Alone

I heard a song today that reminded me of a fishing trip I was on in the early 70’s. The song doesn’t remind me of myself and my life but of a specific trip. I was by myself at an eastern Washington lake in late April. I was by myself and set up a camp along the shoreline. On the drive over, I heard “I Drink Alone” by George Thorogood. I’ve always liked that song because of the way it sounded. So, that night on the shoreline with the stars shining as bright as they could, I sat by a small camp fire after a dinner of a PB&J sandwich with Cheetos; finished off with a chocolate chip cookie dessert. I was having an after-dinner drink of Johnny Walker Red with a Bud (and bud) chaser. I recalled the song I heard earlier in the day. I thought about how sad it would be to live that alone. I didn’t pay it much attention, but I DID think about it. I had my float tube, I tied up some flies I knew to be effective, I was ready to fish in the AM. I was to be here for a week without a fishing partner or my wife or anyone. This was the first time I had ever camped and fished more than a couple of days alone.

It was very strange. I never realized how I was controlled by the thoughts of how I thought someone else wants me to act, get up in the morning, what to eat for breakfast; no one to suggest or make silent demands of my actions. I don’t mean this in a hostile way. I just realized it on this second day of my trip. Every one of my actions was up to me. I had never experienced this. I even had a beer for breakfast for the first time in my life. Tasted pretty good. Pretty soon, I was in my float tube and catching fish through most of the day. I came in and had a lunch and a nap (never did that before, either) and went out for the evening. Had a great time. I was alone on the lake and felt like I owned the fishing world (at least my own world).

The next two days were repeats of the first day fishing and camping. I was having a good time, but I had to admit that I was alone without a friend to share this with. I started to think about fishing with someone for the week and about how it would have been different. This is kind of a double-edge sword. I liked my own schedule and thinking of only how I wanted to fish and approach the day and night. BUT, it would have been fun to fish with a good fishing buddy or be with my wife. I didn’t obsess over this, but it was an interesting thought process. I learned quite a bit about myself.

I had a real fishing puzzle to solve on the 3rd evening of fishing. I had worked my way into a bay at one end of the lake. I could see some fish rising. I knew the bay was fairly shallow, so I didn’t want to scare the fish. These were some REAL fish in that 20-plus range sipping midges. I didn’t know they were midges at the time. It just looked like they were taking a mosquito-like insect off the surface. I had several mosquito flies in the #16 and 18 range, which looked the right size. I would grease them up so they would float like a cork and put some sink on the leader so it would slightly sink. I had those fish in the palm of my hand. I was super careful about the casting; not false-casting over them; not water-loading my backcast; not letting any water drops from my line, leader or fly drop over them. I was really diligent about not spooking them. Well, I didn’t spook them but I also did not hook any. I was very sure to refloat any fly that started sinking. Nothing.

I was at that same bay the next evening and ready for them. When they started eating, I just looked at them. They actually did not show their mouth and head above the surface like a surface take. But, that didn’t register in my mind. I fished just like I did the evening before – with the same results. I was very frustrated. I finally just let my fly sink and started retrieving. BAM!! A strong hit and broke me off. I cast out another mosquito fly and with my sunk leader, I pulled it under and started retrieving slowly. No shit – wakes started appearing behind my fly every time I did this. I finally landed one big fish and released it. It was getting dark so I kicked back to my tent. To my surprise, my friend Bill Fairbanks had decided to come over and join me. I was so pleased to see him. I relived my 4 days while we ate some dinner (PB&J with Cheetos and chocolate chip cookies for dessert, as I recall). I followed up with my after-dinner drink (scotch with a beer chaser). Bill didn’t drink alcohol so had a cup of coffee. I talked to him about my evening situation with the midge-sipping fish in the bay. We came on the idea of taking a mosquito fly and clipping the front hackle off the bottom of the fly so it sat it the water with its body and tail just under the surface like a hatching midge. We did that and for the next two afternoons and evenings we had great fishing. That fly became my standard chironomid pattern. I hated tying #18 and 20 dries so I had a young friend (with good eyes) tie them up for me. The only difference was that I had him make the tail about twice as long as the standard pattern (to represent the shuck of the midge). I would cast it out and let it sit still on the surface (every once in a while a fish took it there). Then, after a short while, I would pull it under the surface. I did this especially when a fish showed close by. Killer technique. It is still a great pattern.

