Tag: Guides

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Smallmouth. South Fork Shenandoah River, May 14, 2018.

Before Monday I had caught two smallmouth in the Devil’s River in South Texas.  Now I don’t know how many smallmouth I’ve caught. I’ve caught a lot of smallmouth.

I booked C.T. Campbell through Murray’s Flyshop in Edinburg, Virginia.  C.T. has his own guide service, Page Valley Fly Fishing, but I booked through Murray’s where C.T. contracts.  Most important, C.T. has a McKenzie boat. I’ve fished out of rafts before and I will fish out of rafts again, but for comfort give me a drift boat any day.

The Shenandoah is an A-list river, appearing in the first volume of Chris Santella’s Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Die. Harry Murray, of Murray’s Flyshop, suggested the river to Santella, but the author seems oddly apologetic that the river is full of smallmouth not trout. As someone who fishes trout relatively rarely, that just didn’t signify.  In Virginia I already knew I wanted to fish either the James or the Shenandoah River.  I thought about the James because what river is more important in America than the James? Ok, the Mississippi, but besides that.  I thought about the Shenandoah because I’ve been humming that tune since the 1965 Jimmy Stewart movie. I thought about wading the North Fork without a guide, but went with the South Fork of the Shenandoah when C.T. had an opening.

The Shenandoah Valley looks like the Shenandoah Valley is supposed to look: a little wild, a lot lovely. It seems a gentler wildness than the American west, but certainly wild enough. C.T. has the perfect background and demeanor for a river guide.  He grew up fishing in Western Virginia. He went to college there. He spent 34 years working for the National Park Service in Shenandoah National Park.  If you mention Stonewall Jackson, C.T.  doesn’t look at you like you’re an idiot.  He tells you a story about Stonewall Jackson’s troop movements. He told us the number of black bears per square mile through the Valley.  He told us about the tree kills from the eastern ash bark beetle and the hemlock wooly adelgild. He talked birds and birds and birds with Kris. We stopped a long while to watch a bald eagle guarding its nest.

You see that big blob in the middle of that terrible photo? That’s an eagle’s nest and it’s huge.  The blurry thing with the white head above it is the eagle. Kris dragged her 600mm lens to Virginia, but she didn’t have it with her in the boat.

Kris tells me by the way that when the bald eagle was named, “bald” meant “white,” not “hairless.”

We put in at Alma and floated seven miles downriver to Whitehouse Landing. I think I got that right. C.T. told us that during Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah campaign the bridges were burned at both Alma and Whitehouse Landing, which means that that there had been bridges where we put in and took out since before 1862. There was still traffic on the bridges, but we saw nobody on the rivers until the last landing.

We talked about our kids.  We talked about Patagonia versus Simms, and how the old Simms sandals made by Keen were great. We talked about the geography of Virginia.  Kris and I fished and C.T. rowed and told us where to cast.  We caught smallmouth,  then we caught more smallmouth, then we caught some smallmouth. The largest was about a pound, but who cares? We caught a lot of smallmouth.

C.T. said it was too early for poppers, and that everything  now was white streamers. We fished white Shenk’s streamers from Murray’s on 6 weights with floating lines and 2X 9’ leaders; they started as 9’ anyway. Over time I’d tied in bits and pieces of tippet until everything except the 2X was approximate.  Later in the morning I switched to a white dragon tail I’d tied up for largemouth. The smallmouth liked it, but there were lots of short takes. We talked about whether a stinger hook would work, but I’d read it ruined the action.  I’ve ordered some mini dragon tails, but I suspect they’re the regular size with a couple of inches of the fat end cut off. I’ll tie up some and send them along to C.T.

Google Earth

* * *

Late in the day we heard thunder. I shuttled C.T. back to his truck and Kris stayed with the boat–it was supposed to be easy duty.  While we were driving though the heavens opened.  Kris got soaked.  I got soaked in the short run from the car to where Kris stood drenched with the boat, but I forebore mentioning that terrible inconvenience to Kris. C.T. insisted he didn’t need help loading the boat in the rain and the wind and the lightning, and we gladly took him at his word, left him wrestling the boat, and fled for West Virginia. We also left a sweater and vest in his truck, which was a future pain for him, but things were in a bit of disarray. I also had to drive with wet socks and cold feet. I didn’t mention that to Kris either.

