Four Eight

It’s that time of year. Some people do this in the midst of the holiday madness at the end of the year. I seem to fall into the abyss of self-analysis as the calendar adds another year of experience to my resume. I’m just over a handful of tide cycles away from turning forty-eight. Not a major milestone like forty or the age of fifty that men seem to have their “crisis” at. But it is significant for me. I vividly recall sitting in a bar on my twenty-eighth birthday thinking and believing that the probability of making it to forty-eight was less than fifty percent. Those odds were based on the career path I was on and my extra-curricular activities in the mountains and at sea. But here I am twenty years later. What a long strange trip it’s been.

I sit here on the bank of my beloved North River in the cold dark of the middle of the night and write this by headlamp. This is the fifth rewrite of this piece. I was going to wax poetic about something introspective discovered while fly fishing and make references to the work of Robert W. Service, Hemingway and Thoreau, maybe some Gierach, and weave in the turning a year older thing. But something happened when I got here tonight.

There were a couple of boys my daughter’s age skate boarding under the street lights where I parked. I listened to them talking trash to each other as I pulled my gear out of the Jeep. Some of it I understood, some I did not. I snapped on my stripping basket, grabbed my rods (one for top water and one for everything else) and walked past the boys toward the river. This is what I heard one of them say as I walked out into the darkness:

“Hey man, that old dude is bad ass, he fishes with two fly rods…in the dark!”

I started down the rocks of the jetty and nearly fell when I heard this coming from one of them:

“I’ll wear your grand dad’s clothes

I look incredible….”

Up until this point I kind of liked that song. Now…not so much.

Old dude? Really? Do I look that old? I guess I do, I just don’t feel that old in my mind. Is the gray in my beard really that noticeable in this light or do I walk like an old guy? Mmmh, I have been eating soup a lot lately.

Bad ass? Little brother, I wish I was a bad ass fly fisherman (Ladies, hereto forthwith this means fly fisher-person!). I want to be one. I have friends who are. In fact, in a few hours I’m driving to the Cape to chase albies with my buddy Henry who is one of them. Granted, he is retired but he fishes hard. A lot. In my book H is about as bad ass as it gets. More about H in future posts.

 

H

Through my fly business, I have met and become friends with bad ass fly fisherman from all over Fly World. Some I have fished with, some I have met at shows and in shops, some from social media and some from just telephone and email conversations. Some are in the industry, some just live to fish. They are guides, manufacturer’s reps, shop owners and workers, fly tiers, writers, bloggers, photographers…people from all aspects of the fishing world. There are others who have compiled long resumes of transient and part-time jobs as they follow the fish and the seasons, earning what they need and living without what they don’t.  They are my fellow New Englanders, steel headers from BC and the northwest, trout fisherman from Idaho and Montana, the hardcore’s from Michigan, the Keys crowd and the Glades and Gulf Coast crew in Florida, the ones who chase reds in the marshes of the Carolina lowlands and Louisiana, there are Aussies, Kiwi’s, Bahamians…my point is they are everywhere.  

Some of these folks have abandoned the traditional jobs, obsessions with retirement planning, the white picket fences, relationships and social climbing to follow their hearts and passions and figured out how to make a living doing it. Not a fortune…a living. If you talk with them for a while you find out that is exactly what they are doing…living. They have figured out the equation. Living on the fly.

That’s my destination. Running with the tide and following the sun.

I’ll get there. And I secretly hope that when I do, someone will refer to me as a bad ass fly fisherman. In the meantime I’ve got to go home and get a couple of hours of sleep before I head to the Cape. Maybe I’ll have some soup. I hope I can get that stupid song out of my head…

“I’m gonna pop some tags

Only got twenty dollars in my pocket…”

North River, MA

27 September 2013

Montauk

Montauk. One of my favorite words because it just sounds cool.

For those who fish the salt just hearing it, saying it or thinking about it conjures the iconic image of acres of striped bass, bluefish and false albacore waging all out surface warfare on baitfish underneath Montauk Point Light House. Getting there for the fall madness has been on my list since the first time I saw a picture of it.

