Tag: Fly rods

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Washington Playlist

What We Took

We took 7 wt and 8/9 wt. Beulah Spey rods.. We took skagit lines for both, and a variety of tips. We fished T-17 tips, whatever that means. The smaller rod was matched to a Hardy Marquis Salmon No. 2 reel, and for the larger I stripped a 12 wt floating tarpon line off of a Galvan Tournament Series Reel. They’re both pretty things. I’m a sucker for reels.

We put 8 wt Rio InTouch Salmon/Steelhead floating lines on two saltwater reels, both Tibor Everglades, and fished them on 9 foot 8 wt rods–Kris’s rods, a Helios 3 and a Helios 2. I got the Helios 2.

The Olympic Peninsula may be the last stronghold of boot-footed waders, the kind of waders with attached rubber boots instead of neoprene stockings worn under separate wading boots. Ryan the guide said that boot foot waders are warmer, and I believe it: my feet were always cold once I’d waded, notwithstanding the Darn Tough expedition socks and liners. Plus our boots never dried after we finished fishing, kicking my luggage over the 50 pound limit. “Happy Valentines” the nice lady at the Southwest Counter said when she didn’t charge me for overweight luggage.

I wore everything I had. Everything. The temperatures were warm enough, it was sunny and there was no wind, but I’m from Houston. I wore everything I had.

Victoria, B.C.

The Black Ball Ferry Line ferry, The Coho, runs from Port Angeles to Victoria. I hadn’t been on The Coho since 1962, when I was five, and my memory of it was somewhat spotty. Mostly I remember my sister being seasick, really, really seasick. So does she. We texted about it on the ferry, and I though she was going throw up by text.

We ate in one memorable restaurant, OLO, which is Chinook for hungry, and one less memorable restaurant, Little Jumbo, where I had fish in a sauce that reminded me of cream gravy. I like cream gravy. Loaded up with pepper and served on either biscuits or chicken fried steak it is the very thing, but cream gravy on grilled ling isn’t particularly successful. It was described on the menu as sunchoke cream, but cream gravy is cream gravy and you can’t fool me. It would have been better with some bacon grease.

We had afternoon tea at the Butchart Gardens, which even midwinter are beautiful, and midwinter have the advantage of no crowds. Afternoon tea is a thing in Victoria, and not having tea is punishable with heavy fines. They even ask at the border if you’ve had your tea. I suspect it magnifies their separation from the weird coffee concoctions on the other side of the border, but it also made me feel good. This was my kind of crowd. Afternoon tea is apparently a thing for the post-60s set.

In a bar, Bard and Banker, we ordered a dozen oysters that never came. Management should tell its servers that even raw oysters can’t walk from the kitchen. I watched ice hockey on the bar tv, so I knew I was in Canada. The Lightning won in overtime. I don’t know where the Lightning are from, or who they were playing.

The Royal B.C. Museum is spectacular, mostly because of the First Nation exhibits, both the past–these were pretty sophisticated people with pretty interesting stuff–and the present. Everywhere there are signs explaining that some of the objects are exhibited by treaty.

We had two very strange encounters.

I don’t smoke many cigars, but, when one can buy Cuban cigars one should buy a few, just in case any Cubans come to visit. When we were leaving the Cuban Cigar Shop the other customer was wearing an Astros cap. He was from Conroe, about 50 miles from Houston, and he was in Victoria building its first sewage treatment plant. This is a city of 350,000, and it’s never had a sewage treatment plant. It fine screens the sewage that otherwise goes straight to the ocean, trusting on currents and cold water to clean things up. I was kinda glad those oysters never got served.

Cohibas, the cigar that Castro smoked, are very good.

Victoria has its street life, it’s a walkable city with its best restaurants and shops and bars tightly packed around the port, so we walked. It’s grungier than I had expected, with a rough edge to its street life. Lots o’ street folk. Walking to OLO the first night a young guy on the street lunged at us . . .

And coughed, hacked, coughed hard, uncovered, clearly at us. It was a 21st century, post-coronavirus assault. Kris was shaken, I was angry, but if you just wanted to hassle people it was brilliant. Lunge and cough. Terrifying.

We stayed at the Best Western Plus Carlton Plaza. Nice enough, and central, but they didn’t have morning coffee in the lobby, which is unforgivable. We should have sprung for The Fairmont Empress.

Seattle, Wa.

In Seattle we had an early flight so we stayed near the airport. We walked around the Ballard neighborhood on the first day, trying to find oysters, and on our last evening ate at Matt’s in the Market, in the Pike Place Market, mostly because there were pictures of it all over the internet and it looked pretty. We wanted to see the Market, but by the time we got there from Victoria almost everything was\closed. Someday we’ll go back to Seattle for a baseball game. They did have coffee in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express.

