Dog Tales

A man backs his boat trailer down the ramp and pauses for a moment as he catches the gold reflection of the late afternoon sun off the water in the side mirror. He sighs knowing this is one of the last perfect days of extended summer. Despite the temperature being almost eighty degrees he can sense the change in the air. It’s that special time of year when warm sunny days and clear cool nights bring bait inside in large schools, on to the flats and into the grass. And with them, fish.

He eases the boat back and checks the trailer in the mirror on the other side of the truck. He sees his companions’ face watching the trailer in the mirror, eyes focused in deep concentration and anticipation. He asks, “You ready?”

Without moving his body in the seat the dog looks back at him over his shoulder and says, “Yeah dude, hit it, let’s go!”

Yes, dogs can speak.

They drop the boat in, park the truck and trailer and hustle down the dock, the dog leading the way staring back at his human every few steps to make sure he’s coming. They stop to talk to a friend who is just tying up on the other side of the dock. The dog sits at the man’s feet for a few seconds and then unable to endure the conversation any longer trots down the dock and jumps into his boat and stands post on the bow. The man takes this as his cue, slips the bow line and boards the dog’s skiff.

Before idling out into the river the man strips out line on the eight-weight, checks the leader and fly and sets the rod in the bow. He throttles up and points the boat downriver as the dog takes his customary seat next to him. They’ve done this hundreds of times, these few moments between leaving the dock and getting to the first spot to check for fish still as exciting as the first time. It’s that way for both of them.

The man thinks of a phone call earlier in the day. Friends had invited him out to do something…watch a ballgame at a bar or follow some trivial pursuit…but as usual he passed knowing something more meaningful might be found in the backwater. His declining of the invite was met with, “Why, you going fishing with the dog? You gotta’ get a life.”

No response was given. Looking into the dog’s eyes now as they motor downriver he knows he didn’t need to give one. Very simply, this is what he and the dog do. They’ve learned this life on the water together, each defined by it and by one another. The man shifts the boat into neutral and the boat drifts out of the channel toward the grass.

The marsh is flooded with a plus tide, the afternoon light starting to fall, the water like glass and the grass standing still in the quiet air. Periodically the calm is broken by pockets of baitfish fleeing for their lives in front of wakes pushed by predators. The man shuts off the engine, raises the motor and poles the boat into the carnage zone. Both take quiet steps up to the bow. The man picks up the rod as the dog takes his seat next to him taking obvious care obtained from experience not to sit on the fly line. Two false casts are made and the fly lands between clumps of marsh grass. Fast strips bring the fly through the grass and on the pause it is inhaled from below. The dog stands up, tail wagging back and forth. The line goes tight and the fish fights back thrashing at the water with its entire body. The dog steps up to the point of the bow to watch the action play out. The man brings the fish boat-side and kneels down to release it, holding it for a few seconds for the dog to sniff it. As the fish is let go, the water beside the boat suddenly erupts with dancing bait and slapping tails.

The man and the dog look at each other, smile and in unison say, “Holy shit! Did you just see that?”

Yes, dogs can speak.

I was that man. I have lived those moments described above many times but as I wrote this I was thinking about my friend Rich Walker and his dog Tucker in Charleston, SC.

I met Rich through social media while following the exploits of Tucker. Fishing dogs intrigue me. I’m a dog person so I’m much more likely to engage dog owners in conversation than non-dog people.  In talking about our dogs, fly fishing and redfish we found that we have some commonalities in our backgrounds so we hit it off. When I head south to get schooled on reds in the grass by Tuck, I'll be bringing the rum.

They have been together for nine years and have been fishing together for almost all of it. Tuck was a quick study and it took only a few outings for him to figure out that if he didn’t chase that thing at the end of the line when Rich threw it in the water, crazy things would happen and sometimes a really cool looking creature would come back at the end of the line.

Now Tuck knows what a waving tail is, what a wake in the water means and what the humans in his skiff are going to do when they see these things. Seriously. Ask him.

Yes, dogs can speak.

In the course of fishing together and taking pictures and video of casts, misses, catches and Tuck, Rich and three fellow anglers joined forces and created Flyline Media. This media group came about not as a business venture but as a collective, drawing on the skills and talents of each of its members to capture through film and photography the moments that inspire them to return to the water time and time again.

The goal of the end product is to present still and moving images that inspire the uninitiated as well as the seasoned angler and to promote the art and life of fly fishing.

