Tag: Sunfish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Call me in Kansas

Former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback measuring a Kansas bluegill.

I started work at my law firm on June 1, 1984, and I’ve been there ever since. I don’t know how long exactly that is, it’s now April 2020 and I’ve run out of fingers and toes for counting. It’s a pretty long time. I bet I’ve practiced law more than I’ve done anything else except sleeping and being married to Kris. I guess over 60-odd years I’ve slept more than I’ve practiced law, but mostly I’ve managed to keep the two separate for a proper work-sleep balance. I’m a good lawyer. I’m also good at sleeping. As for being married to Kris, I guess I must be perfect. She hasn’t bothered marrying anybody else during that time.

Me practicing law at my English law firm. Henry VIII never showed.

Stuck at home during the pandemic I’ve had time to take stock, and I’ve decided it’s time to chuck lawyering. It’s time for a new challenge, something where I can make some real money. I’ve decided to quit practicing law and hang out my shingle as a fly fishing guide. 

Me not practicing law.

I’ve fished with a lot of guides, and one thing I’ve realized is that money-wise fly fish guiding must be about the best thing going, better than lawyering, better than just about anything that doesn’t involve trust funds and inherited wealth. Think about it. Fly fishing guides work hard.  Everywhere except Florida guides have to make lunch. They have to get up early and go to bed late.  They have to have a general notion of where they are, even when it’s foggy. Most of all they have to put up with extraordinary anglers like me, who know that my failure to catch fish has nothing to do with my skill, and that my failure is their fault.  

Guides could only put up with that sort of stuff for the money. Lots of money. More money than just about anything short of hedge fund management, and I bet these days even hedge fund managers are sucking air. Those fishing guides are out there getting rich while we’re sitting in our office on the phone and reading emails. Do you know how many emails I get most days, and how many of them are asking me questions that take work to answer? Chuck it. Like I said, fish guiding must be about the best thing going.

Where will I be guiding? That’s been a tough question.  I thought about here in Houston, but I’d hate to take all the business from local guides; I thought about trout country, but I don’t really like the cold; and fishing guides in the Florida Keys always get shot and die.   Nothing hooked me until I thought of Kansas.

Kansas.

A fly for Kansas bluegill.

If you’ve fished much you know some fly fisher who’s been to Patagonia for sea-run browns, or to Mongolia for Taimen, or to the Farquahar Atoll for whatever’s on the Farquahar Atoll. But think about it: how many anglers do you know who have made a special trip to Kansas? It’s the last fishing wilderness, the last of the world’s exotic destination fisheries.

There is not a single fly-fishing guide in Kansas, so I sense real opportunity. Since I’m an expert on supply-side economics, I know that consumption follows supply. If I produce the goods in Kansas, consumers will be there to buy them. All I have to do is show up with a truck and a boat and a couple of rigged fly rods and after that it’s all gelt, wampum, moolah, and a life of ease. Plus Kansas is far from the rising seas so I don’t have to worry about global warming. It’s already got enough tornadoes and dust storms and drought and hail and locusts that changing weather patterns can only be to its benefit. Like they said in that movie about that Kansas corn field, if you build it, they will come.

Kansas. 

A Kansas longear sunfish.

Of course I’ll have to start rooting for the Chiefs, but that’s easy since they just won the Super Bowl for the good people of Kansas. 

What will I guide for? Apparently Kansas has a spectacular sunfish fishery.  Kansas sunfishing may be better than sunfishing in the Amazon Basin or Kamchatka. It’s not very well known, but I’ve been told it’s legendary. You can talk about your Caribbean permit, or your Florida tarpon. You can talk about Olympic Peninsula steelhead or Alaska salmon or Pyramid Lake cutthroat. None of those hold a candle to Kansas bluegill. Bluegill in the 20-pound range are common, and the longears . . . You should have been here two days ago.

See? I’m practicing my guiding.

I’ve been working on my Kansas sunfish leaders: they involve 40 pound butt sections and 60 pound bite tippet, and are 14 feet long because of the bluegills legendary skittishness. They’re strung together with Bimini twists and blood knots and huffnagles and some spare links of an iron chain I found in the garage. I originally thought 9 weight rods would be the very thing, but now I’m thinking 11 weights? From what this guy I know told me we’re talking big game here. These are powerful bluegill that always run you into your backing. Any reels without heavy duty saltwater drags are worthless.

Our new house in Elmdale.