What We Didn’t Do

We didn’t eat at our acquaintance Jack’s barbecue place in Seattle. We didn’t spend much time in Seattle, and none in Vancouver. We didn’t see any baseball or catch a sea-run cutthroat trout. We didn’t do any yoga. We smoked no marijuana, though I started to ask the cluster of accountants outside the Pike Place Market for a toke. Really? Accountants? They had to be accountants. They looked like either accountants or lawyers, but tax lawyers.

What I Lost

I lost an Apple Air Pod, which left me with a case and a single Air Pod. Did you know that you can buy a single Air Pod from Apple? It’s not cheap, about $70, but cheaper than a new set.

I lost my Nikon waterproof point and shoot, with all the best pictures of our fishing trip. I’d decided to replace it with a new iPhone, but last night Jack Mitchell of the Evening Hatch texted that they’d found my camera. That’s a pretty good trip for me. Only one Air Pod lost. Only one fly rod broken.

Donuts

Empire Donuts in Victoria had good coffee, and a Star Wars theme. There was nothing wrong with the donuts. We went out of our way to go to Sidney Bakery, about 20 miles from Victoria but close enough to the Butchart Gardens to make it easy. It was an old-fashioned bakery, doing a great Wednesday morning business. I ordered a pecan roll so I could hear them mispronounce pee-can.

Playlist

There were 247 songs on my Seattle playlist. That’s a lot. There is a tremendous amount of great music from Seattle.

  • Songs titled “Seattle”: Sam Kim, Perry Como, Mary Mary, Felly, Public Image Ltd., Jackson Walker, Bobby Sherman. The Perry Como is a great example of bad choices. The Bobby Sherman is the same song, from a late-60s television series, Here Comes the Brides. The Public Image is the best of the lot, though I’m not sure what it has to do with Seattle. I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with any television series.
  • Bands That Live in the Part of Seattle That’s Actually Greater Brooklyn: Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, The Head and the Heart, Laura Love, Nieko Case, Death Cab for Cutie, the Highwomen, Brandi Carlile, Chastity Belt, Perfume Genius, Tacocat. I’m very fond of Fleet Foxes, who remind me of Bon Iver. Death Cab for Cutie is better than they should be. I thought Brandi Carlile was off of one of those tv talent competitions, but she’s not, and I was pleased to find her. Tacocat is the greatest name ever, and there need to be more bands like Perfume Genius.
  • Grunge and Post-Grunge. Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam. I had never listened to Pearl Jam, which seems very odd, and I may be the only person who thinks Eddie Vedder sounds exactly like Darius Rucker. I understand that the Mariners play Smells Like Teen Spirit instead of Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the seventh inning stretch.
  • Rock. Jimy Hendrix, Heart, Queensryche, the Ventures. I’ve never really liked Hendrix. At his best he’s a good blues guitarist, but usually I find him cloying. I downloaded Rod Stewart’s cover of Angel, and Derek & the Dominoes cover of Little Wing, and they’re still better than Hendrix’s originals. As for Heart, hadn’t heard them since the 70s, and listening to them 50 years later was great fun. I always thought the Ventures did Wipeout, but that was the Surfaris. The Ventures did do The Theme from Hawaii Five-0, which I’ve added to my Hawaii playlist, and Pipeline. I wish I could play that first hook in Pipeline.
  • Hip-Hop, Rap. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, Mary Lambert (only because of her ties to Maklemore, she keeps me warm is lovely), and some song by Kanye West. We watched the Taylor Swift documentary, Miss Americana, after we got back, so I’m not talking to Kanye right now.
  • Jazz. Bill Frisell, Kenny G, Ernestine Anderson, Quincy Jones. That’s too broad a list to mean anything. I never made it through a full Kenny G. song, but I’m a fan of Bill Frisell because I’m a guitar fan. Ernestine Anderson grew up in Houston, but I’d never listened to her. It’s music that goes well with martinis.
  • Classical. John Cage, Mark O’Conner. I liked the Cage I listened to. Mark O’Conner is from Seattle, and bluegrass, but his Appalachia Waltz with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer is wonderful.
  • Bing Crosby. I can always listen to White Christmas.
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More Florida Playlist

Gear

We took five rods. We took my 7 weight G. Loomis Asquith with a Tibor Everglades reel and a bonefish line. When we weren’t fishing for big tarpon that’s the only rod we used in the Everglades. It’s a little known fact, but Lord Asquith was the commander of the British forces in Florida during the Revolutionary War, and made a pile selling swampland to British loyalists escaping from New York and New England.

