Tag: Largemouth Bass

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Road Trip, Part 3, Rapid City, South Dakota, to Smith Falls State Park, Nebraska (48) June 18-21, 2025.

There aren’t a lot of lodging choices near Valentine, Nebraska. Valentine, population 2,633, is tucked away from bigger cities. It’s north of the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, east of the Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest, and south of South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation. Mission, South Dakota, population 1,156, is 32 miles north. The closest town to the east is Springview, population 242. Omaha is 304 miles east.

So we camped at Smith Falls State Park on the Niobara River. From Rapid City to the park was 219 miles, the shortest leg of our road trip. We crossed through the south unit of Badlands National Park and the Pine Ridge Reservation, including a stop at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre. With a median household income of $36,424 and 49% of the residents below the poverty line, the Pine Ridge Reservation is as poor as America gets, and when we entered the reservation a sign suggested counting how many places on the reservation people could get jobs. I counted one, a National Park satellite office. They didn’t appear to be hiring.

Badlands National Park

Wounded Knee is a solemn place.

Wounded Knee Cemetery

I don’t remember why I picked Smith Falls State Park, and it turned out to be an odd choice. There is good fishing in Nebraska. In the south, where I-80 cuts across Nebraska from Omaha to Cheyenne, there are construction fill-ponds that parallel the interstate corridor. They’re developed and maintained for recreation, and from all reports are a great opportunity for fly fishing for bass.

We didn’t go there.

There are also reels of charming videos of trout bums catching tiny trout out of tiny streams in Nebraska grasslands. I am not a trout bum, but if you live in a van and have a three- or four-weight rod, there’s probably quality Nebraska fishing in memorably isolated landscapes. You just need to take the time to explore those landscapes.

We didn’t go there, either.

We had a two week road trip to fish three states. We had two days in Nebraska. In Wyoming and South Dakota we’d fished with guides, and like as not we’d have caught fish if we’d spent most of the day standing on our heads humming Cole Porter tunes. In Nebraska, we had to figure it out ourselves, so there was limitless opportunity for failure. To find fish we had to rely on studying maps and the Google and then wait until we got there to figure out if we’d picked wrong. And of course we’d picked wrong.

Through Google, I found DIY Fly Fishing’s guide to fly fishing in Nebraska. First on DIY’s Nebraska list was the Niobara River.

Niobara River, Smith Falls State Park, Nebraska.

Smith Falls State Park is on the Niobara, so I guess I figured yeah, that’ll work. There’s a river! There are some falls! We can fish! After our trip, after we got back home, I realized that the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission advises that the stretch of the Niobrara River supported for trout fishing–in other words it’s stocked–is above Box Butte Reservoir from the Wyoming border. Smith Falls is a long way on the wrong side of Box Butte Reservoir. Smith Falls is a nice place, a pleasant, lovely place, but it was the wrong place.

When we checked into the campground I told the young woman staffing the desk that I needed to catch a fish. “You’re in the wrong place,” she said. She was very young and I assumed would be of no help, but this was a country girl who knew her country, and she whipped out a brochure for Keller State Recreational Area, roughly 50 miles east, and started pointing out places in Keller to fish.

I did try to fish the Niobara at Smith Falls. It was water, so I figured there must be fish, but the river was hard to parse: it moved fast and lacked obvious structure except for the banks themselves. It was a fantastic tubing river. Had we floated downriver in a canoe and pounded the water at the banks with woolly buggers we’d like as not have caught something–I don’t know what but something . . .

For randomly wading in and tossing flies though, it was pretty difficult. The banks were so overgrown that the only place I could get into the river was at the canoe launch. I had a three weight trout spey rod, so I tied on a wet fly under a Pat’s rubber legs and made some random casts.

Spey rods were historically fished on Scottish salmon rivers, and are three or four feet longer than normal fly rods, which are already about nine feet. Depending on how well you cast them spey rods are either awkwardly long or elegantly long. With my casts they tend toward the awkward.