* * *

On Thursday, three days later and after West Virginia, it was still raining hard in Virginia. The mountain rivers may have been ok but we canceled our trip for Shenandoah Valley trout with Mossy Creek Outfitters.  We spent the night at Silver Lake Bed & Breakfast, near Harrisonburg, and finally got to eat breakfast at a bed and breakfast. We never do. We’re usually long gone before breakfast is served.

We drove Thursday to Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park, but I’ll save John Brown for Kansas.  The Shenandoah joins the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry, and the two rivers were running high and muddy. On Saturday while I’m writing this it’s still raining, and watching the Potomac out the window of our room in the Watergate Hotel there’s no more fishing gonna happen.

* * *

I’m fascinated by Stonewall Jackson, and in the Shenandoah Valley Jackson is everywhere. There’s a statue of a mounted Stonewall installed by the State of Virginia in the prime position on the First Bull Run Battlefield, superhero muscles bulging, facing down the Union artillery.  It should be moved to the entrance of the Shenandoah.

In Winchester there is the Stonewall Jackson Headquarters Museum. The Stonewall Jackson Highway runs through Front Royal. In Harrisonburg there was the Stonewall Jackson Inn, now closed but much loved, at least on the internet. In Monterey there was a Stonewall Jackson General Store.  Lexington, where Jackson taught at the Virginia Military Institute, is all Stonewall all the time, including a Stonewall Jackson Hotel.

Jackson was a nutcase: a hypochondriac, ruthless to his own men and the Union forces, obsessed with defeating the enemy, and madly religious. If Lee fought for the South out of misplaced loyalty, and others because of belief in the rightness of the cause, Jackson fought for the Confederacy because he believed God ordained it. He was an old school Presbyterian Calvinist, if such a thing could be anything but old school.

He also could not remain awake in church: he would sleep through sermons sitting rigidly upright. I’ve tried to emulate that in my own life, both at church and the opera. He sucked on lemons constantly, believed the blood pooled on the left side of his body (requiring him to hold his left arm in the air), and he would not or could not communicate anything of his plans to his subordinates. At VMI, he wrote out his lectures and read them aloud in a dull monotone.  If interrupted, he would begin again from the beginning.  He was hated as a teacher. He wasn’t exactly popular with his subordinates as a general. There are good arguments that he had Apsberger’s syndrome.

“Chancellorsville” Portrait, taken April 26, 1863. Library of Congress.

His 1862 Shenandoah campaign was brilliant, defeating the Union forces by superior knowledge of the terrain, by ruthlessly driving his troops, and by battle aggression.  It probably didn’t hurt that he had no empathy for others.

”Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.” Stonewall Jackson memorial window, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, Roanoke, Virginia. 

 

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Fish, No Fish, It’s All the Same. Maryland, May 13, 2018.

May 13, Mother’s Day, we fished with Captain Tom Hughes on the Chesapeake, out of Sandy Point State Park near Annapolis.  I am so good to Kris. 

Saturday night a storm blew through Annapolis. We took an Uber to dinner at the Reynolds Tavern so we could drink wine with impunity, but when the Uber picked us up for the return the storm hit hard.  These are the words of the Uber driver driving back across the bridge to our motel:

“Jesus . . . Jesus . . . Jesus . .  .”

The wind blew his little Prius all over the road, and visibility through the rain was tail lights  at 50 feet.  Wine or no wine I was glad it was him driving and not me.

Our son Andy met us at the motel at 6:30 the next morning. We had coordinates for the launch point, but after ending up in somebody’s driveway we called and got better directions.  The launch, Sandy Point State Park, may have the best launch ramps I’ve ever seen.  Texas could take lessons.  

Captain Hughes fishes a catamaran with dual 115 Suzukis.  Maybe 125s? I should pay attention, but they were plenty power enough.  On that water our skiff would have beat us to hell, not to mention the terror of the thing and the yelling between Kris and me. His Cat was incredibly smooth over fast three-foot seas. Probably not so great to pole on the flats though.

