Tag: Fly rods

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Kanektok River, Bethel Census Area, Alaska, July 3-10, 2022.

I had imagined Alaska, and not just the bears, either. I had imagined glaciers and mountains, forests and Western streams and endless fish–like Yellowstone, but better, with more of all the stuff that makes the West wild. That’s not exactly the Alaska where we fished. We spent a week on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta where the Kanektok River meets the Bering Sea, and it was both different and more interesting.

Swinging for Kings

We fished six days at Deneki Outdoors’ Alaska West camp, five miles upstream from the coastal village of Quinagak, population 856. We were where Alaska ended and the Bering Sea began, with no roads into town through the tundra. Quinagak is 72 air miles from the next largest town, Bethel. It was pretty remote.

Fishing for salmon in Alaska is about time. Arrive two weeks too early or two weeks too late and you won’t catch the salmon you want. The salmon come in from the sea on a schedule, year after year, in bigger or smaller numbers, though it seems that these days the numbers are always smaller. We chose early July for king salmon, the largest Pacific salmon. Hubris I reckon.

Fly fishing for kings differs from most other fly fishing. The rods are different. The lines are different. The flies are different.

Spey rods are long, 13 feet compared to the usual 9-foot fly rod, and heavy. You use both hands to cast, and there’s no back-cast. It’s the simplest fly cast, a roll cast, but with some complicating twists and turns and issues of timing, and the arcane lines are the heart of it. We fished with Skagit lines. There is another type of spey line, a Scandi line, but it’s the Skagit that’s used on the Kanektok for kings.

Skagit lines are short, as short as 20 feet, and thick and heavy. They’re the colors of Play-Doh so you can see them on the water, and they’re thick as baling wire, nearly an 1/8th of an inch. Skagit line weights are measured in grains. The heaviest part of a regular 9-weight redfish line, a heavy line, might weigh 330 grains. My 8/9-weight Skagit line weighs 600 grains. See what I mean by arcane? They use an ancient alchemist weight system to measure the lines, and I doubt that much of anybody knows what a grain actually is. Regardless, nearly twice the weight makes a difference, whether it’s measured in grains or in kilograms or in ounces.

The Skagit line is attached to the reel through 100 feet of thin plastic-coated running line, and then through 200 yards of braided nylon backing. We would cast some of the running line, but only saw the backing when a hot fish ran.

Skagit lines are designed to pick up and throw a sinking tip that is also heavy. A sink tip’s plastic coating is mixed with ground tungsten to sink into the river as much as 7- or 8-inches per second. At the end of that heavy ten-foot sink tip is a large, annoying fly with the added water weight of a good river baptism. And the flies are annoying. Once they hit freshwater from the sea, salmon aren’t feeding. The flies are designed for provocation, not imitation.

Learning to spey cast is not for the faint-hearted. The heavy lines, large soaked flies, and high line speed can leave a lasting impression, even if you don’t actually hook yourself. I thwacked my left ear hard, and another bad cast took my stocking cap into the river. If I hadn’t been wearing the cap it would have been bits of my scalp.

When we started on Sunday we were less than competent casters. By the next Saturday we were casting more or less in the vicinity of ok. Our guides were good teachers, and we were at it most of 10 hours a day for six days. Even I had a chance of getting better.

We waded along gravel bars, trying to fish the places the salmon might hold before another upstream push. There was enough river and few enough anglers to always have our own private gravel bar. We’d wade out in the shallows then cast across to the deeper water, maybe 70 feet, more likely 60, and let the fly and 10-foot sink tip drag down and across in the current. That arc–more of a rounded right angle, really–is the swing, arced down and across from me, the pivot. When the line and fly were almost directly below me I would let the fly hang in the current, then retrieve line back until I could cast again.

When I usually fish, I cast to fish I see, or cast to where I think fish are likely. This was more like broadcasting on the radio, casting out to as much of the river as I could cover and then letting the fly search. Cast, swing, retrieve, step downriver one or two steps, and then do it all again. Then do it all again. Then do it all again. I never really knew who was out there.

Those tungsten sink tips? Rio fly lines sells them as MOW tips, and I was told that MOW are the initials of three former Alaska West guides who developed the lines. The Kanektok has the reputation of one of the best places in the world to swing flies for kings, and whether or not you catch fish, it’s a mesmerizing business.

The River, the tundra, and the sea.