The extra length gives spey rods a big advantage: you can roll cast forward without a back cast, so your fly shouldn’t tangle in the brush behind you. I promptly started tangling in the brush behind me. Now if I had had a guide, the guide would have told me, Neil, you idiot, you’re laying the rod out horizontally behind you so the fly goes into the brush, but I had no guide. Three nights later it hit me: Neil, you idiot, you were laying your rod out horizontally behind you so the fly went into the brush.

Three nights later. I’m quick that way.

Guides are worth the money. If we’d had a guide, we wouldn’t have been at Smith Falls State Park. I got frustrated trying to fish the Niobara and went back to the campsite to play the guitar.

The next morning we drove to Keller State Recreational Area. At Keller there are five ponds, imaginatively named Ponds 1-5. The brochure said that Ponds 1-4 are warm water ponds with bass and sunfish, my kind of place, while Ponds 4 and 5 are seasonally stocked with trout. Bone Creek also cuts through the park, and is also stocked with trout.

Bone Creek, Keller State Park

Kris said she would birdwatch and didn’t fish. Each of the ponds was about the size of a city block, and a grandfather and grandkid fishing bait at Pond 3 told me that they had caught a bass, but the pond was weedless and oddly sterile. Nothing moved. Just looking at the pond I didn’t think that there was anything in it that was living. I worked my way down the east bank, stopping every few feet to throw out some casts, but nothing followed my fly. The one sunfish I hooked flipped off before I could land it.

At Pond 5, I dug out a random trout fly to cast while I watched the surface. There were tiny–very tiny–fish slaps out in the middle of the pond, and I watched a pod of 10-inch rainbows, maybe eight, drift through the shallows between the bank and a concrete water intake. I think they were desperate to find the exit. For me stocked trout ponds are unhappy places. The fish can’t reproduce and can’t survive past the first harsh weather, whether heat or cold. My heart wasn’t in it.

Pond 4 though was glorious, mucky, weedy, it looked like home. I tied on a small streamer and immediately started catching small bass on a line of weeds about 20 feet from the bank. Glorious scum! Glorious weeds! This was fishing I understood.

They were tiny bass, perhaps stocked but I thought more likely this year’s crop from the spring spawn. I was catching similar small bass at home near Houston, with maybe a month’s more growth. These fish were thrilling, not least because they were my Nebraska fish, but also because I thought that if I kept at it, casting along the same line down the length of the pond, maybe switching to a popper, I’d catch something respectable. Maybe I’d catch something as big as a pound. Then Kris called. She couldn’t find her car fob and couldn’t lock the car. It was hot. She and Roo the dog were bored. Come now.

I had my Nebraska fish. Kris and Roo were bored. That was all the fish we needed in Nebraska.

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Shad, Brandywine Creek, Delaware, May 25, 2023.

We were in Delaware last Thursday to try again to catch American shad. We fished in Brandywine Creek in Brandywine Park, only a mile or so from downtown Wilmington, with two-handed rods, long 11-foot rods that don’t require a backcast. Shad are anadromous fish, just like Atlantic and Pacific salmon, only not so glamorous. From northern Florida to southern Canada, in rivers all along the East Coast, American shad migrate into freshwater rivers and streams to spawn. Each spring in Delaware the shad run into the Brandywine from the Atlantic. Unlike Pacific salmon, American shad don’t necessarily die after spawning, and most will return to saltwater. They’re not as big as spawning salmon, but in the Brandywine a hen might reach eight pounds.

At least according to those who know they are great fun to catch. I’m assured that there are those who know.

In the ocean shad are planktivorous, which is an extravagant way to say that they live on plankton with a smattering of insects and tiny fish and crustaceans. Like salmon, when shad reach freshwater what they eat doesn’t matter. They stop eating. They will take a fly, maybe out of anger, maybe habit, or maybe just to show off. Who knows? But they will take a fly.

At least I’ve heard they’ll take a fly. This is a spoiler. We didn’t catch shad again.