I fished Captain Hughes’ Helios flex-tip 9 wt. Tip-flex? I should pay attention. This was the model before the Helios II, which is the model before the Helios III, which is how these things work. I don’t know how it casts, because the reel was loaded with a 440 grain Orvis Depth-charge line and I was casting a heavy sinking line most of the day into a 20-mile head wind.  I don’t cast so great in those conditions. I did wrap the leader around my neck once. I always joke about wrapping a line around my neck. This time I really did it. 

The leader was a four-foot piece of 20 pound mono with a 6-inch black streamer with heavy barbell eyes. It made a great neck scarf.

Before we got on the water Captain Hughes gave us a safety lecture.  He made us wear inflatable life vests. You gotta trust a guy like that.

We had lousy conditions to begin with and then things got worse.  There were no fish. The wind picked up. The temperature dropped the proverbial 10 degrees and it started raining hard.  Captain Hughes dug his insulated coveralls out of the dry storage for Kris, who was shivering.  Anytime it gets below 60 degrees we folk from Houston start shivering, just on principal. 

Truth is there are from time-to-time less than optimum days fishing, and this was certainly one of those days. On the flip side Captain Hughes was generous and sociable, with great stories, a running commentary on conditions, and good advice about using a boat, and more importantly great tips on using a a sonar and GPS.  That day that’s the way he fished. He looked for fish on the sonar then told us how to drop the sinking line to the fish.  While waiting for the line to sink and drifting in front of the wind (1-hundred-1 , 1-hundred-2, 1-hundred-3 . . . ), I would figure-8 the running line out of the rod trip.  Frankly it was hard for me to keep count. I’m more of a language guy.

Kris and I really liked talking to Captain Hughes about the sonar. He knows sonar, and he invited us under the tee-top and gave lessons on reading the fish finder: what bait looks like, what stripers look like, what structure looks like, how to contact Garmin about the transponder problems we seem to be having back home.

Captain Hughes is older than me I think, and I’m pretty old, but he’s spent a life fishing and he knows his boat and his water. Part of the joy of fishing with a guy like Captain Hughes is hearing his stories, so I won’t give his away, except for the one about Lefty Kreh. He’s got that Baltimore—Balmer—accent, which sounds like a Mid-Atlantic version of a very mild nautical New England lobster pot.  I wish I could retell the story in the accent. Plus I’m making up the dialogue.

Captain Hughes started fly-fishing after someone convinced him that flyfishers caught more stripers. Early on he called Kreh and told him he needed a casting lesson.

“You don’t need a casting lesson,” Kreh said.  

“I need a casting lesson,” Hughes said, and Kreh took him to a pond for a lesson.

Hughes cast, and after a bit Kreh took the rod away.  “You need a casting lesson,” Kreh said.

So fishing with Tom Hughes you’re fishing with a guy who learned to cast from Lefty Kreh.  Our son Andy, who only goes fishing to indulge me, said after Captain Hughes tried to help him cast “I wish people would just leave me alone to figure it out.”

Andy, you are my son. I love you. You are an incredibly bright, talented, and good man, and I couldn’t be prouder. But when somebody taught by Lefty Kreh offers a casting lesson, take the damned lesson. 

Meanwhile Maryland was a fifty-fish bust.  I was now on the schneid in Maryland, Louisiana, and Florida, everywhere but Texas, where I was almost through January before I caught my first fish. I had a great time on the water, ate some pretty good crab cake, learned a lot about sonar, and had fun with my family and Captain Hughes, but I caught no fish in Maryland. Now I have to go back to Maryland. By Sunday afternoon I’d still only caught fish in Texas.

* * *

We left Maryland for Woodstock, Virginia, which is not, by the way, the site of Yasgur’s Farm. Sometimes I get in a car and fall asleep.  I got into the car and fell asleep.  Kris drove. Andy went back to Washington.

I woke up on the west side of D.C. about the time we started seeing the signs for the Manassas National Battlefield, We detoured for Bull Run.

