Tag: Guides

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The Beaverkill, The Catskills, New York, June 24, 2019.

At the Wulff School we’d cast fly rods most of the weekend, but we hadn’t fished, and before we left New York State we needed to catch a fish. We had a mile of private access to the Beaverkill, and Monday morning we’d booked Craig Buckbee as a guide. Saturday and Sunday we’d fished once or twice before or after class, but the class day was long, and the bar at the Beaverkill was very good, and practicing Bach on the porch with the guitar and a martini in the evening or the guitar and coffee in the morning was a lot easier than climbing into waders. Plus it’s hard to drink a martini while fly fishing. That’s where bait fishing has fly fishing beat cold.

Craig was one of the Wulff School instructors. He tournament casts, guides in New York and Pennsylvania, and teaches casting in Central Park. That last didn’t seem odd to me, but then I realized that most people may not as a matter of course practice casting in urban parks. Thinking about it later there aren’t many places it would be more fun to learn to fly cast than Central Park. I bet you could aim your casts at those little sailboats.

The manager at the Inn told us we’d done the school right, staying over that morning to fish. The Catskills have had their moments: 19th century fly fishing, Borscht Belt resorts, and the Hudson River School. I told her that a young colleague had mentioned that her husband wanted to go to the Catskills, and she said that the Catskills were again a hot outdoors destination, especially for young folk out of New York City. They come to camp and fish and mountain bike and kayak and Nordic ski and feed the ticks. I guess if I were 30 years old and in the City I’d be there as well. I guess come to think of it I was there. I’m such a hipster.

The locals told us that the Beaverkill Valley Inn and the surrounding area had once been owned by Larry. The locals we talked to all mentioned Larry. Larry turned out to be Laurance Rockefeller Jr., great grandson of John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil (and business partner of Henry Flagler). He’s a noted Republican environmentalist, which is a species that as a conservationist he couldn’t save from extinction. Mr. Rockefeller Jr. has spent big bucks on land preservation, both in New York and out West, and on the Upper Beaverkill he seems to have done smart things. He took acreage and resold it in 20 acre plots protected by conservation easements. He renovated and sold the Inn as a country club to the new residents. There’s no golf at the club, but there is croquet.

He also did about a zillion dollars of stream restoration, and Craig pointed out where huge granite blocks had been carefully arranged  in the river to preserve trout habitat. He did not, on the other hand, spend a zillion dollars on tick eradication, or on mosquito prevention, or, as my new discovery on this summer’s list of insect horrors, doing to death the black flies. Black flies love me. I am their new Man God, and they each want a piece of me as a remembrance. 

Maybe it was so even before all the work, but Mr. Rockefeller’s Beaverkill is as picturesque and inviting as a trout river can be. There was no covered bridge where we fished, and someone should point that out to Larry, but there was a mighty picturesque one just down the road. As a general matter trout live in pretty places, and this pretty place was all a trout could desire.

Meanwhile in this pretty place Craig had spent the past two days teaching us, and I worried getting out on the river that he would constantly remind me to relax my shoulder. He didn’t. He was low key and quietly humorous. He asked about Kris’s preferences, and I told him that Kris would be happiest if he gave her plenty of time to flail away on her own, and he did. He paid attention to her, but it wasn’t intrusive, and it was always just enough. Same for me. He didn’t correct my sloppy casts, even though I figured he ached to do so. This was about fishing, and he talked about the water and helped me fish.

He must have changed out my flies a half dozen times in that four hours. I vaguely remember fishing small streamers with a wet dropper down and across and on the swing. Did I do that? I think I did that, but at this point things blend and that may have happened two days later in Vermont. I think though that that’s how I caught my first small brown. It came off the hook at the net, and I didn’t get a picture, but I figured that if I caught nothing else that was good enough for me and New York.

I also vaguely remember fishing nymphs, and Craig pointing out a yellow Sallie. Mostly I remember how pretty everything was, including the yellow Sallie.

Kris caught a small wild brown on a purple bodied dry, and then another larger stocked brown, and after a while I was fishing with a purple bodied dry. This must be our year for purple. Speaking of Mississippi Craig said he’d gone to Houston’s Glassell School of Art, and had expected to be a children’s book illustrator. He had a particular interest in nature illustrations, and he and Kris talked birds. I wanted to ask if he knew Walter Anderson’s strange work, but never got around to it. I think if I were interested in nature illustrations I’d want to know Walter Anderson, but I never even asked Craig if he painted now. Next time.