You know what though? We toss the dice every time we go someplace to fish. There’s always a chance we may not catch fish. That’s ok. With Delaware shad we’ve tried to hit a window when the fish are in the creek. Last time we went, in May 2021, it was still too cold, and the shad stayed out of the creek in deeper water. This spring Wilmington hasn’t had significant rain. Unlike salmon, shad don’t jump obstacles, and when the water’s low the remains of the first Brandywine dam block the shad. Last year when we didn’t go the migration was reportedly great, and someday soon the Wilmington forecast is for rain . . . . Last year. . . . Someday . . . . We can’t control this year, this week. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

There are now lots of states, Maryland, Florida, Kansas, Hawaii, Delaware, where we’ve gone back to catch fish. Next month we’ll make our third trip to Rhode Island, and not because the fish weren’t there. Rhode Island is purely user error. Some day we have to go back to North Dakota, but then who doesn’t want to go back to North Dakota?

What I’ve learned is that every time I go back to a place, there’s something I like more about it, there’s something more to be discovered, and there are always other things I wish I had seen, or done, or eaten, or fished for. There are plenty of places where I secretly half wish I hadn’t caught a fish, just so I’d have an excuse to return.

And this time I really enjoyed going back to Delaware. I liked fishing for shad again, even if I didn’t catch one. Standing in a river practicing my spey cast makes a pretty good day, with or without fish, and we were standing in the middle of Brandywine Park, a park designed in consultation with Frederick Law Olmstead. I would cast my line across the current, trying to remember to quarter down river about 45 degrees, then watch the line arc across where the shad should be. Half the time I’d make my cast, then spend the drift watching joggers and picnickers and dog walkers, or a group of adolescents up to minor mischief, or a man throwing sticks to a dog. It is a lovely place, and it was a joy to watch people take joy from it.

And good guides bring such knowledge to the table. When I called Terry Peach a few weeks ago to set up our day, it was like talking to an old friend. He remembered us from two years ago. He was happy to guide us again, and when we fished last Thursday Kris and I talked to Terry about most everything open to polite conversation, and only 90% or so of our conversation was about fishing. Before we left Houston, Terry called me twice to warn us about the low water flows, and talked us into moving our trip around so that we could fish in the evening.

Terry didn’t sound too hopeful, but he thought our best shot would be after the Atlantic tide pushed the lower Brandywine up two or three feet, and that maybe that push would be enough to get the fish upriver. That evening it wasn’t enough, but it was our best shot at shad.

I did catch one fish in the Brandywine, a small yellow perch, 8 or 9 inches. I don’t know much about perch. I’ve caught one other, in Connecticut, but apparently the Delaware perch spawn happens earlier, in March, and according to Terry it’s a big favorite for local fly fishers. While the fish are small, there’s a mass of ’em, and they’re aggressive. Finding my perch in the creek so late in the season was peculiar, and I was too surprised to take a picture. It was pretty though, bright yellow, with dark vertical bands.

File:Yellow perch fish perca flavescens.jpg

Raver, Duane, Yellow Perch, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2016, public domain.

That yellow perch was enough to check off Delaware, but Terry had already taken care of that earlier in the day. Suburban Delaware may be one of the gentlest, prettiest places on earth. It’s pretty like Kentucky horse country, or the Connecticut second home region in full summer spate. It’s not wild, it’s in no manner rugged, it’s domestic and fat and happy. If you lived there you’d have to belong to a country club. You’d have to own a 1968 Chrysler Town and Country station wagon, or at least a Defender. You really wouldn’t be surprised to discover a mess of Hobbits living down by the Brandywine.

At the heart of suburban Delaware is the DuPont family, who began manufacturing gunpowder at a site on the Brandywine in 1804. There are numerous DuPont and DuPont kinfolk estates scattered here and about, with Winterthur being perhaps the most famous. Across the road from Winterthur is another passel of DuPont heirs–I never did get quite straight who or how they were all related. However they fit in, Terry had permission to take us there to fish their ponds, and before we went to Brandywine Creek we stopped off at a DuPont pond.

