Tag: Reels

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Georgia Packing List

Gear

For trout in North Georgia we took 5-weight rods with floating trout lines. We used long 9-foot 4X fluorocarbon leaders with weighted nymphs. I took an Abel disc drag reel, kinda the pinnacle of obsessively over-built trout reels, but it didn’t get much of a workout. For all the trout I caught I could have used a spool of bright yellow sewing thread, or kitchen twine, or bailing wire, with any of them tied to a stick I picked up on the riverbank. It would have been harder to cast, but I would have caught just as many fish.

In saltwater we fished with 8-weight rods and floating redfish lines, with 7-foot 16 lb leaders. We used the guide’s flies, which if you squinted real hard looked a bit like tarpon toads. They were prettier flies than what I use at home for redfish. My redfish flies look like deformed bits of cotton plucked straight from the boll and colored brown with a Magic Marker. I forgot to take a photo of the guide’s redfish flies.

We could have used the guides’ rods instead of hauling our own to Georgia, but how could we ever amortize their cost if we didn’t haul them with us? We gotta get our money’s worth.

Barbecue

I found a list of Georgia barbecue places on the internet, and on the way to Savannah we stopped at one. Because I didn’t particularly like the barbecue, I’m not going to mention it’s name. Just remember, it’s somewhere between Ellijay, Georgia, and Savannah. I’m sure there are better places than the one I chose, but Georgia being Southern I expected anything that made a list to be quality barbecue. This wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Maybe I’ll try again someday.

We did get a pretty good Cuban sandwich in Blue Ridge, but as a Texan I have strong barbecue opinions but am mostly ignorant about Cuban sandwiches. I thought it could have used some pickles, but what do I know?

Donuts

We stayed in the northside Atlanta suburbs for wedding festivities. Two mornings we ate Atlanta suburban donuts, once at a utilitarian donut shop next to a gas station, Marietta Donuts, and once at an artisanal donut shop, Doughnut Dollies. Both had good donuts, and Doughnut Dollies managed to walk that fine line between too much imagination on the one side and boredom on the other. That’s not easy to do when you’re hawking artisanal doughnuts. I especially liked the frosting on Doughnut Dollies’ strawberry and orange doughnuts. All that fruit made me feel healthy.

Restaurants

Ok, so the barbecue we tried wasn’t great, but we otherwise ate a lot of good food in Georgia. In eight days I gained eight pounds.

The first night we went to a Korean place, Woo Nam Jeong Stone Bowl House, on Atlanta’s Buford Highway. Atlanta seems mostly to be either Anglo (50.7% in the metro area) or black (32.4% in the metro area), but that’s mostly. There is a Hispanic and Asian population, and Buford Highway is this strange culinary accident where a lot of Asian and Hispanic mom and pop restaurants have landed. I could have gone back to that Korean place for every subsequent meal. The food was so elegant but at the same time so homey and delicious that it was impossible not to be happy. All those dishes of pickled stuff couldn’t have been more beautiful. And all the bowls matched, which is more than you can always say at our house.

I suspect I could eat for days on Buford Highway.

Lunch Saturday we ate at Mary Mac’s Tea Room. It’s an Atlanta meat-and-three African American institution that serves huge–and I mean really really huge–portions of Southern food. Covering the walls they had photos of famous people who’d eaten there. There were several of Jimmy Carter and, of all people, the 14th Dalai Lama. I guess the Dalai Lama knows a good meat-and-three when he sees it. They didn’t ask for my photo for the wall, but I suspect that’s only because I couldn’t clean my plate.

Sunday evening we ate at a Vegan Mexican/Cuban place, La Semilla. Vegan Mexican/Cuban seems to me a strange combination, more because of the Mexican/Cuban than the vegan, but it was completely successful and very hip. I’m sure some of that hipness rubbed off, and you’re now reaping the benefit. Our friend Shelley can’t eat dairy, and she declared the vegan queso the trip highlight, because queso.