We were close to the end, and Craig had told Kris she could cast 15 more times–he’d really sussed her out. It was both a hard number and a small enough number that she couldn’t say she’d lost count. We’d moved downstream towards the Inn and Craig told me where to cast in the softer water flowing past a rock shelf set into the bank and I caught a nice stocked brown on my last cast of the day. I really did. I caught a brown trout on a dry fly. There was no hatch of course, hatches being a hoax that Yankees perpetrate on gullible Houstonians, but at least I’m reasonably certain now that it can be done. I did it. I caught a trout on a dry fly.

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Alabama Bass, Spotted Bass, Redeye Bass, Tallapoosa River, Alabama, May 26, 2019

We postponed Kansas because of wind and lightning. Wind and lightning aren’t abnormal for Kansas in the spring, but it was lots of wind and lots of lightning. The New York Times said there were more than 300 reported tornadoes in the Midwest over the last 30 days. Of course whenever I read now of weather that’s a bit more than it should be I wonder if it’s climate change, and whether I should be buying land in soon-to-be-tropical Minnesota instead of going fishing. Being reasonably short-sighted I went fishing.

We fished mid-state, halfway between Birmingham and Montgomery. I picked mid-state in part because I found a guide, East Alabama Fly Fishing. The obvious play for us was the Gulf, from Gulf Shores or Mobile, but we’d already fished for redfish in Mississippi and Louisiana, so we drove four hours further and fished for bass and sunfish. Of course I would have liked to fish for redfish in Alabama, but we only had three days. Choices must be chosen.

So bass. How many species of bass are there? Nine, though it’s not the most settled thing in the world. Fish species identification has a way of being uncertain, even for the best known game species. The nine that are currently agreed on? Largemouth, smallmouth, Guadalupe bass from Texas, Florida bass, Alabama bass, shoal bass from Georgia, Suwannee bass from Georgia and Florida, spotted bass, and redeye. Our guide, Craig Godwin, said we would fish for spotted and redeye on the Tallapoosa.

There’s a problem with that, and it’s a complicated problem. spotted bass, also called Kentucky bass, and Alabama bass, also called spotted bass, are almost indistinguishable. When I thought about it later I had no clue whether we’d been fishing for Kentucky bass or Alabama bass. There’s an easy test. All you have to do is count the pored scales on the lateral line. Alabama bass usually–note the usually–have 71 or more scales with holes. Kentucky bass typically have 70 or fewer. If you use a magnifying glass and don’t lose count you can be pretty certain of your fish. Usually. Since we didn’t have a magnifying glass, and since we haven’t yet been to Kentucky and will likely never go back to Alabama, I’m claiming victory and declaring our spotted bass in the Tallapoosa River as Alabama bass.

Since I’d caught a largemouth just last week, and a smallmouth last year on the Shenandoah, I’m only five species away from a Bassmaster BASS Slam! I may make something of myself yet.

Back to the river, I had never heard of the Tallapoosa. I’ve heard of a lot of rivers, but before we left for Alabama if you’d asked me to name a single Alabama River, I couldn’t have named one. I knew there was a bridge in Selma, but I had no clue what river ran under it. It’s the Alabama, by the way, formed where the Tallapoosa and the Coosa meet near Montgomery.

We met Craig at the put-in at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, considerably north of where the Coosa and the Tallapoosa meet. Our raft float to the Jaybird Creek boat launch was five and a half miles and a bit more than five hours. It’s a big river by my lights, not Mississippi big, but except around island channels where it narrows it’s at least a football field from bank to bank, and where the river falls it’s a limestone boulder garden. And there’s plenty enough fall. There are Class II and and even Class IV rapids on the river, though thank goodness no class IV where we fished.

It’s a tailwater, with four separate power dams. We were below the H.L. Harris Dam and above Lake Martin and Martin Dam. Craig said that the level of the river was driven by power generation at H.L. Harris, and that the river elevation could vary greatly. Maybe I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem that the dams have changed the fish in the river. These are native fish, the fish that were there before we were.

It’s a clean river too, though no river I’ve ever fished was clean enough that I could see bass in current. Ponds, sure, if a pond is clear I can see fish, but these aren’t stillwater bass. Spotted Alabama and redeye bass hunt in the current and we fished the pockets back of rocks and the lines where the speeds of the river changed, and as close to the banks as we could manage to cast.

They were clean, beautiful fish, perfect for the river. First things first. Redeyes do not have red eyes. Some we caught had a red spot on the gill plate, and that may be where the name comes from, but frankly we saw more red in the eyes of spotted bass. They also aren’t big, and the redeyes we caught in the river seemed to be in the neighborhood of a pound. But the dark green and black backs paired with the turquoise lower jaw and belly was so colorful, they’re an unforgettable fish. They also have on the edges of their fins the slightest tinge of white, a hint, a tell, a joy to discover.

