Tag: Reels

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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.

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Pike! Connecticut River, June 29, 2019.

On Saturday we planned to wade fish a half day to finish off New Hampshire, then drive south four hours to Manchester for Sunday’s flight. Our guide, Chuck DeGray, said that instead of wading we should go south, down to Lancaster where the Connecticut starts warming and where instead of trout there are smallmouth and pike. We would fish for pike. He said we might not catch anything, we might not see anything, but that it was worth the try, because to heck with trout Chuck loves to fish for pike! This was the second time on the trip that a guide had said I like this, let’s try it, and the first had worked well. Pike!

Going south put us an hour closer to the airport at the end of fishing. If we didn’t take a long lunch we could fish all day and still get off the river early, and we could fish for something we’d never fished for. This was a really good plan.

When I called the Lopstick originally I’d asked about trips for pike, pike were listed on their website. Maybe it was my imagination but they seemed hesitant to send some Texas bozo after pike, and after our muskie adventure I didn’t push it. I’d already proved I couldn’t catch muskie, and I didn’t need to prove I couldn’t catch pike. But Chuck said pike, and thanks to King George II’s foresight we had already caught our fish in New Hampshire, so Pike!

This far north the Connecticut River isn’t large. It’s the longest river in the Northeast, going south 406 miles to Long Island Sound. As a comparison the Red River, the one that separates Texas and Oklahoma, is 1600 miles long, but even growing up next to it no one ever suggested let’s go fish the Red River. The upper Connecticut where we fished both days isn’t big, and on our two days it was easy to float, but it’s hard to access. It’s lined with bluffs and wooded banks and farmland, and the soft river bottom would make it hard to wade. It’s a long float sort of river.

Most of our floats it averaged maybe 150 feet across, and the day before Kris had often fished the left bank while I made a reasonably credible effort to fish stuff on the right. In normal flows it’s shallow, too, maybe five or six feet towards the center. Like they say in Galveston Bay, if you fall out of the boat the first thing you should do is stand up.

There aren’t any pike in Texas, pike are about as exotic for me as Seychelles giant trevally or Brazilian dorado so I had to study up. They are an ambush predator, which means they’re an all things come to those who wait kind of fish. They sit, they blend, they don’t cruise, and then they attack. They are demon fast from standstill to strike, and I can now attest that the strikes are unforgettable. This is not a fish that sips a fly. This is road rage.

Pike are muskie’s closest kin, and in their waters both are apex predators. Muskie grow larger, but the fish fill the same niche, Apparently they can be hard to tell apart. Pike are native both to North America and Europe, muskie only to North America.

Pike are named after the Middle Ages thrusting weapon which is also called, luckily enough, the pike. The fish look like a pike and they attack like a pike. Until gunpowder came into its own in the 18th century pike were a serious infantry weapon. As late as 1850, when John Brown planned to lead slaves in rebellion from Harper’s Ferry, he had 500 pikes made in Connecticut. Rebelling slaves were going to flock to Harper’s Ferry, be armed with Brown’s pikes and with guns from the armory, and end slavery forever. John Brown made some bad guesses about what would happen at Harper’s Ferry, and it must be the last time that anyone seriously considered using pikes as weapons, but it’s a good name for the fish. There’s something ancient and vicious about them.

In a fishy way pike are foul-tempered, and why wouldn’t they be? Just think how you’d feel if you’d watched your mother eat your little brother for lunch? Especially when you’d been saving him for yourself?

Pike have teeth, both rows of the sharp pointy kind and the Velcro-like fishy plates of teeth on the roof of their mouth. Once in, never out. A full grown pike can have up to 600 teeth. I was glad Chuck was there to take out the hooks because, well, fingers. I like having fingers.

We fished with 8 weights which is probably the weight we fish most often. I’m fairly sure there are New Hampshirite anglers who have never lifted an 8 weight, but for us they felt like home. They were matched to Orvis Mirage reels, big game reels loaded with sinking lines. I fished with an Orvis Recon rod. Coincidentally for Muskie in Wisconsin I’d fished with a ten weight Recon. It’s a fine series of rods, and after fishing with Chuck’s Orvis Access–Orvis’s older model entry-level rod– the day before I suspect that from the top of the line to bottom the Orvis rods are as consistently well designed as any rods on the market. I don’t usually fish them, but I see why Kris trusts them.