In Savannah we ate at The Grey, which is one of Georgia’s best-known restaurants. They priced accordingly, but it was worth it. If nothing else, it’s located in the old Savannah Greyhound Bus station, and who can resist repurposed 1930s streamlined modern art deco architecture? We couldn’t decide what to eat, so we copped out and ordered the tasting menu. They also had the greatest cop-out martini ever, named for one of the owners who could never decide what she wanted. It was advertised as a mix of curated gins and vermouths, with both a twist of lemon and olives. It was the perfect martini for the indecisive, and could only have been improved if they’d both shaken and stirred it. It was excellent, and if I’d drunk two it would likely have been more excellenter. I only had one and I could still barely speak English.

We ate at Common Thread, which was also highly recommended, expensive, and excellent, and we got ice cream at Leopold’s because we were walking down the street and there was a line. Who can resist a line at an ice cream parlor, and if you can, why would you want to? There’s a lot of good food in Savannah. There’s a lot of good food in Georgia, though the jury’s out on the barbecue. Did I mention I gained eight pounds?

The Civil War

Georgia was the industrial heart of the Confederacy. From 1863 to War’s end, Georgia was the final focus of the Union’s Western campaign. After the Confederates under General Bragg defeated the Union under General Rosecrans at Chickamauga, Ulysses Grant took charge of the Western campaign. Grant changed the War. Under Grant, General Sherman led the Union in two of the most important campaigns of the War, the Battle of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. I had three great-great grandfathers at Atlanta, two Confederate, one Union. Those Union victories cut off the Army of Northern Virginia, and with Grant’s Virginia campaign the War ended.

Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863, was a major Union loss, and the War’s second bloodiest battle. There were more than 34,000 Union and Confederate casualties, and more than 4,000 deaths. That means that over three days, 34,000 Americans, Southern and Northern, were shot, stabbed, or blown up, and more than 4,000 of them died. The Union fought at Chickamauga to capture the Chattanooga railroad hub and open Georgia for Union invasion. The South fought to destroy the Union’s Army of the Cumberland. The South won the battle, but under Bragg they didn’t cripple the Union army. Because the South failed, two months later at Missionary Ridge Chattanooga fell to the Union under Grant. That defeat at Chattanooga may well have ended the South.

We visited the Chickamauga battlefield, and weirdly it’s in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Congressional District. It’s odd that one small region could produce two such catastrophes.

Chickamauga National Battlefield. Apple Maps.

Back to Atlanta. In addition to wedding festivities and eating, we visited the Botanical Garden and the High Art Museum, but best of all we visited the strange Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama at the Atlanta History Center. The History Center has a solid presentation about the Battle of Atlanta, of which the Cyclorama is only a part, but the Cyclorama is its own attraction. It’s a 358′ x 49′ hand painted canvas, which is a painting longer than a football field. It may be the largest oil painting in the world.

Some interesting tidbits about the Cyclorama. According to the history center, Southern troops at the Battle of Atlanta outnumbered Northern, but the Cyclorama was painted in the 1880s in Ohio, a Union state. In the painting the South is vastly outnumbered. When the Cyclorama was first moved to Atlanta in 1891, many of the Union soldiers were repainted with grey uniforms to show the South winning the battle. It’s a problem with history. It’s hard not to slant the presentation.

Where We Stayed

In Atlanta we stayed in the Roswell DoubleTree. It was fine, but where we stayed was less important than that we were in the suburbs, and (except for the Atlanta Brave’s Truist Park), a lot of Atlanta eateries and attractions seem to be located centrally within easy driving range of downtown. Every time we went somewhere–well every time we went somewhere other than Total Wine, REI, or the wedding–we had to drive 20 miles. If I ever go back to Atlanta, I’ll stay somewhere central.

In North Georgia we stayed at a B&B, the Overlook Inn. If you’re going to some relatively remote mountain destination, you’re statutorily required to stay in a B&B. It was pretty, and on our second night we ate dinner there. Kris always complains about B&Bs because on the mornings we fish we never get to eat the breakfast, but she didn’t complain about this place, maybe because our friends the Marmons were there. And the dinner we ate there–all four of us had the smoked trout–was great. The Georgia mountain views were also great.

In Savannah we stayed at a restored 1960s motor lodge, The Thunderbird Inn. Who doesn’t like a restored 1960s motor lodge? This one had everything you could want except Magic Fingers, a swimming pool, and free parking. The turndown service was a Moon Pie and RC Cola, and there was 24-hour coffee and popcorn in the lobby. The rooms were small, the colors bright, and the sign was neon, so it was almost perfect in every way. It was also very central, but everything in Savannah seems reasonably central.

