolulu, because we wanted to stay near the airport. We dropped the rental car that afternoon, took an Uber to dinner, and the next morning used the airport shuttle. It’s a plan that works well, unless the hotel is the Best Western Palace Hotel Honolulu. It’s tucked in at the edge of a grimy bit of freeway, has itself seen better days, and for the first time I recall I pulled back the covers and checked the bed for bedbugs. It was fine for the night before an early flight, and convenient, but next time I suspect I’ll pass. There were no bedbugs.

Where We Ate

We ate dinner the first night at Alan Wong’s, which is famous. It’s the granddaddy, and The Obamas Ate Here. Our waiter had learned his trade watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and things could have gone better. I’m sure it’s ok most nights, but I didn’t like the food much, and they lost us in the shuffle. Kris gave them one star on Yelp! I guess people only do Yelp! reviews when they own the place or they’re angry.

The Pig and the Lady

Waikiki shopping is like shopping Rodeo Drive, or the Miracle Mile, or Fifth Avenue, with all the high-end retail anyone could ever need. We ate dinner at a place called Roy’s Waikiki. It was very popular and perfectly decent and I greatly admired the lips of the Australian woman next to us at the bar, which were immense and must have been made, literally, for Waikiki. There were other parts of her that looked manufactured as well.  If you’re going to eat in Waikiki Roy’s is fine, though it’s not a place that looks like a Hank’s, or a Joe’s, or a Roy’s. I liked the tuna poke appetizer. Maybe if you go there the Australian woman will still be at the bar and you too can be amazed at the size of those lips.

The two hottest places in Honolulu are The Pig and the Lady, which was spectacular and my favorite, and Senia, which was Kris’s favorite and spectacular. They’re next door to each other in the old Chinatown, which pre-WWII was the place for sailors to go for tattoos, liquor, and sexual shenanigans and is apparently now the place to go for cheap rent and leis. The Obamas had dinner at The Pig and the Lady the week before, which if I didn’t like the Obamas would make an amusing joke. I do like the Obamas though, and I liked The Pig and the Lady. Those two places made up for Alan Wong’s.

At the Rainbow Drive-in Kris ordered for us and I got the plate dinner, but with fish, beef, and chicken on a single plate, plus chili covering the side of rice (but not the side of macaroni and cheese). It was delicious, all of it. We ate tuna poke at a random sushi place in a strip center (which I’d never have done in Houston). As for baked goods, the Coco Puffs at Liliha Bakery are obligatory, plus I had the Full Hawaiian Breakfast with Spam, rice, and fried bananas. I have a secret and long-standing fondness for Spam, Salt! Fat! Pork!, so I am one with the Islands.

Liliana Bakery

The malassadas at Leonard’s Bakery are the very thing, and if you order enough of them they come in a pink box. Get the one stuffed with guava jelly, and the one with the cinnamon and salt, and the rest of them.

Malasadas

I had the Obama shaved ice at Waiola Shave Ice, then ate the rest of Kris’s shaved ice which was some other set of flavors. It was healthy. It was fruit.

There may not be an Obama statue in Hawaii, but they sure let you know where the Obamas eat.

Where We Went That Didn’t Involve Fishing

The National Park Service and the Navy are keeping the Pearl Harbor monument open during the government shut-down with private donations. The Arizona Memorial is closed, not because of the shut-down but because it needs repairs, so we didn’t get to see my cousin’s name in the list of the dead: Houston O’Neal Thomas, age 20, coxswain. He was a bit older than my father, and I suppose they must have grown up together. He was a child. I suppose he had no notions of war. I hope his death was sudden and painless.

We toured the Ilioni Palace, which was the last royal residence of the last king, King David Kalakaua, and then the last queen of Hawaii. Queen Liliuokalani. The conspirators wanted immediate annexation of Hawaii into the States, but President Cleveland refused, and sent a delegation to explore restoration of the monarchy. When asked, Liliuokalani sensibly said she planned to cut off the conspirators’ heads. Her answer derailed restoration, but she was, after all, a queen, and off with their heads is always a queenly answer. Hawaii was later annexed by President Cleveland’s successor (technically his second successor), William McKinley.  The palace (which is modest as royal palaces go), is a monument to regret at the loss of sovereignty.

