Here are a few thoughts on fishing as socialization, the “best” pace for covering a given stretch of water and why, if you’re fishing with me, you need to be at the pick-up point at the mutually agreed time.
First of all, I think everybody fishes in the way that suits them best. There is a social as well as a practical component to the reasoning involved. We’re all different in the things about fishing that make the experience most valuable or satisfying to us as individuals. Generally, when I and a partner or fishing buddy fish the same section of a small to medium size stream together at the same time, trading off pools or runs, it is because of one of four reasons: 1) I'm "hosting" them on a fishery that I know and they do not. 2) They're "hosting" me for the same reason. 3) It's my brother or one of a very small number of close or long time fishing friends and the family connection or duration and quality of the friendship shifts my priority for the outing from exploring water and catching fish to socialization. 4) I'm working with a newcomer to the sport.
Otherwise, I get all the socialization I need in the car between destinations or going to or from the stream.
This doesn't mean I don't like to fish with other folks. I do. It simply means that with the above exceptions, I fish alone while spending the day fishing with you. You fish from bridge A to bridge B and I fish from bridge B to Bridge C, and I'll meet you back at the car parked at bridge B in two, three or four hours (whatever). And you're not allowed to be late (give or take 10 minutes), because we're due at the next creek and the day is only so long. I suppose this rigidity could be annoying to some people, but trust me, it’s better than messing up my schedule if I have other places I’m burning to get to. I’ll “accidentally” leave your cold drink outside the cooler if you start messing with my schedule.
I'm a friendly guy, but I fish frenetically and have a pretty powerful need to see what's around the next bend, a place I've never been before, or not lately anyway. If I'm waiting on somebody who is fadiddling along, I'm in danger of spontaneously combusting. I'm like a dog straining at the terminus of a chain.
There are no value judgments here or any suggestions of a superior or inferior way of doing something. I'm simply explaining who "I" am. And you're you. And so long as you're back at the car when you're supposed to be, it works out fine.
Despite my idiosyncrasies, I like to think I'm a pretty good fishing buddy. I've fished with quite a few good friends and so far as I know, my fishing MO hasn't annoyed any of them to the point they never want to fish with me again.
In regards to the pace at which we fish small streams, there are so many variables that it is impossible to stipulate a pace and declare it to be "the" correct one. To give an example in two similarly-sized streams in very disparate locations, it would make sense to me to cover long sections of the lower half of South Kinzua Creek in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest where it is broad, shallow and lacks good holding lies at a pretty rapid pace. But if I were on the Tremont Branch of the Little River in Great Smoky Mountain National Park with its endless maze of nice pockets between the boulders, I'm going to take a lot longer to cover the same linear amount of stream.
So, there's that..
There is also the matter of the trout population's hierarchy within a stream that is directly related to how "good" or "strong" the fishery is. When you have a limited amount of time to fish, not every trout in the stream is worth the time it takes to try to catch them. Depending on the stream, the long sections of so-called "infertile" water between sections of quality habitat may have no fish or they may be full of 5" fish or they may have a surprising number of 10-12" inch fish. The first time you fish a place, you can (usually) find these things out, so that the next time you're there, you can optimize your time. In one of his excellent guides to trout fishing, Tom Rosenbauer of the Orvis Company recommends that anglers “skip” obviously infertile water and move on to the next pool. But when he speaks of skipping "infertile" water, an angler of Rosenbauer's experience and obvious thoughtful approach almost certainly isn't saying to only fish the big, slow pools or other obvious locations with a high likelihood of holding fish and skip the rest. The nature and location of "infertile" water, while sometimes obvious, more often than not has to be learned, stream to stream. I think Rosenbauer assumes we will take the time to learn it on the particular stream or stream type we are on rather than take what he has written as a one size fits all axiom.
I once heard a pretty experienced small stream angler say that he tends to cover 66’ feet (why 66’ and not 65’ or 67’”, I don’t know) of stream per minute. On a lot of the smaller streams I frequent, I think this is a very reasonable pace that allows us to cover the maximum distance of a given stream while not skipping any of the better water. Back before the years began to cause some slippage in my higher gears, a one mile/hour pace on small water was pretty close to my usual MO. I've slowed down a bit, but not that much. Chances are pretty good I'll still be at the car tapping my foot when you finally make it to Bridge B
But the general and overarching point is that it really is a matter of preference more than it is fishing efficiency, in my view at least. There are streams where it pays to go fast and others where it pays to go slow. What pays even more is learning to identify one from the other.
See you back at the car. Please be on time..
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Snakes
Virtually every experienced Pennsylvania small stream trout angler you talk with has a rattlesnake story or two. Some say they’ve almost stepped on one a number of different times. Others report seeing a rattler lying out in the warm May sun on a logging road or a streamside boulder as they were hiking or fishing along. A few even claim to have been struck in the boot leg by a Pennsylvania rattler.
Almost everybody has a rattlesnake story. Except me. I cannot honestly say I’ve ever seen one while fishing in Pennsylvania. And that strikes me as a little strange because over the years, I’ve probably spent as much time fishing small streams in Pennsylvania rattlesnake country as anyone.
I’m not sure whether to feel left out or lucky. When the talk turns to rattlers, the best I can do is to offer that I “may” have seen the southern end of a northbound rattler disappearing into the high grass once on Young Woman’s Creek and maybe another time on the West Branch of Hick’s Run. And possibly one other time on Lost Creek in Juniata County. I can’t say for sure, the snake was gone so quickly. But maybe..
In the meantime, guys have told me that that they often find pairs of them hanging off the porch rails of their camp on Cross Fork. Or they saw three rattlers walking the first mile of the trail into Fish Dam Run. They were four, five or six feet long with bodies as thick as the business end of a softball bat and huge triangular heads with darting forked tongues and evil, red-slitted eyes. Or they were fumbling their way along over the bowling ball-sized rocks along the banks of the Loyalsock and looked up just in time to see a rattlesnake, coiled and menacing, just a couple more steps ahead.
Other guys see them everywhere, even in places where I’m pretty sure there haven’t been any for over 50 years. But not me. I see an occasional water snake, quite a few muskrats, thousands of herons, a bear now and then and once, an otter. No rattlesnakes though.
That’s OK. Beyond the obvious benefit of having so far avoided the trauma of seeing a rattler up close, this rattlesnake encounter immunity I evidently have also allows me to not pay any attention to other anglers who tell me that while such and such a creek is loaded with trout, I’d have to be nuts to go there and try to fish it. Its just lousy with rattlesnakes, you know. Doesn’t mean a thing to me. Even if the placed is paved with vipers, I know I’m not going to see them. I never do. So, I can relax, forget about the snakes and concentrate on fishing. So, fair warning.. Don’t try your “beware the snakes” voodoo on me to try and keep me off your creek. I’m immune.
Or maybe I’m only immune to seeing Pennsylvania rattlesnakes because I actually have seen a rattler once in my life. It was about five years ago on a lonesome blacktop 20 miles from the nearest gas station, way back in the dairy country of southwest Wisconsin while driving from stream to stream. As I understand it, rattlesnakes are far less abundant in Wisconsin than they are in Pennsylvania. So seeing one there was sort of like the equivalent of seeing a Yeti or a highway maintenance crew where everybody was working at the same time in Pennsylvania. Pretty rare. Anyway, I came bouncing around the corner in my Focus wagon and there it was, bigger than life, stretched out in the middle of the road soaking up the heat. I steered around the snake and stopped beside it and watched as it slowly slithered its way off the road and into the weedy ditch. It was a rattlesnake, alright. Body as big around as the business end of a softball bat and a huge triangular head with a darting tongue and evil red-slitted eyes. Unmistakable. I can’t wait to get back to Pennsylvania to tell the guys..
Almost everybody has a rattlesnake story. Except me. I cannot honestly say I’ve ever seen one while fishing in Pennsylvania. And that strikes me as a little strange because over the years, I’ve probably spent as much time fishing small streams in Pennsylvania rattlesnake country as anyone.