Most anybody can work up some mystical awe for a mountain, but it’s hard to work up much awe for a delta. Its beauty is more difficult to parse. I’ve probably spent more time fishing coastal marshes than most, and that’s what first struck me about the Kanektok. Out of context, if someone told you that those were mangroves, not stunted alders, and that that was marsh grass, not tundra grass, you’d like as not believe you were somewhere in Belize, or Galveston, or New Orleans.

The Kanektok flow was steady and smooth. The gravel bottom was easy to wade, though it did get deep. We stayed in the shallows, and I doubt that I ever waded in water that was much above my knees.

At the sea the mouth of the Kanektok is a tidal plain. At low tide at the outlet there were sand bars and tall, cut banks. Twelve hours later, everything we saw would be hidden under ten feet of high tide. I climbed up a bank, in part from a full bladder and in part from curiosity, and from there the tundra grass, flat and seemingly endless, was dotted with purple fire weed, white yarrow, and yellow grundsels.

I’ve read that in summer the Bering Sea hosts the largest biomass on earth, and that carries over into the Delta. Even along the relatively people-inhabited river we watched swallows attack a golden eagle, compared the glaucous gulls to our own smaller laughing gulls, saw beaver swim dragging fresh-cut alder, and watched tiny yellow warblers, maybe from as far south as the Yucatan, explore the bankside alders.

An odd factoid: the average American eats about one ton, 2000 pounds, of food each year. In Quinagak, about 700 pounds of each resident’s annual food supply comes from subsistence fishing, hunting, and gathering. Even with our annual fig crop and July okra production, plus those two or three tomatoes each year that actually ripen, I doubt that we get 25 pounds of food per year from anywhere but the HEB. And this year the figs didn’t make because of the drought. We’ve had a lot of okra though.

There’s Yup’ik archeological history near Quinagak that dates from as early as 1350, so it’s a well-established trading site, and probably a fishing site. During the year though the current residents’ ancestors would disburse throughout the region to gather food. I suppose that’s part of the legacy of the Alaskan Native Claims Act: it mandated that Native Alaskans pick their spot. Maybe there’s an anthropologist somewhere who knows.

Anyway, back to that 700 pounds. There always seemed to be Quinagakians on the river snagging sockeye. It wasn’t sporting, but then it wasn’t meant to be. It was harvesting. And from the river mouth we could watch Quinagak boats put out to sea to net fish.

On the Kanektok, the king return was down, and for the season Alaska had banned chum salmon fishing because the numbers of returning chum are way off. Global warming maybe, maybe the efficiency of gill nets, maybe both. Probably combinations of things I can’t imagine.

Fish, No Fish

The first day I caught five fish. Now mind, any day with five fish is a good day, and I caught one 15-pound king, a couple of smaller jacks, and two chum. They were bright, fast fish, only a few miles from the ocean and not yet changing to their spawning form and colors, not yet dying.

We couldn’t target chum, but when we fished for kings we couldn’t help accidentally catching chum. We landed and released them as quickly as we could. The jacks are a bit of an oddity, and are defined by Alaska law as any king salmon that’s less than 30 inches long. The two Jacks I caught the first day were big for jacks, maybe close to ten pounds. They were good fish, but they weren’t 30 inches. They weren’t kings.

Kings go out to the ocean for five to eight years before they return to their home river. Jacks are immature males, always males, teenagers, who go out to the ocean but then return to their river after one to three years. People say it’s a bit of a mystery why the jacks return early, but do teenage boys ever believe in the possibility of death? Are teenage boys everywhere not stupid for the chance to get laid? Where’s the mystery?

The first day my five fish were the best catch for the camp, and I reveled in it, certain that I had this Alaska thing down. The next day I followed it up with nothing. Nichts, nada, nil. I worked hard, and came back to camp in the evening shamefaced. Kris caught fish, Kris always catches fish. Within a couple of hours of arriving at camp she walked down to the river and caught a nice rainbow. Then she caught a jack, a chum and a rainbow on Monday, a jack and two rainbows on Tuesday, a chum on Wednesday, two rainbows on Thursday, a jack, a king and the first pink of the season on Friday, and three rainbows and two jacks on Saturday. She mostly spent her time in Alaska outfishing me.

I had imagined Alaska as a steady stream of fish, and after going nil on Monday, on the third day, Wednesday, I caught one jack.

None of this matched my imagination. On Thursday again I caught nothing. I hooked two fish and lost them after setting the hook. Once I tried to set the hook too soon after the slightest nudge.

I got plenty of practice casting.

