the kid

The tide was coming in to meet me as I walked down the edge of the creek toward bigger water. The sun was still low with not a stir in the air giving good visibility into the water. A grass shrimp hatch was going off and periodically I could see schoolies rush the bank and pick off shrimp as the water flooded the grass roots. Watching this I clipped off the streamer on the seven-weight and tied on a Crazy Charlie.

My destination was a spit of mud that stuck out into the main body of the creek. From there I would be able to cover a great deal of grass line where three finger creeks entered the creek proper. Applying the adage, “Don’t drive past feeding fish”, I made a few casts along the bank in front of me as I walked and picked up a couple micro stripes. They were not big fish, the largest about fourteen inches, but these smaller fish tend to be violent and pissed off when they take a fly and fun to mess with.

I stood in my spot for a while mostly blind casting along the bank but managing to “sight-cast” to a handful of fish as they cruised along the edge. I saw a big push of fish go around the corner of the creek in front of me toward an area I knew held a deep hole. I had fished back in there in my boat on a flood tide once but had never been able to get to it on foot. I decided an expedition was in order and set off to find new water.

I back-tracked, hop-scotched mosquito ditches, made some not so graceful long-jumps in full waders and back-tracked some more. After a little more than an hour I found the hole I was looking for. I set up where I could make a long cast over the hole and retrieve back across it and over its edge into the ditch in front of me. I made a cast and stared out at the marsh in front of me and slowly stripped the fly.

My morning was disturbed as I saw a blue and white Atom Popper go sailing down the ditch landing right where I had just cast. I followed the line with my eyes back into the grass and saw a Texas Rangers ball cap about twenty feet to my right. I walked up to the hat and found a young boy underneath it sitting on the edge of the creek ripping that popper across the water like he was on Saturday morning television.

He looked up at me like I was the teacher who had just caught him smoking a Marlboro in the bathroom.

“I didn’t see you over here”, I said as a form of introduction.

He shrugged and told me he had watched me jumping around through the marsh and followed me because he figured I knew a good spot.

He stood up and said, “You know, it’s a lot easier getting out here if you just follow the line of trees back there and then walk out here in a straight line from that big rock, there’s only three ditches to jump over and one has a plank across it.”

“Thanks.” I replied. “I’ll have to keep that in mind on the way back.”

The kid made another cast and I looked at the tackle box next to him. “What else have you got in the box?” I asked. “That popper may be a little big for the stripes that are in that hole.”

“I haven’t fished for stripers much. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“They’re keyed up on all these little shrimp, you need something smaller.”

He opened the box and showed me a collection of top-waters, a bag of plastics and a few metal spoons. I picked out the smallest Kastmaster and said, “I’ve got an idea, if you’re cool with trying it I’ll bet we can get you hooked up.”

I set about removing the treble hook from the Kastmaster and asked the kid questions about himself while I worked. The short story was he loved the Rangers, had just turned thirteen, lived in Fort Worth, and his father had sent him here to stay for the summer with his grandparents because his mother had left and the details of the divorce and selling the house were being worked out.

I asked him about the Red Sox t-shirt he was wearing with the Rangers hat. He said that he had been to two Sox games with his grandfather since getting here and they bought the shirt at Fenway.

I asked him who his grandparents were, thinking I might know them. I didn’t. He told me his grandfather liked to fish the creek and marsh back by the parking area and had shown him the way so he could ride his bike there when he wanted to. I asked if he liked fishing and he said that he and his friends back home fished almost every day in a local pond after playing baseball.

“The hard part is not being with my friends for the summer and being stuck here. I don’t really know my grandparents and they don’t know me. I’ve only seen them a few times. Grampa is retiring at the end of the year and they may move back to Texas to help my dad.”

I tied a short piece of mono to the spoon and rummaged through my gear for a small Clouser. Without looking up from my project I asked, “So, did you bring your bike with you from Texas?”

“No. Grampa took me to buy it the day I got here.”

“What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?” I asked.

“Chocolate but I like Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food too, why?”

“What kind of ice cream does your grandmother have in the freezer?”

“Um, chocolate…and Phish Food.”

I tied the Kastmaster/Clouser combo on to his spinning rod and asked one more question.

“Who did the Sox play when you went to Fenway?”

“The Yankees and the Rangers.”