These were big flies and big fish, but it was easy enough to fish the 8 instead of a 10. The pike flies weren’t quite as big as the foot-long muskie flies. Most were only about six or seven inches, but still, these were some mighty big flies. Big rods. Big flies. Foul-tempered fish.

Chuck ties flies for part of his living so he has to tie a lot of flies fast. He said that it could take 20 minutes or longer to tie a single pike fly. The flies were gaudy things, with lots of bright colors and tinsel flash and wiggly tails. He said he sold some pike flies, but he tied a lot for himself. I’d figured out earlier that we’d be in Pittsburg, N.H., for the North Woods pride parade, and there we were, with all the feathers and tinsel we could have wanted.

Our leaders were short, four feet of probably 20 pound straight tippet ending in a 50 pound fluorocarbon bite guard of a couple of feet, and then the fly. The bite guard,—remember 600 teeth—was about as thick as kite string, but made out of the strong, abrasion-resistant flourocarbon. Toothy things ain’t leader shy. For comparison, we use a 60-pound fluorocarbon bite guard in Belize fishing, at least in concept, for 100-pound tarpon.

We fished the flies like we would have fished for river bass; cast as close as possible to the bank or structure, retrieve in short, steady strips, and then do it again. And then do it again. And then do it again. We didn’t fish the flies on the bottom of the river. They ran a couple of feet under the surface, though in deeper water I’d let the fly sink three or four feet. There was good water clarity, and I rarely lost sight of the fly.

There were downed trees in the river, and of course Kris was hung up on an underwater log when I cast under a tree and caught the first pike. Kris was snagged, Chuck was trying to net the fish and hold the boat and manage the anchor and telling me to take the rod over his head so the fish would come into his cradle net, and I was trying to keep my line and my rod out of the overhead branches. This was the Three Stooges doing battle, but the pike was caught, and for all the teeth and violence I was surprised at how pretty it was.

The colors were different with each fish caught. They were brighter silver or greener, more yellow or no yellow. The difference was radical from fish to fish. But they are so perfectly put together for what they are. Apex predators. Ambush predators. Beautiful fish.

They also fought hard. I’d read that notwithstanding their size muskie don’t put up much of a fight, not that I would know, but there was plenty to the pike. They even came out of the water to try and shake the hook. I ended up catching three and lost one, but Kris caught one and probably had three more fish come off. They didn’t make long runs, but they thrashed hard and pulled hard.

The fish I remember best was the one I didn’t land, that I never saw. I’d lost sight of the fly and then it stopped, snagged on some underwater debris. I raised my rod to unsnag it and it wasn’t snagged at all. Something big gave a great heave and roll and thrash and bit through the bite guard. It bit through the 50 pound bite guard and it was gone. I often remember fishing failures better than successes, but that was a magnificent failure.

We’ve been planning next year’s trips. I’ve suggested we go back for another shot at south Florida, though I hate to lose my special status as the only person in the world who can’t catch fish in Florida. Kris wants South Carolina. I want to do a Southwest tailwater tour in April, the Green in Utah, Lee’s Ferry in Arizona, and end on the San Juan in one long drive. And I’ve thought about Michigan, fishing the Ausable, and then around through the Upper Penninsula to Hayward, Wisconsin, for another shot at muskie, then down into the Wisconsin and Iowa driftless region for trout. I suspect as things get better sorted we might, just might throw some pike into that last northwoods mix. To heck with trout, pike! Maybe Chuck will sell us some flies.

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Waloomsac River, Vermont, June 25, 2019

“Waloomsac River, is a small stream, which is formed in Bennington by the union of several branches, which rise in Glastenbury, Woodford and Pownal. It takes a northwestern direction, leaves the state near the northwest corner of Bennington and unites with Hoosac river, nearly on the line between Washington and Rensalaer counties, N.Y. Between this stream and Hoosac river was fought the Bennington Battle. On the Waloomsac and its branches are many good mill privileges and some fine meadows.”

Zadock Thompson, A Gazetteer of the State of Vermont, 1824, Montpelier, Vermont, E.P. Walton, Printer.