By the 6th night, after fishing, dinner and sitting around the campfire, I was telling Bill of yet another fishing story. He finally looked at me and said “Shut up. You haven’t stopped talking since I got here. Give me some peace, man”. He was right. I realized that I liked his company and missed him on the earlier days. I had talked his ear off for two days. I am forever glad he decided to come over and keep me company. I surly miss him now that he has passed away. I will have a scotch with a beer chaser the next time I am alone fishing to think of fishing with him on that eastern Washington Lake and other waters throughout the northwest and beyond.

Hitchin’ A Ride

I was lucky enough to be one of the first fly fishers in Los Roques, Venezuela.  There were no guides ; only local fishermen who would take us out to fish for raton (bonefish).  I was with a video production company shooting a video of this up and coming bonefish destination.  It was actually unbelievable fly fishing for bones. Once we got it across to the fishermen/guides what we were after (very little Spanish and zero English).  I started working for a company organizing group trips there a year later as a group leader. 

One of my group trips was very memorable.  Our trips, early on, started with a night in Caracas and a private flight to Los Roques (about 80 miles off the Venezuelan shore).  We arrived OK and got checked into one of the weirdest “lodges” I’ve been in.  First of all, they had one overhead bare bulb in the center of each room.  Not so bad, but they then installed the ceiling fan below it, giving a strobe-light effect in the room.  Definitely hard to read a book.  Or tie a fly or just about anything requiring some in-focus eyesight.  And just to let you know, we had a French “chef”…….who didn’t know how to make French toast among other meals.  We could take this.  The food was edible (barely).

OK, now that you know what the rooms are like and our situation was, this is how our week progressed.

Upon arrival, you know as well as I do that the first thing to get done after securing a cold beer is to put your gear together.  Some of you know what is coming next.  One of the group, in his excitement to put his rod together, put the rod tip in the immediate path of the blades of the whirling, ceiling fans.  The rod was instantly 6” shorter.  He had a spare rod so not all was lost, except this was before unconditional guaranties for fly rods.  Not to be outdone by his roommate’s accident, the other inhabitant of the room was putting on his tropical shirt which required lifting his arms up over his head into the exact same orbit of the fan blades, slicing a very deep wound into his thumb palm.  Pretty nasty and bloody.  Now lucky for him, his roommate (who just surgically removed a half-a-foot of his rod) was a doctor.  He managed to rustle up a needle (hook) and line for stitches (monofilament) and the gaping wound was closed up.  It worked until he got back to the states when he exchanged it for the real thing.  We weren’t fishing that day but we all prepared for the next day.  The before-mentioned roommates left their wading boots outside the door of the room (which was a lone-standing building), with access to the public beach.  The one with the broken rod awoke the next morning to find that his wading boots were stolen.  This is not an especially good way to start a trip.  But he stayed in good humor.  He used another pair a wading boots to walk his way across the flats.  I like to fish with all of the fishers in any group I am leading.  I had been hearing about the fantastic fishing on the outer pancake flats.  I, quite frankly thought it was bull-shit, but I decided that we ought to try it for my day with the afore-mentioned roommates.  They were great fun and had a super sense of humor (which was a good thing). 

Our “guide/boat-handler” (they really didn’t have guides then, but boatmen who knew where the bones were) , had no idea of how to guide fishers into fish.  They would drop you off on a flat and pick you up later on the other side of the flat.  So you had to be pretty self-sufficient.  Plus, on this day our “guide” was hung-over:  Actually falling asleep while running the boat.  When we arrived at a pancake flat, he would sleepily run (crash) the boat into it almost throwing us out of the boat.  However, the first flat was unbelievable with numbers of bonefish.  We would look out from the boat approaching the flat and would see a sea-weed green covering the immediate area in front of us.  Then (as we banged into the outer edge of the flat, the green bottom scattered.  It was bonefish; hundreds of them.  These pancake flats are a treat to fish.  They are hard sand (easy to wade) with patches of sea weed and open areas.  When they are fished in the morning, the wind and the sun are at your back:  Perfect conditions.  I love fishing them.  We did a few; catching a number of bones.  We had lunch and except for our guide, everything was perfect.