The Alabama bass are larger, and frankly I’d have confused them with largemouth if I hadn’t known better. The colors, even the lateral markings, often aren’t that different. The most obvious difference is the jaw. The jaw on a largemouth extends back behind the eye, the spotted bass’s jaw is in front of the eye. Plus there’s the whole current thing. Largemouth don’t live long and prosper in current.

We both fished five weights with floating lines, and most of the float we fished poppers. It was funny popper fishing though. We cast the popper, let it drift like a dry fly, and now and again gave it a twitch. Do you know how to fish a popper on a pond? There are lots of ways I suppose, but my best luck is to cast the popper, let it sit until the ripples die, then give it a nudge. Then let the ripples die and give it another nudge. I guess this was similar but in the absence of pond ripples the popper drifted. It was like fishing dry flies on a drift, except for the now and then pop.

Sometimes the sunfish would hit it, but the poppers we were using were just a bit much for sunfish. Look, I have to admit it, and I had to admit it to Craig, give me a choice of any fish in the world to catch I’d probably catch a sunfish. I loved them as a child, and I love them now. I love to see their colors and to try to parse out the species. I love their ferocity. We were catching bass, yeah, and there’s no nobler calling, tarpon or trout-be-damned. But this year I’ve caught a paucity of sunfish. Late in the day I switched to a Barr’s slumpbuster I’d tied up for Kansas, because I knew I would catch sunfish. I caught sunfish. Craig said these were longears, and I’ll go with that.

Just a note on fishing with Craig. I’ve fished with a lot of guides. I’ve fished with well-known guides and I’ve fished with extraordinarily skillful guides. I’ve fished with guides who were too young to be guiding and guides who were fun to fish with precisely because they were old enough to have seen all they could possibly see, older even than me. I never fished with a guide who took as much joy from the place or from me catching a fish.

Late in the day a fish on Kris’s line went under a rock and couldn’t be brought up. Craig went in after it. That’s service, or maybe you just can’t keep an Alabama boy from noodling.

That’s Southern humor, and I can get away with it. Don’t you try it at home.

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Another Interlude

On Thursday we leave for Hawaii, which for some odd and I suspect Southern reason I pronounce Huh-wah-yuh, which Siri can’t understand when I call up my playlist. We should spend today packing, which we won’t. What do we take? Some shorts, some shirts, some wading boots. The couple of 9 wt rods we gave each other for Christmas. A guitar. We fish with Captain Jesse Cheape of High Tide Fishing, a full day on Friday and a half-day on Saturday. After that we’ll sightsee. I think sightseeing is required by the nature of the thing.

It is the second farthest distance we’ll travel, closer than Alaska but further than Maine. I’ve actually practiced casting some, which is frustrating and unrewarding. I’m such a mediocre caster. I’ve tried to keep up my Hawaii reading, and have been through a couple of additional Hawaiian books–The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings, which was very likable, and Dreams from My Father by Barrack Obama, which was about his birth in Kenya.

I guess my thoughts have moved on to Mississippi, which I’ve been working on for May, and Florida which I have to go to in February. I’m beginning to despise Florida and its uncatchable fish, but the Astros open there in April, and if we fail again in February (with a one-day fishing trip to the Keys) maybe we’ll make a fourth trip in April.

Hawaiian music hasn’t really grabbed me: it’s melodic, sweet, all major keys and thirds and fifths and pure tones. I’ve been cheating on Hawaii with Mississippi Blues. It shares a slide guitar, but not much else.

Frontispiece, Life on the Mississippi, The Baton Rouge, 1883, Gutenberg.org.

I also cheated on Hawaii with Mississippi books, and re-read Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. It is such an essential book. It’s only a bit more than a six-hour (read eight-hour) drive from here to Vicksburg, and we could visit the battlefield memorial and the National Cemetery over the long Martin Luther King weekend. Of course with the government shut-down nothing at the National Cemetery would be open. It’s too bad all presidents aren’t required to be born in Kenya.

Early on Twain also traveled to Hawaii (née the Sandwich Islands) and wrote a series of letters from there for a San Francisco newspaper. I didn’t find the letters particularly illuminating, though Twain liked the place immensely and always talked of going back.

I’ve tied some leaders which won’t turn over, and some flies which won’t catch fish. I’ve also bought some flies, almost all of which are some kind of spawning shrimp, which is the only fly I can ever seem to remember on Captain Cheape’s list. I do own a bunch of bonefish flies, almost none of which are on said list. I’ll haul them along anyway.

Meantime the weather here in Houston is as good as it gets: clear, windless, dry, and cool, 61 degrees this morning with a high of 71 degrees. There’s a mockingbird singing through the open door to the porch. Maybe I’ll go look for black bass this afternoon, or spawning crappie. Yesterday we took the skiff out on Galveston bay, and the combination of cold weather and still air left the water clear. We saw some redfish, too.