We stayed two days in Manchester, Vermont. There is a famous river near Manchester. It’s famous because since at least the 1960s Orvis has sold a fine series of reels dubbed Battenkill, and also sold a high-dollar bamboo rod of the same name. The reels are pretty things, always made by somebody else and marketed by Orvis, and I have a couple from the early 90s when they were made in England. Bamboo rods are always pretty, and the Battenkill particularly so, and I don’t have one of the rods, dammit. If the reels are that good though, and the rods that pretty, then the river must be good too, right? So I had a vague notion heading to Vermont that the Batten Kill was the place to fish.

The Batten Kill though doesn’t get that great of reviews. Apparently it’s pretty, but has better name recognition than fish. Our guide, Christian Betit, with Taconic Guide Service, wanted us to fish the Waloomsac near Bennington, a tiny river that runs 16 miles from Vermont across the New York border where it joins the Hoosic. Part of its course takes it along the edge of Bennington, and for a bit the Waloomsac becomes an urban waterway in one of the least urban states in the Northeast.

Bennington was a mill town, and is now a town sans mills. It’s not a wasteland, but it’s not the Ritz either. Mills were built in Bennington in the 19th century in part because of water power, Waloomsac water power specifically, and a diversion dam ran much of the flow out of the Waloomsac proper through Bennington. The old mills died somewhere in the last century, and while some remain vacant or were torn down, others house small businesses such as the de rigueur craft brewery and a racing snowshoe manufacturer. We don’t have many showshoe races in Houston, so the existence of a racing snowshoe manufacturer was pretty remarkable.

“[The Waloomsac’s] a pretty little freestone stream that has suffered the same kinds of neglect as the area through which it flows, so it’s not odd to find an old car battery or lawn furniture half-buried in the gravel riverbed. But despite this evidence of man’s folly, the stream is home to beautiful trout —some wild, some stockers that have migrated from elsewhere in the system. I’d been introduced to the particular hidden stretch of water along Benmont by a couple of colleagues, who referred to the spot as ‘The Sh*thole'” 

Phil Monahan, The Trout Stream That No One Else Wanted, Orvis News, June 29, 2017.

If I’ve got the history right, the diversion dam was removed, and the Waloomsac flow was restored. The Bennington sewer plant ain’t the very thing and it discharges into the Waloomsac, but in 2017 the City voted $9.9 million in bonds to fix the plant. I figured if they started from the election it should take about a year to prepare plans, issue bonds, and bid construction contracts, and then another year or two to complete construction. This is why I tell my children: Always vote yes for bonds! Well that and because I’m a bond lawyer, and they should support their father in his dotage.

Vermont Fish & Wildlife began stocking the river in 2014 with trophy rainbows and browns, fish at least 14 inches long, so there are good fish. We didn’t fish Phil Monahan’s raggedy water behind the Taco Bell, so I don’t know if it too has been improved, but what we fished was lovely, with overhanging trees and clear water. We put in at the picturesque Henry Street Bridge and fished downstream towards the New York border. It was a Tuesday, and nobody else was on the water.

That largest dark blotch is a snapping turtle in the Waloomsac. In Texas, snapping turtles are an indicator species for good water quality. That’s a good thing.

Because of Christian and anglers like Christian the Waloomsac seems to be having its moment, and seems to be getting the attention it deserves. Vermont like a lot of states has a fishing season, and the Waloomsac is one of the few Vermont rivers Vermonters can fish year around. I gather that there are Vermont anglers who will in fact fish in the middle of a Vermont winter, and so a bunch of crazy people know and care about the Waloomsac.

“More than 20 volunteers worked to clean up a section of the Walloomsac River on Saturday morning. The volunteers pulled out bicycles, scrap metal, tires, wheels, and a propane tank from the Walloomsac, a popular recreation spot and cold water fish habitat.”

Edward Damon, Volunteers pitch in to clean up Walloomsac River, The Bennington Banner, August 1, 2016.

So I was on a nice river with an eager guide and my lovely fishing partner and notwithstanding all of that I was in a foul mood. It was raining. Okay, it was a light, pleasant rain and I knew it would be raining, but still it was wet and grey and a wee bit dreary. Launching the boat I slipped on a rock and fell down in the river. I wasn’t hurt except for that whole pride thing, and I didn’t get water in my waders. Still. That pride thing.

And I wasn’t catching any fish. For the first two hours I caught no fish. Kris caught fish. She hooked three fish while we were fishing at the boat launch. Not that I would let Kris’s good fortune ever blacken my mood. Oh no, not me. I’m surely above that. But dang, right at the launch?