I’m not sure whether to feel left out or lucky. When the talk turns to rattlers, the best I can do is to offer that I “may” have seen the southern end of a northbound rattler disappearing into the high grass once on Young Woman’s Creek and maybe another time on the West Branch of Hick’s Run. And possibly one other time on Lost Creek in Juniata County. I can’t say for sure, the snake was gone so quickly. But maybe..
In the meantime, guys have told me that that they often find pairs of them hanging off the porch rails of their camp on Cross Fork. Or they saw three rattlers walking the first mile of the trail into Fish Dam Run. They were four, five or six feet long with bodies as thick as the business end of a softball bat and huge triangular heads with darting forked tongues and evil, red-slitted eyes. Or they were fumbling their way along over the bowling ball-sized rocks along the banks of the Loyalsock and looked up just in time to see a rattlesnake, coiled and menacing, just a couple more steps ahead.
Other guys see them everywhere, even in places where I’m pretty sure there haven’t been any for over 50 years. But not me. I see an occasional water snake, quite a few muskrats, thousands of herons, a bear now and then and once, an otter. No rattlesnakes though.
That’s OK. Beyond the obvious benefit of having so far avoided the trauma of seeing a rattler up close, this rattlesnake encounter immunity I evidently have also allows me to not pay any attention to other anglers who tell me that while such and such a creek is loaded with trout, I’d have to be nuts to go there and try to fish it. Its just lousy with rattlesnakes, you know. Doesn’t mean a thing to me. Even if the placed is paved with vipers, I know I’m not going to see them. I never do. So, I can relax, forget about the snakes and concentrate on fishing. So, fair warning.. Don’t try your “beware the snakes” voodoo on me to try and keep me off your creek. I’m immune.
Or maybe I’m only immune to seeing Pennsylvania rattlesnakes because I actually have seen a rattler once in my life. It was about five years ago on a lonesome blacktop 20 miles from the nearest gas station, way back in the dairy country of southwest Wisconsin while driving from stream to stream. As I understand it, rattlesnakes are far less abundant in Wisconsin than they are in Pennsylvania. So seeing one there was sort of like the equivalent of seeing a Yeti or a highway maintenance crew where everybody was working at the same time in Pennsylvania. Pretty rare. Anyway, I came bouncing around the corner in my Focus wagon and there it was, bigger than life, stretched out in the middle of the road soaking up the heat. I steered around the snake and stopped beside it and watched as it slowly slithered its way off the road and into the weedy ditch. It was a rattlesnake, alright. Body as big around as the business end of a softball bat and a huge triangular head with a darting tongue and evil red-slitted eyes. Unmistakable. I can’t wait to get back to Pennsylvania to tell the guys..
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Cheating At Math
For better or worse, I’ve inherited from my Mother a tendency to try to control, assess and regulate a lot of the decisions and choices I make through the use of lists and mathematical analysis. My Mom used to keep a running list of the school clothes my three siblings and I wore each day along with the current number of days we had worn each item since it was new. On the list would be entries like: “blue button down shirt - 27 ½” (I must have been sick a half day somewhere along the line) or “tan skirt 19”.
I never paid much attention to what happened when a certain article of clothing exceeded a certain point in the number of days it had been worn. Maybe a buzzer went off and it suddenly went up in a puff of smoke or maybe it became a gun cleaning rag for my Dad. Like I say, I don’t know. I was too busy peddling newspapers around the neighborhood so I could take off and go fishing down the creek to pay much attention. It was just a way that my Mom kept track of things in her world. Maybe a little obsessive/compulsive, but no big deal.
After I left college and went my own way in the world, I found that I too felt a compulsion to make lists, assign mathematical values to various things on the lists and then do computations to help me decide what to do about this or that decision I was facing. And for me, a lot of these decisions had to do with fishing. Because fishing was mostly what I did when I wasn’t eating, working or sleeping.
A goodly number of years ago, I worked as a scheduling supervisor in a manufacturing plant. It was boring work for the most part, but it paid OK and allowed me to buy toys so I could fish. As well as other non-fishing related items I had to grudgingly admit I needed; like toothpaste, bourbon, hearing aid batteries, Wendy-burgers, etc. When the Spring came and with it the opportunity to fish at least one full day almost every weekend, I would sneak off at lunchtime by myself and find a quiet corner and make my list to decide where I was going to go fishing. I would usually list nine or ten rating factors. Things like “proximity” (how far away was it?), “likely fishing pressure” (would there be anybody else there to puncture my sense of solitude?), “fish quantity” (were there a lot of fish there?), “fish quality” (were the fish mostly dinky or would I have an opportunity to get into some bigger ones?), and “novelty” (had I been there lately?). Then, I had a final category I called “general feeling” which represented how the notion of going to a specific stream or destination resonated with me if I were to interview myself and ask me what I thought.
I would list these factors across the top of a sheet of paper and then list the candidate streams down the side of the sheet. Then I would draw crooked lines between each to separate each category and stream from the others. Then I would follow the line for each stream and assign a point value from 1-100 for each factor. Then, at the end of the stream line, I would add up all the points for that choice and enter this number in the final column. Then, it was a simple process of observing which stream had the most points and deciding that was where. Except for when the answer I got wasn’t the one that I really wanted. That was the unmentioned elephant in the living room about the entire process. Usually, I pretty much knew where I wanted to go before I ever headed for the quiet corner. There was just something I enjoyed about the process of crunching the numbers and I wasn’t above cheating to make them come out the way I wanted. Usually, if I did not get the result I wanted, I simply adjusted the “general feeling” scores of a few of the streams to make it come out right. Then, I would look at my work and tell myself that I had made my decision based on sound, empirical, logical analysis and that the results were unimpeachably correct.
I suppose it’s a little odd, but on the other hand, I once knew a guy who always wore a small piece of yellow ribbon on the back of his vest and would not fish without it. He said it made all the difference in how many fish he caught. Clearly, he was disturbed and by comparison, I’m as normal as they come..
Anyway, the good news is that I stopped making these faux analytical lists about the time we pulled stakes and moved out to the Midwest from Pennsylvania. But not all the news is good. I found another mathematical game I could cheat at to take its place.
There are days on the water when, for whatever reason, be it a falling barometer or not having a good casting day (and make no mistake, fly anglers have good and bad casting days, just like the cagey southpaw baseball pitcher’s good curveball comes and goes), lack of a yellow ribbon or whatever, you’re not catching any fish. Although not blessed with a lot of patience, I do have some and I’ll soldier on for a while, even when I’m not doing any good. I’ll change flies, lighten up my tippet, hold my mouth half open or any of a dozen other tricks I’ve learned to increase my chances. But eventually, if my hook-up drought continues, there comes a point where the notion of being somewhere else begins to seduce me. No doubt the fish there are cooperating. At first I fight it, but eventually I give in. It is at this point that my patience flees and I begin the game.
I tell myself that I will only make 100 more casts and if I do not catch a fish, I will leave. And then I begin to cast and count. 14, 31, 64. Oops, there’s a fish. Six inches long. Well, OK. I revise the rules. I allow another 100 casts, but must catch either a minimum of three more six inch fish or any combination of fish whose total length exceeds 18 inches. OK. 21, 49, 92. Bang! 14 inch brown from the undercut along the left bank. I revise the rules again. I allow an additional 75 casts, but must catch 25total inches of trout during the 75 casts. OK. 11, 44, 57 casts. Big fish swirls fly, but does not take. I revise the rules again. 50 more casts in which I must catch 20 total inches of trout. Or I’ll leave. I mean it. OK. 16, 29, 33. Ouch. Left knee (smashed in a fall against a beer keg in college in 1971) gives out. I sag to the bank and sit with my left leg fully extended to dampen the pain. Well, I’ve been pretty patient and followed a methodical but sensible regimen in order to decide how long to stay and when it is time to give up and leave. Good for me. I exhibited admirable discipline. But clearly, it is now time to go. I grab a sturdy piece of driftwood to use for a crutch and head back to the car.