After lunch, we wanted to go to the outer islands where I had been hearing about the unbelievable numbers of fish, so that is where we went.  After plowing into the downwind side (instead of the upwind side) of the flat, the guy mishandling the boat dropped the three of us off and then ran the boat to a far side of the flat.  We separated (the three of us fishing) and I went close to our boat and then started wading upwind across the flat.  The stories of bones were true.  I have never seen before or since seen so many bonefish concentrated in one area.  The wind was howling right into our faces.  It was so strong that I couldn’t yell to the others.  I could see that they were excitedly casting to huge schools of bones and connecting.

This is the honest-to-God truth.  There were so many fish in front of me feeding upwind that, no-shit, they would part and let me wade through them to an upwind position and then they would come back together and continue feeding.  I would turn around and start casting. I caught fish after fish doing this.  I was just in awe of the fishing I’d just had.  When I reached the other side of the flat, I turned around and started fishing my way back downwind.  Again, with great fishing.  As I got closer to our boat, realized I couldn’t see its handler. I found out later that he was sleeping in the bottom of the boat. Then, with a sudden and abrupt jump up, the handler looked panicked (he was just awakened by water pooling in the bottom – his sleeping quarters).  As he was hustling around the inside of the boat, I hooked a bone.  While playing it I watched our boat which was now wind-blowing away from the flat.  I got the bone to hand just as I watched the bow of the boat point straight up directly to the sky and slowly sink.  As it disappeared (I mean out of sight), I saw the guy in the boat start swimming to the mangrove island downwind from us.  This left me and my two partners stranded on a flat where there was no dry land.

I started walking in calf-deep water to them.  We all came together at one point.  The one who was not a doctor was an engineer.  When I could talk with them, I asked the engineer how good he was.  He said “what?”.  Can you put together a boat for us with the driftwood we could see?  He still looked at me quizzically and I asked both of them if they could see our boat and boat handler.  They said no, of course.  So I told them of the sinking boat and the guy in it swimming to the island downwind of us.  We all knew that the worst case scenario was that we would sit on the only drift wood log we could see, maybe a foot out of the water.  We would be found tomorrow, but none of us wanted to have that experience.  The experience I had always fantasized about being on a tropical island didn’t include stranded with two overweight men.  I always had different ideas about this.  But this is reality.  I put my white shirt on the tip of my rod and started to wave it at passing boats (a long way off).  We needed to hitch a ride back to the island if we were going to have a dinner and dry place to sleep.  Unbelievably, one of the boats (a small cargo boat maybe 50’ long) turned toward us and pushed its bow (about 12 feet above the water) into our flat.  Luckily, there is deep water surrounding almost all of the pancake flats.  They lowered a rope and I (much younger then) hand-over-handed my way up and over the side.  The other two fishers were much heavier and one was much heavier than the other.  This took some effort from me and the crew of two on the cargo boat.  But we did, finally, get everyone on-board.  Then we started off toward Los Roques.  We crossed directly over our boat, showing brilliant white lying on the bottom in crystal clear waters.  We keep going closer to the downwind island and we see the boat handler waving.  We pick him up and continue toward home.  Then we find out that the boat that just rescued us was actually looking for helpers to keep it afloat.  It was taking on water.  That is why they happened to come by our “Gilligan’s Island”.  They needed help to keep the manual hand pump going to keep the water from sinking the boat.  The sound of it and it’s circumstances kind of reminded me of the “African Queen” movie.  We didn’t end up with leaches all over our body.  But, I couldn’t help thinking of it.  We ended up being saved from our sunk boat with a sinking boat.  Pretty ironic.