Then I broke my rod. It was the new R.L. Winston 5 weight Pure that Trout Unlimited had sent me for perfect attendance, and I broke the rod tip when I slammed a weighted streamer into it on a forward cast. Now mind, I knew theoretically that sort of thing could happen, but in my earlier years I must have slammed a thousand woolly buggers into a thousand rod tips and come out fine. Now when I don’t do that sort of thing very often I finally break a rod tip. Worse still it was just after I’d finally hooked and lost a couple of fish. Poor Christian, he had an angler in a dark mood smashing rod tips and he had to loan him a rod to finish the day. I’m not sure I’d have done it.

But Christian loaned me a rod and he pulled out the day. At one point late in the morning–we were on a half-day float–Christian was pondering our final stretch, a nine-foot deep hole, and I watched him think through the alternatives and come up with an appropriate answer: an indicator high on the butt of the leader, a lot of weight, and a random buggy brown pheasant tail nymph variant–random to me, but presumably not to Christian. I’d fished much the same rig before, not that I would have thought of it, but with a different fly it’s the going concern on San Juan River drifts. Watching Christian think through his approach was a joy. He’d worked hard all morning and even with a cranky old guy in the back of his boat he was still working hard. And then I caught five nice rainbows in about 30 minutes. Not that my mood would brighten because I caught fish.

Oh no, not me. Man I love the Waloomsac.

*

We went to Manchester in the first place because Orvis is there, and there is both an outlet store (which is huge) and a separate flagship store (which is huger). American-made Orvis rods are also made in Manchester, though the corporate offices are in Sunderland on the way from Manchester to Bennington.

Manchester is decidedly upscale. We stayed in the Equinox Resort which dates back to a tavern founded before the Revolution, and it was pretty posh. Kris was convinced that Tiger Woods was in the resort with us, though the guy she thought was Woods was sitting behind a pillar in the dining room and I couldn’t get a good look. It might have been Tiger Woods. Woods wasn’t playing at the PGA Rocket Mortgage Classic, so he had to be somewhere, and the guy in the dining room was wearing a golf shirt, plus the Equinox is the kind of place where Tiger Woods might be staying. It could have been Tiger Woods.

Including the Equinox, I counted three pretty big resort hotels within a mile of each other on Main Street. There were good restaurants (though my duck breast glazed with maple syrup came off a bit like duck breast pancakes). Not even counting the Orvis stores, there were enough outlet shops–Ralph Lauren, Kate Spade, Vineyard Vines, and Brooks Brothers among others–to keep a shopper happy. The Orvis stores were enough for us, though we did find a great laundromat. The Orvis stores were magnificent temples to the fly fishing shopping gods, and there were great deals on Helios 2 rods in the outlet store. I went looking and found an Orvis bamboo rod in a glass case in the flagship store. It was one of the newer models, not a Battenkill, and I didn’t buy it this time either.

Instead I bought two size twelve brown drake flies, because that’s the sort of thing one has in one’s flybox in Vermont. You never know when you might need one. I wouldn’t anyway.

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Alabama Packing List

What We Took.

Rods

On the Tallapoosa we didn’t expect big fish. We threw a lot of stuff in the car, helter skelter, but we intended to fish with five weight rods, and that’s all we set up for the float. Kris had her Helios D3, and I had the new Winston Pure that Trout Unlimited had sent me for my high school graduation.

So far I’ve caught largemouth, bluegill, longear, redeye, Alabama bass, and a really big catfish on the Pure. It’s an excellent trout rod I’m sure, and someday I plan to catch a trout with it. With the rod Trout Unlimited also sent a Cheeky Reel, which must be the single gaudiest unobtrusive reel ever made. It’s an electric blue and green. It’s also disk drag, smooth and silent, and I don’t fish much with five weight disk drags, smooth and silent. After I put it on the rod I never really noticed the reel was there. Like I said, at once gaudy and unobtrusive.

I have lots of five weight reels, so I loaded the new reel with something different for streamers and poppers, a Scientific Anglers half-weight heavy MPX line. I don’t know what MPX stands for, but I’m used to big weight forward lines for redfish and bass and I liked the MPX. It’s probably the worst possible combination with the Pure, mixing a medium slow rod with a half-weight heavy line to make it faster, but there you are. The combination worked fine for Alabama, where neither the bass nor the legislature is big on subtlety.