All of this was done under lead skies, in cold and rain. Kris caught fish and I caught nada.

Besides the obvious differences in rod and line, maybe the biggest difference between swinging flies and other fly fishing is the take. So much of fly fishing is visual, or a fish attacks a retrieved streamer. You watch the line, you watch an indicator on the line, you watch the fish, or you watch the fly. You’re active, you’re looking. Swinging the fly, on the other hand, is all tactile. The connection through the line between you and the hook is direct, and it’s the only connection. We couldn’t see what was happening beneath the surface, but could only feel a nudge, a tug, and then the heavy pull of the fish on the line. If you hadn’t already blown it, that’s when you would set the hook. It is the most connected, electric thing.

On Friday, I lost a good king after a good fight, and landed another king within a mile of the ocean. There was a lamprey wound on its belly, and it still had the sea lice it would lose in freshwater. Kris also landed a king, and her fish had the beginning colors of the spawn. Late in the day I hooked a salmon, and it ran down and across the river, taking all of the 100-foot running line and a good bit of the braided backing. I saw the fish once, 100 feet across and downriver, dragging the long curve of my line and jumping upriver parallel to the surface. While I fought the fish it started to rain, the only rain of the day, big, heavy drops. When I finally landed the fish it was a huge chum, bigger than any of the kings I’d caught, and by then the rain had stopped. Alaska can be a volatile place.

Chris the Guide spent time reviving the fish, and Kris the companion snapped a photo when he took it from the net. It was nothing but a moment, a few minutes to revive the fish, and a brief glimpse of the sea, of the river, of a different place from what I had imagined.

Our last day

Our last day fishing, Saturday, was bright and clear, warm and sunny, with low tides. It was a terrible day for fishing, though of course Kris caught all sorts of fish. We fished for a bit, caught nothing, then went down to the mouth of the river at the sea, as much to see it as to fish. After lunch Chris the Guide ran the boat upriver 15 miles to fish for trout with single-handed rods. We caught some on heavy sculpin patterns, and Kris caught a couple of jacks, but we went as much to sightsee as to fish.

They were good rainbow trout, big by the standards of the lower 48, as much as 20 inches. They weren’t big Alaska trout though. Those would come later in the season, and downriver, closer to the ocean, after more salmon had spawned and died and the trout were fat with salmon flesh and eggs.

Upriver I sat bankside to change flies and was swarmed with mosquitos. They weren’t as substantial as our Gulf Coast mosquitos, more of whisps of mosquitos, but they were real enough and plenty numerous and persistent, plenty annoying, and until we left that place the swarm stayed with me. I guess that was something I hadn’t really imagined either. Just like I hadn’t imagined the tundra, or the wildflowers, or the tiny bank-side yellow warblers.

On our final sunny day I could finally see the sockeye ghosting upriver to spawn. It was a continuous line of driven fish, and I watched hundreds, maybe thousands. They coasted up the shallows where I stood, and would come within a few feet of me then swerve deliberately, out and around me, never stopping, never running, saving their energy to move upstream.

The sockeyes were fish I couldn’t catch, or at least that I wouldn’t snag. I would go again just to watch those fish.

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Connecticut Packing List

Gear

We fished with Bert Ouellette on the Housatonic River, and mostly we fished with Bert’s stuff. We had rods, but Bert said we’d use our rods, a 5-wt for Kris and 6-wt for me, for dry flies. we never fished dry flies, so we never used our stuff.

Instead we fished Bert’s 6-weights, good Orvis Recon and Orvis Helios 3 rods, with sinking lines for bait-fish streamers and a complex leader at the front of a floating line for deep underwater nymphs. For non fly-fishers, I could go into endless detail about all this but your eyes would glaze and you’d wonder off to the kitchen to see what’s in the icebox. It’s not worth the explanation. Leave it be that they were very good rods, set up in pretty sophisticated ways for fishing the river as well as we could fish it. It all worked.

We were fishing out of a drift boat, and never waded in the river, but it was raining the first day so we wore our waders as rain gear. Because we had studs in our boots–think hob-nailed boots, but with screw heads, not nails–we didn’t wear our boots in Bert’s boat. Since we never got out of the boat, neoprene stocking feet were fine.