Late Thursday night I got a text message from my buddy Mark Seymour at High Hook Wines saying that Bryan Goulart had an opening on Sunday and was I interested in going. Calculating costs and available resources in my mind my first thought was that I should pass it up. And I had fly orders to get out and a project due at work on Monday. But I really wanted to go. I went downstairs and hit the heavy bag for twenty minutes while Reckless Mike beat the crap out of Responsible Mike. Montauk, false albacore, one of the best guides in the business and I had an available weekend. Guess who won?

So I met Mark in New London on Saturday afternoon, jumped the ferry to Orient Point and we drove to Bryan’s house in East Hampton. We met up with Bryan after dinner, had a few beers, watched some football and talked fishing, flies and life before turning in. One of the topics covered was the proverbial “buck fever” that happens during a blitz and the “albie dance” that follows. I’m not sure I really slept. I fell back to the technique of mental imagery I used when I was a ski racer in college and ran through every albie situation I could think of. I wanted to be prepared.

We were on the water shortly after 7:00am and made the run out of Star Island to Montauk Point. I went to Italy in high school and remember the feeling of pure awe standing in the Sistine Chapel. Floating in front of the light house felt no different.

 

Montauk Point Light House

Bryan checked a few spots and finally albies started to show in small pods. We ran around playing the game of “run and gun” as is generally the case with albies. Mark took the bow and I took the stern. After about an hour of making casts to these speedsters I realized something was wrong. I could not make a long cast if my life depended on it. Bryan and I had agreed on one of my larger flies, a 4-1/2” sand eel imitation on a 3/0 hook to start with in the event that there were bass around. A big fly but my Bluewater 8/9 can throw it just fine. Forty feet this morning was a struggle. It was obvious that something was wrong with me. That’s when the inner dialogue started.

“You’re out here with one of the best guides in fly fishing and you F-ing suck. You look like an idiot. You should have stayed home, WTF dude? If Beulah hears about this they’re not going to let you fish their rods and Cheeky will ask you to fish a different reel.”

About this time, just as I had line wrapped all around me, I went tight to a fish. Line started screaming through the guides and I broke into the Albie Dance. Now I had the idiot thing going full speed both in ability and appearance. In the chaos of clearing line and getting the fish on the spool, my line wrapped around the reel frame and I couldn’t clear it. I’m still not sure what happened but there was no way I was going to lose my first Montauk albie. So I struggled with it and didn’t horse the fish. Slowly I was getting backing and line back. Bryan came over and asked me if I was alright. I mumbled some gibberish about my line and Bryan looked at the mess on my reel and started laughing.

“Oh, I feel better now, I thought you have a disability or something and needed help but you just suck!”

We all had a laugh at that and the stress was relieved once I got that fish in and released despite myself.

 

The Captain and the Idiot

Then I got about clearing the mess on my reel and re-rigging my rod. It was at this time that I realized in my haste to pack Saturday morning I had mistakenly grabbed my Bluewater 7/8. That explained a lot. Yes, I was still an idiot but after changing to a smaller fly I was back in the game and feeling a lot better about my casting.

We chased albies all morning to slack tide. Each time one of us would hook up, all three of us hoped for a double just to revel in the chaos and mayhem that such things generate.

 

Mark getting it done

The double almost happened a few times but we couldn’t get it together. After slack tide the attitude of the fish seemed to change. They were still there and feeding but spread out and very selective. We tried several different flies but could not get an eat. But we stayed at it for a few more hours before calling it a day. Mark and I were exhausted on the run back to Star Island. We had a great day with a great guide and left it all, as they say, on the field.

I’ve fished with a lot of guides. Some are really good, some are just good and others…not so much. I know when a guide takes the time to explain how he (or she) fishes the boat, what he’s planning and what he wants the angler to do in a “what if” situation, he’s on his game. More importantly when the guide asks me what I’m looking to get out of the trip and then makes efforts to make that happen while working around my ability to cast and skill level, then I know he is a great guide. Bryan and I had that conversation and I told him I obviously wanted to get tight to some albies but I also wanted to experience the stress of making a shot as many times as possible to overcome the “buck fever” phenomenon. As it is in life, the best way to get better at anything is repetition. I don’t get a chance to fish for albies a lot so I viewed this day as a training session. Bryan made that happen and I came away from the day a better fly fisherman.