I do have one beef with the Winston rod. It has a hook keeper, a rather large, sharpish hook keeper which when combined with the cigar grip and my choked up hand position rubbed my index finger raw. Does anyone actually use hook keepers? Why are they still put on rods? I guess I’ve got lots of rods with hook keepers and cigar grips, but that combination on the Pure really rubbed me the wrong way. All afternoon. And it’s an ugly hook keeper too, and ugliness isn’t part of the whole Winston thing.

Flies

My leaders were a highly technical design: Three or four feet of 20 pound fluorocarbon joined to three or four feet of 16 pound fluorocarbon by a blood knot. They worked fine.

A month or so before we went to Kansas Alabama I lost most of my bass and sunfish flies, four fly boxes worth. They were returned by a Good Samaritan, but not before I’d frantically tied a bunch of new flies, including (at the suggestion of a Kansan I’d been emailing) some Barr’s slumpbusters. Other than the disreputable baseball tie-in, I really like that fly, and fished it about a third of our river time in Alabama. I also tied some BBBs, woolly buggers, and clousers, and used none of them. I tied everything but the BBBs on size 8 streamer hooks, so they should be fine as well for our New York/Vermont/New Hampshire trout swing at the end of June. Of course the whole point of that trip is to learn something about dry flies, so I shouldn’t use them. I really shouldn’t.

The rest of the time we fished poppers. Craig didn’t bother calling them anything but Boogles, which is exactly right. I know there are people out there who tie their own poppers, but I never could get them painted in a way that made me happy, so I am happy to use Boogles. Craig fished with an intermediate size, neither as large nor as small as the ones I usually use. I’m going to have to buy some intermediate Boogles. East Alabama Fly Fishing has an excellent discussion on popper colors, and when to use them. It’s the kind of cool stuff that Craig and the guide service owner, Drew Morgan, are thinking about.

New Shoes

I’m a biting bug magnet. This spring alone I’ve suffered from infestations of gnats, mosquitoes, and fire ants. There’s nothing quite like a couple of hundred fire ants together with your feet in a pair of Keen sandals.

I figure that I’m not likely to pay more attention, so I bought a pair of cornflower blue Converse high tops for our trip to Kansas Alabama. Paired with running socks and some supplemental arch support for the aged they’re pretty comfortable. There’s reasonable traction, and I don’t have to worry about fire ants between my toes. Plus the cornflower blue matches my eyes when I stick my foot in my mouth.

The laces will catch a fly, so it’s another reason to debarb hooks.

I think Kris prefers snake boots, and the Chuck Taylors probably don’t provide much snake protection.

Restaurants, Barbecue

Coming into Alabama, the lady at the visitor center sent us to a Dick Russell’s for barbecue. It wasn’t really so much a barbecue place as a plate-and-three place, with an incredibly good two instead of three and pretty mediocre barbecue as the meat. I had turnip greens and black-eyed peas, and I’d go back for them. They also didn’t have white sauce barbecue, which southern Alabama is known for: Mayonnaise, vinegar, brown sugar, mustard, horseradish, salt and pepper. It sounds awful for pork or beef, but is supposed to be great on chicken.

In Montgomery everyone I talked to told us to eat at Central, which was around the corner on the same block as our hotel. It was the kind of elegant modern American place which seems to be everywhere and because of which the world is better off, and on a Saturday night it was crowded. One of the servers suggested Cahawba for biscuits the next morning for their breakfast biscuit sandwiches. The cheese in the eggs was a bit much, but the biscuits were excellent. I’ve never baked a decent biscuit, though from time to time I try. Because of my own failures I admire the craft of a good biscuit.

Back in Mobile heading home we ate breakfast at Time to Eat, which had the only Amnesty International and Human Rights Campaign stickers on doors in Alabama, and a smoking room. We accidentally ate in the smoking room. It had good grits, and the view of the locals coming in to smoke and drink coffee was pretty memorable.

In Louisiana we tried to get po’ boys in Lafayette, one of the great po’boy towns, but everyplace was closed for Memorial Day.

Where We Didn’t Go

We didn’t see Birmingham, home of both the AA Birmingham Barons and the former Negro League Birmingham Black Barons, for whom Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, and, of all people, Charlie Pride played. Pride and another player were apparently traded to the Barons in 1956 by the Louisville Clippers for a team bus. Everyone seems to like Birmingham, and it was once, along with Memphis and Atlanta, the industrial heart of the South.