Why do I play these games with myself on the water and why have I always been playing them in one way or the other? I don’t know and I guess, I also don’t care. I enjoy it. And I’ll bet that over the years, I’ve saved at least ten bucks in yellow ribbon and safety pins.
Now, I have to go check the mailbox. If there are four pieces of new mail or less, I’ll sort them on the stairs just inside the door. But if there are more than four, I’ll take them in the office and sort them. Unless there are one or more magazines, in which case… Oh never mind.
In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean famously said: “I am haunted by waters”. Lucky him. He could have had it a lot worse and also been haunted by elastic mathematical reasoning and a bad knee.
I never paid much attention to what happened when a certain article of clothing exceeded a certain point in the number of days it had been worn. Maybe a buzzer went off and it suddenly went up in a puff of smoke or maybe it became a gun cleaning rag for my Dad. Like I say, I don’t know. I was too busy peddling newspapers around the neighborhood so I could take off and go fishing down the creek to pay much attention. It was just a way that my Mom kept track of things in her world. Maybe a little obsessive/compulsive, but no big deal.
After I left college and went my own way in the world, I found that I too felt a compulsion to make lists, assign mathematical values to various things on the lists and then do computations to help me decide what to do about this or that decision I was facing. And for me, a lot of these decisions had to do with fishing. Because fishing was mostly what I did when I wasn’t eating, working or sleeping.
A goodly number of years ago, I worked as a scheduling supervisor in a manufacturing plant. It was boring work for the most part, but it paid OK and allowed me to buy toys so I could fish. As well as other non-fishing related items I had to grudgingly admit I needed; like toothpaste, bourbon, hearing aid batteries, Wendy-burgers, etc. When the Spring came and with it the opportunity to fish at least one full day almost every weekend, I would sneak off at lunchtime by myself and find a quiet corner and make my list to decide where I was going to go fishing. I would usually list nine or ten rating factors. Things like “proximity” (how far away was it?), “likely fishing pressure” (would there be anybody else there to puncture my sense of solitude?), “fish quantity” (were there a lot of fish there?), “fish quality” (were the fish mostly dinky or would I have an opportunity to get into some bigger ones?), and “novelty” (had I been there lately?). Then, I had a final category I called “general feeling” which represented how the notion of going to a specific stream or destination resonated with me if I were to interview myself and ask me what I thought.
I would list these factors across the top of a sheet of paper and then list the candidate streams down the side of the sheet. Then I would draw crooked lines between each to separate each category and stream from the others. Then I would follow the line for each stream and assign a point value from 1-100 for each factor. Then, at the end of the stream line, I would add up all the points for that choice and enter this number in the final column. Then, it was a simple process of observing which stream had the most points and deciding that was where. Except for when the answer I got wasn’t the one that I really wanted. That was the unmentioned elephant in the living room about the entire process. Usually, I pretty much knew where I wanted to go before I ever headed for the quiet corner. There was just something I enjoyed about the process of crunching the numbers and I wasn’t above cheating to make them come out the way I wanted. Usually, if I did not get the result I wanted, I simply adjusted the “general feeling” scores of a few of the streams to make it come out right. Then, I would look at my work and tell myself that I had made my decision based on sound, empirical, logical analysis and that the results were unimpeachably correct.
I suppose it’s a little odd, but on the other hand, I once knew a guy who always wore a small piece of yellow ribbon on the back of his vest and would not fish without it. He said it made all the difference in how many fish he caught. Clearly, he was disturbed and by comparison, I’m as normal as they come..
Anyway, the good news is that I stopped making these faux analytical lists about the time we pulled stakes and moved out to the Midwest from Pennsylvania. But not all the news is good. I found another mathematical game I could cheat at to take its place.
There are days on the water when, for whatever reason, be it a falling barometer or not having a good casting day (and make no mistake, fly anglers have good and bad casting days, just like the cagey southpaw baseball pitcher’s good curveball comes and goes), lack of a yellow ribbon or whatever, you’re not catching any fish. Although not blessed with a lot of patience, I do have some and I’ll soldier on for a while, even when I’m not doing any good. I’ll change flies, lighten up my tippet, hold my mouth half open or any of a dozen other tricks I’ve learned to increase my chances. But eventually, if my hook-up drought continues, there comes a point where the notion of being somewhere else begins to seduce me. No doubt the fish there are cooperating. At first I fight it, but eventually I give in. It is at this point that my patience flees and I begin the game.
I tell myself that I will only make 100 more casts and if I do not catch a fish, I will leave. And then I begin to cast and count. 14, 31, 64. Oops, there’s a fish. Six inches long. Well, OK. I revise the rules. I allow another 100 casts, but must catch either a minimum of three more six inch fish or any combination of fish whose total length exceeds 18 inches. OK. 21, 49, 92. Bang! 14 inch brown from the undercut along the left bank. I revise the rules again. I allow an additional 75 casts, but must catch 25total inches of trout during the 75 casts. OK. 11, 44, 57 casts. Big fish swirls fly, but does not take. I revise the rules again. 50 more casts in which I must catch 20 total inches of trout. Or I’ll leave. I mean it. OK. 16, 29, 33. Ouch. Left knee (smashed in a fall against a beer keg in college in 1971) gives out. I sag to the bank and sit with my left leg fully extended to dampen the pain. Well, I’ve been pretty patient and followed a methodical but sensible regimen in order to decide how long to stay and when it is time to give up and leave. Good for me. I exhibited admirable discipline. But clearly, it is now time to go. I grab a sturdy piece of driftwood to use for a crutch and head back to the car.
Why do I play these games with myself on the water and why have I always been playing them in one way or the other? I don’t know and I guess, I also don’t care. I enjoy it. And I’ll bet that over the years, I’ve saved at least ten bucks in yellow ribbon and safety pins.
Now, I have to go check the mailbox. If there are four pieces of new mail or less, I’ll sort them on the stairs just inside the door. But if there are more than four, I’ll take them in the office and sort them. Unless there are one or more magazines, in which case… Oh never mind.
In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean famously said: “I am haunted by waters”. Lucky him. He could have had it a lot worse and also been haunted by elastic mathematical reasoning and a bad knee.
The Big Black Ugly
Although I’ve been tying all my own flies for well over 40 years, I’m not a particularly good or precise flytier. Most of my flies are serviceable and will catch fish. None of them would ever win best of show in a tying contest. Even a tying contest between a bunch of guys with duct tape over one eye..
Which is why I like relatively simple fly designs or flies that actually become more effective if they look a little rough coming out of the vise. No loop-wing emergers for me. Or jointed body Hexagenia nymphs or knotted leg grasshopper patterns for that matter. While, with great effort, I’ve tied a few classic salmon fly brooch pins for my wife from time to time, my tying overall is far more utilitarian than artistic. I mostly tie to fish and seldom undertake a fly with more than four or five steps from bare hook to finished product or a fly that would take me more than about 10 minutes to tie. I have fish to catch; I can’t be sitting at the vise all day.
Happily, some of the simplest flies are also among the most versatile and effective. Clunky deer hair terrestrials and simple gob of muskrat or hare’s ear fur on a hook nymphs among many others, come to mind as examples of uncomplicated, easy-to-tie but very effective flies.
Another good example is my favorite fly for smallmouth bass, a simple black fur leech I call the Big Black Ugly. Dead drifted or actively worked in the flow, this is one of the deadliest bass flies I know of and I can tie a dozen of them in an hour, which makes me like it even more. And it is effective on virtually any fish that swims in fresh water and has been known to take a fly.
I’ve caught northerns up to five or six pounds out of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee River on the Big Black Ugly fished on a slow retrieve in the weedy backwaters off the main current flow. My best pike taken this way probably would have sheared me off and escaped had he not hooked himself dead center of the bony plate between his eyes. Somehow, this struck me as something I should not be surprised to see a pike do. They tend to be long on savagery and short on smarts, even by fish standards. In any event, hooked this way with the leader well away from that buzz saw of a mouth, I was able to land him.