There are all sorts of exotic fly fishing destinations in the world, and all sorts of exotic fish, and for all of them I’m at best nothing but a duffer. Give me a pond, though, and I know how to fish. I may be one of the world’s premier bluegill fly anglers.

And during our hour or so on the pond we caught fish. We were fishing 6-weight single-handed rods with floating lines and various surface bass flies: poppers, sliders, gurglers . . . . Kris caught a crappie and a nice bass, maybe two pounds, or at least it might have been two pounds pre-spawn, and I caught a couple of crappie and a bluegill. Crappie, pronounced crop-ee, are what my parents loved to fish for, and the first fish I ever caught was almost certainly a crappie. Fishing a bass pond on a DuPont estate and catching crappie, I couldn’t have been happier. I may not have caught a shad, but I caught a crappie. I’m one of the world’s premier crappie fly anglers.

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Arkansas Packing List, Part I

Vaccines

We had ’em, two of ’em each, plus the 10 days’ grace period. No side effects, though I’m certain that Hillary Clinton is telling me it’s time for another trip to Arkansas.

Besides mind control (of which I’m all in favor–not having to make decisions seems like a real boon), my friend Limey tells me that the CDC has determined that with rare exceptions the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines prevent virus infections, and don’t just lessen the symptoms. I need to check to see where Limey got his information, but part of me wants not to check and believe what’s most favorable to my world-view. I guess I’m having a fake news moment.

Apparently everybody in Arkansas and East Texas has already had the vaccine, because there wasn’t much social distancing or mask wearing. In a gas station, the cashier pulled down her mask so that I could hear her answer my question. I’m pretty sure I’d have heard her anyway, but I guess she figured I needed to read her lips. In a cafe, another cashier told the couple waiting for a table at the register that I was brave so they didn’t need to move. I told her I wasn’t brave at all. Actually, I think I’m brave enough, but I’m not stupid. I am both a baseball fan and a fisherman, so my outlook starts from superstitious, and as a lawyer I’m always belt and suspenders. Why test fate?

We wouldn’t have gone into restaurants without the vaccine, which leads me to

Where We Ate

It’s just as well that fine dining is a consideration but not a requirement, because there isn’t a lot of fine dining in Arkansas. There is some, in Bentonville and Little Rock, but Arkansas doesn’t really rival Paris, France. On the whole it’s a cheap-food-and-lots-of-it kind of cuisine. There’s nothing wrong with that, but as often as not it’s not something one wants to remember.

Kris and I both like to cook, and even before the pandemic we cooked at home most days. Restaurants are rare, so maybe I think more about them than I should. What good things make me remember a restaurant? I can remember some places vividly, a fish place in the Keys where the fish was great and the couples next to us argued about Donald Trump, a dinner at Three Brothers Serbian in Milwaukee with our friends Tom and Sal, a weekend of ethnic eating in Chicago suggested by Tom, a Basque place in Reno (again suggested by Tom) where we sat at a communal table. . . As often as not I remember places because they are great food, sure, but I think as much because they tell me something about the place. I hated Voodoo Donuts in Portland, bad service, bad food, too many gimmicks, but it did tell me something about Portland. That’s not, though, memory created by good things.

On our January pre-Arkansas fishing excursion, we ate at the Hive in Bentonville. The Hive is generic American imaginative–the kind of place you can now find in almost any urban area From Sea to Shining Sea, with pretty similar menus. It was just fine, had a good wine list, and could have been anywhere, from the Wine Country to Connecticut.

So for this Arkansas trip I tried to figure out where Arkansans thought was essential Arkansas eating. A lot of the places were further west than us, a lot involved fried catfish (which I like), and none were in Heber Springs where we stayed. We had been to Heber Springs before, and pretty much knew what was there. I wouldn’t let the food keep me away from Heber Springs, but I wouldn’t go back for it.

On the way to Heber Springs, we drove out of our way to the Bulldog Restaurant in Bald Knob, because (1) who doesn’t want to visit Bald Knob, and (2) they were supposed to have excellent strawberry shortcake. It has excellent strawberry shortcake because Central Arkansas is, apparently, a strawberry-growing region, and there were no strawberries yet, so no strawberry shortcake. We had a good burger and fries, thought it looked like the people at the next table ordered smarter than us. They always do.