The Northern part of the state is supposed to have gorgeous waterfalls. Our guide Craig Godwin said it was the prettiest part of the state.

We didn’t try enough barbecue, and we didn’t catch a redfish on the coast. The same server who suggested Cahawba for biscuits suggested the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, Montgomery having been Zelda’s home. It didn’t open until noon on Sunday, so we didn’t make it.

Playlist

I didn’t know that Charlie Pride played for the Birmingham Black Barons, or he would have been included.

  • Alabama Shakes. This is one of those bands I follow because of their appearance on Austin City Limits. There’s just nothing not to like, except that I guess they may not exist any more.
  • Emmylou Harris. I probably have more Emmylou Harris music than anything else. For someone who doesn’t write many songs, she’s consistently had the best taste in music, and has a liberating way of making other people’s songs her own. I actually needed to cut 50 or so songs so I could hear something else, but I just never got around to it. She was a military brat, and didn’t spend much time in Alabama after she was born there, but being born there was enough of an excuse to listen to Emmylou. And of course there was “Boulder to Birmingham.”
  • John Prine, “Angel From Montgomery.” I had versions by Susan Tedeschi and Bonnie Raitt, but oddly I first knew the song from a high school John Denver record. It was a good version.
Handy’s Memphis Orchestra, 1918.
  • Paul Simon, “Loves Me Like a Rock,” “Kodachrome.” First I ever heard of Muscle Shoals, sometime circa 1973.
  • Arthur Conley, “Sweet Soul Music.” Muscle Shoals.
  • Wilson Pickett, “Land of 1000 Dances,” “Hey Jude,” “Mustang Sally.” Muscle Shoals.
  • Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, “Old Time Rock & Roll.” Muscle Shoals.
  • James & Bobby Purify, “I’m Your Puppet.” Muscle Shoals.
  • Clarence Carter, “Snatching it Back.” Muscle Shoals.
  • Jimmy Cliff, “Sitting in Limbo.” Muscle Shoals.
  • Etta James. James, from California, had a long and strange career, and she recorded a lot of fine rhythm & blues, but none finer than what she recorded in 1967 in Muscle Shoals. “Tell Mama,” “I’d Rather Go Blind.”
  • Aretha Franklin, “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” “I Never Loved a Man.” Muscle Shoals.
  • The Staple Singers, “I’ll Take You There.” Muscle Shoals.
  • Percy Sledge, “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Just try not to sing along. Muscle Shoals.
  • The Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses.” Muscle Shoals.
  • Ma Rainey, “Bo-Weevil Blues,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “See See Rider.” Rainey made some of the first important blues recordings, and the available versions are pretty poor quality. She said she was born in Georgia, but scholars think she was born in Alabama five years before the year she admitted to. Charlie Pride did the same thing in minor league baseball, and this is now known in baseball circles as Dominican Aging Syndrome.
Ma Rainey, 1917.
  • Hank Williams. What a lot of great songs in a too short life. There’s a Williams museum In Montgomery, but it closed before we got to it.
  • Erskine Hawkins, “Tuxedo Junction.” I had versions by Hawkins, Glen Miller, Duke Ellington, and Manhattan Transfer. Tuxedo Junction was a blues bar in Birmingham. One of the great happy songs.
  • W.C. Handy. Ma Rainey is the mother of the blues, and Handy is the father. I had the Louis Armstrong plays W.C. Handy recording. If I’d known “Loveless Love” was by Handy I would have included the Billie Holiday version. I probably should have included Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” as well, in honor of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, but it’s a tough song to contemplate, as is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. One was enough.
  • Alabama, “Dixieland Delight,” “Song of the South.” I liked these more than I thought I would.

On principal I did not download “Sweet Home Alabama.” I meant to download a selection by St. Paul and the Broken Bones, but never got around to it. If you’ve never watched the Muscle Shoals documentary, Muscle Shoals, do. Muscle Shoals is some of the best of Alabama because, well, it’s some of the best of all of us.

Guitar.

I took the Kohno since we were driving, but then worried about the heat of the day when it had to live in the car while we went down the river. I worked on the Allemande movement of the first Bach Cello suite, the Duarte transcription that I always associate with Segovia. I’ve been told that Duarte was kind of a jerk, but it’s a good transcription, and the Allemande is actually my favorite movement. I can’t remember it for anything.