I trimmed the Clouser to match the length of the grass shrimp, handed him his rod and said, “So your grandfather showed you his favorite fishing spot, got you a bike so you can ride here, they have your favorite ice cream in the fridge and they took to you to see your favorite baseball team play the Red Sox. I think they might know you a little better than you think they do.”

“I never thought of it that way. I guess you’re right.”

 I told him where to cast, how to retrieve the rig and let him have at it.

“Are you going to fish?”

“No way,” I said, “I’ve never seen someone from Texas catch a striper on a spoon and fly rig before so I’m going to watch.”

About ten minutes of baseball talk later the rig worked and my new friend brought in his first striped bass. He handed me his phone and I took a photo of him with it before we released it. He immediately sent it to his dad.

He made another cast and looked at me and said, “It’s going to be hard when I go back. Mom’s living with this other guy in another town and I’m staying with my dad in an apartment so I don’t have to change schools. Everything is different. It’s so hard. It really sucks.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond or even if I should. Thankfully the awkward moment was broken up with another stripe on the line. I reached down to lip it and while removing the hook said, “You’re right, it does suck, everything is upside down and all you can think about is how hard it is. I can tell you having gone through divorces as a father and as a son, you’ll adjust, you’ll learn how to deal with all the changes. You won’t believe this right now but this is not the hardest thing you’re going to have face in life. Take it all head-on, don’t run from it. You’ll get through it.”

I let the little stripe go and said, “Next one is all you cowboy, catch it, release it…all you.”

A few casts later he went tight to another fish, a little bigger than before. I snapped a few more photos of him with his phone while he removed the hook and let it go.

“Nice fish, dude.” I said as I gave him a high five.

He looked at the photos on the phone and said, “They’re not very big. I thought they’d be bigger.”

“Well, bigger fish are gonna be out in cooler water. These little guys live inside along the river during the summer while they grow. This is fishing, dude. Worrying about how big or how small your catch is…that ain’t fishing. That’s something else.”

“What do you mean, what’s the something else?”

I handed him his rod and said, “You don’t need to worry about that right now. You’ll find out soon enough. Right now you’re a kid. Be a kid. Have fun.”

We walked out of the marsh together so he could “show me the way.” I gave him my cell number and told him to call me if he had fishing questions or needed to talk. I told him to keep the rig we had built and gave him a couple of Clousers to put in his box. He said thank you, jumped on his bike and rode away.

One evening about a week later I was out in the marsh and saw the kid with his grandfather fishing near where I met him. From behind them I watched as he lipped and released a small striper that his grandfather had just caught. The kid gave him a high five and said, “Nice stripe, dude!”

I heard his grandfather laugh and say, “I thought it would be bigger.”

 

Illustration by Abigail Rice

The kid shrugged, made a cast like a pro and said, “This is fishing, Grampa…worrying about how big the fish is or isn’t…that ain’t fishing…”

From the journal

North River, MA

Summer 2013

Tempo

The water flows off the flat as the tide drops and the sun rises in the sky. It’s a never ending dance, a continuous symphony of light and water and color. I carefully pick my way through the white-water around a rock garden I’ve been fishing and think of the music lessons and band practices from a lifetime ago. Words like allegro, espirando, bellicoso and poco a poco fill my mind with the same definition, just a different meaning.

I follow a trough running across the flat to where it narrows before opening to the outside and deeper water. I move from waist deep water to knee deep in one step where I can see down into a natural choke-point and watch for cruising fish. The breeze creates ripples on the water’s surface that cast shadows on the sand below. If you stare at these shadows long enough, they look like fish; if you wait long enough, fish will move through them. Sometimes.

A striped bass on the flats is a chameleon. Its stripes and body coloration allow it to blend in with its surroundings and virtually disappear to avoid detection from above. There are times I have seen a fish only at the last second as it swims by my feet and spooks from my reaction. When I have other anglers with me in these conditions I tell them to look for a rock or a shadow that seems out of place. If you look for a fish, you’re likely not to see them.

Flats fishing is frustrating, especially if you’re wading. There are very few “first cast” or “third cast” fish. They come after thousands of casts. Hours can turn into days and days into weeks without a catch. I’ve spent a lot of time on different flats inside and outside of Cape Cod Bay. Each flat is different, each tide is different. Some days I catch multiple fish, some days I don’t. Some fish are big, most are not. Each outing, catch or no catch, teaches me a little more about the place and the fish.

It’s a process.

Poco a poco.