On the way home, we ate breakfast at Cheryl’s Diner in Cabot for their chocolate gravy. Apparently chocolate gravy on biscuits is a breakfast thing in Arkansas. If you can imagine a slightly creamier version of chocolate pudding slathered onto a biscuit, you have chocolate biscuits. I like biscuits. I like cream gravy. I have now had chocolate gravy on biscuits. It was certainly memorable. I would go back for Cheryl’s cream gravy on biscuits.

We skipped a last meal in Arkansas and made it to Jefferson, Texas, to Riverport Barbecue, which is on the Texas Monthly top-50 list. It was 3 in the afternoon, and they were out of just about everything. Except for me and one teenager, no one wore a mask. That teenager was a rebel, and so was I.

We did eat at a great place in Shreveport, Strawn’s Eat Shop, recommended by my high school classmate Cindy (who lives in Shreveport). Great strawberry and coconut icebox pie, and chicken fried steak as part of it’s meat and three lunch special. Larry McMurtry once wrote that only a rank degenerate would drive across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak. We weren’t in Texas, but still. Avoiding rank degeneracy should always be a goal, though some degeneracy probably doesn’t hurt. Cindy texted that Strawn’s would be a good place for a reality TV show: The Waitresses of Strawn’s Eat Shop. Thanks Cindy. You’re right, both about the waitresses and Strawn’s Eat Shop.

The Drive

What’s it like driving up I-40 through Arkansas? It’s like this:

Gear

We took trout stuff; a 9-foot 6 weight for streamers, a 10-foot 4 weight and a 10-foot 3 weight, and a couple of 9-foot 5 weights (because you have to have a five-weight when you fish for trout, even if you never use it). All had reels with floating lines. We fished them all except my Winston 5 weight.

There is a story with the 4 weight, a Thomas & Thomas Avantt that four years ago I’d bought on sale. This year Kris gave me a Thomas & Thomas 10-foot 3 weight for my birthday. 

Here’s the thing about all that weight stuff: with fly fishing, it’s usually the weight of the line that lets you cast the fly, so you match a 3 weight rod to a 3 weight line. You can overline, you can match a 3 weight rod with a 4 weight line, or underline–I’ll let you figure that out yourself–but all of that is nerdy fiddling. Weights and lines are pretty much standardized (if a bit esoteric).

Anyway, I thought I’d taken the new 3 weight, but had accidentally taken the 4 weight. Do I need both these rods that do pretty much the same thing? What a silly question, of course I do. The thing was, I thought I’d taken the 3 weight until I got home. I put a 3 weight line on the 4 weight, and never noticed anything wrong. We had so much weight on the rigs, both with heavy weighted flies and split shot, and all the casts were so short, it made no difference. Not to me anyway. 

All the weighted flies and split shot were to get the flies down in the river as quick as possible and then keep them there. And also to smack me in the back of the head if I tried to get fancy with my casting.

Flies

I’m a firm believer that if I’m fishing with a guide, I should use the flies that the guide brings to the river. It’s funny though, I always look at what should fish in a place, and usually try to tie a few things to fish there. This time I tied some big streamers, Barr’s meat whistles, and fished them for a bit. I foul hooked–snagged–one rainbow in the gill plate, but nothing else. I decided streamer fishing was a lot of work for low reward and stuck to the guide’s stuff. I’ll use the excuse on the streamers that my shoulder’s been hurting.

Drew started us out with mop flies (and I could go into a long digression on mop flies, but won’t), but then switched me to a marabou jig fly, and that worked better. He really liked the jig flies, and bought them pre-tied from Little Rock. He claimed that you could catch anything with a jig fly, and frankly I thought they looked like the perfect fly for crappie and white bass.