Where We Didn’t Go

When we fished in North Carolina we stayed with our friend Bryan, and his family had given him a week in Blue Ridge, Georgia, for his birthday. We went to Blue Ridge, and we had a good Cuban sandwich there, but Bryan didn’t go to Blue Ridge for the Cubano. Bryan went to Bill Oyster’s six-day bamboo rod building class. He hadn’t been yet when we stayed with them, but later he sent me pictures of the classes and the rod he built.

Now I can’t find Bryan’s pictures. They’re on my computer somewhere, probably under my virtual bed, or in a virtual drawer in my virtual closet. They were great photos, and I was jealous. Bryan made a beautiful rod.

Bill Oyster is famous for his rod-building class, and maybe more famous for his bamboo rods and his metal engraving. Bamboo rods aren’t explicable. They’re best compared to an old Jaguar E Type, or a 1956 Martin D-28, or a first edition of Absalom, Absalom. It may not be the most useful thing in the world, but it’s so . . . irreplaceable, beautiful, timeless . . .

One of Bill Oyster’s bamboo rods built for Jimmy Carter. Photo shamelessly cadged from OysterBamboo.com

And Bill Oyster makes some of the most beautiful bamboo rods in the world. He made two for Jimmy Carter, who was a serious fly fisher. They were gorgeous things, with gorgeous engraving. Oyster told a story to the American Fly Fishing Museum about how he made the first rod for President Carter, and how Carter was going to fish it a bit, sign it, and then it would be sold as a fundraiser for the Carter Presidential Library. Carter fished it a bit and then told the Library that they’d better buy another because he wasn’t giving back the first.

I remember talking to Kris after Bryan went to Blue Ridge, and she just didn’t get it. Why would somebody pay good money to build something, when for the same money they could buy a rod from a real builder? I’m still baffled by her response. Why wouldn’t you want to build your own bamboo rod? And also the prices aren’t the same. The rod class currently costs $2,950–and almost all the classes for 2024 are full. Oyster also has some fly rods listed for sale online, and an 8′ 5 weight lists for $5,760. The cheapest rod listed is a 8′ 9 weight saltwater rod for $3,320.

8 5-weight Bill Oyster Master, photo shamelessly cadged from OysterBamboo.com

Isn’t that rod-building class a bargain?

I don’t know though. That 8′ 5 weight looks pretty sweet. I might have to get a prettier reel though. And I might have to give up some stuff, like food.

Benedetto Guitars are made in Savannah, but I’m afraid they’re out of my league. I guess Oyster fly rods are also out of my league.

Playlist

Georgia had a great music playlist. Blind Willie McTell, Gnarls Barkley, Harry James, R.E.M., Cat Power, James Brown, Trisha Yearwood, Gladys Knight, Little Richard, Fletcher Henderson, Otis Redding, The Allman Brothers, The B-52s, Ma Rainey, Indigo Girls, Jessye Norman, Robert Shaw, Robert Cray, Kaki King . . .

There’s also Atlanta HipHop, plus there all those great songs about Georgia. I could listen to Rainy Night in Georgia once a day from here on out, and never get tired of it. There’s Georgia on My Mind, I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train, Midnight Train to Georgia, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and if you get tired of those there’s Moon River and Skylark.

That playlist is good enough to keep me happy on a six-hour drive, through Georgia, on a rainy night.

Blind Willie McTell

Guitar

I took the Kohno and practiced some. I should have found a transcription of Moon River.

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Missouri Packing List

It’s been a few weeks and a trip to Cuba since we went to Missouri, but there are interesting things to add about Missouri, and by now the tornado is mostly forgotten.

Gear

We fished part of a day at Roaring River State Park. It’s a pretty Ozark mountain river, and it’s easy to wade. It was a bit crowded though. Why do I ever fish on a Saturday? Since Kris and I are both retired we don’t have to anymore, and having a place to ourselves is such a joy. Still, it was a pretty park, and we used typical trout set ups, 9′ 5-weight rods with floating lines. I caught two fish, both rainbow trout. We fished until the park trout permit pinned to my cap blew off and floated downriver.