If you want to experience the glory that is Montauk, check out Capt. Bryan Goulart and Point to Point Charters at http://www.nysaltfly.com/home.htm  . He books up in advance but you might get lucky with a cancellation.

From the ferry, Long Island Sound

15 September 2013

Chains

Labor Day weekend for all intents and purposes marks the end of summer. This long weekend, once an eagerly anticipated way point in my year now serves as an annual reminder that once again I spent more time over the summer in the office furthering someone else’s agenda than I did out of the office living my own. Sadly, I realize that I have created the situation, enabled it, chained myself to it and continually allow it to drag me off course. It’s affecting my health but worse it’s affecting my fishing life. The cinder worm hatch, Nantucket, Montauk, Flamingo, Jupiter, a couple of new fly patterns…just a few of the things on the short list I made in May.  None have been checked off. Sometimes I really piss myself off. But I digress. I just want to go fishing.

So on Friday afternoon I bid farewell to the office, emails and conference calls. I put the top down on the Jeep, cranked the “oldies” station on the radio and headed north to Maine to see my daughter and hang out on the lake with my sister and family for a few days. Sitting in traffic on 93 I looked in the rear view and thought of the south side of Cape Cod and wondered if the albies would show up this weekend.  As I pondered the question and my schedule for next weekend, Sheryl Crow’s voice came across the radio;

“It’s not about having what you want

It’s wanting what you’ve got”

This sent me down another avenue of contemplation. Last winter at the Bears Den Fly Fishing Show I was set up tying flies beside my friends Pat Cohen and Rich Strolis, two of the best fly tiers out there. At one point during the day we were talking with a gentleman who was jammed up about not being able to fish in some of the popular “adventure fishing destination locations’ because of finances and logistics. Collectively we assured him that he could find “adventure” on his local water for less than a dollar just by changing things up a bit. Targeting a different species, a different type of water, a different time of day, trying a new spot close to home …the possibilities are only limited by one’s own creativity. At some point in the conversation I am pretty sure that something along the lines of “fishing where you can and forgetting about where you can’t” was said. I thought about this, and Sheryl, for the next hundred miles. I put the albies out of my mind and made a plan.

First light on Saturday morning found me paddling in search of adventure. During my last visit to the lake I had found a shallow cove full of (chain) pickerel while hunting for largemouth from the kayak. Some of them were good sized and in shallow water when they realize they’re hooked and can’t dive, they run and explode out of the water. They are aggressive and will eat almost anything but what draws me to this spot is that it is very similar to fishing mangroves for snook. Long casts over the weed beds, floating plant life, stumps, dropping the fly into a space the size of a shoe box underneath overhanging branches and bushes. It’s long ball and short game all wrapped into one. Fast strips, vicious hits, boiling water. I couldn’t stop.

Saturday morning was all sub-surface fishing using a multi-colored fly I call April’s Reign. Simple, beautiful and catches everything.

Sunday morning I was back at it but arrived in the dark. It was top water with orange and yellow poppers. Throwing ‘Glades style right at the overhanging canopy so the popper would hit the branches and drop to the water, one or two strips and the pickerel would inhale the popper. Or follow it and envelop it like the sea creature did to Kevin Costner in “Waterworld.” At least that’s what it looked like from my seat.

I sit and write this on Labor Day morning looking out on the lake as rain falls in torrential downpours. My Beulah Bluewater 8/9 weight loaded with a Cheeky Mojo 425 leans against the picnic table rigged and ready, faithfully staring back at me through the window like my dogs used to waiting for a tennis ball to be thrown. In the distance thunder rolls and the wind drives waves onto the beach. I sit back with my coffee and close my eyes. There will be no fishing this morning. I gladly embrace the peace of this moment. I have the images of the last two mornings playing a slide show in my mind, set to proverbial lyrics;

“I’m gonna soak up the sun

Got my 45 on

So I can rock on.”