Great art and moments in time that are not forgotten are generally brought forward by those who think and act outside the proverbial box. The guys at Flyline are the types who deconstruct boxes. Actually, I think they kick them apart. Having heard for years that tailing reds on the flood tide would not eat a surface presentation, they formulated a thesis that it could be done and set out to dispel this myth. The results are presented in their film, TALL TAILS: Legend of the Gurgler.

For those of us who knew the creator of the Gurgler, Jack Gartside, it will have special meaning. Jack would have loved this.

And while you view the film, watch Tucker and watch his face.

Yes, dogs can speak.

*Photo's from Rich Walker, Ryan Rice and Flyline Media

 North River, MA

7 October 2014

33 Hours

Entries from the journal as I scribbled them a few years back, a quick out and back trip to Martha's Vineyard…

Zero Hour

The ride across Vineyard Sound has been quiet. And wet. The forecast for this excursion is rain and seasonably cool. I don’t mind the rain or the temperature it’s the wind that could make this miserable. Right now it’s not bad, maybe 10 knots. Three months ago when I made these arrangements I hoped for clear skies and flat conditions but I’ll take whatever Mother Nature throws at me. I’ve got thirty-three hours to fish straight through until I catch the last ferry tomorrow night back to The World. The goal obviously is to catch as many fish as possible, I’ll settle for one to officially enter into the Derby. Four species: striped bass, bluefish, false albacore and bonito. It sounds like that increases the odds in my favor but it doesn’t. I’ve written off the bonito, am less than hopeful for a shot at an albie, guardedly optimistic about a bluefish and somewhat positive I can catch a striper. Will any catch meet the size requirements of the Derby regulations? Who the hell knows. Does it really matter? Call me Eeyore.

I sit in the truck and wait my turn to disembark the ferry. I don’t know the island all that well but have been here enough to know my way around well enough to get lost with confidence. I laugh to myself because nobody knows where I am. And nobody here really knows me so I can disappear. I told the office I had some personal things to take care of for a couple of days. In the midst of a train-wreck on the tracks of life, nobody questioned what I was really doing. I wonder if I don't go back will anyone notice. I need some time away from it all. I let it go. I leave mainland life behind as I drive off the boat. I’m on The Rock.

Hour 2

After the obligatory stop at the Black Dog for Abby’s t-shirt and a hot cup of coffee, I’m about to go “boots wet.” I stopped by Menemsha Texaco for a few supplies and to get mentally oriented. The rain stopped on the ride out here. By the time I drove around to the other side it started back up. No matter, I’m rigged up and ready for the walk along Lobsterville Beach. The tide is outgoing just past slack. I’ll fish here up until the low and see what I see. The eight weight has an intermediate line and a two feather flatwing, the nine has a sinking line and a small Clouser. Locked and loaded.

Hour 5

The rain continues and man is it dark out here. The wind so far has been benevolent but it really doesn’t matter so I’ll speak of it no more. I ran into some bluefish, had one on the nine weight, not large by the feel of it but it was on nonetheless. Until it bit me off. I moved fast to add a 60lb bite tippet but the blues were gone by the time I had my shit together.

Hour 6

They’re back. Shallow and moving fast. I left my gear up the beach and ran after them like a mad man. I was able to get a few casts into them and fooled the smallest one of the bunch with an orange popper on the seven weight. The size of the blue is irrelevant; the black and white varmint has now been dismissed.

Hour 10

I’m at Big Bridge. I can’t describe the rain other than the air is full of water. I spent some time at the end of the jetty blind casting. Crickets. Ghost Town. Silence, no phones, no computer…I’ll take it. Powering up on Diet Coke and a Clif Bar. Optimism exudes as I head up the beach.

Hour 13

20” striper in the surf on a black lobster buoy popper. Scoreless in terms of the Derby but I feel like I just took Andy Pettitte yard.

Hour 15

I’ve moved up to a spot just outside of Oak Bluffs. I’ve had luck here in the past. It continued. In what little light there was I found some happy stripes on top near some shallow structure. Olive and white Slim Jim on the seven, my last one. Some follows, some short takes and two little guys to hand. Yeah, it’s still raining.

Hour 17

Vineyard Haven. Stopped for more Diet Coke and Snickers at the bridge on Beach Road. The fish from OB had me charged up but fatigue just knocked on my door. I can hear splashing under the bridge. Gotta go.