When I travel home to Pennsylvania to visit my Mom and siblings, my brother-in-law often arranges for me to have access to a small farm pond owned by friends. I’ll escape up there for an hour or so when my schedule permits. I walk around the high banks of the pond throwing a brightly colored Clouser minnow out into the middle and stripping it back at a rapid rate. About every third cast or so, a small but chunky largemouth bass in the 10-12 inch range grabs the fly. It’s a lot of fun and allows me to get my fishing fix in while I’m supposed to be acting like a responsible adult and doing family stuff.
On one of these outings at the pond, after bringing about 20 of these pint-sized bass to hand, I sat down on the bank, clipped the Clouser from the leader and changed to a size #4 Big Black Ugly. I wanted to try crawling it across the bottom in hopes I might happen into a larger bass. I put a couple of split shot a few inches in front of the fly to help it get down and proceeded to fling it as far out into the center of the pond as I could cast. Kersploosh, went the fly and I waited for it to sink and then began to slowly bring it back towards me a couple inches at a time. Nothing, so I tried again and again and again. After about another half hour of this, I was ready to pack it in, but I figured I’d give it one more try. This time, instead of casting out into the middle of the pond, I threw the fly parallel to the shoreline about 10 feet off the bank. I let it sink and began my retrieve, not anticipating anything was going to change, but determined to give it this last try. I had moved the fly no more than a foot or so when it stopped dead. I lifted the rod tip. Hung up, I thought. That’s OK. I can tie a dozen of these things an hour. Then the snag began to move. For the next 10 minutes, I followed the fish around the boundary of the pond, gaining a little line here and then losing it again as the fish made a series of short but powerful runs. I figured I had the bass of a lifetime and was anxious to see him. But when he finally gave up the fight and rolled up to the surface, I saw this was no bass. Rather, it was a channel cat that (once landed and measured against my rod before being released) taped out at 26” or, I’d estimate, about seven pounds. What he was doing in that farm pond, I haven’t the slightest idea. Never mid that, though. Big Black Ugly comes through again.
I’ve also put Big Black Ugly to good use on the browns of the Spring Creeks of Southwest Wisconsin, where it has produced a number of fish in the 16-18” class when dead drifted in under an overhanging bank or man-made lunker structure. I’ve fished it off the edges of the weed beds in the lagoons of Presque Isle Bay and taken some nice largemouth up to three pounds or so. Largemouth seem to take it on the drop and before the retrieve even begins, much as they would a plastic worm. I even caught a couple of small muskies (around 22” or so) out of the inlet of Lake LeBoeuf on the Big Black Ugly.
Like I say, if it swims in fresh water and will take a fly, it’ll eat the Big Black Ugly.
It’s a simple fly to tie, even for a dexterity-challenged tier like me. Here’s the pattern.
Give it a try.
Hook: 3XL nymph/streamer hook in sizes #2-10. The best sizes for smallmouth are #4 and #6. I use #2’s and #4’s for Pike and #8’s and 10’s for trout.
Thread: black 6/0 or 3/0, depending upon fly size.
Body: Black chenille sized to match hook size. I put 10 or so wraps of .020 wire under the body on my bass Uglies and about that many wraps of .015 under the body of the smaller versions I use for trout.
Overbody/tail: Black dyed rabbit Zonker strip.
Mount the hook in the vise and wrap lead-free wire directly on shank. Then start thread at hook bend and wrap forward to point where body will end and then back to bend to anchor the wire in place. Cut a piece of black Zonker strip about 2 ½ times the length of the shank and tie this in just in front of the hook bend at the midpoint of the strip with half of the strip forming the tail and the other half ready to be tied down to form the overbody. Tie in chenille at hook bend and wrap it forward over the wire to a point about ¼ inch behind the eye. Make a few wraps to hold the chenille in place and add a drop of cement. Then pull the remaining strip over top of the body, making sure to center it on top of the chenille. Tie off and clip excess. At this point, you should have a little puff of rabbit fur sticking up in the air ahead of the body. You can get fancy and divide this with the thread to make a collar or gills along both sides of the fly. Or not. In any event, finish the head of the fly, cement and go fish.
The Big Black Ugly is my kind of fly. It’s a quick, easy tie and it catches fish regardless of how you work it; dead drift, slow retrieve with pauses or a rapid stripping retrieve.
I’m never without at least 50 of them in various sizes….
Which is why I like relatively simple fly designs or flies that actually become more effective if they look a little rough coming out of the vise. No loop-wing emergers for me. Or jointed body Hexagenia nymphs or knotted leg grasshopper patterns for that matter. While, with great effort, I’ve tied a few classic salmon fly brooch pins for my wife from time to time, my tying overall is far more utilitarian than artistic. I mostly tie to fish and seldom undertake a fly with more than four or five steps from bare hook to finished product or a fly that would take me more than about 10 minutes to tie. I have fish to catch; I can’t be sitting at the vise all day.
Happily, some of the simplest flies are also among the most versatile and effective. Clunky deer hair terrestrials and simple gob of muskrat or hare’s ear fur on a hook nymphs among many others, come to mind as examples of uncomplicated, easy-to-tie but very effective flies.
Another good example is my favorite fly for smallmouth bass, a simple black fur leech I call the Big Black Ugly. Dead drifted or actively worked in the flow, this is one of the deadliest bass flies I know of and I can tie a dozen of them in an hour, which makes me like it even more. And it is effective on virtually any fish that swims in fresh water and has been known to take a fly.
I’ve caught northerns up to five or six pounds out of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee River on the Big Black Ugly fished on a slow retrieve in the weedy backwaters off the main current flow. My best pike taken this way probably would have sheared me off and escaped had he not hooked himself dead center of the bony plate between his eyes. Somehow, this struck me as something I should not be surprised to see a pike do. They tend to be long on savagery and short on smarts, even by fish standards. In any event, hooked this way with the leader well away from that buzz saw of a mouth, I was able to land him.
When I travel home to Pennsylvania to visit my Mom and siblings, my brother-in-law often arranges for me to have access to a small farm pond owned by friends. I’ll escape up there for an hour or so when my schedule permits. I walk around the high banks of the pond throwing a brightly colored Clouser minnow out into the middle and stripping it back at a rapid rate. About every third cast or so, a small but chunky largemouth bass in the 10-12 inch range grabs the fly. It’s a lot of fun and allows me to get my fishing fix in while I’m supposed to be acting like a responsible adult and doing family stuff.
On one of these outings at the pond, after bringing about 20 of these pint-sized bass to hand, I sat down on the bank, clipped the Clouser from the leader and changed to a size #4 Big Black Ugly. I wanted to try crawling it across the bottom in hopes I might happen into a larger bass. I put a couple of split shot a few inches in front of the fly to help it get down and proceeded to fling it as far out into the center of the pond as I could cast. Kersploosh, went the fly and I waited for it to sink and then began to slowly bring it back towards me a couple inches at a time. Nothing, so I tried again and again and again. After about another half hour of this, I was ready to pack it in, but I figured I’d give it one more try. This time, instead of casting out into the middle of the pond, I threw the fly parallel to the shoreline about 10 feet off the bank. I let it sink and began my retrieve, not anticipating anything was going to change, but determined to give it this last try. I had moved the fly no more than a foot or so when it stopped dead. I lifted the rod tip. Hung up, I thought. That’s OK. I can tie a dozen of these things an hour. Then the snag began to move. For the next 10 minutes, I followed the fish around the boundary of the pond, gaining a little line here and then losing it again as the fish made a series of short but powerful runs. I figured I had the bass of a lifetime and was anxious to see him. But when he finally gave up the fight and rolled up to the surface, I saw this was no bass. Rather, it was a channel cat that (once landed and measured against my rod before being released) taped out at 26” or, I’d estimate, about seven pounds. What he was doing in that farm pond, I haven’t the slightest idea. Never mid that, though. Big Black Ugly comes through again.
I’ve also put Big Black Ugly to good use on the browns of the Spring Creeks of Southwest Wisconsin, where it has produced a number of fish in the 16-18” class when dead drifted in under an overhanging bank or man-made lunker structure. I’ve fished it off the edges of the weed beds in the lagoons of Presque Isle Bay and taken some nice largemouth up to three pounds or so. Largemouth seem to take it on the drop and before the retrieve even begins, much as they would a plastic worm. I even caught a couple of small muskies (around 22” or so) out of the inlet of Lake LeBoeuf on the Big Black Ugly.