 

At a lake in Maine

2 September 2013

Tequila Dreams

(from the journal...)

I had been poling the boat all morning in a constant light rain. Visibility into the water had been minimal because of the rain and fog, hampered further from the hood of my jacket. That and the Agave haze in my head from the previous evening’s consumption of Don Julio’s finest, golden hued, oaky and full flavored Anejos tequila. But it was letting up now, the surface of the water almost glass. It was late August and we had planned on running down the river to the mouth and then outside in search of bluefish for the smoker. Within a few minutes of leaving the dock we had run into one of the biggest schools of rat striped bass I had seen this season. None of them were much bigger than sixteen inches but there were literally hundreds of them, all smashing sand eels in two to three feet of water on a mud flat just across from one of my go-to holes.

We had been on them now for two hours. I’ve gotten past the point in my fishing career where I feel the need to keep score. Numbers and size don’t really matter anymore. For me it’s just about being there and watching it happen. So after an hour and a half of drifting the boat and hooking up on every third cast, I climbed up on the platform and just poled us around the flat. So far I hadn’t fallen off.

Up on the bow, my brother Z continued to cast. He was throwing my seven weight loaded with an intermediate line. On the sharp end I had tied on my favorite river fly, a Fur Strip Fly. Essentially just a short piece of chartreuse rabbit zonker palmar wrapped up the shank with a one inch tail and a piece of flash tied in, simple but very effective. Z was releasing another rat as I turned the bow to head to the northern point of a small mud island I had just seen a group of fish boiling in front of. As I poled along I could see a larger, more substantial series of splashes just around the corner of the point. Z saw it as well. He turned, looked at me and said something about big splashes and big fish.

Now the rain had stopped and the water became crystal clear. I dug out my sunglasses from my jacket. The amber lenses actually lightened the water up a bit and from my vantage point above the deck I could see clearly into the water in front of us. Not to mention the pounding behind my eyes seemed to lessen. I stopped and quietly climbed down from the platform and pulled out a 9 weight. I may not keep score anymore but I did not want this fish getting away because we were not properly armed. I dug around in my gear bag for a fly I had in mind. The sand eels had been hanging an inch or two below the surface of the water and I had the perfect fly in mind. But I knew I only had one, an olive and white Page Rogers Slim Jim, kind of a sub-surface popper. A floating line would have been mint but we could get by with an intermediate. I quickly tied the Slim Jim on the nine, handed it to Z and climbed back up the platform.

I eased us up along the edge of the flat to where the river turned a bit and the water gets deeper and held us there as I looked for the fish. I was afraid I had lost it during the tackle change. A couple of minutes later there was a violent eruption of water about 50 feet off the bow and a huge flash of silver and dark gray. I could see her (larger striped bass are almost always female) move off to the base of the sod bank in about 5 feet of water. I pushed us up another ten feet, kicked the stern around so Z would have a straight shot and told him to get ready. I looked at my watch; it was nearly slack on the high tide. I wasn’t sure we could get her to take a fly in slack water and I knew at some point as the clouds above started to break the wind was going to start. We had time. But not a lot.

“Forty feet straight ahead at twelve o’clock, just the let the fly sit when it hits the water”, I whispered.

He nodded, made two false casts and dropped the fly about eight feet to the right of the fish. I saw her move forward and then circle back around looking at the fly.

“Z, slow strip and wait.”

She slowly moved up in the water, a little closer.

“Again.”

“Dude,” he whispered, “I can’t see it.”

“I can, quick strip and stop.”

As soon as the fly moved the fish backed off. Game on. Varitek and Beckett versus A-Rod.

“Ok, two short slow strips, pause and then a fast strip. Let’s see what she’ll do.”

On the first slow strip she began moving toward the fly, she hesitated during the pause and then turned off on the fast strip. She swam along the bank to our left. Not wanting to spook her, I poled us out a bit and parallel to the bank. I could still see her just hovering under an overhang in the bank.  I held us in place and watched her. She wasn’t moving, almost like a laid-up tarpon.