Here’s the thing about travel: you pays your money, you takes your chances. If we hadn’t been there to fish The Chesapeake there were a thousand things we could have done. We could have seen the Tiffany windows in St. Anne’s Episcopal Church. We could have visited the state capitol and the Naval Academy.  We could have hung out and drunk beer.  Instead we fished The Chesapeake. Because we were blown off the water early in Maryland we visited the Manassas National Battlefield.  I would have hated to miss Manassas. 

*  *. *

A week later I finally got my Rockfish at a restaurant in D.C. It was good. Doesn’t count though. Notwithstanding Kris’s suggestion, this isn’t 50 fish platters.

 

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Small Texas Interlude

Yesterday we drove our skiff from Galveston, on the Texas Gulf Coast, 250 miles west on I-10, the highway that in my world stretches from El Paso to New Orleans (but in reality goes a bit further), to a tiny community outside San Antonio, Elmendorf, where we dropped the skiff off at the builder for some work and its motor’s 100-hour service.

We keep the boat in a dry stack, and don’t trailer often. Everything from loading the boat on the trailer to towing it through Houston down the interstate to San Antonio is terrifying.  We’re still married I think, at least no papers have been served on me yet. Kris did an excellent job on that last 100 miles into the New Water Boatworks. Let me say that again. Kris did an excellent job, and I’m sorry I yelled at her. I’m even sorry I offered advice from time to time while she was driving.

We’d planned to fish the Guadalupe late in the day, but it was after 4:00 when we dropped off the boat. We drove to New Braunfels, found our motel, and ate German food and drank German beer at Alpine Haus. After dinner we went to Gruene Hall to listen to music. Chronologically we might have been the elders at Gruene Hall, but as Kris noted a lot of younger folk looked like they’d been ridden hard more miles than us. Listening to the main attraction, Uncle Lucius, was like reading a pretty good mystery novel the plot of which you’d read a half-dozen times before. The opening act, Folk Family Revival, was terrific.

A couple of months ago, three guides from Go Outside Expeditions had done a presentation at Bayou City Anglers on trout fishing on the Guadalupe. They did such a nice job that last week I emailed them about fishing the Guadalupe.  The owner, Chris Adams, said that with the warmer weather the fishing on the Guadalupe was slowing (which was a surprise to me–I never knew it was fast). He recommended fishing the San Marcos.

I was happy as could be. I like the San Marcos, and many years ago had canoed it a good 20 times and had fished it once, but that was old history. It’s a Texas Hill Country river (though not really in the Hill Country), 75 miles long from its start at San Marcos Springs to its confluence with the Guadalupe. It’s lovely, with greenish clear water and good flow and lots of descents through class I rapids. Clovis Culture artifacts have been found at its headwaters, so it’s one of the oldest continuously settled sites in North America. Bank to bank it’s small, just right for goofing around for a day, which means it’s just right for fly fishing.

Prairie Lea between Luling and the town of San Marcos used to have the best kolaches in Texas, but it’s a long way out of the way from nowhere and the shop didn’t last. My high school classmate Mark Morgan’s aunt is the last house on the right on the way from Prairie Lea to the river, and Mark met us at the river because that’s where we met Chris-the-Guide and Mark happened to be in Prairie Lea. Confused? Kris was. What’s to wonder? Mark was there to add local color, mostly orange.

I only ever remember one lazy fishing guide. A redfish guide once dropped me off the boat and told me to stand there and watch for the fish to swim by. None came. I think the guide motored off and took a nap. Chris-the-Guide on the other hand was great. He knew his river and kept us fishing, working his way through downed trees, rowing us into position to cast, ducking when I cast, and  recovering hung flies. It was hard work, dragging the raft over trees and shallow gravel and staying calm while we dropped stuff into the water, including me. The spa treatment was free.

Kris-Not-the-Guide fished most of the day with a popper, I fished most of the day with a weighted streamer, typical bass stuff. Kris fished her Orvis 5 weight, I fished my Winston 6 weight. It all worked fine, just like Chris had said. Chris-the-Guide was a Winston pro-staff guide, and we talked about how nice the Winston rods felt casting but more important how pretty they are. Chris said there were people who didn’t like their looks.  I would never have imagined someone could find those pretty rods boring. You learn all sorts of stuff from guides.