We also took Kris’s 8-weight Helios 3 with an Orvis Hydros reel, a 10-weight Helios 2 with a Tibor Riptide reel, and a 11-weight Helios 2 with an Orvis Mirage reel. All of them had floating lines. In the Everglades we used the guide’s 11-weight H3 because we needed an intermediate line and because H3. We used the guide’s 10-weight H3 out of Key Largo because the guide didn’t like my leader and because H3. My leader was tied with lots of bits and pieces of fluorocarbon and his was a simple 40-20-40 or thereabouts.

It rained out of Key Largo, so our rain gear came in handy. I wore my Converse high tops. Kris kept wanting me to go barefoot so I’d feel the line under my feet, but I never did. Together with my blue sun gloves, blue Buff, blue cap, and blue eyes I was very color-coordinated, and going barefoot would have ruined the whole ensemble.

Unfortunately my boat bag was orange. I need to work on that.

We also took Kris’s 5-weight Helios 3 for the Miami canals. More on that later.

Flies

We only used a few. For the bonefish it was a lead-eyed root beer crazy charlie, probably size 8 or 10. The tarpon fly we used was a black toad, not very big, only a couple of inches long, tied on the the usual sized hook for tarpon, 1/0 or 2/0. For the smaller fish and the baby tarpon we switched to an orange and white baitfish pattern, size 4 maybe. it wasn’t a fly I knew, but any clouser variant or baitfish pattern would probably have done. These were all guides’ flies.

The Canals

I wanted to fish Florida canals on our first trip to Florida, but we didn’t have the time, or at least the energy. This time we did, but only for an hour because of a luggage snafu. ProTip: Don’t try to late-check a bag of food and expect TSA to get it onto your plane, and if you do be ready for the recriminations of the lady at the Southwest baggage claim who feels wronged because you late-checked luggage. Also, buy the Coke Zero when you get there. When one explodes in the plane and mixes with the instant oatmeal it’s a real mess, even when you bag is waterproof. Maybe especially when your bag is waterproof.

At the canal it was too windy for Kris’s 5-weight, and it was hot. We were fishing on the side of the road in a warehouse district. It wasn’t a transcendent outdoors experience.

Hotels

We had great luck with hotels. We stayed at The National in the heart of Miami Beach. The National was built in the 50s, and is immaculate. I wanted to spend the weekend floating by the poolside bar and drinking mai tais, and if I’d done it the other guests could have gone home and told their friends that in Florida they’d seen the Great White Manatee.

In Key Largo we stayed at Popp’s Motel. There are nine cottages with a beach. There are palm trees and hammocks. Nobody was there but us, though in-season my guess is it’s packed.

Restaurants

On the way out of the Everglades we stopped at Robert is Here in Florida City. I had the mango and strawberry milkshake, Kris had the blackberry. There is a low-rent zoo in the back where you can sit at picnic tables and watch tortoises and goats and the other customers while you drink your milkshake. There are parrots and motorcyclists with tattoos and The Great White Manatee. It’s a fine place.

In Miami we went to Joe’s Stone Crab for lunch. I had expected something close to Felix’s Oyster Bar in New Orleans, something with a formica counter and twirly stools. Instead it was white table cloths and waiters in tuxedoes. A waiter who spoke tourist gave great guidance, and there was crabmeat and key lime pie. The waiter had a good Houston story about being stuck in Houston during Hurricane Harvey, and volunteering at the George R. Brown shelter.

The guy behind us had stories too, and he announced them with unflinching gusto. Here are his stories.

  • He was raised right here in Miami, and every time he came home he came to Joe’s, and he especially wanted to bring her to Joe’s.
  • He loved her, and that story she told about her parents was funny, and her family must think he was robbing the cradle.
  • Don’t worry about how much food he was ordering, because he could eat it all. Gusto!
  • People come for the crabs, but really it was the coconut shrimp that he loved.
  • These weren’t local crabs. These were west coast crabs. He could tell, he was raised here.
  • She would love the key lime pie.
  • Ok, she hadn’t loved the key lime pie. They’d order the chocolate cake.
  • She was so funny. He loved her.
  • He loved her.

My back was to them, but while it was impossible to see I could hear him fine, more than fine, more than I wanted. Whether or not raised in Miami his accent was Jersey, and she was 25 (or at least he said she was 25) and her accent Asian. She didn’t talk much.

When we left I got my only glimpse of them. He was closer to 60 than 25, a bit rotund, a bit worn, a bit sagging. If he’d been a fish he would have been a gizzard shad. She was nondescript. She could have been 25 or 30 or 40, a bit rotund as well, and not glamorous, nor seemingly striving for more glamour than any of us might seek. Was she Korean? Vietnamese? How did these two meet? Online? Was there some sort of matchmaker? Would things end well? I wished them well if well was in the cards, but I guess didn’t really think it was.