The Bishop Museum is also a bit of a monument to the monarchy, but it’s very fine, and probably the best collection of Polynesian artifacts in the world.

We climbed Diamond Head. There was some guy jogging up and down the path carrying a boom box blasting 80s music. Somebody should import ear pods to Hawaii.

Where We Didn’t Go

We didn’t see any of the other islands. We didn’t snorkel, so I still haven’t. We didn’t surf, and I never will, particularly since I’m getting rid of my board shorts. 

We didn’t eat poi at Helena’s Hawaiian. I’m not certain that Helena’s Hawaiian is ever actually open. It was closed all day Sunday and Monday and even on days it claimed to be open it closed by 7:30.

We didn’t see hula, though I did buy a reprint of a book first published in 1907 about the songs of the hula. We didn’t attend a luau. We didn’t visit a ukulele factory. We didn’t feed the mongoose, though I saw it.

We didn’t see the Honolulu Museum of Art, and we never walked on Waikiki Beach. We didn’t eat shrimp out of a food truck. Luckily we get to go back.

I didn’t buy a Panama hat from Newt at the Royal, so I’m glad I’m going back. It’s startling to realize that with a Panama hat, a cigar, and a goatee I could pass for a planter, or at least Colonel Sanders. They’re a bit fine to use as fishing hats.

Newt at the Royal Hawaiian.

Playlist

Hawaiian music is everywhere, everywhere. Maybe it’s just atmosphere, or maybe it’s pride and love. It can get cloying, but in reasonable doses it’s beautiful.

Unlike prior trips where I’ve depended on my own music collection with some supplemental purchases, I owned no Hawaiian music. I finally subscribed to Apple Music. It’s miraculous. I was able to download a perfectly respectable list of Hawaiian musicians.

  • Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. A half dozen years ago Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow was all over the internet. He was a monstrous man, a man the size of a Sumo, and he was playing a tiny instrument and singing sweetly. He also did a cover of Take me Home Country Roads that doesn’t once mention West Virginia. I’m not sure that’s legal, but he was a bit of a rebel: he was a sovereignty activist.
  • Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu and Kamehameha Schools Children’s Chorus, Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride, from Lilo & Stitch. Lilo & Stitch may be the strangest Disney movie ever made. I can’t describe the plot but trust me, it is . . . strange. And this is a fun song.
  • Elvis Presley, Hawaiian Wedding Song and Blue Hawaii. Elvis fits the jet-fed Hawaii. There’s also a very fine version of Blue Hawaii by the famous Hawaiian musician, Willie Nelson.
  • Keola Beamer and Kapono Beamer, Honolulu City Lights. This is a 70s album, and it sounds it. It is much loved, but they probably made records that carried the dated date less heavily.
  • Ry Cooder, Chicken Skin Music. In 1970 Ry Cooder made an album that probably still baffles folk. Chicken skin music is apparently a Hawaiian description of music so good that it brings goose bumps. The album features the great Norteno accordianist, Flaco Jimenez, and the great Hawaiian slack key guitarist, Gabby Pahinui. There is a cover of Irene Goodnight, and a cover of Stand by Me. The most Hawaiian song on the album, Hank Snow’s Yellow Roses, was as far from Hawaii as Tennessee, but it manages to sound like both.
  • Don Ho, Tiny Bubbles and Pearly Shells. I am of an age that remembers Don Ho. They are likable songs.
  • Gabby Pahinui. Of all of the Hawaiian musicians, Gabby Pahinui (1921-1980) is the one guy everyone should know. Gabby Pahinui is B.B. King or Ty Cobb. Ok, I’m mixing metaphors, but in his place, in his time, he was the distillation. He was a drinking man, but in the introduction of Iz’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow Iz announces “This is for Gabby.” It is Gabby who Ry Cooder included on Chicken Skin Music. It is lovely stuff
  • Na Leo Pilimehana, Local Boys and Waikiki. Na Leo Pilimehana is the girl group, and if the Beach Boys had been three Hawaiian women they would have recorded Local Boys. I sang Waikiki to myself for days. Sometimes I might have sung it out loud.
  • Steel Guitar Rag. It’s the song that stateside crystalized the popularization of Hawaiian slide guitar. There are versions by Bob Wills, Merle Travis, Les Paul, and John Fahey.
  • Louis Armstrong, To You, Sweetheart, Aloha. There’s also an album by Andy Williams. 
  • I guess Jack Johnson is the most famous contemporary musician from Hawaii. He was a competitive surfer but was injured, so he became a popular singer and guitarist. It’s hard to see how the boy ever got a date. It’s likable, amd it incorporates the sounds of Hawaiian music: sweet guitars, ukuleles.
  • Ka’au Crater Boys, Guava Jelly.  Motown meets Honolulu. “Ooh baby, here I am, come rub upon my belly like guava jelly.” That goes on to my road trip list.
  • Jake Shimabukuro, As My Guitar Gently Weeps. I think Shimabukuro may have single-handedly resurrected the ukulele.
  • Nathan Aweau, Akaka Falls.
  • The Brothers Cazimero, Home in the Islands.
  • Hawaiian Style Band, Let’s Talk Story. This one’s something of an ear worm.
  • Ho’ai Kane, Kona Red.