Thirty years ago in Arkansas, scud flies were all the rage. Scud flies are an underwater fly that is supposed to look like a shrimp-related crustacean called, of all things, a scud. I don’t think it has anything to do with the missile. Think roly-polies, doodle bugs, but in water. I have never been able to imagine the fly, though from time to time I’ve tried to tie them. Drew said that a study from ASU (translation, Arkansas State University) had determined that scuds were Arkansas trouts’ primary food, and that Arkansans still heavily fished scud flies because Arkansas trout still ate them. He put one on a dropper on Kris’s rig. I thought Oh boy, I’ll see a scud fly, and then I forgot to take a look. I guess I was busy watching my orange bobber.

The second day we fished shallower, and Drew had us fish hare’s ear nymphs, which are about as traditional a fly as nymphs can be. His flies were sparse, and tied on tiny jig hooks. 

When we came back I tied more Barr’s meat whistles–I wanted to go ahead and use up my cache of streamer jig hooks, and yesterday I fished a purple one at Damon’s. I caught my largest bass in a while, and I watched it crash across a sandy flat to hit the fly. The meat whistle’s usually thought of as a trout streamer, but as often as not, fish are fish. Next time I’ll try a marabou jig fly.

Terrible picture, I know. But it was a big fish, and I wanted to keep it in the water. The purple smudge in the vicinity of its mouth is a purple Barr’s meat whistle.

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What’s the Matter with Kansas, Part 1, October 16-19, 2020

I’ve been busy this fall with work and other things, so even without the coronavirus, there have been reasons not to travel. We’ve fished for bass in freshwater and redfish in salt, but since early August all of our fishing has been close to home. I’ve studied maps, and concentrated on where we could reach driving. I’m not ready for airplanes, but I still want to fill in blanks.

And there are blanks to fill reasonably close to home. There are adjacent states I’ve been saving, Arkansas and New Mexico, and states a bit further that we can drive to without too much effort: Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Colorado, and Arizona, maybe South Carolina, maybe Utah. With the exception of Kentucky, I’ve been to all those states before, even if I haven’t been there to fish. What’s the point, though, of finally making it to Kentucky if I can’t visit distilleries? And New Mexico, one of my favorite places, requires visiting Texans to quarantine. Colorado is on fire. Then there’s Kansas, which is a peculiar problem that demands particular attention.

I can’t find a fly-fishing guide in Kansas, and I’ve spent hours on the internet looking. Over the summer I thought I’d finally found one, Paul Sodamann at Flats Lander Guide Service, so I called Paul. He’s a FFF certified fly casting instructor, and he’s taught a fly-fishing course at Kansas State, but he told me he’d stopped guiding. Zebra mussels have infested his local waters, and while the carp were still there, the mussels have so cleansed the water that the carp see you coming. Carp are spooky, and in the clear water he says there’s no reliable approach to spooky fish.

Zebra mussels and carp: America’s heartland has been invaded. See? Kansas is a complicated place.

Since I can’t find a guide I’ve focused on the least-populated Kansas places, and I will tell you there are plenty of least-populated Kansas places. In 2019 Kansas had an estimated population of 2,913,314, with 104 counties, and an average population density of 35.4 people per square mile. That’s a lot of land, and not a lot of people. And the population is not spread evenly. The ten most populous counties represent about 65% of the population, while the 65 least populous counties represent only about 10% of the population. There’s some weird symmetry in those numbers.

After map study we settled on the Cimarron National Grassland which is as far south and west as Kansas goes, with a stop at Meade State Park, an 80-acre lake just over the Oklahoma border, about an hour south of Dodge City. Meade State Park is 641 miles from Houston, or a roughly 12-hour drive. Cimarron National Grassland is about two hours further west, with a side trip to get the hell into Dodge. The description of Meade was of a good warm water lake, with bass, catfish, and sunfish. The descriptions of Cimarron said it had ponds, with bass, catfish, and sunfish.

Cimarron is in Morton County, Kansas. Morton County, Kansas, population 2,539, is not the least populated county in Kansas. That honor goes to Greeley, population 1,232, two counties to the north. Out of 104 Kansas counties, Morton ranks 91st in population. Urban as it is, one wonders, how do 2,539 residents support the communal things people need? A sheriff? A doctor? a high school football team? a high school?