I haven’t told Kris about my plans yet, but I have bought a house in Kansas, in Elmdale. I bought it online, and from the pictures it may need a little work. Whatever, I know she’ll be thrilled, and Elmdale ought to be remote enough for these troubled days. The guy who sold me the house said that of course there were fish near Elmdale. He reminded me that the whole area was once an inland sea. I paid his asking price, which was very reasonable, not too much more than what houses go for in my neighborhood, and with plenty of character. This is going to be so popular that I think I may go with the Florida model and let clients bring their own lunch. Apparently there’s no grocery store in Elmdale, so bringing lunch from Wichita probably works best anyway. It’s only 70 miles.

I’ve let the major manufacturers know I’m available for their pro staffs, and I’m waiting to hear from them. I think the Abel series of Kansas sunfish reels are pretty nifty, and I’m trying to decide whether the new Orvis Recons will be sufficient or if I need Helios 3s. You can’t skimp when you’re chasing Kansas bluegill.

When you’re ready to fish Kansas, inquire within. We’ll be on Main Street in Elmdale.

On the edge of the inland sea with a typical Kansas bluegill. Photo courtesy of Nick Denbow, Western Caribbean Fly Fishing School.

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I Got Speyed, Redux

Lately I’ve had rod fever. This happens from time to time. I convince myself that there’s a hole in the universe that can only be filled by possession of. . . some rod, some rod that is newer and niftier and pretty as a happy child hunting Easter eggs on a bright spring morning and that will make me a better caster and a better catcher and a better husband and father and human being. Rod fever may happen to me more than most, but I doubt it. And it never quite works out the way I think. I’m always still just me.

Last year I got rod fever bad for Spey rods, which is a peculiar thing for a Houstonian since there’s no real Spey fishing for at least a thousand miles. Still. I bought a Spey rod, and in 2018 we fished four days for steelhead on the Deschutes River in Oregon. We swung flies with long 13-foot Spey rods, about four feet longer than normal rods, and tried to learn Spey casts, or at least enough to get through four days’ fishing.

To most fly fishers, Spey casting is exotic and mysterious. It’s not like the standard overhead cast. It’s done with two hands, not one. There is no backcast; the line never lays out behind the angler, instead there’s some flippy dippy stuff that eyesight and brain can’t quite follow. After a couple of incantations and some pyrotechnics the caster shoots the line forward, as much as twice the length of a normal cast. It is a lovely, magical thing to see, baffling and irresistible.

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, J. Cary, Detail from a new map of Scotland, from the latest authorities, 1801, London.

The River Spey is in northeast Scotland, and the long rods and the two-handed casts originated on Scottish Atlantic salmon rivers. Speyside single malt Scotch is also from the region of the River Spey, Glenfiddich and Macallan being the best known, so there are many good things from thereabouts. What could better define a day of manly sport than putting on a bit of tweed, spending a day casting a Spey rod, and following it all with a wee or not-so-wee dram of rich and smoky Speyside? What man or woman could want more?

The long rods have advantages. They don’t require a backcast, so you can stand by a bank in a river and cast without hanging up in the branches behind you. They cast far, so you can cover lots of ground on big water, and the rod length better manipulates the line once it’s on the water. After four days of fishing I could cast 50 or 60 feet with the spey rod, but I fished near a good caster, Louis Cahill of Gink and Gasoline. He consistently shot line twice the distance I could manage, and it was beautiful.

Spey rods have some disadvantages. They’re not particularly accurate, and casting that far usually isn’t necessary. They’re made to swing flies, and swinging flies, isn’t common. Swinging flies lets the line pull the fly down and across in an arc, with the angler as the pivot point. It’s an old method of fly fishing, arcane even, with plenty of modern arcana pitched in to make the whole business obscure and esoteric, but except in the Pacific Northwest and maybe Scotland swinging flies isn’t common. Instead we let flies drift naturally with the current, or retrieve streamers. We don’t let flies swing.

I hadn’t seriously touched my Spey rod since our trip to Oregon, but we need to catch a fish in Washington State, and the obvious play, the right color of fish, is Olympic Peninsula winter steelhead. Kris didn’t hesitate. “Of course,” she said. “Let’s go,” she said. “And bring along some whisky.” Ok, she didn’t say that last, and she didn’t spell whiskey like a Scot when she didn’t say it, but sometimes one needs to extrapolate.