“Ok Z, right up against the bank, see that overhang? She’s right under it, kind of in the center of it. Drop one either to the left or right of the center.”

“Can you get me closer?” he asked.

“Negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.”

He laughed and looked up at me. “What the hell was that?”

I managed a smile and replied, “Top Gun, 1986. You’re Maverick, I’m Goose, now cast.”

Z laid out a perfect sixty foot cast - perfectly in the middle of the overhang and two feet directly in front of the fish. She darted to the right, hugging the bank and then circled back toward us almost moving up on to the mud flat and then back toward the bank. In the background I was aware of Z mumbling some four letter words. I had to get him back into the game.

“It’s all good, brother. I would have done the same thing. Strip in quick, throw one back out, same spot and strip fast.”

He did. With the fast strip, the little fly made some good commotion but the fish didn’t move on it. But she didn’t move away either, she just floated back and forth like Tim Thomas in the crease waiting for a breakaway.

I whispered, “Pick it up quick and cast again. Same spot, ten feet to the right.”

The pressure was on. The previous near perfect cast of 60 feet was now a twenty foot spaghetti toss. Next cast, same thing. We’ve all been there. It’s part of the experience and evolution.

Again, with the four letter words as he cleared the tangled line at his feet. I didn’t have to say anything this time. He took a deep breath, made two false casts and let it go. The fish started moving slowly to the left, heading directly into the trajectory of the fly. The fly hit the water about ten feet beyond her.

“Ok man, short quick strips.”

She turned on the fly and started following.

“Stop. Strip. Strip.” My voice now sounded like Michael Jackson.

Z looked back at me quickly. Words were not necessary. He paused the retrieve and then began another strip.

What happened next cannot be fully described with the eloquence that the event deserves. You had to be there. The water behind the fly erupted as the fish lunged at it. She short-hit the fly just as it was stripped away from her but she made another violent lunge, mouth wide open and I saw her dive down. I wasn’t sure if she had taken it or not. She didn’t. The fly popped up at the edge of the wake she had left behind. I saw the fish turn quickly like a Sidewinder missile trying to reacquire a heat signature. Z did too. He immediately water-hauled the fly, dropped the forward cast about twenty feet behind the fish and started stripping. She turned, came up under the fly and inhaled it. The line went tight, Z set the hook and the drag on the reel started singing. She came up out of the water three times trying the shake the fly, not quite tail walking, but close. She was pissed. Really pissed. She turned and headed for the deeper water of the channel.

I poled us along and for a moment considered starting the engine but Z had things well in hand. She gave one more short run and then went heavy. Z could barely get line back. Not wanting to let this last longer than necessary and stress the fish, I kept poling in her direction. After about five minutes Z got her up alongside the boat and I grabbed the leader. I steered her in, lipped her and quickly removed the hook. I got her head out of the water and cradled her in one arm to lift her up. She was heavy and long, coming in at just over forty-two inches on the deck tape. I handed her to Z and snapped a few pictures of her in his arms. He got her back in the water and let the current of the channel run water through her gills to revive her. In short order she gave a big tail splash and swam off.

Z sat down on the forward casting deck. There were no words spoken. None were needed, we had both been there. As I was fumbling through my gear bag looking for something, he finally spoke.

“I can’t believe that just happened. Did you see that shit? Thank you, that was unbelievable.”

I kept searching my bag. “That was a fish of a lifetime. Not so much the fish but how it all went down. You did everything, man. You found the fish, made the cast, adjusted, made more casts, presented, teased her, got her to eat, nice release…dude, that doesn’t happen all the time. Well played, sir.”

He let out a deep breath and asked, “Is it too early for another tequila?”

I stood up from the gear bag holding a half full bottle of Don Julio and two old paper coffee cups.

“Not today brother, not today...”

That’s when I woke up, not really sure of where I was. I was on my couch and the Weather Channel was on TV. Apparently I only made it that far after last night’s viewing of Soulfish2 and a barbecue and tequila fest with Z. I looked out the window as the weather girl talked about snow in the forecast for Boston. The fish had just been a dream.

Tequila dreams.

Good stuff.

North River (MA)

12 Dec 2011