I’ll only indulge in one bit of fly fishing arcana. At the end of the second day Bert told me that his dry fly leader–remember, we didn’t get to fish dry flies–was usually 25-feet long. The leader is the (usually) nine feet of monofilament line that attaches to the end of the thick plastic-covered fly line. The fly line is the heavy part of the whole business that actually casts, and the leader connects the fly to the fly line. I’m usually feeling mighty lucky if I can cast 25 feet of the fly line, and Bert was fishing 25 feet before he reached the line. He promised to send me the formula, and when I get it, I’ll look at it and gape. I doubt that I’ll ever be brave enough to fish a 25-foot leader.

Restaurants and Inns

In northwestern Connecticut, we were in the land of the cute country inn. There was a cute tiny town every 15 miles or so, with some cute restaurants, and some cute shops selling electric bicycles or Shaker furniture, and a pretty covered bridge and then another pretty covered bridge and some charming barns, and all of it with just a whole lot of charm and prettiness and cuteness and smartness.

I keep a running list of places to stay or eat or fish in different states, and the White Hart Inn, Salisbury, Connecticut, was on my list, probably cadged from some magazine article that caught my eye, and it was near enough to the Housatonic for us to stay there.

The original part of the Inn was built as a farmhouse in 1806. Here’s the Inn’s description from its website:

The property features 16 guest rooms, three dining rooms, a taproom with a full-service bar, two outdoor dining patios, a large porch with drink service, a ballroom and café. The artwork of Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Terry Winters, Donald Baechler, Hugo Guinness and Duncan Hannah is displayed throughout the premises.

I have to admit, I’ve got no clue who Terry Winters, Donald Baechler, Hugo Guinness, or Duncan Hannah are, but I’m certain it’s my loss. What’s worse is that I noticed none of the artwork displayed through the premises. I did have two great dinners in the restaurant, and it was a completely cute and smart and charming place. Score.

Fly Shops

There are no fly shops in northwestern Connecticut. Bert said there was one, but then one day it was open and then the next day it was closed. I’m going to use that as an excuse to tell you about the fly shops we visited in New York.

We started the trip at Joan Wulff’s casting school in the Catskills, near Livingston Manor, New York. There are actually two nearby towns, Livingston Manor (which has its annual Trout Parade), and Roscoe (“Trout Town USA“). Look, I’m a relatively unsophisticated trout angler, and always feel that if I catch a trout, the fishing gods for some peculiar reason have smiled on me for my innocence and devotion. The Catskills though are the area where American trout fly fishing developed, and reached a level of sophistication that still defines the sport. The Catskills have had other things going on–Jewish Borscht Belt humor for instance, and Hudson River School painting. In recent years it’s become a destination for Brooklyn hipsters seeking a weekend in the woods. But trout, and fly fishing, have been the area’s mainstay for 150 years.

In Roscoe, New York, there are three fly shops on one street. Roscoe, population 541, has almost as many fly shops as Houston, population 3 million. In Livingston Manor, just up the road from Roscoe, there is Dette Fly Shop (which actually moved to Livingston Manor from Roscoe). Dette opened in 1928, and inside it looks exactly like a fly shop from Diagon Alley. It’s now owned by the third generation of Dettes. I’ve been tying flies for Alaska, and had a list of obscure materials that I couldn’t find in Houston. Dette had it all, and the counter help led us down aisles packed with obscure bits of fluff and feathers to find a dozen different colors of the very thing crammed into a bin stacked underneath another bin.

It was highly entertaining, and going there and looking at the place is a pilgrimage for every fly fisher. It was so packed with stuff that they displayed fly rods on the ceiling because there was otherwise no space. On. The. Ceiling.

Charles Ives, Wallace Stevens, and Mark Twain

I ran into Charles Ives and Wallace Stevens–figuratively, not literally–at roughly the same time, in Mrs. Miller’s American Literature class my junior year in high school. She played The Unanswered Question in class for us, and ever since I’ve had a fondness for Ives. I don’t think it’s misplaced, though Kris would disagree. She found the number of Ives pieces I had on my Connecticut playlist annoying.

Charles Ives, 1913

Me on the other hand, I love Ives. I love listening for the Easter eggs in his music, and the complications, and the moments of intense serenity. I read once that Ives is hard for musicians because of the dissonances, rhythmic tumbles, and linear incoherencies. To me that’s the fun of it, but I did download a lot of Ives.

Ives was born and raised in Connecticut, attended Yale, then owned and ran an insurance agency in New York. He is considered the originator of modern estate planning, at least by Wikipedia. He wrote his music in obscurity, but was wealthy enough to be a New York music patron and to fund, from time to time, performances of his music. He wrote music for 20 years, then more or less stopped. He may be the fifty states’ most significant composer. Me, I just find the notion of two marching bands in the town square playing different tunes at the same time completely believable, and delightful.