That boat sound like “chuga-chuga, chuga-chuga, chuga-chuga; barely making headway.  We did finally make to shore after taking 3 hours for a 30 minute trip.  We told the owner of the “lodge” and I told him I wanted to go back with him to recover the boat.  I had a boat bag, somewhat water-proof in the boat with $1000 cash, my Nikon camera, my passport and my return flight tickets in the boat.  But as I was changing clothes, he took off without me.  I was super-pissed.  I fumed and stomped around until I saw him coming back with the sunk boat in tow.  When they got the boat on shore I went to it and looked around and saw my bag.  It had kept all of my stuff dry.  I asked the owner about it and he said after they got the boat up to the surface and were on the way back, they saw this yellow bag in the mangroves.  It had popped to the surface and drifted to the mangroves. They retrieved it and brought it back.

That evening over drinks (many of them), we laughed about our day.  As it happened, it was a boat that was built with room in it for foam floatation.  There was room between the bulkhead and the skin for the foam.  But, they forgot to plug the hole for the injection of the foam.  And they forgot to inject it with foam. The water flowed in while our “guide” was sleeping it off.   We had a great day of fishing with an adventurous return from the flats.  We toasted our good luck and knew we had an outstanding fishing story.  What a great life we fly fishers have.

Fishing Is Fishing

This is a blog I wrote several years ago for Epic Fishing in BC.

Fishing is Fishing

Last week I finally got to realize a goal. In addition to an addiction to steelhead, I have to get a fix of throwing flies at carp every summer. My brother and I took off from Seattle in a pouring-down rain for the drive east to meet our friend Darc Knobel in Ephrata, Wa, for three days of chasing scales on the flats of Banks Lake in Eastern Washington. The type of fly fishing for carp we have been following for 20 years is sight fishing only, in shallow water that is fished by a poled boat or by wading. This year we added a new twist (more later). For those of you who have done some flats fishing, you know that a clear sky is a 99% necessity. Maybe one percent of the time, under very specific conditions, carp can be spotted and cast to with overhead clouds. But nearly all of the time, if cloudy skies are looking down on you, they might as well see you back at camp having a beer, playing dominoes, tying flies, catching a nap; anything but fishing. We got to the campground, launched the boat, tied it up to the dock and set up camp. By the time Boyd (my brother) and I got the tent set up and Darc got his trailer situated, the clouds had set in thick and stretched from where the sun came up a few hours ago to the western horizon. A solid impenetrable sheen on the lake’s surface that the best polarized glasses on earth couldn’t cut through.

We sat around camp for a couple of hours with our gaze skyward. From a seemingly impossible situation, we began seeing chinks in the armor of the shrouds of grey/black above. Some blue started showing through. I could see the blue fighting and clawing its way through and eventually getting a foothold. I mentioned to Darc that we ought to boat out to the flats and then to hang out just in case we got lucky with clear skies. We did and we did. Eventually, the clouds were so weak that the blue skies knocked the shit out of the overcast. Soon we could see through the water surface to the bottom. It was pretty late in the afternoon by the time we could start fishing, but we had a couple of hours of fishing, but the carp did not want what we offered them. But we had a great time fishing in the sun-filled skies, warm air and calm waters. We made an adjustment to my leader and changed to another fly just in time to get back to camp and fix dinner. My outfit was ready for tomorrow.

Camp that evening was so delightful, with a tasty dinner, good wine, beautiful sunset and comfortable air temps to enjoy some camp talk to way past sunset. But later that night. Much to our surprise everything changed. Let me try to describe to you what 2 inches of rain, with lightning and thunder and wind is like while trying to sleep in a tent. When we crashed for the night, the skies were clear, the wind was calm and we all had visions of that perfect day greeting us tomorrow. It was at 1:00 AM when those thoughts were crushed in a clap of thunder and lightning that almost threw me off of my cot. Then the wind and rain started. Great test for my tent. The rain on our tent almost drowned out the sound of the thunder marching its way toward us. Our fiberglass tent poles were bending into impossible shapes, but they always returned to their original shape. The lightning, first, would light up our tent like a camera flash, seeing everything within like daylight. But it was just running interference for the thunder crashing through our defense. It was like trying to sleep inside a drum with Gene Krupa on the sticks. At first, there was a decent pause before the roar of the thunder filled our tent after the lightning, expending its energy, returned darkness to us. This continued for almost 45 minutes; constant – light, darkness, then the hammer of Thor. I would look in the direction of my brother and when the tent would fill with light, I got the strobe-light-look of a guy staring straight at me with his eyes wide open asking “Are we done for?”. The tent is bending and swaying and doing its job – we did not get wet. As I said, this went on for quite a while with the thunder sounding off closer and closer to the lightning flash, until, as we both knew would happen (but dreaded), the lightning blinded our eyes and thunder filled our tent and ear-drums at the same time. We both were convinced the tree we were camped under had been hit. But, we heard no tree, nor limbs falling. It was close but not on us. What a storm!