The river is stocked from a nearby hatchery, and it was a mix of wild and stocked trout. For some folks stocked fish may seem like opportunity, but it’s always less desirable to fish for stocked fish than wild fish. I can’t usually catch much of either one, so I guess it’s not that one’s harder to catch than the other. Wild fish are just better.

I caught both trout on the Roaring River on a mop fly over a hare’s ear nymph, both fished under the surface. Mop flies are tied from one of those fuzzy mops, and are considered by some as a cheap trick. Don’t tell anyone that I used one.

I kinda like mop flies because you can get a lifetime supply of tying materials with a single trip to Walmart.

The next day we fished Crane Creek in Crane, Missouri, which is another pretty Ozark stream, and which is almost but not-quite famous. In the late 1800s, railroad workers dumped California McCloud River rainbow trout off of a railroad bridge into Crane Creek. Cane Creek hasn’t really been stocked much since, and the fish there today are the descendants of those original fish without significant interference. They may be the purest genetic strain of McCloud rainbows in the country, including those in the McCloud River.

Cane Creek

Stocking trout in rivers that support wild trout is controversial. It introduces non-native fish and diseases, and the stocked fish are just enough competition with the natives to hurt. The stockees don’t survive much either. The best-managed states, Montana for instance, have stopped stocking where there are wild trout, and a lot of the nation’s best rivers are never stocked. A creek that hasn’t been stocked, or a creek where stocking was abandoned, is a bit of a gem. That’s why a place like Crane Creek is someplace to look for.

We were there on a Sunday, and Crane Creek was also a little crowded, but I swear they were the nicest people I’ve ever come across on a river. We were at th park in the Town of Crane, population 1,495, and people invited me over to fish next to them. It was unnatural.

Crane Creek fish are small, and I fished with my tiniest rod. This is where I get goofy. Goofier. The truth is I buy fly rods and reels not because they’re better–almost every fly rod and reel is better than I am–but because they’re pretty. If I’m going to buy a reel, I don’t go in thinking that I want this reel because it has the very latest drag system and faster line retrieve, I buy it because I think it looks good. Of all the fly fishing gear I own–and I own a stupid amount of fly fishing gear–this is my prettiest rod and reel:

It’s an 8 1/2 foot Winston Boron IIIx 3-weight rod made in Montana, a rod that is way too lightweight for most of my fishing, and it’s just the loveliest shade of emerald green, with nickel silver fittings and a burled maple reel seat. The reel is a tiny Hardy Marquis 2/3 reel made in England. Are they appreciably better than any other 3-weight rod or reel? No. Could I have found a perfectly decent rod and reel for a third of the price? Absolutely. Are there any rods that look better? Well, maybe some custom classic bamboo. My goodness they’re pretty, and when the fish are small enough it just makes me idiotically happy to use them.

On Crane Creek I caught two small trout on a size 16 hare’s ear nymph under a size 14 royal Wulff, and Kris caught another. I picked the hare’s ear and royal Wulff because, well, they’re classic flies and I thought they matched that rod and reel. I’ve got standards, and I’m not fishing any mop flies with this rod.

Royal Wulff

Branson

I don’t like Branson. Am I being a snob? Of course. I have friends and family who love to go to Branson. I don’t.

There is a Trump Store, and there are shows.

I can’t think of anything worse than going to a show, unless it’s going to a Trump Store. You say the word show to me, and I feel queasy. Las Vegas? Oh lord, don’t make me go. I don’t gamble, and in Las Vegas there are shows. My daughter says the shopping is great in Las Vegas, but how can that be? I don’t think there’s a single fly fishing shop. Las Vegas at least has a minor league baseball team. I don’t think there’s any baseball in Branson.

The last show I went to voluntarily was Cirque de Soleil some 15 years ago, and I know those performers were miraculous, and that there are otherwise rational people who think that Cirque de Soleil is the best thing going. I know in my heart of hearts that that very show I went to was in all ways wonderful, but me? I was bored out of my mind. I’m still bored just thinking about it.

Maybe I need to go to a show with some mostly-naked ladies. At least I’d like the costumes.