Hour 19

The splashing at the bridge may have been an auditory hallucination. I just drove out to Tashmoo. Pretty sure I saw a toothless kid in one of the trees playing a banjo. Eerie does not fully describe driving out here in the dark and rain. Geared up and ready to stand on the jetty and wait for Albert when it gets light. Yeah, a little windy. I figured I’d be alone but there’s a dude already out here.

Hour 22

The water at Tashmoo is like the salad bar at The Sizzler on a Saturday night. Shit everywhere. We did see albies splashing - for about 3 seconds a hundred yards off the jetty. I set over and dredged off the beach with the nine weight hoping for a stripe but I think it’s time to move. I just found half a tin of Cope in my fleece...trying to quit but I've been awake for a long time. Sitting here in the truck, soaking wet and cold with most of my worldly possessions in the back seat I realize that right now, right here, there is really nothing else I want. Maybe an albie. Excuse the profanity but I f*c#ing love this.

Hour 23.5

Gas station coffee…nectar of the sleepless. Half a dozen guys walked up from Edgartown Light as I started down. Change in plans, I parked the truck and jumped on to the ferry to Chappy. For some reason the water along the beach just looked fishy. My buddy Z caught a baby jack here once. I’ll take anything. The rain has let up and a pretty woman smiled at me as I passed by her car…blonde hair, baseball hat with the pony tail through the back…yeah man, life is looking up. And then I realized she was talking on the phone and was not looking at me. Crickets. Typical. Whatever. Game back on.

Hour 24

The water here on Chappy is fishy. There is bait everywhere and every few minutes something cuts through it. I’m thinking snapper blues.

Hour 24.75

Nope, little rat stripers as far as I can tell. Three of them for sure. I’ve resorted to the trusty orange Charlie. Never fails on rats.

Hour 27

Back at Lobsterville headed down the beach. The rain turned back on with a vengeance. Apparently there were albies off the jetty this morning. Nobody I talked to said any had been caught. Judging by the number of people there they are expected back this afternoon. Too many people for me, I need open space and obscurity.

Hour 29

It stopped raining. It’s just gray and wet. I just noticed the smell permeating from my waders. It’s more like a cloud. And I’m pretty sure I’ve got trench foot. But the hunt is on. There are fish out there periodically hitting bait on top, stripes I think.

Hour 31.5

Back in the truck. Fishless. I’m talking to myself. I brought two beers with me. I’m on the second. I’ve got a little time left. A few minutes at Big Bridge, a few minutes at that spot outside of OB. Maybe.

Hour 33

I’m calling it, heading to the dock. No fish to enter into the Derby - seemingly a failure but it’s not. Not in the least. It's been a training run for future exploits. I caught another (or maybe the same) 20” striper just before I left the beach at Little Bridge. In the light of my headlamp I watched him swim back into his world. Now I’ve got to return to mine.

I drive on to the ferry and feel the weight of the mainland back on my shoulders. It sits there, as heavy as it was when I arrived. I can carry it. The water is glass and I see stars in the sky as we leave the harbor. All storms eventually pass.

Vineyard Haven Harbor, MA

Mid-Derby Sept 2010

Images

I was asked the other day where I have been all summer.

I’d like to say I’ve been fishing like a mad man since the season began and tell some epic story of hero casts and double digit days.

But I can’t.

I wish I could post up pictures of the thousands of flies I’ve tied since the spring.

But I haven’t.

Life gets busy. As much as you want to and try to stay on a certain course, falling off the rhumb line happens quickly in unsettled weather. Course correction is influenced by things you can’t necessarily control. Destinations change. It is a constant juggling act living one life posing as a happy idiot in the struggle for the legal tender and the other as a happy idiot waste deep in a backwater creek seeking adventure. Someday I’ll get it right.

But for now other things and other people can wait. My daughter moved home in June after a year away. She will begin high school in two weeks, back in her hometown, back with her friends. The summer has been spent making up for lost time and preparing for the start of a new journey, a new adventure. For both of us.

Abby’s talent in art has led her to photography, an interest we both share and something she has suggested on her own that might fit well with the fly-water side of our lives. During our travels this summer she has brought her camera gear along to capture whatever might be encountered. It has been fascinating not just watching her as she photographs different things but more so in listening to her explain what she saw or what she was thinking when she took each shot. These thoughts are as interesting to me as the actual photograph.

We’ve worked on a couple of photograph projects since she came home. One of which was submitting some of her pictures in the photography contest at the Marshfield Fair. It’s not Nat Geo, I know, but it is a start. Abby spent a week going through all her shots and chose four to submit. She was gone last weekend when the fair opened so I went down by myself to see how she had done. I have to say I was a very proud father as I walked through the exhibit.