The next day was the same as the first, but the carp were feeding in the afternoon after the clouds parted and we had some awesome fishing. Part of what made it so fun and interesting was the method we used to fish for them. It is a “stalk and drop” technique with a cane pole (the bamboo was cut last fall and aged over the winter and spring) and a fixed line. Sort of an Oklahoma tenkara. This is really the way-back roots of fly fishing. The pole is 13.5 feet long and the line (and leader) is 20 feet long past the tip of the pole. We had to heron-step our way to the feeding fish. In the boat, the one poling must crawl toward the fish with pain-taking slowness with no pole noise or wave slap against the boat. When wading, it is the same procedure; slow-stepping toward the fish and keeping low. The idea is to present the fly without a splash and as close to the fish as possible. So, we generally had to get within 13 to 17 feet of the fish without it being aware of us. The fixed line on the bamboo pole provided more fun than I’ve had fishing in a long time. What a blast: Fastened to an 8 – 12 pound fish going bonkers at the end of your line tightly connected to my pole. Dig your toes in! Let it tow the boat around until it could be strong-armed close enough to net.

Later, back in camp, I tried to figure out why this is as much fun to me as steelheading. They are such different fish. But the fishing is the thing. Both fishes demand skill, patience, fish knowledge and a love of the sport. They both provide me with so much satisfaction. I have to admit I get just as much fun carping as I do steelheading. They are so different, but so much the same.

The Old Trail

The trail never gets easier, only more familiar.  I anticipate the meadows with calm pleasure and the cliffs with fear and dread.  I keep trekking it season after season with my fly rod in my hand.  The end of the trail is always welcome and the resultant fishing is always beyond my expectation.  I remember when I first found it.  I was glancing over a map of the no-road access areas of not-very-popular river with direct access to saltwater.  The map was well worn (I had fished the river dozens of times) and I was surprised when my eye caught the long sweeping run of the river.  Why hadn’t I seen it before?  It was a long hike in with no trail, but I made it a point to check it out and I have been returning for several decades.  I am not the only one who knows these waters, but we are all of the same fishing mind-set.  If another angler hikes in when I am fishing, I always welcome him/her to follow me through.  And to a person, they have always reciprocated when I am not the first to swing a fly through the run.  I don’t know any of the other fishers I’ve met here outside of sharing this run with them, but we have a strong friendship bond and share fly patterns and other “secret runs” with each other as easily as the run we are fishing.  Anyone willing to get off of the road and drip a little sweat to find a new, fun place to wet a fly is a person to welcome and treat with respect.  I rarely run into anyone here, but when I do, it is OK.  I have found other drifts I often fish, but this is the one I return to cast after cast.

The fish are not resident but anadromous, returning to their natal tributaries far upstream from here.  I want only, to interrupt their long journey for a few minutes of jumping, running and exercise.  Just enough to get them stoked for what’s ahead. The run is near perfect.  Picture a crescent moon.  The inside of it is baseball to basketball sized rocks covering a bar that extends out into the river run with larger boulders scattered across the river from about midstream to the far side (the river represented by the bright portion of the moon).  Step in at the top.  Cast and swing a fly through to the bottom.  One step at a time.  No need to rush through.  It is a good one to three hour drift.  It is the just-right place to be at dawn when the sun comes up over the snow covered mountains beyond the opposite shore of the run.  Just when it peeks over the mountains and the shadows are still long, a skated fly looks so proud dancing its way across the riffles.  Its wake reflects the sun’s rays in a shotgun blast behind it in a million directions.  The only better sight for me is a repeat action at sundown.