In Branson, there are shows a-plenty, and what’s worse they’re all shows that revel in clean living. There’s Dolly Parton’s Stampede Dinner and Show, Hamners’ Unbelievable Magic Variety Show, WhoDunnit Hoedown and Murder Mystery Show, the Grand Jubilee Show, All Hands on Deck Show, Legends in Concert Show, Shepherd of the Hills Outdoor Drama Show . . . The list just won’t stop. You think you’re on a river in the Ozark backcountry away from all the shows, and you come across a flier for the Amazing Acrobats of Shanghai Show.

I’ve got nothing against clean living, and I consider myself a reasonably clean liver. I know and love several devout Baptists, and even some vegetarians, but clean living commodified into a show? I can’t think of a less appealing combination. Branson is one of those rare places where a soupçon of depravity would improve the moral tone.

I guess they do fish with mop flies, and plenty of people consider that depraved.

Donuts

We found two donut shops, though I’m sure there were more.

Parlor Doughnuts was a bit off the beaten path in a strip center. They sold gourmet donuts,((I’ve created a donut shop classification system, and there are four categories. Traditional shops include Houston’s Shipley’s, Krispy Kreme’s, Dunkin’, or the very best donut shop in the world, Ocean Springs, Mississippi’s Tato-Nut Doughnut Shop. Parlor Doughnuts is a chain in the Gourmet Category, and gourmet donuts are a bit more creative, with upscale whatnots coming to the fore. Portland’s Blue Star or Albuquerque’s Rebel come to mind. Experiential donut shops have let creativity run amock, and they are my least favorite kind of donut shop–I’m talking to you, VooDoo. A Cambodian donut shop is a clean, well-lighted place that is almost certainly located in a strip center. Everything is basic but good enough, and the owners are at the counter. Cambodian donutries can have flashes of brilliance–the boudin kolache was invented in a Cambodian donut shop and that deserves a Michelin star, or at least a James Beard nomination. It’s fusion cuisine at its finest.)) and the donuts were a bit elaborate for my taste, but I’d go back. I’d certainly go back if the choice was the other place we tried, Hurts.

Hurts is experiential. It’s next door to the Trump Store on the main drag, and it’s huge for a donut shop. There was a long line for the donuts. There were flavors like cotton candy, and cookie monster, and dirt worms, and every donut seemed created for a 9-year old, which I’m not. When I got to the counter, they were out of plain glazed.

The donuts were cold and forgettable. Kris wanted to chuck them and go back to Parlor.

AirBnB

We stayed in a nice pet-friendly AirBnB on the lake on the edge of town. It was just far enough from Branson’s center to forget where we were, and the owner left us a plate of cookies. They were good home-made cookies, too. There was an old canoe and a beat up bamboo fly rod hung as decorations above the fireplace, and I took that as a good omen. I sat on the enclosed porch and read Huck Finn, and, notwithstanding the No Trespassing signs, took the dogs for walks down to the lake. I’m pretty certain those signs weren’t meant for me.

Fly Shops

There are at least a couple of fly shops in Branson, but we only went to one, River Run Outfitters. We were supposed to fish with guides from the shop, but they talked us out of going. It was cold, in the 40s, and all the floodgates on the dam were open. The wind was gusting up to 40 mph. It was dangerous, and what’s worse we weren’t likely to catch anything. They gave us free coffee and good advice on where to fish instead. I bought some mop flies.

Restaurants

Branson is not a restaurant town. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of restaurants, but they all seem to have names like Hungry Hunter or Pickin’ Porch Grill. There are lots of barbecue places, but I’ve made the mistake of eating Missouri barbecue once before, in Kansas City, and I won’t do that again. Those people eat melted cheese on brisket, which should only be done in leftover brisket enchiladas.

The Keeter Center at College of the Ozarks promised farm to table dining, and I guess it was, but mostly everything just seemed big. Big room, big appetizers, big iced tea. . . Big ideology. I don’t know, it just didn’t click.

See that dish right there? That’s the Brussels sprout nachos appetizer, which as i recall was a lot of chopped up Brussels sprouts and feta on a lot of fried wontons. Had they artfully arranged four or five of those on a plate and charged me $12, I would have eaten them and said that’s ok, but that pile of stuff for $12 was too daunting. All I could think was man-oh-man, that’s big.