It’s probably no surprise that Western Kansas is flat and rural, and that it doesn’t sport a lot of water or trees. The Cimarron Grasslands is located on the Cimarron River, which in Kansas is an intermittent stream, dry for most of the year. It was dry when we saw it. Even Middle Springs, a dependable watering hole on the Santa Fe Trail, was dry. Semi-arid, this is wheat country that depends on rainfall and aquifer irrigation, and every 15 or 20 miles along the highway there is a community with a co-op grain elevator, a farm supply, and a cafe. My friend Clark, a Nebraskan trained as a city planner, once explained it to me: the farming frontier communities are spaced by how far a pre-automobile farmer could reasonably travel to get to market and home again in a day.

Western Kansas is beautiful, but I may be unnaturally drawn to flat and sparse. It’s also In Cold Blood territory. Writers who trade in horror and violent confrontation should be drawn to Western Kansas. There’s nothing like isolated farmhouses to spur that creepy distrust of the stranger. But sparse as it is, isolated as it is, it’s not wild. This is industrialized agriculture, and everywhere there is evidence of cultivation and the massive machines and infrastructure that make it possible. In Western Kansas there’s rarely even the faux wilderness of uncultivated pasture. Every acre seems farmed. This is grain country, exactly what Kansas is supposed to be.

In 2016, Morton County voted 83% for President Trump, which is also what Kansas is supposed to be, and there was strong support of the President all along the highway. In every community there were Trump signs in yards and at businesses. At farm gates there were Trump flags. In contrast, yesterday morning on my run I counted 12 Biden/Harris signs in five blocks. Kansas was just like my neighborhood, but in reverse. instead of five blocks its political uniformity spreads across hundreds of miles.

On the drive from Houston I re-listened to a lecture by Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas, based on his 2004 book of the same name. I haven’t read the book, and the lecture isn’t so much about Kansas as it is about conservative voters generally, with Kansas appearing mostly in the title as a bit of shorthand. If I follow the lecture correctly, the right on the left side of Kansas is no longer driven by economics; those Trump flags aren’t out there because of fiscal conservatism, but because of cultural divides. The Kansas Trump voters are now driven by anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-antifa, and anti-whatever, not economics.

Maybe there’s some truth to that, but I suspect Mr. Frank misses part of the point of all those miles of wheat fields. Farmers are business owners, and the people who work for them and depend on their trade are deeply tied to the success or failure of their business. I’d guess their political convictions were developed more from Jimmy Carter’s 1970s inflation, followed by the 1980 Russian grain embargo, than from any deep seated dislike of what’s happening culturally in Chicago or Denver or Dallas, or for that matter Wichita or Amarillo. As much as there is to admire about Mr. Carter, he didn’t do much for Kansas farmers, and I’d guess 40 years on Kansas farmers still see government generally and Democratic government in particular as less a help than an intrusion, or a ruination.

This corner of Kansas was also the heart of the Dust Bowl, and Cimarron National Grasslands only exists because of government intrusion in the 30s, when a bit more than a hundred thousand acres of environmentally ravaged land was purchased by the government to add to the national forests, sans trees. Even in the photo above, the trees are imports, not natural parts of the landscape. There are also bits of the national grassland throughout the dustbowl plains, in Colorado, Kansas, and Texas, and it’s held as grassland in part to protect against a repeat of the Dust Bowl. In the urban mind, those Kansas farmers are always less cognizant of their dependence on the government aid they receive than they should be.

Meanwhile, we traveled to Morton County, Kansas, to fish. We may well be the only people hereabouts who can say that. We drove about 1400 miles and I didn’t catch a fish, not a bass, catfish, nor sunfish. Not a one fish, two fish, red fish, nor blue fish, of either the Republican or the Democratic variety. At least I get to think more about Kansas. What’s the matter with Kansas? We didn’t catch a fish.