Occasionally, this scene is pleasantly interrupted by a bulge in the water surface just behind the fly.  Don’t react too quickly, I tell myself!  The fly disappears and the line comes taut to my reel that is screaming for help a few seconds later.  Adrenalin-induced excitement follows to the final release, then I watch the sea-run rainbow swim strongly back into the currents.  The take happens rarely, but each one is like the first time all over again. 

After the sun inches higher overhead, it is time to swing a sunk fly, fished more to the fish’s level; make it easy for the pull.  It may work or not.  In a way it is just as visual as a waking fly, just not as obvious.  The experienced caster is watching the line as far out and as close to the fly as is possible, looking for the almost invisible indication that a fish has stopped the fly’s downstream swing:  That fraction of second where the current has lodged the fly in the corner of a steelhead’s jaw and has anchored the line.   The line drift is interrupted just before anything is felt.  A strike now almost surely results in a head shake and, if lucky, a leaping fish with your fly attached. It is the full process of steelheading that makes it the obsession it is.  It doesn’t start or stop with the hook-up or the release.  It starts with the approach to the run, the anticipation of a trip; fishing a waking fly late in the late afternoon just to see its wake in the golden reflection of the sun setting on the hills guarding the opposite shore; the feeling of your way into the current for your first cast of the day even when it is still too dark to see the bottom.  It is a comfortable place to stand while wading over impossibly slick boulders.  Look up and downstream.  Take in all you see.  Look closely along the opposite shore.  There’s a mink peeking in and out of the shoreline rocks, scrambling along oblivious of your presence.  There is a small splash next to the river’s edge.  A water ouzel dips and dips and disappears below the surface.  The first time I witnessed this avian activity  I was completely perplexed.  I never knew of such a bird or its habit of finding its food underwater.  I have loved them ever since.  I never tire of watching them.  I used to never see or observe anything past the point of my line entering the water’s surface.  I learned this lesson from a non-fisher (he was a non-fisher then, but not now).  He is my brother.  He is a talented still photographer and an accomplished film maker and videographer.  We were shooting a film and he amazed me with the visual account of our outings.  When I reviewed the film, I saw so much going on around me.  I never experienced anything near what he saw through his camera lens.  This happened more that 4 decades ago.  I now catch myself occasionally falling into old habits and I remember my bro’s lesson.  My experience is always enhanced by knowing and remembering how to look around.  He gave my fishing a new depth and meaning.  I love my brother and this is only one of the reasons.  This is just one part of the steelheading process. 

You know, I catch way more steelhead at my tying vise than I ever will at the river.  All of the flies I tie have caught a fish (in my mind) just prior to being released from the jaws of my vise; unlike in real life where most of my flies are released just prior to fastening themselves to the jaw of a steelhead.  I don’t claim to be a good steelheader, I just enjoy the hell out of it.  I don’t ever remember leaving this run angry or even disappointed; only looking forward to my return.  When I go through a really good looking run; if no one is behind me, I will fish through it again.  I know several fishers who would never do this.  They are more the in-and-out types who can’t wait to get to the next run.  I understand this; just don’t fish this way.  My slow-moving Oklahoma ways of my childhood serve me well working my way through a run.  I’ve often hooked fish on my second go-through.  If someone comes up behind me while doing this, I’ll let them fish through ahead of me and wish them well.

I never meet anyone at the end of the trail who doesn’t understand all of this.  That is one reason I never mind sharing the run with any angler who arrives while I am there.  Some days when all is lined up perfectly, I’ll nap on the gravel bar after enjoying a stream-chilled beer during a mid-day break and repeat the morning’s drift later in the day to watch the sunset riffles in the wake of a skated fly.  I don’t really look forward to climbing the “cliffs” at dark, but I know it well enough to step carefully to the top.

I never know when my final trip will come to pass, so I try to experience each trip as if it is.  I am never disappointed.