So I emailed Jason Osborn at The Portland Fly Shop and asked Jason who we should fish with in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Jason said he was guiding in southern Washington, but that the Olympic Peninsula was a good idea. He said that for February we should check with Jack Mitchell’s The Evening Hatch.

But I also had rod fever, I wanted–no, I needed–another Spey rod, so I asked Jason to send along a 3-weight rod and a matching line because suddenly Spey fishing for trout is all the rage, and like I said, I had rod fever. This 3-weight business takes a bit of explanation. Fly rods are in weights, higher weight rods are used for bigger fish. If you want to catch a 200 pound marlin, a 14-weight would do the job. If you want to catch a bluegill, a 3-weight would be the very thing. For steelhead, the usual weight is somewhere around a 7- to 9-weight. A 3-weight is built for smaller fish.

Jason made a couple of suggestions and I took the cheapest, a Redington Hydrogen trout Spey made in China. I should say it wasn’t cheap, but for a Spey rod it was pretty reasonable. It’s a rather homely fella, with none of the design flourishes that would come with a high-dollar rod, but it’s well put together. It’s perfectly good to fool with in local waters.

And for most of what we catch in Texas rivers a 3 weight will work just fine. It would let us practice spey casts before our trip to Washington, and that’s all I really wanted. The rod came, and we drove three hours to New Braunfels to see if there were any trout yet in the Guadalupe. There weren’t, they won’t be stocked until Thanksgiving, and the flow in the river was ridiculously low, but I hadn’t forgotten everything I knew, the rod cast fine, and there were bluegill and bass. I caught a Guadalupe bass, the state fish of Texas, swinging a girdle bug. I also caught a tiny bluegill on a partridge and yellow. What sounds more manly than a partridge and yellow? Just forget that tiny bluegill part.

And then I went home and had a wee dram. Or two.

T.E. Pritt, Pritt’s Orange and Partridge, Plate 6 – Yorkshire Trout Flies, 1885, Goodall and Suddick, Leeds.

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All Dressed Up

For the first time this year,  we don’t have any out-of-state fishing trips on the calendar. It’s an odd feeling, but I’ve more than used my annual vacation time and tapped into my built-up surplus.

I need to keep some vacation time. Next year I want to make three big trips, Idaho, Mississippi, and Nantucket, and it’s still a few years to retirement. When we go to Massachusetts we’ll probably hit Rhode Island. At least I think that’s right. My knowledge of East Coast geography is sketchy. I do know there’s a lot of states crammed into that right hand top corner below Maine.

Mississippi is a big deal because of William Faulkner and the Blues, and in Idaho I want to float the Middle Salmon River and fish Silver Creek. There may not be time for both. Nantucket of course is the port from whence the Pequod sailed, so we’ll be fly fishing for whales.

The Pequod

I’m talking to our friend Mark Morgan about a weekend trip to Beavers Bend in Oklahoma to fish the Mountain Fork, maybe in November. It’s a five-hour drive and I’ve been preparing, putting together a playlist. There are a surprising number of great guitarists from Oklahoma, or at least guitarists who passed through in a significant way: Roy Clark, Michael Hedges, Vince Gill, Tuck Andress, Leo Kottke, Charlie Christian . . . Charlie Freakin’ Christian. Some places, Memphis, say, or New Orleans, you expect a lot of great musicians. I didn’t expect it of Oklahoma, and not so many guitarists. Oklahoma, OK!

But that is probably late November or December. Because the trout season is ending in most places, Kris suggested Arkansas, which I enjoy, but I hate to use up all the neighboring states early. That would take Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas off the board, leaving only New Mexico. The other places where I think we could fish into December are Florida (I have to go in February, so not now), Mississippi (already on the list for February or March), Georgia, and the Carolinas (later, they need more time than a long weekend), Missouri, Arizona, Southern California, and Alabama. It’s all vague and squishy, but those places might be warm enough. Of course I could go to Washington State for the winter steelheading, but I want to go to Seattle in the baseball season. And frankly I’ve done enough steelheading for one year.

We’ll get some trips in, maybe Alabama for New Years. Last year we went to Portugal for New Years, and Alabama’s just like Portugal, right? I guess I’m desperate.

There’s also Hawaii. Mighty fine bonefish in Hawaii.

* * *

Meanwhile last weekend we made a quick trip to Damon’s 7 Lakes to fish for bass. I caught a couple, and I also caught the world-record bluegill.

Ok, I lied about that world-record part, but it was a nice bluegill, and it stripped line just like a permit.

Ok, I lied about that permit part too.