Stevens, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish. He was born and raised in Connecticut, attended Harvard, then worked as an insurance company lawyer in Hartford. Does this sound familiar? His poetry is obscure and difficult. Does this sound familiar? I had to write an essay about the Emperor of Ice Cream. 

Take from the dresser of deal, 
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet 
On which she embroidered fantails once 
And spread it so as to cover her face.

That essay still embarrasses me. Did Mrs. Miller think that a 15-year old would understand what death has to do with a roller of big cigars from the preceding verse, or concupiscent curds? I didn’t, but I take comfort now in knowing that even though I like the poem, and could probably recite it by memory with a wee bit of preparation, I still have little clue what’s going on.

Stevens was apparently kind of difficult. There is the famous punch-out of Stevens in Key West by Ernest Hemingway, instigated by a probably drunk Stevens, but better still is the famous put-down of Stevens in Key West by Robert Frost, whose poetry is, at least, mostly comprehensible:

“The trouble with you, Robert, is that you’re too academic.”

“The trouble with you, Wallace, is that you’re too executive.”

“The trouble with you, Robert, is that you write about– subjects.”

“The trouble with you, Wallace, is that you write about– bric-a-brac.”

Bric-a-brac. Was there ever a harder slam? And it was, after all, a sheet on which she embroidered fantails once. If that ain’t bric-a-brac, what is?

Sylvia Salmi, Wallace Stevens, 1948.

Anyway, for 50 years I’ve off and on tried to read Wallace Stevens with some comprehension, appreciation, and intelligence. I’m a failure. Sometimes there are moments of brilliance that make it through to my small brain–“death is the mother of beauty“–sometimes there are moments of sublimity–“for she was the maker of the song she sang./The ever hooded, gesturing sea . . . “–but mostly I’m just stupidly baffled. I should give it up, but I probably won’t.

Mark Twain, an adopted Connectician, wasn’t born in Connecticut, and didn’t attend either Harvard or Yale. He did move to Hartford in 1873 and became a director of the Hartford Accident Insurance Company. As a director he gave a brilliant speech on the importance of accident insurance:

Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance line of business–especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest–as an advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care for politics–even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.

Mark Twain, Speech on Accident Insurance, 1874.

Unlike that other Hartford insurance man, Wallace Stevens, Mark Twain is mostly comprehensible.

Pizza

New Haven is particularly famous for its pizza. Bert said we had to have the pizza on our way back to LaGuardia, and said that since we wouldn’t go through New Haven we should stop at the Frank Pepe’s in Danbury. Frank Pepe is credited as the originator of New Haven style pizza, The Guardian claims that the original Pepe’s pizza in New Haven is the best in the world, and The New York Times says that even the Pepe’s outlets are consistently good.

We ate at the Danbury outlet. It was the best pizza I’ve ever eaten. Dear Lord, please let me eat that pizza at least once again.

I’d show you a picture of the pizza, but we ate it before we thought about a photo. I did get a picture of the box.

Where We Didn’t Go

I’d like to have visited the Mystic Seaport Museum. Maybe when we go back to Rhode Island we’ll sneak across the border.

Playlist

Charles Ives, of course.

Did you know the Carpenters are from Connecticut? Karen and Richard. My senior year in high school, they had to be the most popular singers in America, and I thought then that if I never heard Close to You Again, my life would be richer for it. I despised them.

The Carpenters and Richard Nixon, 1973, White House Photo.

Look at that hair! The Carpenters’ hair is pretty remarkable too.

I suppose that I’ve mellowed since I was 17, but if I hadn’t gone to Connecticut I would never have heard Close to You again. And I was right. I would have been richer for it. 

On the day that you were born the angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue

Who can say those words with a straight face, or at least a crippling dose of irony. The only thing I can say is that there are worse things on a Connecticut playlist. Michael Bolton is also from Connecticut.

Laura Nyro is from Connecticut, and I love Laura Nyro. Sometimes the only thing better than Laura Nyro is listening to covers of Laura Nyro: And When I Die by Blood Sweat & Tears, Wedding Bell Blues by the 5th Dimension, Stoney End by Linda Ronstadt (ok, ok, and Barbara Streisand), Eli’s Coming by Three Dog Night . . . Such good stuff.

