Tag: Reels

Posted on

Washington Playlist

What We Took

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

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

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

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

Victoria, B.C.

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

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

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

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

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

We had two very strange encounters.

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

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

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

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

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

Seattle, Wa.

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

What We Didn’t Do

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

What I Lost

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

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

Donuts

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

Playlist

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

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

More Florida Playlist

Gear

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

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

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

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

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

Flies

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

The Canals

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

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

Hotels

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

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

Restaurants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donuts

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

Playlist

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

Posted on

Idaho Playlist

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

What We Took

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What We Lost. Where We Didn’t Go.

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

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

What We Ate.

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

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

Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baseball

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

Birds

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

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

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

Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

Chicago Flyfish, Smallmouth, September 1, 2019

We fished with Kurt Nelson, co-owner of Midwest Waters Anglers. I picked Midwest by the worst possible method: I googled Chicago – flyfish – guide, and they were the first website that popped up. It’s a good website, and I got lucky, Kurt’s a fine guide. Illinois isn’t exactly a destination fishery, and Kurt said most of his clients lived in the City or are in Chicago for family or business. Like me probably a lot of people get to Kurt via Google.

Midwest Waters apparently guides several rivers around the City, and where we fished was the most urban, but Kurt said his other rivers were blown out from rain. We fished the 28-mile DuPage River, in Chicago suburbia, from Plainfield eight miles down river to Joliet. We were usually isolated by vegetation, but sometimes we floated past backyards, and sometimes we could hear the whack of golf balls from the golf course and race a golf cart. We passed under roadways and train tracks and power lines that sizzled with current. We passed by large engines that we couldn’t see but that were too large for tractors and too immobile for trains. There were some kayakers, but not many–during the summer there would be a tube hatch, but not this late. For such an urban place the river and the banks were surprisingly clean.

We put in at a canoe launch near Plainfield. Kurt fished a StealthCraft drift boat with a 30 HP Yamaha jet motor. That’s a pretty big motor, but we only used it as a convenient snag for my fly line.  Even with the obstacle I would rather fish from a drift boat than just about anything, and this was a big comfortable boat. There are, after all, always obstacles just waiting to snag your fly line. My feet never got wet, and I’m certain that thanks to the boat it never rained. Ok, maybe not that last.

There was steady current from bank to bank, without a lot of river drama: we weren’t reading seams or casting to rocks. We did look for eddies, but they were always where a tree or bank cut stopped the current for a few feet. There was some water clarity, not much but some. It was also overcast, which didn’t help visibility. Kurt said it was usually clear enough to sight cast, clear in part because of invasive zebra mussels. We fished for smallmouth, though I did cast for carp once or twice, casting to mud puffs in the water. Kris caught a nice fish early on a medium yellow popper, ten minutes from the launch. It was dark green with bronze fins, a couple of pounds, exactly what a smallmouth should be.

Over the course of the day I fished a big deer hair frog and medium yellow poppers, Bougles, both cast to the banks then drifted like dry flies with periodic pops or gurgles. I never catch fish with frogs, and I didn’t disappoint this time. Consistency is important, and bad juju with frogs is one of those things at which I’m consistent. They always look so excellent, cost so much, and then fail me because, well, me. I just can’t fish them with conviction.

Kurt Nelson photo

I caught some fish on the poppers, at least one anyway, and Kris happily fished poppers most of the day. Most of the fish I caught were on a purple conehead woolly bugger variant, maybe a size 6 or 8, tied with grizzly hackle and lots of green rubber legs wrapped behind the conehead. I fished them like a dead drift nymph, waiting for any line tick or hesitation. That was new for me and woolly buggers, which I usually retrieve like a streamer. Since the fly often ticked along the bottom I must have hook set a thousand times for the five or six fish I caught. If Kurt had charged by the hook set he’d be a rich man. 

I really should learn to take pictures of the flies I fish. I never take enough pictures.

I caught my biggest fish, about two pounds, when for some reason I let the line rest midstream on my a backcast, and then Kurt yelled did you see that! when I picked up to cast. Of course I didn’t see it. I was facing the bank and my back was to the fly. I lay the fly down and the smallmouth came again for it. Luck, dumb luck, I wish I could be as consistently good with luck as I am consistently bad with big deer hair frogs. 

Kurt Nelson photo

There was lots of riverside vegetation, and lots of floating grass from the week prior’s rain. I did plenty of vegan fishing in the trees, and most retrieves required grass removal. There was river grass piled at my feet where I cleaned the line and my fly.  Sorry Kurt.

I reckon we cast a thousand times between us, and by the end of the day my shoulder ached and my forearm began to cramp. We cast, and then cast some more, and then cast for a while. By late in the day we were worn out and lazy, just flinging the fly to any old place and maybe letting it sit just a wee bit longer than strictly speaking could be considered fishing as opposed to hanging out.

We didn’t take our own rods, and one of the things I realized was how much I like to fish with guides’ stuff. They pick their stuff well. Kurt fished nice Hatch reels, but more striking were the rods, one piece rods, which I’d never cast before. Used to be ferrules were considered a design flaw and the fewer the better, but even then one piece rods were rare. These were Loomis IMG Pros, 8’10, 7 weight for me and 8 weight for Kris, and casting was a joy. Yeah, there were lots of tangles in grass and trees, but I never minded taking risks with that rod, and most of my casts did more or less what I wanted them to do, which was first not to hook me or anybody else and second to go somewhere in the vicinity of the bank.

Kurt fished short leaders, maybe 7 feet, but they were longer than what I usually use for bass, and they were tapered a bit, with a butt of maybe 25 pound and a 16 pound tippet.  He said that sometimes he used a mid section, but that because of the floating grass he wanted fewer knots. The leader worked well though, and the flies turned over. The grass I caught was usually on the flies anyway, and the single knot was rarely a problem.  

The fly line was a bass line with an aggressive front taper, maybe a Rio smallmouth line? I fished a streamer for a bit, a pretty white baitfish thing tied on maybe a size 4, on an intermediate tipped sinking line. That line was a monster. It was also a magnet for grass, so I didn’t fish it long.

Kurt pointed out something interesting, something that explained a lot to me about smallmouth.  Some fish fight the hook, some fish don’t, and then there are variations in between. I’ll never understand, for instance, the Gulf Coast popularity of speckled trout: it’s like catching grass on an Illinois river. Once hooked it’s done, and even the hook-up isn’t all that exciting. Largemouth are great fun but it’s mostly fun in the violence of the first few minutes, especially for bigger fish. Smallmouth never give up. They take like largemouth and then they don’t stop until they’re in the net. Then they swim away.

Like I said, Illinois is not a destination fishery, but Chicago is a destination city. While I’m in no hurry to fish the DuPage again, I’ll fish again near Chicago next time I’m there. I’d fish with Kurt again in a heartbeat. It reminded me of the Broken Bow in Oklahoma, not the river itself, but how the river fits in its space. If you live near there, in Dallas or Tulsa for the Broken Bow or Chicago for the DuPage, if that is your river, it is a very good river. No one will ever know and appreciate that river like the angler who gets to fish it three or four times every summer, year after year. You can learn a lot on the DuPage, not because it’s magnificent, or beautiful, or any sort of superlative, but because of days floated and green and bronze fish, some lost, some caught, some watched, because special knowledge of that river is yours. You could learn everything you need to know about fly fishing on that river, and with Kurt. I liked the river, but I was a visitor for a day. It would be an entirely different place if it were home. It could be a good home.

Follow Fifty Flyfish on Facebook. Illinois was state 14.