Like I say, if it swims in fresh water and will take a fly, it’ll eat the Big Black Ugly.
It’s a simple fly to tie, even for a dexterity-challenged tier like me. Here’s the pattern.
Give it a try.
Hook: 3XL nymph/streamer hook in sizes #2-10. The best sizes for smallmouth are #4 and #6. I use #2’s and #4’s for Pike and #8’s and 10’s for trout.
Thread: black 6/0 or 3/0, depending upon fly size.
Body: Black chenille sized to match hook size. I put 10 or so wraps of .020 wire under the body on my bass Uglies and about that many wraps of .015 under the body of the smaller versions I use for trout.
Overbody/tail: Black dyed rabbit Zonker strip.
Mount the hook in the vise and wrap lead-free wire directly on shank. Then start thread at hook bend and wrap forward to point where body will end and then back to bend to anchor the wire in place. Cut a piece of black Zonker strip about 2 ½ times the length of the shank and tie this in just in front of the hook bend at the midpoint of the strip with half of the strip forming the tail and the other half ready to be tied down to form the overbody. Tie in chenille at hook bend and wrap it forward over the wire to a point about ¼ inch behind the eye. Make a few wraps to hold the chenille in place and add a drop of cement. Then pull the remaining strip over top of the body, making sure to center it on top of the chenille. Tie off and clip excess. At this point, you should have a little puff of rabbit fur sticking up in the air ahead of the body. You can get fancy and divide this with the thread to make a collar or gills along both sides of the fly. Or not. In any event, finish the head of the fly, cement and go fish.
The Big Black Ugly is my kind of fly. It’s a quick, easy tie and it catches fish regardless of how you work it; dead drift, slow retrieve with pauses or a rapid stripping retrieve.
I’m never without at least 50 of them in various sizes….
Wild Freestone Rainbows
I have a thing about small stream wild rainbow trout. I don’t know if it’s due to having spent most of my fishing time in places where they are scarce, as in my native Pennsylvania or whether it’s more about how beautiful the places are where I have been fortunate to fish over wild rainbows. Places like the high gradient streams of the Southern Appalachians or a select few of the freestone spring creeks of Central Wisconsin with their golden sand and gravel bottoms and glassy, unbroken flows.
Or maybe it is the fish themselves. Muscular and compact little trout with a slash of scarlet war paint down their flanks that grab my elk hair caddis from the surface and turn and vault from the water and clear a three foot wide mid-stream boulder with ease. I enjoy catching all three species of wild trout that I have access to that doesn’t involve buying an air ticket, but I like the little bows best of all. They seem somehow, well, wilder to me
On the western edge of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest along US Route 62 south of Irvine but north of Tidioute, a number of short, very small streams fall off the steep mountainside, cross the highway and join the broad Allegheny River. While I’m not sure they are there any more (they may have been driven out by increasing stream acidity and competition from brook trout), at one time several of these dinky rills held reproducing populations of rainbow trout. I used to plan an entire day’s fishing around these little creeks with their equally little fish. They seldom exceeded seven or eight inches and most were closer to five or six, but there was just something about catching these miniature, red-slashed rockets out of the steep plunge pools of the tiny flows. I couldn’t get enough of it and would often stay on these streams to the exclusion of waters where there were more or bigger wild browns or brook trout.
In the mid-80’s, the company I was working for sent me down to their satellite plant in Charlotte to train the folks there in how to use the new-fangled (at the time) computerized manufacturing control system that was being put in place company-wide. If I wasn’t already hooked on the little rainbows, being proximate to the tumbling streams of the North Carolina Blue Ridge where as a rule, wild rainbows dominate the fisheries, cinched the deal. I soon found that from Charlotte, I was only a three to four hour drive from some of the best of these waters. Streams with wonderful, enchanting names like the South Toe River, Lost Cove Creek, Sassafras Creek and many others. I was over there every free weekend, gladly getting up at 4:00AM so I could make the drive and hike in the requisite mile or so on the well maintained trail system of the Pisgah National Forest.
Once I was on the water, I went nuts. It was wild rainbow heaven. I’d hike in and fish two and sometimes three streams a day, covering a couple miles of each (I was younger then, but then again, so were you..) and flinging elk hair caddis, the old cork McMurray ants or a simple Humpy into every likely pocket and run. I would lose track of time and wait too long to hike back out and often barely make it back to the car before dark. I scaled cliffs; I fell off of one and broke a finger. I got lost more than once. And I caught hundreds of the little bows. I even got a handful that made it past the 10 inch mark on the tape. I had a ball. Every time I went back home to Pennsylvania, I told my bosses that while it was going fairly well at the plant, it was obvious that I would need to go back for several extended visits. Extended as in months and months and months. The folks at the Charlotte facility were eager to learn, but it was going to take a while. And it did. It took an additional 15-20 new streams, several hundred dollars worth of gasoline, two new fly lines, a hundred or so lost flies and two new pairs of hip boots before I was confident they had learned the new system well enough to go it alone. Then I came home. I told the guys at work that it was a hardship to be away from home for so long, but that my Dad had always told me that any job worth doing is worth doing well. The bruises on my backside from falling off slippery mid-stream boulders and the ache in my thighs from climbing near vertical trails coming off the creek told me I had done a good job..
The years flew by. I stayed in Pennsylvania and fished mostly for wild browns and brookies. I hadn’t forgotten the little wild rainbows, but the available fishing for them around home was deteriorating and where it was still pretty good, there were a lot of other guys on the creek. So, I contented myself with what was around, which wasn’t bad. Pennsylvania had and still has some of the best small stream fishing in the East for wild browns and brookies. A few more years went by and the next thing I knew, I was getting married and moving out to the Midwest. Whoa, let me slow up a second here. It wasn’t instantaneous and one day I was fishing out of Charlotte and the next, I was married and living out in the flat lands. There was a lot of stuff that happened in between, but very little of it had to do with wild rainbow trout.
So here we are in our new home within a three hour or so drive of some of Wisconsin’s better freestone spring creek trout fisheries. I started to research and explore a bit and found, to my delight, the wild rainbows and I were about to meet again. It was time for more bruises and maybe, if I tried hard enough, another broken finger. And little silvery, finned rockets with a red slash down their flanks.
The West Branch of the White River clips briskly over a bed of glowing tan sand and multi-hued fine gravel as it travels in its corridor of birch, pine and high grass bog on the western edge of Wautoma, Wisconsin. I don’t think I’ve seen a more beautiful trout stream. In fact, I know I haven’t. All through the five mile length of the stream, wild browns and a scattering of brook trout hold under the grass hummocks and fallen logs that anchor the stream bank. But the dominant fish of the West Branch is the wild rainbow trout, an anomaly of sorts in this region of brook and brown trout waters. Hurray! I was back in business. The first decent April day of our first year in the Midwest, I made a beeline for the West Branch.
In coloration and shape and certainly in the berserk way they fight, the wild bows of the White River system are fairly close cousins to their Blue Ridge and Pennsylvania counterparts. But they on average run just a little bit larger, perhaps due to the fertile nature of the stream. Fish of eight to nine inches are pretty common and there are enough fish up to 12 and occasionally 13 inches to keep the anticipation level high.
When I arrived for the first time at the West Branch, I stood on the bridge and just looked at the stream for what must have been close to five minutes. That isn’t like me, not at all. But it really is that beautiful and, well, fishy looking.
Soon enough, I snapped out of it and started to work my way upstream with a Parachute Adams. Within the first dozen or so casts, seven or eight young of the year rainbows, two or three inches long blew the fly out of the water like a kernel of popcorn exploding.
I didn’t mind. This is a sign of a healthy wild trout population.