Laura Nyro, circa 1968, from Wikipedia

I came across an interesting Laura Nyro factoid, that after Al Kooper left Blood, Sweat & Tears, but before David Clayton Thomas, the band invited Laura Nyro to be the lead singer. She turned them down. Lordy, Lordy, what might have been.

The jazz pianist Horace Silver is from Connecticut, and there’s a very good big band song, Connecticut, that was recorded by Judy Garland and Bing Crosby, and by Artie Shaw. I liked the song Kylie from Connecticut by Ben Folds a lot.

Willie Deville of Mink Deville is from Connecticut, and after his punk phase he moved to New Orleans and recorded some terrific Americana, including covers of Spanish Harlem and Come a Little Bit Closer. John Mayer is from Connecticut, and is perfectly acceptable.

It was, all told, a pretty good playlist, though Kris got sick of all the Charles Ives.

I remember when Mrs. Miller played The Unanswered Question for us, she left me thinking that the question unanswered was something big, existential, the meaning of life and whatnot . . . When I hear it now I amuse myself by substituting other questions: Would you like to go to prom? What’s for dinner? Where did you fish? I guess those are pretty big questions too, and in my experience as like as not to be unanswered.

Guitar

I took the Kohno and played a good bit, especially on the front porch of the Beaverkill Valley Inn in New York, mostly trying to relearn a transcription of Cadiz by Albeniz. Bert promised that he would send a decal for my guitar case, and I need to follow up.

The White Hart Inn dining room.
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Kentucky Packing List

Gear

We took waders and wading boots. It was March and still cold, so we also took sweaters and rain jackets and gloves and knit caps. We took long underwear. We needed the sweaters, and long underwear helps when you wade in cold water, but the gloves (and the mukluks) were a bit of overkill.

I‘ve written already about my new/old bamboo rod. I used a 6-weight, weight-forward floating line with a 9-foot 4X leader, which is meaningful if you fly fish but gibberish if you don’t.

I used a Hardy Duchess reel, which is a newer reel that harkens back to designs from before the last World War, or maybe the one before that. It’s handmade in England, is very pretty, and most of all it looks right with a bamboo rod.

You don’t really use a reel when you fly fish for freshwater fish. To bring the fish in you just pull in the line by hand and let it pile up at your feet, so honestly the reel has a lot in common with ear rings or the color of a car’s paint job. It’s meaningful but not essential. That means that for no rational reason your reel needs to be as pretty as possible. The Hardy is very pretty.

I caught my wee trout on a dry-dropper rig, a dry fly floating on the surface so that I could see it and a trailing nymph underwater. The dry fly was a #14 Royal Wulff, which seems to be my go-to dry these days, and the nymph was a random #14 pheasant tail mayfly nymph that caught my eye when I poked through my fly box. I watched the dry fly so that when it went under, I knew the fish had taken the nymph.

Whiskey

By law, when you go to Kentucky, you are statutorily required to visit at least one whiskey distillery for each day you’re in the state. Kentucky makes it convenient by locating a distillery every 37 feet. We were in Kentucky three days and met the statutory minimum for distillery visits.

What is or is not bourbon is defined by statute. It must be corn-based, and it has to meet certain standards during distilling and aging. Whiskey taxes were a significant source of revenue for the federal government in the 19th century, and 1897 laws regulating bourbon pre-dated the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. By 1900 if you were buying bonded bourbon, you were buying something that didn’t contain lead, or wood alcohol, or any number of other things that shouldn’t be in the bottle. Not that it was good for you, it just wasn’t as bad as it might be.

Other than being American, bourbon doesn’t come from a particular place. It doesn’t have to be made in Kentucky. There are bourbon distilleries located in places like Indiana and Ohio and Texas, but Indiana bourbon just doesn’t trip off the tongue. When one thinks of bourbon, one thinks of Kentucky.

KyBourbonTrail.com

There is a side-note here, about water. A waitress in Southern Kentucky apologized to us for Kentucky’s lousy drinking water. I’m guessing that she was saying that her local water was poor quality, but the area where bourbon historically comes from, the area of North-Central Kentucky west of the Appalachians, actually has great water. That’s one of the reasons that bourbon is made in Kentucky. Well, great water and corn. Well great water and corn and money.