That evening we went to The Surf Club at the Four Season’s Hotel. The blurb promised nostalgic cuisine and the Thomas Keller touch. That sounded fun, expensive what with Thomas Keller touching our bank account, but fun. And nostalgic cuisine! 50s-60s cuisine! It sounded just right for Miami.

Here is what I learned: you can’t high concept authenticity. You can high concept all you want, and if the concept is good it will travel, but if a restaurant is concept and the concept is authenticity (and that’s really what you’re at when you’re grabbing nostalgia), well, you can’t Make America Great Again. It doesn’t matter how good the service, how finely sourced the beef, how excellent the dang-that’s-really-expensive wine list, a $46 soft boiled egg is still a soft boiled egg, even if it comes with caviar and a buckwheat blini.

I was dressed in my finest fishing wear, including my bright blue Converse high tops, so I didn’t exactly fit the space, but I figured nothing said 1960 like Converse high tops. Kris told me not to get the oysters Rockefeller, but I’m a sucker for roasted oysters. It never works out though. Except for the Oysters Gilhooley at San Leon’s Gilhooley’s (cash only, you can smoke at the bar, and be sure and stop and admire the Harleys out front) I’m always disappointed. The oysters were surprisingly fine, still plump and fresh, but how do you make bread crumbs bitter? Were they scorched? And why ruin an oyster with a slather of spinach? I ate the oysters anyway, just so Kris wouldn’t know she was right. They needed some hot sauce, but so did much of the 50s.

Kris didn’t do more than taste her lamb chops and said they were over-salted and overdone. They took them off the bill. Great service, and the crudite and martinis were magnificent. They cook magnificent crudite. My steak was a steak. It was a bit over salted in pockets, but I didn’t tell Kris.

Just like lunch there was an old man with a much younger woman, and this old man was frightening–if he wasn’t Miami mafioso he had missed his calling–while Kris was certain that any woman that tall and with arms that thin was a young man in drag. She was so coiffed and painted that you couldn’t tell what she’d begun as, male, female, beautiful, plain.

She had a mass of frosted hair over a dark underlayer–there were a lot of women in the room with a mass of frosted hair over a dark underlayer, and there was a magnificence in the complexity of it. How did they do that? In more innocent places you’d just guess their roots were showing, but this was so planned, so well-executed, and so universal that it could be nothing but premeditated. Did they dye their hair dark, then dye it again light? It had to take hours, did it take days? I wondered why Kris didn’t do the same, but she’d have to add more hair to get the effect. I like her hair just fine.

I don’t think she was a young man in drag, but I didn’t ask. When I was leaving the maitre d’ asked if I’d enjoyed my golf. Our kind of place.

South in Key Largo we ate at The Fish House. Its concept was to throw fishy looking bibelots on the wall and serve the same menu they served last year and the year before and the year before that, with whatever fish was fresh that day. The couples at the tables next to us got into a heated argument about the President until one stormed out. My nose was so far into my plate that I couldn’t tell who took which side, but the remaining couple, the couple immediately to our right, lived in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, and guessed from our intro that we’d dined with Thomas Keller the night before. They were younger than us, but not by much, and said that they’d had dinner the night before at the Trump Doral, the one that had made all the headlines for the G7 conference, and that there had been a woman in a sequined Make America Great Again dress that wasn’t meant to be ironic.

At the fish house the oysters were from Texas, just like us. There was no slather of spinach. On our way out of the Keys the next day we stopped again for a second lunch.

Our final night in Fort Lauderdale we found a red-sauce Italian place, Il Mulino, and ate comfort food. We didn’t talk to anybody. We didn’t watch anybody or overhear any conversations. We split a pair of Apple Airpods and streamed the Astros beating the Nationals in World Series game 4 through Kris’s phone. Those were more innocent times.

Donuts

No donuts. We didn’t eat a single donut.

Playlist

I’ve covered my Florida playlist before, and there’s nothing more to be said except this time I liked it. I liked Mel Tillis. I liked the Adderly Brothers and Ray Charles and Arturo Sandoval and John Vanderslice. Not a single Jimmy Buffet song cycled through, and I liked that. I’ve made my peace with Florida. I’ve caught my Florida fish.

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The Everglades and Key Largo, October 25-26, 2019.