Didn’t catch those either. We did get some excellent oysters and ceviche at the Black Pearl Oyster Bar on 23rd Street.

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Speycasting for Grass Carp

Last August we booked a Spey casting lesson with a local TFF instructor, but it was canceled because of Hurricane Harvey.  Meanwhile our friend Mark Marmon said that he’d learned to Spey cast for Salmon in Iceland and that he’d give us a lesson. We had to have a lesson because when we go to Oregon we have to Spey cast, it’s like a law or something, and we don’t want to break any laws. Everything else is legal in Oregon, but they’re serious about Spey casting.

That’s Mark in the photo above. I stole that photo off his website, so he can sue if he wants. I’m not certain but it doesn’t look like the photo was taken in Houston. He’s sans pony-tail these days, but I always liked that photo of Mark. I don’t know if he lost the pony-tail when he became an Episcopal priest, but it’s a better story that way, sort of an Episcopalian version of God’s Wrath.

I knew Mark first through local fly shops, Angler’s Edge I think but it’s been a long time. Mark chose and sold Kris one of my favorite Christmas presents ever: a 5-weight Winston matched to an Abel click-and-pawl reel. About the time Kris bought that rod I ran into our friend Shelley.  I’d known Shelley since law school, and Kris and Shelley were even better friends than Shelley and me. Shelley said she had taken up fly fishing and that also oh-by-the-way she and Mark were getting married. Houston is a big city, and the chance that Shelley would know Mark, much less marry him, was pretty remote. I figured whether they knew it or not we were the common thread. They might see it differently, but I’m a firm believer that coincidences never happen, except by accident.

There were entire years when you couldn’t open a Houston Chronicle on any given day without reading a story about Mark. Every other guide in Houston (and that was pretty much Chris Phillips) was obsessed with saltwater, but Mark fished fresh. He fly fished the inner city bayous, and the Chronicle couldn’t get enough of it. Still can’t. Mark fished in the bayous mostly for grass carp, but he was also fishing for trout on the Guadalupe and for local bass: Mark introduced us to Damon’s Seven Lakes. Mark says his largest grass carp out of Braes Bayou was 48 pounds, which would be a state all-tackle record. Braes Bayou is less than a mile from our house.  He had found big fun fish that he could sight cast to, even if the fishery was decorated with abandoned grocery carts.

Mark met us at Meyer Park Duck Pond to teach us what he could on stillwater about Spey casting, and it turned out that it’s the place to be on a Sunday evening.  Stacy was there from Bayou City Anglers giving casting lessons to a family.  Gretchen from Orvis (who ties the best doubled Bimini twists I’ve ever seen) showed up to meet Stacy and go for Margaritas and Tex-Mex.  I’m pretty sure they looked at us and the Spey rods and laughed and laughed and laughed.

It was nice of Mark to give us the lesson, but Mark is a really nice guy. I once mentioned to Mark that my second-ever fly rod was a Shakespeare Wonderod that my mother bought when I was 14 with S&H Green Stamps, and that while I had the Pflueger Medalist reel I’d long ago lost the rod and wished I still had it. The next week Mark brought me a circa 1970s fiberglass Shakespeare Wonderod.  I’ve fished with it some too. It’s heavy as a horse and casts like a slug, but it’s great fun in small doses, as most memories are. My 12-weight is lighter than that Shakespeare. Modern spey rods are lighter than that Shakespeare.

 

Mark’s only flaw, really, is that he doesn’t like the Beatles. Personally I think he’s enjoying some mild perversity, which after all I know a good bit about. I’m the one learning how to Spey cast.

When we went to the pond, Mark had three Spey rods of various weights, two Thomas & Thomas and one Echo. Mark also had some great second-hand reels for his rods that he’d apparently found the same place that he’d found that Shakespeare Wonderod. We fooled around for a while, and I got to where I could do a roll cast that didn’t always end in a puddle 30 feet out.  The rods were heavier than I expected, in part because of the need for a heavy reel to balance the rod, plus the surprisingly heavy lines.  They were also really, really long.  They’re magnitudes longer than 9-foot rods, nearly half again as long.  Kris of course was a natural, though Mark was giving her workout advice for upper body strength by the end of the lesson. I offered to loan her my Shakespeare Wonderod.

Mark pointed out that you could in fact overhand cast with Spey rods, just like you would normally cast a single-handed rod. Since that lesson it’s been easy for me to shoot 100-feet of line casting overhand, though where it lands is not real precise. They never tell you about overhand casting in the online videos, but that’s because overhand casts are also illegal in Oregon. They’re serious about Spey casting.

Mark asked what rods we were going to use in Oregon, and I said that the outfitter had rods. He said that was smart and did I want to borrow his to practice with? I said maybe.

The next day I went rod shopping. This has nothing to do with smart.