The bobber swims in circles for at least five seconds and I scream “SET!” a minimum of eighty times. Eventually, he finds it in his heart to sweep that big ol’ fly pole upwards and stretch that silly plastic line. There is twitching and headshaking. Long deliberate runs circle around the pool and I stifle the whisper that is pinballing in my brain “bigfuckingbrowntrout”. Saying such a thing out loud while staring hard at tense monofilament slicing green ether will automatically turn whatever is on the other end into an asshooked whitefish; such is the evil nature of river alchemy.

“He’s pullin on me pretty good”

“Just keep that line tight”

He doesn’t.

“Larry go git yer camera out I wanna get a picture of this fish”

He turns his attention away from the task at hand to call to his partner in the front of the boat. The line goes completely flaccid as the fish swims towards us. I dig the right oar as hard as I can, spin the ass end of the boat into the current and get his rod bent again.

“Keep the line tight!”

Shit. Ass. Whore.

You can’t call for the camera while the fish is still swimming, you might as well cut the line with your pocketknife. I hope it is the white-dog. It can’t be, not with those oil-rig headshakes. It has to be, any decent trout would have easily spit that barbless hook by now. We have to land this fish. We’re never going to land this fish.

“You seen him yet Larry? I ain’t seen nothing yet, kinda fights like a croaker”

His attention is once again severed from the fish, the first we’ve actually hooked all day,  and again the line goes utterly slack as it swim slowly and deliberately toward us.

Another violent oar-dig and Larry almost goes Greg Louganis over the side as he’s  snapping pictures of water hiding unseen scales and fins and, shit what is this anyway. Please, please don’t let this be a snagged sucker. There’s no way this is a trout.

“TIGHT LINE!”

I am all nerves and coiled spring. I am osprey staring into the green. We are gaining ground and I can see the bobber again. Was that a flash? Another run, shorter this time, he’s about done. Is that him, am I imagining it or can I actually…

“It’s a toad!”

Confirmation. No green back, no translucent fins, no pig snout. Solid brown trout hooked in the mouth.

“Don’t bring your fly line… the plastic line… into the rod tip.”

“Huh?”

It’s too late. The yellow balloon is now jammed into the top guide. The fish has come to the bow and his head is on the way up, I’ve got one shot. I am a pneumatic piston. Just as I fire the net toward the slab of gold, he throws his head out into the current and parts the line. Instead of a shower of water and an empty bag, which is what I’m expecting, the fish is in the net. I have won the lottery, I have dipnetted a 20+ inch brownie, we have absolutely no right to have caught it. It doesn’t hit the 2 foot mark like I expect but weighs in close to 5 pounds.

“Is this good?”

It’s his first day holding a fly rod, his first day on a Montana stream. They are on a family vacation to Yellowstone from Florida and decided to get a half-day guided trip. This is the first trout he’s ever caught. After that fish all we can manage to land is a 5 inch rainbow. At the end of the day, they’re disappointed. I suppose it all depends on your definition of good.

Make it a good one

OPEN THREAD! PILE ON!

Abbey on NBC from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

After G_Smolt’s thoroughly tasteless post advocating bead bouncing with a bamboo stick, we felt it was time to get back on track, appeal to our literate readers and pull this place out of the gutter.

But then, well, we got distracted.

Capr fishing explained:

Finally, a tying video without all the heavy breathing, instructional jibber-jabber and UV lamplight! And better keep that Scott dude away from your sister: he’s got fast hands, man.

Sealed drag reel? - Check.

Plastic line? - MmHmm.

Fluorocarbon? - Yup.

Gussied up 8mm bead?  - You betcha.

Bamboo rod? - Why the hell not?

Props to the Fine Bastard what made her, goofy lumps and all.

Glista’s just too good at this.

“The world was new each day for God so made it daily.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

There’s been a dearth of good news from the world lately. On the micro level, people are still fishing, still traveling, still finding maps and mazes through the latter bewilderment. The big picture has been basically shit though. BP fucked the Gulf royally, unemployment is at a 60 year high, the national political scene looks like Room 8 of the local high school where the deliquents, incompetents and developmentally challenged are warehoused for 4 years and “not getting worse” is considered “getting better”.