Up around the second bend from the bridge, a log about the diameter of a telephone pole had fallen in the stream. Over time, the water flowing by and under this obstacle had dug a pocket about 18 inches deep in the gravel. Good place for a bigger fish. I flipped the Adams upstream and let it drift along the edge of the log. It went bobbing along, its little white calf tail post nodding in the flow. Then it disappeared in a swirl and I set the hook. Nine inches of feisty and angry rainbow trout vaulted from the water and landed clear up against the far bank of the stream, a leap of what had to be six or seven feet as the crow, umm, trout flies. Then, he zipped back across and tried to get back under the log. I raised the rod tip and slowly guided him to hand, and turned the fly from his jaw and sent him on his way.
I broke out in a big grin. I was back with my favorite small stream wild trout. I really love the little bows..
Or maybe it is the fish themselves. Muscular and compact little trout with a slash of scarlet war paint down their flanks that grab my elk hair caddis from the surface and turn and vault from the water and clear a three foot wide mid-stream boulder with ease. I enjoy catching all three species of wild trout that I have access to that doesn’t involve buying an air ticket, but I like the little bows best of all. They seem somehow, well, wilder to me
On the western edge of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest along US Route 62 south of Irvine but north of Tidioute, a number of short, very small streams fall off the steep mountainside, cross the highway and join the broad Allegheny River. While I’m not sure they are there any more (they may have been driven out by increasing stream acidity and competition from brook trout), at one time several of these dinky rills held reproducing populations of rainbow trout. I used to plan an entire day’s fishing around these little creeks with their equally little fish. They seldom exceeded seven or eight inches and most were closer to five or six, but there was just something about catching these miniature, red-slashed rockets out of the steep plunge pools of the tiny flows. I couldn’t get enough of it and would often stay on these streams to the exclusion of waters where there were more or bigger wild browns or brook trout.
In the mid-80’s, the company I was working for sent me down to their satellite plant in Charlotte to train the folks there in how to use the new-fangled (at the time) computerized manufacturing control system that was being put in place company-wide. If I wasn’t already hooked on the little rainbows, being proximate to the tumbling streams of the North Carolina Blue Ridge where as a rule, wild rainbows dominate the fisheries, cinched the deal. I soon found that from Charlotte, I was only a three to four hour drive from some of the best of these waters. Streams with wonderful, enchanting names like the South Toe River, Lost Cove Creek, Sassafras Creek and many others. I was over there every free weekend, gladly getting up at 4:00AM so I could make the drive and hike in the requisite mile or so on the well maintained trail system of the Pisgah National Forest.
Once I was on the water, I went nuts. It was wild rainbow heaven. I’d hike in and fish two and sometimes three streams a day, covering a couple miles of each (I was younger then, but then again, so were you..) and flinging elk hair caddis, the old cork McMurray ants or a simple Humpy into every likely pocket and run. I would lose track of time and wait too long to hike back out and often barely make it back to the car before dark. I scaled cliffs; I fell off of one and broke a finger. I got lost more than once. And I caught hundreds of the little bows. I even got a handful that made it past the 10 inch mark on the tape. I had a ball. Every time I went back home to Pennsylvania, I told my bosses that while it was going fairly well at the plant, it was obvious that I would need to go back for several extended visits. Extended as in months and months and months. The folks at the Charlotte facility were eager to learn, but it was going to take a while. And it did. It took an additional 15-20 new streams, several hundred dollars worth of gasoline, two new fly lines, a hundred or so lost flies and two new pairs of hip boots before I was confident they had learned the new system well enough to go it alone. Then I came home. I told the guys at work that it was a hardship to be away from home for so long, but that my Dad had always told me that any job worth doing is worth doing well. The bruises on my backside from falling off slippery mid-stream boulders and the ache in my thighs from climbing near vertical trails coming off the creek told me I had done a good job..
The years flew by. I stayed in Pennsylvania and fished mostly for wild browns and brookies. I hadn’t forgotten the little wild rainbows, but the available fishing for them around home was deteriorating and where it was still pretty good, there were a lot of other guys on the creek. So, I contented myself with what was around, which wasn’t bad. Pennsylvania had and still has some of the best small stream fishing in the East for wild browns and brookies. A few more years went by and the next thing I knew, I was getting married and moving out to the Midwest. Whoa, let me slow up a second here. It wasn’t instantaneous and one day I was fishing out of Charlotte and the next, I was married and living out in the flat lands. There was a lot of stuff that happened in between, but very little of it had to do with wild rainbow trout.
So here we are in our new home within a three hour or so drive of some of Wisconsin’s better freestone spring creek trout fisheries. I started to research and explore a bit and found, to my delight, the wild rainbows and I were about to meet again. It was time for more bruises and maybe, if I tried hard enough, another broken finger. And little silvery, finned rockets with a red slash down their flanks.
The West Branch of the White River clips briskly over a bed of glowing tan sand and multi-hued fine gravel as it travels in its corridor of birch, pine and high grass bog on the western edge of Wautoma, Wisconsin. I don’t think I’ve seen a more beautiful trout stream. In fact, I know I haven’t. All through the five mile length of the stream, wild browns and a scattering of brook trout hold under the grass hummocks and fallen logs that anchor the stream bank. But the dominant fish of the West Branch is the wild rainbow trout, an anomaly of sorts in this region of brook and brown trout waters. Hurray! I was back in business. The first decent April day of our first year in the Midwest, I made a beeline for the West Branch.
In coloration and shape and certainly in the berserk way they fight, the wild bows of the White River system are fairly close cousins to their Blue Ridge and Pennsylvania counterparts. But they on average run just a little bit larger, perhaps due to the fertile nature of the stream. Fish of eight to nine inches are pretty common and there are enough fish up to 12 and occasionally 13 inches to keep the anticipation level high.
When I arrived for the first time at the West Branch, I stood on the bridge and just looked at the stream for what must have been close to five minutes. That isn’t like me, not at all. But it really is that beautiful and, well, fishy looking.
Soon enough, I snapped out of it and started to work my way upstream with a Parachute Adams. Within the first dozen or so casts, seven or eight young of the year rainbows, two or three inches long blew the fly out of the water like a kernel of popcorn exploding.
I didn’t mind. This is a sign of a healthy wild trout population.
Up around the second bend from the bridge, a log about the diameter of a telephone pole had fallen in the stream. Over time, the water flowing by and under this obstacle had dug a pocket about 18 inches deep in the gravel. Good place for a bigger fish. I flipped the Adams upstream and let it drift along the edge of the log. It went bobbing along, its little white calf tail post nodding in the flow. Then it disappeared in a swirl and I set the hook. Nine inches of feisty and angry rainbow trout vaulted from the water and landed clear up against the far bank of the stream, a leap of what had to be six or seven feet as the crow, umm, trout flies. Then, he zipped back across and tried to get back under the log. I raised the rod tip and slowly guided him to hand, and turned the fly from his jaw and sent him on his way.
I broke out in a big grin. I was back with my favorite small stream wild trout. I really love the little bows..
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Around The Island
In the dead center of the southern Erie County glacial pothole called Lake LeBoeuf just a half mile from my boyhood home, there is an island of sorts. It's sparse crown of willows and dying snags are often inundated to ankle level by the freshets from LeBoeuf's three strong inlets, and dry ground is a sparse commodity there in any season. Still, we called it "the island".
Off the edges of the island were the places that held the fish.. A major sand bar extended off the island's west side, and it hosted a weed bed rich in minnows and other aquatic life. From the southern most point of the island, a single finger of a weed line extended out to touch and intertwine with a like protrusion extending from the lake’s southwest shore line. The dense weeds drew the minnows which drew the panfish which drew the bass and muskies. The chain of life.
It was here, in these places around the island, that we most often saw him. He was a fixture on the little lake. Well past retirement age, a solitary figure in a weathered cap and light windbreaker. Two rods extended from the rear of the boat, taut strands of monofilament line running from the rod tips to the water’s surface and the outboard coughed the staccato rhythm of trolling speed. Round and round the weed beds and the island he would go; winding through the channels of open water, searching for big fish.