We talked a lot on the way down the river. Chris suggested places to fish in North Carolina and Georgia and Virginia. He grew up a Southern kid, in Georgia, and while his accent passed for Texan he was more polite than us, and he unfailingly addressed me as sir. With age lots of people do, but I suspect that’s how Chris always talks to clients, and that it was something drilled into him by a correct Georgia upbringing.

Nothing we caught was big, the biggest was maybe a pound, but it was lively and fun casting. We pounded the bank, putting the fly as close as we could then taking a few strips then doing it again, just like Chris-the-Guide told us.  There were black bass, Guadalupe bass, sunfish (which I found myself calling perch–I haven’t called them perch in a good 50 years), and warmouth. We caught several black bass/Guadalupe hybrids, and a few purer Guadalupe bass, and Guadalupes being the state fish of Texas, that was particularly satisfying. I like to think that Guadalupes were what Cabeza de Vaca labeled trout when he came through in the 1500s.  The Guadalupe bass behave more like trout than black bass, feeding in faster water off seams and runs in the river. Or maybe Cabeza de Vaca called all fish trout. Or maybe my memory’s faulty and Cabeza de Vaca didn’t talk about trout at all.

We probably caught 15 fish in the five hours we were on the river, which for us is something of a record.

Morgan, the local color at the top of the post and perfectly good fly fisher, had stayed put to catfish bankside where we put in. chicken liver. Doughbait. Eight pound channel cat.

 

 

 

 

 

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New Orleans’ Guides

I’ve fished New Orleans once before, two days, post Katrina, maybe seven years ago. We stayed in the Roosevelt Hotel, home of the Sazerac Bar. The hotel had just reopened, but it was already a destination for wedding parties and conventioneers, and every time I’ve tried to get a room since it’s been full.  The Roosevelt was what a good old hotel should be, rococo and redolent of a time when people traveled by train and came to New Orleans for business at the Port of New Orleans and with Huey P. Long and for the wildness, but perfectly restored and well-managed.  We ate the best food I’ve ever eaten at Restaurant August, and didn’t feel bad about it because the chef, John Besch, hadn’t yet been called out for sexual harassment. We drank sazeracs in the Sazerac. We had the worst fishing guide ever.

I don’t remember the guide’s name, and wouldn’t tell it if I did. I’d asked a Houston shop for a recommendation. Their recommended guide was booked but he passed me on to this guy. Kris was there for a conference, and I fished the first day alone. It was March, maybe the worst time to fish Louisiana: windy and overcast. The guide picked me up at the hotel and drove to a place where I bought breakfast. It wasn’t anything special. His boat was in the shop–he had a Mitzi Skiff that seemed to be permanently in the shop and he was permanently and vocally unhappy with the boat and the company. He had borrowed a Hell’s Bay for the day. We got about a mile from the dock when he realized he had no gas and we had to turn around.  He speculated the gas had evaporated.

He was from Florida, the Panhandle, and guided in Louisiana in the winter. He was a Florida guy. He told me a story about how someone in Florida had just caught a record tarpon, maybe 190, on some impossibly light set up: a 4 lb tippet, a 4 weight rod, a 4 ounce brain. I don’t remember, but the angler seemed to have fought it for nine hours and it seemed cruel to the fish and stupid.  They could have hooked a rock with a 4 weight and had as much fun.  At least the rock would have already been dead.

The Florida guy re-rigged my redfish set-up, cutting off a nail knot on fly line because in Louisiana the fish were bigger.  I could have landed a tarpon on that nail knot. I did catch a redfish early the first day. It was the only fish we caught over two days. He wanted to take a picture and it took forever, me holding a dying fish while he changed camera lenses.

The second day when Kris went with us things got worse. He took the rod out of her hands to show her how to cast. There was a point where the forward gear on the boat wouldn’t work and the guide was banging on the motor with a wrench. I thought we’d spend the next five hours backing back to Venice. When he drove us back to the Roosevelt in his truck he drove and drank beer.

He was a young guy, and I hope he grew up smarter. What I remember the night we returned to Houston was Kris on the phone telling off the guide in New Orleans who’d made the recommendation. I’ve never seen Kris so mad, not even at me.