To get ready to go we watched a lot of the new Hawaii Five-0, and it’s addictive. I’m going to have trouble quitting.

For guitar music I worked on the Allemande movement to Duarte’s transcription of Bach’s first Cello Suite. I’ve worked on it off and on for years, and still can’t remember where the bass notes go.

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Wisconsin Packing List

We didn’t take any fishing gear to Wisconsin, except for waders, boots, and sunglasses. We didn’t wade, but on the day it rained I wore my boots instead of sandals, and Kris wore her waders and her boots both days to stay warm.  The temperature was in the 40s. It was arctic.

We used the guide’s rods, Orvis Recon 10 weights, and they worked great. We have 10 weights, but we don’t have cold water lines for them, and tropic lines kink in cold water. I could get used to not hauling fishing gear through airports. And as to Recon versus Helios most rods are better than I am.

When we were in Oregon, we asked a waitress what we should do while we were there.  She said she didn’t know, that she’d just moved to Oregon from Milwaukee, so we asked her what we should do in Wisconsin. “Eat fried cheese curds.” Our daughter added that we should also eat fresh cheese curds because they squeak when you chew. They do.

Cheese curds are curdled milk, cheddar in process, and not yet cheese. In the New York Times, Louisa Kamp once described the squeak as two balloons trying to neck. They taste a bit like cottage cheese, with more chew.

We bought a block of cheddar cheese which I stuck in my daypack and forgot about.  At least I forgot about it until the TSA lady pulled me out of the line at the Milwaukee airport to go through my pack. I’m pretty sure that in the scanner the block of cheddar looked just like C-4. “Do you have anything sharp in your bag? Anything that could stick me.” She was pulling on her proctology gloves.

“No . . . yes, wait. I have a block of extra sharp cheddar cheese.”  Wisconsin humor. She looked at me and then laughed. The Wisconsin TSA lady thought the joke was funny, and I’m not in prison.

Cheese

After the fur trade, Wisconsin’s first industries were timber and wheat. The wheat didn’t last, and I can’t remember why. Disease? Poor soil? Short growing seasons? Wheat worked in Nebraska and Kansas, but not in Wisconsin. So Wisconsin turned to dairy, spurred on by the efforts of the University of Wisconsin. I had always assumed that Wisconsin came to dairy because that’s where European dairy farmers immigrated, but no. It was the replacement crop because of the failure of wheat.