It’s easy to make fun of Florida, it’s such an attractor of poor judgment and other shenanigans, but this trip I liked Florida. I don’t know if I liked Florida because I caught fish, or caught fish because I liked Florida, but it was our first trip where nothing else drove the show: no Disney World, no baseball, no conferences. We were going to see Miami and the Everglades, and when I got there I liked them. I liked driving around Miami Beach. I liked where we stayed in Key Largo. I could have spent days poking around the National Park.

And I jumped a tarpon, a big tarpon, the tarpon of the world. And while we were in Florida the Astros tied the Nationals two games to two in the World Series. Ok, that last had nothing to do with being in Florida, but it certainly affected my mood.

We’ve now fished twice in the Keys, once out of Key West, and this time with Duane Baker out of Key Largo. It was uncommon windy, more like March than kinder, gentler October. We fished Duane’s heavy 10-weight rods instead of our lighter gear, not because of the fish but because of the wind. Kris spent as much time as she wanted on the casting deck, which was fair since I’d held the deck for tarpon most of the previous morning. If we’d been home I’d have made a mess of poling the boat and given up, but Duane was poling and I was happy enough to drift along and watch the big boats heading east to blue water. I napped some, daydreamed some.

Duane’s Maverick had no GPS, but I guess over 30 years you can learn a place pretty well. Duane certainly knew the place pretty well. We were at the edge of the Atlantic over foot deep flats, a mile or so from developed shoreline, protected from breakers by the Florida Reef. Duane let the skiff drift in front of the wind over hard sand and turtle grass while he watched for fish and we tried to watch for fish.

Duane would say 30 feet, three o’clock, or 20 feet or 40. He had started the day with a lecture on what his directions meant, and while usually he was soft-spoken and quiet, when there were fish his directions were urgent, intense. Maybe we’d make that 20- or 30- or 40- foot cast in the right direction or maybe we’d wrap the line around our head, but what we usually wouldn’t do was see the fish Duane saw. Between the urgency and the wind and line management Kris had trouble casting, some days are just that way, but I caught my bonefish casting to where Duane told me to cast, retrieving the fly the way Duane told me to retrieve the fly, playing the fish the way Duane told me to play the fish.

And while I’d caught bonefish before, I’d never caught so large a bonefish, so fine a bonefish, and just like it was supposed to do it ran the line on my reel into the backing. Few things in this life are as good as advertised, but that fish was as good as advertised. This was a fish built for getting out of the way of sharks and it was doing all it could to get out of my way. Thank goodness for all those pushups.

Maybe after the cast and during the retrieve I saw the fish follow my fly, but then again maybe I convinced myself later that I had seen the fish. It didn’t matter. I followed directions and caught my bonefish. Earlier in the day I had hooked another, and that time I saw the fish and saw the take, but it was small and immediately came off the hook. Except for the couple of times I hard-smacked the back of my head with the fly I cast well enough, certainly as well as any fish could have reasonably expected, and no one was injured, not badly anyway.

The Keys are a crowded place, but October is the slack time and I suspect that maybe it’s the best time. Even if Kris insists she never saw a fish there were fish a’plenty. There was boat traffic, but on a Saturday we only saw one other boat on the flats. I can’t imagine what those flats must be like with crowds. No wonder that in every novel about Keys fishing, guides end up in violent encounters. No wonder Duane is so low key. If other anglers get on your nerves then in the crowded season urgency could be dangerous.

The day before we’d fished the Everglades, and if the Upper Keys were as advertised, then the Everglades were a revelation. We fished with Jason Sullivan out of Flamingo, as far south as you can go on U.S. soil without either getting in an airplane or island hopping down the Keys. From the Hotel National in Miami Beach we drove 90 miles, two hours, through the dark down and around South Florida, into the National Park, nearly from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico. To get there by the 6:30 put-in we left Miami Beach at 4:30. That’s 3:30 central.

Jason seemed astonished that on our earlier trips we had failed to catch Florida fish. He said there’s so much life in the water. Of course that’s a problem with somewhat random fishing. We’d snatched days or parts of days, and fishing days and parts of days can always be ruined by weather, the wrong bit of beef or blot of mustard, or just bad luck. We’d had some of all of that, even with so much life in the water.

But the Everglades is such a miracle, it’s no wonder Marjory Stoneman Douglas waxed poetic and then became its defender, and it’s not a miracle because I caught a fish, or at least not only because I caught a fish. It’s a miracle because it is. It just is.

Jason ran us north and west out of Flamingo, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. He ran a Hell’s Bay skiff with a 90 HP Suzuki, running at times 38, 39 mph on protected water. Over the course of the day we covered what must have been 70 miles, maybe more. If Jason had told me we’d covered twice that I’d have believed him.