All of the waiters at Keeter Center are students at College of the Ozarks, and the hostess told us all about it, and then the waiter told us all about it. It’s a free Christian college, well, free in exchange for work. I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t have gone there without lots of conversations with a dean.

The next night we played it safe and went to two of Branson’s sushi joints, Mitsu Neko and Wakyoto. They were fine, and there were no Brussels sprouts. There was some kale, but I think it was purely decorative.

Playlist

Missouri has produced some magnificent music, and I’m still listening to that playlist. Josephine Baker was from St. Louis, and maybe I might have enjoyed one of her shows. From Wikipedia:

Her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927 caused a sensation in [Paris]. Her costume, consisting of only a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.

Now that’s a costume, and there are some fun recordings of her singing jazzy French stuff.

Missouri had great jazz. You wouldn’t think it, would you? But in the 1920s, Prohibition wasn’t really enforced there, and 18th and Vine in Kansas City was as lively as anyplace in the country. The Kansas City Big Bands had their own style, blusier than New York or Chicago, with a frantic quality that makes you drive just a little faster if your foot’s on the peddle. There are great black big bands, Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra, Andy Kirk, George E. Lee, Count Basie . . . Two of the great jazz saxophonists, Lester Young and Charlie Parker, both came out of Kansas City.

There’s rock ‘n roll, too. Big Joe Turner is a joy, then there’s Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner, Sheryl Crow, Michael McDonald, and T Bone Burnett. The Beatles went to Kansas City, or at least they were going.

St. Louis Blues has been covered by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Louis Prima, Doc Watson, Herbie Hancock, Eartha Kitt, Art Tatum, and Ella Fitzgerald, and if your name is Louis, you can still meet Judy Garland there.

Ojon Mill, Photograph of Lester Young, 1944, Time Magazine, Volume 17, Number 13, Public Domain.

Guitar

I took my old Kohno classical, and spent some time at night playing. I don’t remember what, but I’ve been working on an arrangement of Gershwin’s Somebody Loves Me. That’s likely.

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North to Alaska

When I say that we’re going to Alaska, people usually ask if we’re taking a cruise. I gather that cruises go from Seattle up through the Inner Passage, hitting some of the coastal towns along the way. In September, I could sail from Seattle to Alaska on the Carnival Spirit for as little as $579, plus taxes and port costs of $279. Is that per day? That’s cheaper than a flight to Anchorage from Houston.

It doesn’t matter. I can’t fly fish off of a cruise ship.

Photo by Ice Cream for Everyone, Sign at Quinhagak Airport, 2011, from Wikipedia.

Tourism employs one in eight Alaskans. About 2 million visitors arrive in Alaska every year, about half on cruise lines, and tourism is crammed into the four months from June to September. Alaska’s tourism mimics Alaska’s natural world: make hay while the sun shines. Far North winter survival depends on the solar energy stored during the long summer day. Everything blooms, grows, breeds, and feeds during summer, and that stored energy is then converted into winter survival. Alaskan tourism is on the same schedule.

Here’s an Alaska travel tip: everything is cheaper in February. In February, a hotel room that’s $400 in July only costs $150. A car that rents for $350 in July only costs $100. Flights are cheaper. Uber rides are cheaper. If you could find a lodge that thought fishing in Alaska in February was a good idea, the lodge would be cheaper.

There are no fishing lodges open in February, so like everybody else, we’re going now. Tomorrow we fly to Anchorage. Actually, because Houston flights to Anchorage are expensive, we’re flying Southwest on points to Seattle, then we’ll switch to Alaskan Air to fly to Anchorage. It makes for a longer day, but with 11-hour flights the day’s shot whatever we do.

It wasn’t obvious to me, but Anchorage isn’t really a destination, it’s a gateway. Visiting Anchorage seems a bit like visiting Fort Worth, or Albuquerque, or Salt Lake City–all nice cities, but after a day or so it’s time to move on. Because of the lack of roads in Alaska, to get out of town and actually see stuff you have to fly into Anchorage and then go elsewhere, as likely as not by train, or boat, or plane, but usually not by car. Not only are there few roads, but that $350-a-day July car rental is pretty steep. And even post-retirement, driving is just too much of a time commitment.