Where We Didn’t Go

There was a lot of Wisconsin we didn’t see. There is a peninsula, Door County, in the northeast, roughly paralleling the Michigan upper peninsula on the east side of Lake Michigan. Door County was somewhere referred to as Wisconsin’s Cape Cod. I haven’t been to Cape Cod, but Door County had some appeal to me. The pictures look genteel.

Historically northern Wisconsin was timber, not farming, and Stevens Point was the doorway to the pineywoods. I’ll have a chance to see the north country in Michigan and Minnesota, and it was a long way from Chicago (notwithstanding the draw of the giant fiberglass muskie in Hayward), so we didn’t go. We probably won’t.

The part of the state I wish I’d seen but didn’t was the southwestern Driftless Area.  It is apparently a very fine trout fishery, overlapping Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. It is also the part of the state with the highest concentration of organic farms and rural Democratic votes. It is geologically different than the rest of the state because the great sheet glaciers didn’t cover the Driftless, and consequently didn’t leave glacial drift, glacial drift being the trash left behind by glaciers after a picnic. Consequently there’s not much glacial rock.

There’s a lovely looking trout town there, Viroqua, and I’m a sucker for trout towns. I had already planned to fish the Driftless region in Iowa, so maybe next year I’ll hit them both.

We also didn’t visit the Milwaukee churches.  I’ll go back for that.

What I Didn’t Write About

Aldo Leopold. John Muir. Hank Aaron. The Art of Fielding.

Bud Selig.

Have you ever had someone be so unjust, perpetrate so many indignities, large and small, deliver so many insults that physically you react to their name? Bud Selig. If Fortunato had only been the Commissioner of Baseball, Montresor’s motivations in The Cask of Amontillado would stand revealed.

I’m glad I’m going back. I’ll write about Bud Selig.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bud_Selig_on_October_31,_2010_(2).jpg

Playlist

  • Bon Iver. It was the first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, that was so arresting, so beautiful. I can hum Skinny Love happily forever. I like the other albums, even the strange 22, A Million and side projects like Volcano Choir. But For Emma is beautiful.
  • BoDeans. I’ve listened to the BoDeans since a Stereo Review review of Home back in the 80s.  I miss Stereo Review, but I’m probably the only one. Red River goes into my car trip playlist. 
  • Steve Miller Band. I didn’t really care for them in the 70s, but they’re fun to listen to when your expectations are low.
  • Bruce Springsteen. Cadillac Ranch. Hey little girlie in the blue jeans so tight/Drivin’ alone through the Wisconsin night.  
  • George Jones, Milwaukee Here I Come. There’s also a version by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. If you never saw Dolly Parton on the Porter Wagoner Show on Saturday night, your education is incomplete. Dolly was 21. “Why Porter! You brung me flowers!”
  • Les Paul, The Best of the Capitol Masters Edition. Luckily he designed a great guitar, otherwise no one would remember him. If you never actually listened to Les Paul (which I hadn’t), don’t. 
  • Ella Fitzgerald, My Cousin in Milwaukee. Singin’ sweet about singin’ sexy. 
  • Smoking Popes, Welcome to Janesville. Paul Ryan is from Janesville. It’s a fine song, but I don’t think it’s about Paul Ryan. 
  • Jerry Lee Lewis, What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me). Lewis’s late country phase.
  • Brad Paisley, Alcohol. Paisley is from West Virginia, and should have been on my West Virginia playlist. He wasn’t, but only out of ignorance. I suspect he’s not my kind of country, but this is a strange sort of anthem, and probably fitting for the state with the highest alcoholism rate in the country.
  • Kimya Dawson, Tire Swing.  Didn’t know her, and still don’t. Wikipedia lists her genre as anti-folk. Ok then. 
  • Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Milwaukee is a port. 

Guitar

I took a guitar, my cheap travel guitar, and worked on Villa-Lobos’s Choro No. 1. I gave up on the Bach I’d been working on without really learning it. I did manage to play all the way through it though.

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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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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.