Every once in a while, he would pause in his travels and stop and talk for a moment. We would show him the good stringer of crappies the morning had brought, and he would smile and nod. But the crappies weren't his thing. When asked how he was doing, as often as not he would shrug and say that he had "something" on at first light this morning. It had seized his Creek Chub lure or oversized Rapala, been there for a second, and then was gone. Big fish. Likely a muskie. That was what brought him out on the lake every day just as the new light was beginning to touch the water, and what made him troll the endless loops around the island and along the adjoining shoreline.
More often than not though, he would just wave as he passed. A single hand flashing in greeting while the other grasped the handle of the outboard to steer the boat along the weed line. And then he would be gone.
His name was Fred Koehler and we thought of him as the wisest of the wise in the ways of Lake LeBoeuf. He had retired, and moved from Pittsburgh up to our home town of Waterford to be with the lake always. We venerated him, and always watched for him when we were anchored off the island filling the bucket with crappies. We wanted to know what he knew. Because we knew he knew it all.
One bright Saturday morning in June, Fred paused from his trolling to talk for a moment. I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old at the time. With the brashness of youth, I spoke right up and asked him about the best way to catch the walleyes that lived in the little lake. He smiled and explained a technique involving a big bobber with a five or six inch chub hooked lightly through the lips suspended below. He told us where to fish it. Just off the island on the south side along the edge of the weeds. He told us this was where the walleyes were early in the morning, but not to be surprised if we came up with a big bass or even a muskie in the bargain. They were there at that time too. We nodded and thanked him. He moved on.
I spent most of the next week peddling papers, chasing lawn mowers and yanking weeds out of the garden, all the while thinking about big bobbers, first light and the weed bed.
Saturday morning finally arrived, and while there was a growing glow around the tree tops to the east, it was still dark when we approached the weed bed. The chubs had been collected the evening before. I clipped the big bobber to the line just about at the depth that Fred had suggested. Then I reached into the bucket and grabbed one of the wriggling chubs and baited up. In the half-light, I cast the whole thing as close to the edge of the weeds as I could, just as Fred had said to do. My Dad and brother followed suit. The daylight grew stronger. The morning mist rode low on the water. We sat back and waited.
I had the only take of the morning. The bobber jiggled, and then darted to and fro frantically. Then it began to move, cutting an inexorable "V" across the flat surface of the lake. "Let him run with it, then set the hook", my Dad said. I did the best I could. I was only twelve, after all.
Just as I thought I was going to pop from anticipation, my Dad said: "Hit him". I hauled back on the rod with both hands and dug my feet into the bottom of the boat. The rod arced, and the line began to melt from my reel. The bobber disappeared. We couldn't see it, but we could see the mighty wake it was leaving as it was towed towards the weeds by whatever was on the other end.
In a few seconds, it was over. The line went limp, and the bobber popped through the surface and just sat there. Gone... We spent the rest of the morning filling the bucket with crappies.
Later, we saw Fred. But he didn't stop. Just a wave and the passing rumble of the motor. I wish he would have hauled up and talked just for a moment. I would have liked to have had the chance to thank him for the advice and tell him that crappies were OK, but that I was after big fish now. Just like him.
(This essay originally appeared in modified form in Pennsylvania Angler And Boater Magazine)
Off the edges of the island were the places that held the fish.. A major sand bar extended off the island's west side, and it hosted a weed bed rich in minnows and other aquatic life. From the southern most point of the island, a single finger of a weed line extended out to touch and intertwine with a like protrusion extending from the lake’s southwest shore line. The dense weeds drew the minnows which drew the panfish which drew the bass and muskies. The chain of life.
It was here, in these places around the island, that we most often saw him. He was a fixture on the little lake. Well past retirement age, a solitary figure in a weathered cap and light windbreaker. Two rods extended from the rear of the boat, taut strands of monofilament line running from the rod tips to the water’s surface and the outboard coughed the staccato rhythm of trolling speed. Round and round the weed beds and the island he would go; winding through the channels of open water, searching for big fish.
Every once in a while, he would pause in his travels and stop and talk for a moment. We would show him the good stringer of crappies the morning had brought, and he would smile and nod. But the crappies weren't his thing. When asked how he was doing, as often as not he would shrug and say that he had "something" on at first light this morning. It had seized his Creek Chub lure or oversized Rapala, been there for a second, and then was gone. Big fish. Likely a muskie. That was what brought him out on the lake every day just as the new light was beginning to touch the water, and what made him troll the endless loops around the island and along the adjoining shoreline.
More often than not though, he would just wave as he passed. A single hand flashing in greeting while the other grasped the handle of the outboard to steer the boat along the weed line. And then he would be gone.
His name was Fred Koehler and we thought of him as the wisest of the wise in the ways of Lake LeBoeuf. He had retired, and moved from Pittsburgh up to our home town of Waterford to be with the lake always. We venerated him, and always watched for him when we were anchored off the island filling the bucket with crappies. We wanted to know what he knew. Because we knew he knew it all.
One bright Saturday morning in June, Fred paused from his trolling to talk for a moment. I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old at the time. With the brashness of youth, I spoke right up and asked him about the best way to catch the walleyes that lived in the little lake. He smiled and explained a technique involving a big bobber with a five or six inch chub hooked lightly through the lips suspended below. He told us where to fish it. Just off the island on the south side along the edge of the weeds. He told us this was where the walleyes were early in the morning, but not to be surprised if we came up with a big bass or even a muskie in the bargain. They were there at that time too. We nodded and thanked him. He moved on.
I spent most of the next week peddling papers, chasing lawn mowers and yanking weeds out of the garden, all the while thinking about big bobbers, first light and the weed bed.
Saturday morning finally arrived, and while there was a growing glow around the tree tops to the east, it was still dark when we approached the weed bed. The chubs had been collected the evening before. I clipped the big bobber to the line just about at the depth that Fred had suggested. Then I reached into the bucket and grabbed one of the wriggling chubs and baited up. In the half-light, I cast the whole thing as close to the edge of the weeds as I could, just as Fred had said to do. My Dad and brother followed suit. The daylight grew stronger. The morning mist rode low on the water. We sat back and waited.
I had the only take of the morning. The bobber jiggled, and then darted to and fro frantically. Then it began to move, cutting an inexorable "V" across the flat surface of the lake. "Let him run with it, then set the hook", my Dad said. I did the best I could. I was only twelve, after all.
Just as I thought I was going to pop from anticipation, my Dad said: "Hit him". I hauled back on the rod with both hands and dug my feet into the bottom of the boat. The rod arced, and the line began to melt from my reel. The bobber disappeared. We couldn't see it, but we could see the mighty wake it was leaving as it was towed towards the weeds by whatever was on the other end.
In a few seconds, it was over. The line went limp, and the bobber popped through the surface and just sat there. Gone... We spent the rest of the morning filling the bucket with crappies.
Later, we saw Fred. But he didn't stop. Just a wave and the passing rumble of the motor. I wish he would have hauled up and talked just for a moment. I would have liked to have had the chance to thank him for the advice and tell him that crappies were OK, but that I was after big fish now. Just like him.
(This essay originally appeared in modified form in Pennsylvania Angler And Boater Magazine)
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
My One Rod
I own a lot of fly rods. Certainly not as many as a lot of fellows, but a lot. I have eight fly rods that are specifically for trout fishing, or trout-sized fish like bluegill and other panfish. I have four other rods that are for larger fish like bass and pike and steelhead and that would be suitable for light salt water duty as well, I suppose, if I ever get motivated, organized and close enough to the ocean to use them in that way. And like a lot of guys, I have a few more rods with broken tips that I never bothered to have repaired. One of these now has a four foot length of 1X tippet knotted to the highest remaining eyelet of the broken tip section. I tied a piece of red Christmas ribbon to the terminal end of the 1X and made a cat toy. Our cats love it.