On the flats

24 July 2016

Reboot

It’s good to get back to basics sometimes. Slowing down and stepping back once in a while can remind one of experiences forgotten, places overlooked and things taken for granted.

Jill started casting the fly rod at the end of last season. This season we’ve spent a lot of time on the water working on her casting and learning the basics of reading the water. Because my casting technique is, um…well, it sucks, I’m not sure I’m a lot of help to her. But it has been a good refresher for me. It’s caused me to focus on and think more about the fishing rather than the catching. Turns out the more you think about the fishing part, the more catching you do. Ain’t that something?

And it’s been helpful at the vise. Because we’ve needed a fly that can be cast easily and will cover a wide range of situations, I took a fly I worked on last year for albies and tinkered on it a bit. The end result is a little all purpose baitfish pattern that I have fished exclusively for the last month. It’s caught a lot of fish and we’ve started calling it the Jilly Bean. There’s still some more water to cover with it and species to put on it, but I think it will go on the menu.

The whole point of getting back to basics was reinforced last weekend. My niece Jenn and her boyfriend Max made the trek down from Maine for a quick visit and as much time on the water as possible. Max is a solid trout guy but has limited experience with stripers in the surf or skinny water. I had heard through the grapevine he was really pumped up to fish the salt and catch a striper on the flats. I wanted to make that happen.

I gave them some caffeine and a few minutes to stretch their legs after they got out of the car and then we hit the water. I rigged all four rods with fresh Jilly Bean’s and looked for a place to set Jenn and Max up. The tide had just turned and we had some time to wait for the water to ebb enough to get to a couple of spots I was confident we would find fish in. I put them in a rock garden that sets up a narrow rip with a back eddy as the tide drops. I’ve caught some pretty nice fish out of the backside of this rip in the past but it’s intermittent and requires devoting some time to that one area. I gave them a pep talk, tried to explain what a single or a pair of striped bass would look like swimming across the flat and told them to have patience and keep casting.

I went off with Jill to work on her casting a little and then took a walk to check a few cuts and channels for signs of life. Halfway back to where our gear was situated I looked up and saw Max’s rod with a bend in it and a smile on his face. By the time I got to him he had the fish in and was holding it in the water. For his first linesider in skinny water he had done well. The look on his face said it all. It was kind of like that moment in “Castaway” when Tom Hanks finally got a fire going.

We watched the fish swim away and I asked him, “Tug a little when he hit?”

He just looked at me and nodded. Enough said.

 

Max and I kept pounding the surf while the ladies took a break in the sun. We both saw a few fish but they were spooky and moving fast. We moved along the flat with the retreating water until we got to the edge of a bank where I hoped I could get everyone hooked up on some rat stripes. Max picked one up with about fifteen minutes to go before we had to head back to distract my daughter while her surprise birthday party was being set up. It was the perfect way to end the day.

I grabbed Abby under the guise of going to dinner with Jenn and Max which was an easy sell because she and Jenn share the same birthday. We sat on the deck at Roht Marine and talked fishing and family while we celebrated birthdays and striped bass.

After a long day and pulling off a successful surprise party everyone crashed so we could get out early for a few more hours on the water before Jenn and Max had to leave. We fished the reverse of the previous day, working our way with the incoming back to the spot Max had scored the big fish at.  I had pulled in a couple of rats but the others were striking out. I was staring at the water thinking about stopping at one more place on the way home that I was pretty sure would be holding fish when I looked up and saw Max with a stripe nearly identical to his first.

After we released the fish Jill and I sat on the rocks watching Jenn and Max cast, hoping for one more fish before we had to go. I thought about the dozen times over the last month and a half I’ve rushed past that spot to get to pieces of water I know I’m going to hook up in without having to think about it. As I looked up along the rocks and the beach I realized there are several spots I’ve hurried by that I used to spend hours patiently working the water for one nice sized fish. I wondered how many fish I’ve just plain walked past because I was focused on catching and not fishing.

I learned something.

My next time out, I’ll be fishing.

North River, MA

22 June 2016

Low Country: Chapter One

To be cliché, there are some people you meet in life that you just instantly connect with. In today’s world social media has become the mechanism by which a lot of people meet, friendships are created and relationships (of all forms) are developed. I shied away from it for years until I realized that business-wise you cannot afford to not be on it. I signed on to it for business exposure, what I didn’t expect was connecting with so many people in the fly fishing community or the friendships that social media has yielded. I have friends on Facebook and Instagram that I have more contact with than people in my own area code. For a child of the seventies, the 3-party phone (rotary) line and the Pony Express mail system…well, it’s still a little overwhelming.