We ran fast through the mangrove channels, narrow curving rivers of dark water bordered by densely packed roots and trees, and then the channels would suddenly open into saltwater lakes—Jason called them bays—still outlined with the same 15-foot mangrove walls. These were big open areas of water, thousands of acres of flat water. On that day the water wasn’t clear, but Jason was right: it was full of life. I cast and caught my first fish, what we Texans call a skipjack and everyone everywhere else calls a ladyfish. It was a raggedy little fellow, but after three fishless trips to Florida it was the best beloved fish in the world, the noblest, grandest, trophiest fish ever. Take that IGFA. I know what the world record ladyfish looks like.

And then in a few more casts I had my second fish, a Spanish mackerel, and now I was jaded. Florida is the easiest place in the world to catch fish. Anybody can catch fish in Florida.

We spent most of the rest of the morning following big tarpon using Jason’s 11-weight Helios 3 with an intermediate line, a line that sinks under the surface of the water, on an Orvis Mirage reel. Good stuff. We floated at the opening to the Gulf, now on the west coast of Florida, watching for the big fish to roll. I have to admit, I hogged the platform, but Kris was ok with it. Her previous tarpon experience had not been a good one, there was some terror and a lost thumb nail involved, so she was happy enough sitting on the ice chest and giving me directions. I had one hard pull that I failed to set, and one jumped tarpon that I didn’t set well enough.

The jumped tarpon took the fly and ran and then came out of the water, fast and explosive, determined to be rid of both the hook and me. I was thinking how do I play it? Can I? Then it came out of the water twice more so fast that I couldn’t think any more—maybe 50 pounds? It will certainly grow larger in my head in time; even now I’m thinking it was 60 pounds, minimum, maybe closer to 70. The tarpon was standing, four feet vertical to the surface out of the water. Then it shook the hook. Then it was gone.

I get it now. Tarpon. I jumped a tarpon.

In the afternoon we fished baby snook hard against fallen trunks and the tangled red mangrove roots. The small snook were everywhere, like sunfish. Jason said that if we caught one we would fish the same place because others would head to the commotion, and maybe we’d have a chance at bigger fish. We were fishing my 7-weight with a floating line, and after wearing out the baby snook we fished baby tarpon against silty, deoxygenated banks. We found them when they rolled into air above the surface to fill their swim bladders, protected from predators by the silty water. Their odd lung-like bladders let them take oxygen from air, and even the big tarpon breach the surface and roll for air. These were two and three pound fish, but just as certain as their elders to come out of the water when hooked. I hooked four, brought two to the boat before they came off, and finally late in the day landed one.

Even baby tarpon, there’s nothing like tarpon. Kris landed her own juvenile tarpon and then I think she wanted nothing more in the world than to go back after the big guys. I may never get to fish for anything else again. I may never get to stand on a casting platform again. Kris will be out chasing tarpon every time we fish.

That afternoon we drove east over the park road that we’d driven west that morning. In the daylight we saw what we’d missed: the dwarf cypress, the great glades of sawgrass, the walls of mangroves along the road, the birds . . . Just like in the bays it was full of life. There were signs announcing the elevation above sea level: one said four feet, one said five. You can get headaches because of the change in elevation.

Driving past an expanse of grass I said to Kris: that’s all covering water. She didn’t understand me until we stopped at the visitor center and could see the water everywhere. At the visitor center I read the captions on the placards a little carelessly, a little reverently. It didn’t matter. Everywhere there were details to forget but something big to remember: it is all full of life. Even the grass grew from the water, and all of the water is full of life.

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Idaho Playlist

Did you know that if you took any song written about Mexico, and changed it to Idaho, the meter still worked? That’s why Canadians sing “South of the border/Down Idaho way.“

What We Took

We took gear for trout. We took a 3-weight rod, a 4-weight rod, and two 5-weights, and we never took the 4-weight out of the luggage. I liked the flimsy 3-weight just fine until it got windy, but it got windy a lot so I finally gave it up for the 5-weight. Both rods I took were Winstons, a new Pure 5-weight that Trout Unlimited sent me because I won their annual spelling bee, and a Boron IIIX that I picked up at a Gordy & Son’s remainder sale because Winston came out with the Pure. Kris took her Helios 3D 5 weight. I fished it for just a bit. I’m used to big booming saltwater rods. I’m not used to big booming trout rods. That rod is a big booming trout rod.

We took floating lines and some 5x and 6x leaders I’d tied. We didn’t use the 6x, and I think the guides laughed at me for owning 6x tippet. We took some reels, a couple of Abels, a Ross, a Hardy, but I caught exactly one fish on the reel, and then I was reeling in my line for a pause in fishing when for some unfathomable reason a fish hit the skating fly.