When we fished the Driftless in the Midwest I learned that what makes the Driftless special is its karst topology. Karst is characterized by relatively porous sandstone, dolomite, and limestone lying close to the surface and from time to time poking through. In Kentucky, the rock is mostly limestone. Water that seeps underground fractures the rock–Kentucky’s caves, including Mammoth Cave, are the products of fractured and hollowed limestone. Water literally runs through the fractures and seeps through the pores, and the pressure from rain forces clean and mineralized water out at springs. There are springs everywhere. For fly fishers, it’s one of the best things going. The resulting spring creeks, clean and enriched, support plenty of bug life, which in climes further north support trout and should support smallmouth in Kentucky. It’s also one of the best things going for whiskey.

Kentucky Geological Survey, Karst Topology of Kentucky. The dark blue is the heaviest karst areas, the light blue less so.

Over the course of a couple of days with an additional day fishing, we toured the Buffalo Trace, Makers Mark, and Woodford Reserve distilleries. At Woodford Reserve, the tour guide distilled (get it? get it?) whiskey making for us: whiskey making is making beer and then distilling the beer to clean out the mess and concentrate the alcohol. It’s not, he told us, very good beer, but I guess bad beer makes pretty good whiskey. To be bourbon, it has to be at least 50% corn-based and and the distilled beer must be barrel-aged in new oak barrels. There’s no minimum time for aging, but the longer it ages, the better it should be, but the longer it ages the more loss there is from evaporation, the longer it has to be stored, and the more expensive it all becomes.

There are few things that smell better than a warehouse full of aging bourbon in oak barrels.

Where We Stayed

We stayed in the 21C Hotel in Louisville. It’s the third time we’ve stayed in a 21C. The other times were in Bentonville, Arkansas, and in Kansas City. They’re a bit pricey, but they are unbelievably friendly to pets, have interesting art everywhere, and lurking red plastic 4-foot penguins that you can move around in the hallways to disturb your neighbors. The first of the 21C Hotels were in Lexington and Louisville.

Louisville is not a rich city. Kentucky is a poor state generally, and I guess it always has been. After all, Daddy sold a hog each fall to buy us kids shoes. On the flip side, there’s a lot of wealth–just drive down a horse-farm back road. Those splits, poverty/wealth, whiskey/conservative Protestants, urban/country, they all seem harder in Kentucky than in other places, at least harder than I’m used to. Kris thinks I’m making it up. She thought Louisville was great.

Where We Didn’t Go

I never made it to the Louisville Slugger Museum. It was two blocks from our hotel, and I never made it.

We never made it down by the Green River where Paradise lay. We never saw Appalachia from the Kentucky side (we’ve been to West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania), or Mammoth Cave.

Restaurants

I wouldn’t write home about the donuts or the barbecue, but Louisville has pretty good restaurants. We ate at the hotel one night, at Proof on Main, and the next night at a very good interior Mexican food restaurant, Maya Cafe. The last night we ate at at Everyday Kitchen, and to my eye its menu had a lot of East European food. East European food is to me mighty exotic, it’s just not something I’ve seen very much of, and at the same time it’s completely comprehensible, like Mom’s home cooking. My brushes with East European food in Milwaukee and Chicago and Louisville may be one of the things I like most about the Old Northwest.

I had stuffed cabbage.

The most remarkable thing about the restaurants in Louisville was the amount of whiskey on the menus. There were moderately priced whiskeys by the barrel, and expensive whiskeys that made fly reels look cheap. There were pages of whiskeys, regiments of whiskeys, whiskeys waiting in the wings just to get on stage. I didn’t know there were that many whiskeys in the world.

Mind, that picture only starts with the letter “O”. There were 13 letters of the alphabet preceding. Those aren’t bottle prices either.

Route

Going out we drove from Houston to Nashville; coming home we left early and drove straight through. There are more eighteen-wheelers on the road from Little Rock to Memphis than there are distilleries in Kentucky. If I ever drive to Kentucky again, I’ll drive through Louisiana.

Music

What a lot of music there is from Kentucky. There’s not a lot of jazz; Les McCann and, if you stretch it as to the jazz, Rosemary Clooney. There is a lot of bluegrass and country. Besides Loretta Lynn, there’s the Monroe Brothers, Tom T. Hall, Crystal Gayle, The Judds, Rickey Skaggs, Merle Travis, and Dwight Yoakum. “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” isn’t nearly as bad as I remember it.

I looked forward to Sturgill Simpson and My Morning Jacket coming up on the playlist. Simpson put out Metamodern Sounds in Country Music in 2014, and a A Sailor’s Guide to Earth in 2016, and both albums astonish me, as much for the lyrics as the music. “Turtles all the Way Down” is a country song about Jesus, or Buddha, or LSD, or the turtle that holds up the world. Or something.