The ribbons aside, I am proud of Ab for taking something she loves and putting it and herself out there. That is adventure.

Now begins the subtle suggestion of places to visit for great photography like the Low Country, Cudjoe, Baja, NOLO, the Bow, the Dean…

PS: Fishing to resume soon.

North River, MA

21 August 2014

Soul Music

A couple of weeks ago my daughter told me that she wanted to audition for a solo or duet for her last chorus concert of the school year. As we talked about it, one of her comments was something akin to “I want to make some noise going out of the eighth grade.” I smiled to myself because although I was a “band geek” up until the tenth grade, I have never been musically endowed. I smiled again to myself thinking of all the years she and I have sung Jimmy Buffet, Lynrd Skynrd, Kenny Chesney and Eagles songs at the top of our lungs in the truck and on the boat. She may not have received musical talent from me but she has a pretty extensive working knowledge of classic rock and country music.

Abby made it happen. She and a classmate were given a duet solo in the classic “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” On the drive to Maine yesterday for the concert I was as nervous for her as I had been for myself in any ski race I was ever in. But as the chorus took the stage I could see in her eyes the confidence she had in herself and the fire to get up there and put it all out there in front of the audience. She rocked it. I was proud beyond words, not just of her performance but maybe more so of her doing it for herself.

I have seen huge advances, particularly this year, in her self-confidence as she has become more involved with chorus so I was not surprised. As a parent you want your kids to find something that is their “thing.” As much as you want at times to steer them toward something, all you can really do is sit back and let it happen. I was a little surprised last week when she was down for the weekend and told me she wanted to catch a striped bass…on the fly. She has fished with me a lot over the years but I think more to appease me than because she really wanted to. So I always offer but never push.

This time was different. As we got geared up to go down to the river, she commented about how much she missed going to the fly shows this past year and seeing all my fishing friends and that she wants to fish more so she understands what it is that I do and how all the flies that I tie work for different fish.  She has been the one person who has never questioned the fishing or the fly tying business. In fact one night shortly after her mother and I split up we were sitting on the couch watching a movie and she looked over at the tying bench and asked me why I wasn’t tying. I told her that I wasn’t sure I was going to do it anymore. She just looked at me and said, “Dad, it’s not something you do, it’s who you are. It’s your thing.” From an eight year old. That’ll choke you up.

So Abby and I put on the rubber boots and went to the river. We had talked about working on casting a bit but there was pretty good breeze in our faces so I told her I would do the casting and the rest was up to her. I would make the cast and hand her the rod and she would strip the line. It was slow but she kept at it and asked all the right questions about retrieves and line management.

As we stood there I thought about how fast she is growing up and how much of a young lady she has become. The last year has been tough with her living in Maine, not being there every night to hear about what she learned that day or to help her figure something out. And I again thought about how I’ve seen her come into her own this year and how singing and chorus have been a part of that. Having a knack for remembering obscure things I thought of a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote I saw somewhere:

 

“Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence and whereto.”

I stood there in the sun, on the bank of the river, in my favorite place in the world, with my daughter, fishing and started contemplating the commonalities between the art of music and the art of fly fishing. This was interrupted by a strike on the fly. Abby missed the fish but she now knew what the take felt like. We talked about what do when she felt it again and I made another cast.

She stripped the line and I Googled the definition of music on my iPhone. I know, web browsing while fishing – not cool – but the idea for writing this happened at that exact moment and I needed to keep it rolling.

One definition I read was “an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through elements of rhythm, melody, harmony and color.” I was on to something. The expression of ideas and emotions…yup, nailed it there. The act of casting is all about rhythm. Reading the water, accounting for wind and light, making the cast, presenting the fly…it becomes a melody. For it all to work, it has to all happen in harmony. And color…well everyone knows its chartreuse. Except here in Dog Town it’s a number 2 orange Charlie.

So I stood there trying to save all this garbage in my mind to write down as soon as we got back to the Jeep. I made another cast and as I handed Ab the rod she felt that tug, surprised me with a little unrehearsed strip strike and was tight to her first stripe!

We made a few more casts but it was not to be. We walked back to the Jeep and cranked some Kid Rock on the way up the hill.

I hope that in music and singing Abigail finds what I have found in fly fishing. The gift of both is in finding yourself.

North River, MA

4 June 2014