We took waders and boots for Silver Creek, but didn’t take them on the Middle Fork. The guides strongly discouraged waders in the boats, something about getting thrown out, waders filling with water, and drowning. All things being equal I’d just as soon not.

Our gear was limited by the weight we could take on the bush plane, 30 pounds apiece, and I was already taking 11 pounds of guitar and case. I paired down and then paired down again. Instead of taking all ten foam hoppers that I’d tied, I only took five. Really. I’m stupid.

We took a bottle of Four Roses bourbon in honor of William Faulkner’s birthday, and poured the contents into a plastic water bottle to save weight. Happy birthday William!

I gave myself a new guitar case for my birthday, a Visesnut, maybe the best guitar case made (though they make a carbon fiber model for about $800 more). For years I’ve traveled with a cheap 3/4 size classical that I would stow in the overhead bin. Coming through Chicago Midway on Labor Day I talked to a guy who always checked his guitar with his luggage, and when I asked Kris if I should get a better case and check my guitars she immediately said yes please. Apparently with a guitar case on a plane I’m a nuisance.

We took too many clothes, but that’s probably because we had great weather. I discovered that I really liked wearing a fishing shirt on the water, the kind with lots of pockets, because, well, pockets. When I just wore a knit pullover I wanted pockets.

I bought a new pair of shoes for the trip, Simms Riprap wet wading shoe. They worked great, except that I didn’t wear socks until the final day on the water. I should have worn socks. They’re better with socks.

What We Lost. Where We Didn’t Go.

Kris destroyed her IPhone on Silver Creek by dunking it. I destroyed my Nikon Coolpix W300 waterproof camera on Silver Creek by ignoring the warnings about cleaning the seals and then dunking it. If you ignore the warnings it’s not waterproof. I had to take pictures the rest of the trip with my GoPro, which was better for stills than I thought it would be. Kris had to use my phone. She takes most of the photos I post, and is better at it than I am.

We didn’t go to McCall or Couer d’Alene, both of which my parents loved 60 years ago. I’m sure they haven’t changed. We didn’t fish the Henry’s Fork.

What We Ate.

On the way out of Boise we stopped by the Basque Block and bought a baguette and cheese, which got us to Ketchum. Ketchum is a strange mix of college town sans college and affluent resort, but I enjoyed the Pioneer Saloon, where I had a long conversation with an older south Idaho rancher and his daughter about barrel racing, how I could never break 20 seconds as a kid, and why I don’t much like horses. Some of us just aren’t really horse whisperers.

The guides kept us fed on the river, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In order of dinner entrees: fried chicken, pork chops, fajitas, salmon, steak. It was always excellent, though Idahoans could use some advice on how to serve tortillas. I got two deserts on my birthday, though one may have been for William Faulkner.

Books

I’ve already written about Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which stands alone as a peculiarly great book about Idaho. Hemingway famously died there, but he didn’t really write anything important in Idaho except maybe A Moveable Feast, and that’s about Paris. But did you know that Hemingway’s buddy Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho?

Ezra Pound is at the heart of American literature, he really is. I like some of his poems very much, and there is still no writing more beautiful to me than Pound’s The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

Ezra Pound circa 1913, doing his best Bob Dylan, from the Paris Review.

That said, I suspect I wouldn’t have much liked Pound in the flesh. Since college, whenever I’ve thought of Idaho, I’ve wondered how Pound could have been bred and born in Hailey? I finally looked it up. Turns out he was born there because his broke father took a political appointment in Hailey’s general land office. He was born and then a month later Mom left one of the most beautiful places on earth for New York City because she wouldn’t raise her son in such a God-forsaken wilderness. Dad soon followed. It explains a lot.

Baseball

When we left Ketchum and civilization, the Astros had clinched the American League West. When we got back to Salmon they had clinched home field advantage over the Yankees and the Dodgers. It was a good way to return to WiFi. That whole Ukraine thing happened with the President too.

Birds

Kris birds, seriously birds, as in she’s permanently attached to a pair of binoculars and a birding guide, and she spent as much time in Idaho looking at her copy of Peterson’s New Birder’s Guide as I spent playing the guitar. There are birds, eagles and ospreys, that fish for a living, and we saw ospreys but we never saw an eagle. She was thrilled with the osprey skull found at a campsite.

There is a small bird on the river, called an ouzel by the guides but the American dipper by the guidebooks. It lives in the rocks by the river and is a delight and joy. They’re the only aquatic songbird in America, and one dusk when we heard a bird song I said to Kris that sounds like a mockingbird. Of course I always tell Kris every pretty bird song is a mockingbird, even when in Idaho where there are no mockingbirds, but for once I was sort of right; it was an ouzel. The New Birder’s Guide said its strong sweet tones sound like a mockingbird. And they do.

Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren – American Dipper, from Wikimedia Commons.

Music

After Kris got tired of my collection of Josh Ritter (which is surprisingly extensive, and his Wolves is a great favorite), she found a bunch of songs with Idaho in the name or the lyrics and an internet comment that said there are a lot of songs with Idaho in the name or the lyrics, none of which have much to do with Idaho. Like I said, you can substitute Idaho for Mexico anytime you want, and it looks like lots of songwriters do.

Victor Wooten, a well-known jazz bassist and the bassist for Bella Fleck and the Flecktones, was born in Idaho. His parents were military, and he apparently stayed about as long as Ezra Pound.

  • b-52s, Private Idaho. I could do without ever hearing this song again.
  • Riders in the Sky, Idaho (Where I’m From). Ranger Doug is a great Western Swing guitarist, and Too Slim is responsible for the Paul is Dead Hoax.
  • Bryan Lanning, Idaho. It is stunning that there are so many songs called Idaho. This may be the only pop anthem called Idaho.
  • IDAHO, To Be the One. And this may be the only band called Idaho. I’d change my name, just because it’s so hard to google.
  • Gregory Alan Isakov. Idaho.
  • Gorillaz, Idaho. Bon Iver meets Harry Nilsson, and I’m not sure it works,.
  • BoDeans, Idaho. I’m just a BoDeans kinda guy. They’re from Wisconsin.
  • Jeffrey Foucault, Idaho. I liked this. Foucault is also from Wisconsin, and this song would have worked if sung about Mexico.
  • Y La Bamba. Idaho’s Genius. A Spanish lament out of Portland that mentions Idaho. I should have had these people on our Portland playlist.
  • Hot Buttered Rum, Idaho Pines. Bluegrass. Tennessee mountain music about Idaho.
  • Caitlin Canty, Idaho. Clean voices, clean guitars. Good Nashville.
  • Down Like Silver, Idaho. This is also Caitlin Canty, with Peter Bradley Adams. She must have a thing for Idaho.
  • Ron Pope, Twin Falls Idaho. Road song. More ok Nashville, but it’s kind of the problem with songs about Idaho: they don’t have to be about Idaho. It’s convenient. It’s exotic. It’s a place to yearn for in a sadly yearning sort of way.
  • Rick Pickren, Here We Have Idaho. This is the state song. It’s kind of a polka song.
  • Jeremy McComb, Bury Me in Idaho. McComb was born in Idaho. McComb sounds like he’s from Nashville. What is it with Nashville and Idaho?
  • Old Bear Mountain, Idaho. More Idaho Bluegrass.
  • Ronee Blakly, Idaho Home. This was from Robert Altman’s Nashivlle. Inauthentic old-time Nashville meets Idaho, and Blakly is still authentically great.
  • Clare Burson, Take Good Care. I don’t know what this song has to do with Idaho.
  • Cori Connors, Idaho Wind. I don’t know what this song has to do with Idaho.
  • Rosalie Sorrels, Way Out In Idaho. Sorrels was part of the 50s-60s folk movement, and recorded a number of Idaho timber and mining songs. They’re very earnest.
Tony Rees, John Renbourn and Stefan Grossman, 1978, Norwich Folk Festival.
  • John Renbourn, Idaho Potato. For guitarists of a certain type and age, Renbourn is a hero. This is classic Renbourn. If I were picking out a road trip playlist, this would be my Idaho song.
  • Drew Barefoot, Idaho. Instrumental that would fit just fine on an Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western soundtrack.
  • David Robert King, Bad Thing. This guy listened to too much Tom Waits as a child. This is off his album “Idaho.”
  • The Eisenhauers, Idaho. Every time this came on I had to pick up the phone to see who sounded so great. They’re Canadian. I think they thought they were writing about Mexico.
  • Amy Annelle, Idaho. Annelle is from Austin, and has a troubled medical history and a lovely voice. Apparently writing about Idaho in Austin isn’t quite the thing that it is in Nashville. She’s the only Austin musician on the list.

All those songs called “Idaho?” You may not believe it but every one is a different song. If I ever write a song I think I’ll call it Idaho, and it will never mention Idaho once.

Reckless Kelly is from Idaho. I think of them as an Austin band. My fail.

One song named Idaho stood out: Idaho by Afroman. “Idaho, Idaho, Idaho baby/potatoes ain’t the only thing they grow.” Then the song gets obscene. Really really party rap obscene. Don’t listen to this with your children. Don’t listen to this if you’re squeamish. I’m squeamish, but it was funny to listen to once or twice.