I have rods made of fiberglass, the industry standard up until the advent of graphite in the 1970’s. And I have rods made of several different generations of graphite, from the earlier, slower rods to the stiffer, higher modulus “faster” rods that became popular in the early 90’s. I even at one time, had a boron rod, when they were supposed to be the next big thing. I fished it a few times. It had all the flex of a reinforced steel bar. It was an altogether ugly and unwieldy piece of equipment that always seemed to glare at me from its place in the rod rack over in the corner of the basement because it knew that when I came to pick a rod to go fishing, it wasn’t going to be the one. I finally got tired of all the glaring and donated it to a TU raffle. Maybe whoever has it now is happy with it or maybe they glued a red reflecting disk to the end of it and stuck it in the ground to mark the edge of their driveway. I think, all things considered, it was a better functional fit for that purpose than it ever was for fishing.
So, I have had a lot of rods over the years.
But I only have one favorite rod. One rod that has been with me almost from the beginning of my fly fishing life and has traveled with me from the tumbling mountain freestones of Pennsylvania to the stair-step gradient streams of the North Carolina Blue Ridge to the headwaters of Oregon’s Deschutes to the whispering Spring Creeks of the Driftless Region of Southwest Wisconsin and Northeast Iowa. Only one rod that, of all of them, brings a smile to my face each and every time I unscrew the top from its aluminum case and take it out to fish.
My one rod is a 1978 or 1979 vintage Orvis Far & Fine graphite, a 7’ 9” rod for a five weight line. Its like a feather in my hand, weighing 2 1/8 oz with its simple down locking reel seat that secures the flanges of the reel against the cork and without the superfluous rosewood insert that made later models of the Far & Fine a half ounce heavier and (in my opinion) more clunky. The action is the old style full flex of first generation graphite. On a long cast, you can feel the rod loading all the way down into the butt section. I like that. It makes me feel like part of the cast, like I’m sailing out over the water right along with the fly. I like that too.
The original case for my Far & Fine has an ugly V-shaped dent in it from being accidentally closed in the rear hatch of one of the Subaru wagons I’ve owned over the years. I’m lucky that a dent to the case is all the damage I did. When I first arrive at the stream, I’m usually out of control with anticipation and in a mind-blanking hurry to get on the water. I’m lucky I haven’t slammed my hand in there instead.
My Far & Fine is on its fourth tip. Twice I whacked it against the under sides of bridges setting the hook on a five or six inch trout. I have a violent hook set, especially when it has been a while since I’ve had a take. Another time, the tip section simply splintered when I was shaking the rod to try and dislodge a stuck fly on a small tree branch. The vigor of my shaking to free a loose fly is second only to the violence of my hook set. So, the rod makes regular trips back to the Orvis rod repair shop in Manchester, Vermont and since its date of manufacture preceded the institution of Orvis’ 25-year guarantee on rod breakage for any reason, I pay through the, umm, zinger for each new tip.
Every couple of years, I get conscientious and scrub the cork grip of my Far & Fine with an old toothbrush and a baking soda/water paste. Clean it up. Peel away the years of grime and darkening from the hundreds of thousands of casts I’ve made over the life of the rod. And every time I do this, I look at the product of my work and decide I won’t do it any more. It makes the rod seem a bit like a stranger to me for some reason. Too clean and too new looking. I like it better when its dirty and wearing all the battle scars of the time on the water. And besides, I don’t think it casts as well with a clean grip…
I don’t know how many trout I’ve caught on my Far & Fine. 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 or more perhaps. I just don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. There have been a lot of days on tough water when all the rod did all day was dislocate air as it moved back and forth in the casting stroke. No fish, or very few anyway. And there have been a lot of days where was a fish willing to take virtually everywhere I put the fly and my palms looked like prunes from releasing trout. Every day on the water is the same in a way before the first cast is made. Anything is possible, the best day ever or one of the worst. This is one of my favorite things about fishing, the limitless nature of the possible at the beginning. We don’t know until the day is done and we look back on it. And in that sense, every day is different.
Only one thing is constant. Me and my One Rod, battle tested and scarred, but always eager for the case to be opened, the cloth sack removed, the reel mounted and the next round to begin. We’re the oldest and best of friends.
I have rods made of fiberglass, the industry standard up until the advent of graphite in the 1970’s. And I have rods made of several different generations of graphite, from the earlier, slower rods to the stiffer, higher modulus “faster” rods that became popular in the early 90’s. I even at one time, had a boron rod, when they were supposed to be the next big thing. I fished it a few times. It had all the flex of a reinforced steel bar. It was an altogether ugly and unwieldy piece of equipment that always seemed to glare at me from its place in the rod rack over in the corner of the basement because it knew that when I came to pick a rod to go fishing, it wasn’t going to be the one. I finally got tired of all the glaring and donated it to a TU raffle. Maybe whoever has it now is happy with it or maybe they glued a red reflecting disk to the end of it and stuck it in the ground to mark the edge of their driveway. I think, all things considered, it was a better functional fit for that purpose than it ever was for fishing.
So, I have had a lot of rods over the years.
But I only have one favorite rod. One rod that has been with me almost from the beginning of my fly fishing life and has traveled with me from the tumbling mountain freestones of Pennsylvania to the stair-step gradient streams of the North Carolina Blue Ridge to the headwaters of Oregon’s Deschutes to the whispering Spring Creeks of the Driftless Region of Southwest Wisconsin and Northeast Iowa. Only one rod that, of all of them, brings a smile to my face each and every time I unscrew the top from its aluminum case and take it out to fish.
My one rod is a 1978 or 1979 vintage Orvis Far & Fine graphite, a 7’ 9” rod for a five weight line. Its like a feather in my hand, weighing 2 1/8 oz with its simple down locking reel seat that secures the flanges of the reel against the cork and without the superfluous rosewood insert that made later models of the Far & Fine a half ounce heavier and (in my opinion) more clunky. The action is the old style full flex of first generation graphite. On a long cast, you can feel the rod loading all the way down into the butt section. I like that. It makes me feel like part of the cast, like I’m sailing out over the water right along with the fly. I like that too.
The original case for my Far & Fine has an ugly V-shaped dent in it from being accidentally closed in the rear hatch of one of the Subaru wagons I’ve owned over the years. I’m lucky that a dent to the case is all the damage I did. When I first arrive at the stream, I’m usually out of control with anticipation and in a mind-blanking hurry to get on the water. I’m lucky I haven’t slammed my hand in there instead.
My Far & Fine is on its fourth tip. Twice I whacked it against the under sides of bridges setting the hook on a five or six inch trout. I have a violent hook set, especially when it has been a while since I’ve had a take. Another time, the tip section simply splintered when I was shaking the rod to try and dislodge a stuck fly on a small tree branch. The vigor of my shaking to free a loose fly is second only to the violence of my hook set. So, the rod makes regular trips back to the Orvis rod repair shop in Manchester, Vermont and since its date of manufacture preceded the institution of Orvis’ 25-year guarantee on rod breakage for any reason, I pay through the, umm, zinger for each new tip.
Every couple of years, I get conscientious and scrub the cork grip of my Far & Fine with an old toothbrush and a baking soda/water paste. Clean it up. Peel away the years of grime and darkening from the hundreds of thousands of casts I’ve made over the life of the rod. And every time I do this, I look at the product of my work and decide I won’t do it any more. It makes the rod seem a bit like a stranger to me for some reason. Too clean and too new looking. I like it better when its dirty and wearing all the battle scars of the time on the water. And besides, I don’t think it casts as well with a clean grip…
I don’t know how many trout I’ve caught on my Far & Fine. 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 or more perhaps. I just don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. There have been a lot of days on tough water when all the rod did all day was dislocate air as it moved back and forth in the casting stroke. No fish, or very few anyway. And there have been a lot of days where was a fish willing to take virtually everywhere I put the fly and my palms looked like prunes from releasing trout. Every day on the water is the same in a way before the first cast is made. Anything is possible, the best day ever or one of the worst. This is one of my favorite things about fishing, the limitless nature of the possible at the beginning. We don’t know until the day is done and we look back on it. And in that sense, every day is different.
Only one thing is constant. Me and my One Rod, battle tested and scarred, but always eager for the case to be opened, the cloth sack removed, the reel mounted and the next round to begin. We’re the oldest and best of friends.
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