About two years ago I started seeing a guy in South Carolina fishing with his dog on Facebook.  The dog’s name was Tucker. The images, expressions and settings brought back memories of my dogs and the times we had on and off the water. I could tell from the pictures that Tucker was well trained and a true fishing dog. This doesn’t happen by accident. Having trained my three black labs, well two out of three anyway, to be fishing dogs, I know the time and work that goes into it. Following Tuck told me a lot about his owner. Eventually I contacted him and invited Tucker to join the group of fishing dogs on my Mud Dog Facebook page. Rich Walker and I have been friends since.

Over the course of the last two years, Rich and I have messaged and talked fishing, flies, dogs and life. After one twenty minute conversation and a pot of coffee I posted “Dog Tales” about them. In short, he’s become one of my best friends. He and Tuck, and the weather in Charleston have become regular topics of conversation in my house. In one of our first conversations Rich had extended an invite to visit and begin my redfish education. Last fall my daughter told me she was interested in the University of South Carolina so I decided it was time to pull the trigger and I made the plans.

A couple of months ago, for April vacation, Jill and I and my daughter and her best friend made the drive south to Folly Beach. The house that I had rented was on a narrow tidal creek that backed up to an expansive marsh. As we pulled into the driveway and looked out over the marsh, the girls said in unison, “This is just like home.”

 

Photo by Jill Mason

 It was like home except the tides run a lot shorter and quicker than they do in Humarock. We were reminded of this during a morning outing in the kayaks. But that’s a story for another time......

After our first full day on Folly Beach we met up with Rich, his wife Jeannette and Tucker at Rita’s for a drink. We were a little surprised when we walked up to the table in the outside seating area and were met by Tuck sitting beside Rich. After a beverage, and a complimentary strip of bacon for Tuck, we went for ahi tuna tacos up the street at The Surf Bar. It became apparent that Folly Beach is one of the most dog friendly towns in America because Tuck trotted right into the open air seating area and sat between Rich and me at the table.

Although this trip was about family time and meeting new friends, there was time for some fishing as well. Rich and Tuck took me one evening to walk the grass on a flood tide in hopes the reds would be up in it. 

The fish never showed up but it gave me the opportunity to watch Tuck work with Rich and it was impressive. The dog really knows what the deal is wading the grass and the silent communication between he and Rich is remarkable. As we walked and watched for fish Rich gave me a primer on fishing reds in the grass and I told him about fishing similarly for stripers in the marsh back home. It also gave us a chance to learn about each others back-story and views on the world.

The conversation continued a couple of days later when Rich took the afternoon off from work, picked me up with a skiff he had borrowed and took me to one of his favorite spots. We spent the afternoon on backwater creeks that were some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever fished. The wind had been blowing all week and the water was stained. Rich could pick out a fish here and there as he poled us along but I couldn’t see them until we were right on top of them, usually just before they would spook. I could sense that Rich was putting it on himself and told him that my expectation was not to catch fish but to learn how to see them, what to look for and how to set up for them. Under the watchful eye of Tuck we worked on that and in between drifts continued telling stories and finding we share the same fishing philosophy. We stopped for a cold Sam Adams and as we sat there, Tuck at my feet, all three of us looking out over the creek in silence, the roots of a friendship that I have no doubt will continue to grow over time took hold.

Rich and Jeannette had been determined to show us what Low Country hospitality is all about. Our week in Folly Beach had been amazing and was due in great part to them. For our last night Rich had said he wanted to put on a Low Country boil for us. Friday afternoon he and Jeannette pulled into the driveway, his truck loaded with burners, pots, oysters and shrimp. We set up a table in the driveway and Rich, with Tucker supervising, got the boil going. As the sun set on our last night there we all stood around the table shucking oysters and peeling shrimp and talking and laughing like families used to do over the dinner table. It was an experience that will not be forgotten by any of us and one that I am grateful for.

 

Photo by Jeanette Walker

On the “What” page of this blog I wrote:

“In these backwaters life happens, solitude is found, stories are created, friendships are forged and memories are made.”

Photo by Jill Mason

We all need a little more backwater.

North River, MA

14 June 2016