My Morning Jacket always satisfies.

Main Street, Paradise Kentucky, 1898. From Wikipedia.

And then there are the 37 versions of John Prine’s “Paradise.” John Fogarty, Johnny Cash, John Prine, Tom T. Hall, Dwight Yoakum, Jackie DeShannon, John Denver, Roy Acuff, Tim O’Brien . . . And Sturgill Simpson. Everybody’s recorded “Paradise.” I think if you are from Kentucky, you have to record a cover of “Paradise” before you’re allowed to open a distillery.

Guitar

I took the Kohno, and played a good bit. I’ve been working on the first movement of Bach’s 4th Lute Suite, but I can never get much past page 2, and it’s a lot longer than two pages. I’ve also been working on songs I once knew but don’t know any more–an arrangement of Summertime, some Tarrega, some Sanz, and a transcription of Albeniz’s Cadiz. That’s gone a lot better.

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Fly Fishing for Cats

Pound for pound, the most vicious predator in our household.

Everyone’s heard of catfishing, especially here in the South. Not many people know though how superior fly fishing for cats is when compared to conventional tackle. I have to admit, until this year I had never taken up cat fishing. I had plenty of excuses: I didn’t have the right gear; I didn’t know where to go; I didn’t know how.

Early in the pandemic, I spent a lot of time fishing local bass ponds, and on one of our trips a dumped kitten came out of the barn. We tried to catch it but my 7 weight wasn’t up to the task. We finally returned with a can of cat food. There I was, an accomplished fly angler, reduced to fishing bait.

Sight casting on a local cat flat.

This year I finally invested in serious equipment for cat fly fishing, and I have to say, while it works like a charm, it’s really not up to the challenge of fighting big cats. For all the money Orvis makes on its cat beds and annual cat catalogue, you’d think that they could come up with more durable catfishing gear. And Orvis isn’t alone. All of the manufacturers need to go back to the drawing board.

You don’t need a hook for cats. The lines are fluorescent green, and the leaders another few feet of level white or fluorescent orange. Cats will attack the line and leader from as far away as 10 feet, so you don’t need to cast all that well, though the retrieve can be critical. It’s a little bit like the whole discredited business of fishing for gar with shredded nylon rope. You tangle the cat up in the line and then you land them with a net.

A destroyed Orvis Helios 3 cat rod and shredded premium line.

If you can get close enough, dapping works well. For catch and release, be careful to spend as little time as possible with the cat in the water.

Here’s my first complaint with the manufacturers: the lines and leaders, which are braided polyester yarn, don’t last. These are toothy critters. I doubt that our first leader lasted more than a week before it was shredded and swept up by the Roomba. The line was destroyed within a month. Maybe wire leader would work? Maybe the line could be made out of Kevlar?

You’d think that the manufacturers would know that house cats are vicious predators, and that they represent a challenge to the very best equipment. Tooth and claw, pound for pound, the typical house cat can do more damage than a barracuda. Just look at our couch. A barracuda never did that to our couch.

A follow!

And cat rods are very specialized. A lot of cat fishing is done indoors, so the standard 9-foot rod doesn’t work unless your indoors is bigger than ours. The specialty cat rods are short and whippet thin to achieve a decent cast, and that means there’s no room for a fighting butt. They cast great, but they’re wholly inadequate for fighting and playing the target species. When it hits, a cat can destroy even the best rods. It’s heartbreaking to see a valuable Orvis Helios 3 cat rod shatter after a violent take.

A new Scientific Anglers rig.

We’ve used Scientific Anglers cat rods as well, and are on our second SA rig. The first was just as much a failure as the Helios. Within a month the tip had broken and the line was shredded. You want to know something odd? I could swear that the SA line is exactly the same as the Orvis line. It’s like they colluded or something. If I knew any antitrust lawyers, I’d feel obligated to let them know.

A refusal.

Still, I’m sure Orvis will honor it’s 25-year guarantee on the rod, and I’ve got to say, there’s just nothing more fun than cat fishing. If the conditions are right, I can even roll cast to a cat from my bed before I go to sleep at night, though I haven’t been able to land one yet. I think I need to keep a landing net on my bedside table. When this whole catching a fish in every state thing is done, I may have to go back to every state to catch a cat.

Dogs, by the way, aren’t nearly as good of prey as cats. You can put the fly right on the dog’s nose and they only look at you perplexed. My dogs look at me perplexed a lot.

A take! Cat on!