So we fly to Anchorage, and after a short train excursion and another day of piddling, we fly in a 9-passenger charter plane 300 miles west to the coastal Native Alaskan village of Quinhagak, population 776, elevation 38 feet, on the Kuskokwim Bay of the Bering Sea.

I don’t have any clue about how to pronounce this stuff.

Quinhagak sits on a delta, a huge delta, with more in common geologically with the Mississippi Delta than with Glacier Bay or Denali. We’re going to a flat, treeless coastal plain of raggedy fishing villages and countless mosquitos. Maybe that’s why we picked it. It sounds a lot like home.

Google Earth

From Quinhagak, we travel by jet boats up the Kanektok River, to a tent village where we’ll stay for the next six nights. It’s a nice tent village, at least according to the website. According to the website we’re actually going a’glamping. There are showers, there’s a dining hall, and there’s even a drying tent for boots and waders. Because it’s technically within the boundaries of Quinhagak, there’s no alcohol. Quinhagak is dry.

I didn’t know it was possible to fish without a wee dram at the end of the day. We didn’t notice that clause when we booked, and I suspect they keep it in the fine print. Alaska is marijuana friendly, but we’ll skip that as well.

Google Earth

We’re bringing along a lot of baggage, sort of.

For the flight from Anchorage to Quinhagak, we’re each limited to 50 pounds of luggage and a 15 pound carry-on. There are currently three resident gamefish and three salmon runs in the Kanektok; king salmon, sockeye salmon, chum salmon, rainbow trout, arctic char, and Dolly Varden, ranging in size from 50 pounds to a few pounds. I can’t catch a 50-pound fish on the same rod I’d use for a two-pound fish, and it’s no fun catching a two pound fish on the same rod I’d use for a 50-pound fish, so that means a lot of our weight limit is made up of six single-handed rods, three apiece, plus one big game rod for the king salmon, and a dainty 5 weight just because, well, just because. The big king salmon are usually fished on long, 13-foot double-handed rods, spey rods, so that’s two more rods apiece. Then we’re taking another lighter spey rod for backup. It’s a lot of rods.

Egg-sucking leech

And the rods aren’t really the heavy part. Every rod has a reel, and a lot of the reels are massive things. Those long spey rods are counterbalanced by heavy big game reels that must weigh a couple of pounds apiece, and each of the single-handed rods has both a floating line on the reel and a sinking line on a spare spool. It’s a lot of metal, and along with our boots and waders, fishing gear takes up a good chunk of that 50 pounds.

Intruder

We can bring home 40 pounds of salmon apiece, though you can’t harvest the kings. If we do bring salmon back, it will be the most expensive sockeye ever eaten.

We’re also taking flies, not that flies weigh much, but I’ve been tying flies for Alaska for months. There are big gaudy flies for the king salmon, and smaller flashy flies for the sockeye. Sockeye are filter feeders, and in the ocean feed mostly on zooplankton, but they may also eat small shrimp. The flashy sockeye flies are tied to mimic tiny bright crustaceans.

Flesh Fly

Or maybe not. Who knows why salmon strike flies?

Anyway, the weirdest flies are the trout flies. In the Lower 48, trout flies are mostly lovely, delicate things with lovely, delicate names like quill gordon, prince nymph, meat wagon . . . ok, forget that latter. They imitate mayflies, or caddis flies, or stoneflies, or perhaps a wind-blown hopper or small baitfish or crayfish.

In Alaska the flesh flies imitate rotting salmon.

Flesh flies, mice, leaches, egg-sucking leaches, sculpin, fish eggs . . . there’s no part of this that sounds lovely and delicate. The lodge lists bass poppers in its fly lists.

At least the forecast is for warm and sunny days in Quinhagak. Just kidding

That’s ok. Fish like rain.

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Kentucky Packing List

Gear

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

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

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

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

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

Whiskey

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

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

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

KyBourbonTrail.com

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

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

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

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

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

Where We Stayed

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

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

Where We Didn’t Go

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

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

Restaurants

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

I had stuffed cabbage.

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

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

Route

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

Music

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

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

My Morning Jacket always satisfies.

Main Street, Paradise Kentucky, 1898. From Wikipedia.

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

Guitar

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