Maybe that is why, while reading through this morning’s news, the latest entry in the Times Editorial Notebook caught my attention.  

“A couple of weeks ago, I walked along a spring creek in the upper Madison Valley, just south of the town of Ennis, Mont. As my guide, Jeff Laszlo, explained, the creek is one of the unnamed tributaries of the Madison River, fed by innumerable springs along the valley’s rich bottomland. The creek meanders for miles before it reaches the Madison, gaining water, providing spawning grounds for fish and invaluable wetland habitat for birds. I looked on in disbelief, because the section we were hiking — nearly eight miles of cold, clear waters — did not exist before 2005.

Or rather, it existed until 1951, when Jeff Laszlo’s grandfather dewatered this section of land by digging canals to draw the water along the edge of one of the alluvial benches that define the Madison Valley. His purpose was to move water to other sections of his ranch and to improve the grazing. In the narrow agricultural logic of the time, his ditches made a certain economic sense. And if it seems strange that his grandson would undo all that work 60-some years later, Laszlo notes that he is simply obeying a different economic logic — one that considers increased biodiversity to be one of the ranch’s most important assets.”

Granted, restoration on the spring creek was done to start a pay to play fishing operation on the ranch, but this is not the Beaver. Instead of privateering a public waterway, Jeff Laszlo restored what had once been obliterated. It feels good to read about 8 miles or so of trout stream being added and not destroyed. We need more of this.

Even dead, he can still kick Tie Domi’s ass.

It’s become popular to call it “the poor man’s bonefish,” but that doesn’t really prepare you for standing knee-deep in a fetid brew of algae and dung, while listening to cow farts at disturbingly close range. No - I’m pretty sure that even if I was deaf, dumb and blind and someone was pouring a Kalik down my throat, I still wouldn’t mistake this place for Andros.

But then these details start quickly fading into the background as disturbance is noticed in the otherwise smooth shallow flats, and cruising fish start to be picked out in the tea-colored water, and the adrenals are throbbing all over again at the thought of channeling that inner egret; standing poised, motionless and studying…waiting for the right individual, delicately placing a temptation in its path, and waiting, waiting, waiting until the shadow of this beast practically darkens the fly before a little twitch gets its attention, and then, with another, it alters direction and you watch the inhale before stripping hard and everything erupts and you’re clearing your line as the first run hits the sound barrier. And while I still haven’t been able to fool myself into thinking I’m back in the Bahamas, I don’t really fucking care anymore, either.

The flies. Or the Dudes. We can’t tell who or what looks more battered.

The lack of ego ran megahigh early on Week One/Day One ’round the dinner tent tables at AK West, which tends to happen when you’ve gotta group of dudes with little to prove, a lot of tundra time to kill and a 41° water temp/41° air temp that was making swinging flies for kings damn near fruitless for those devoid of proper karmic 401(k) plans. How it goes with coldwater king fishing, it eventually will and did go off and those with vested soul, as always, reap the reward.

Without much shit to throw anyone’s way yet on account of a botched gagger hookset, a blowed up rod/reel/running line from torquing down on a choker chinook before it was ready for sweet, sweet caressing or farmed 40+ lb. tanker that would haunt a fella well into next winter steelhead season, Horatio “the Instigator” Nailknot, in what could best be described as a sustained haze of brown/sinister conflict fabrication for languid personal entertainment, knocks the shit outta the dinnertime hilarity with a dual. One wherein neither of competitors could afford to lose. But then again, neither were all too sure they’d win. How it goes when two badass sticks decide to throw down with what many consider to be the two best mice patterns ever invented. Thats the beauty of Week One; if the kings don’t show for a day or two, not a problem. The ‘bows haven’t seen a fly since last September.

The Fight Card:

Jeff “The Creasewrecker” Hickman and his venerable Mr. Hanky Mouse

vs.

Kenny “Never Met an R&R Handle He Couldn’t Tame” Morrish and the legendary Morrish Mouse.

The Proving Grounds: The river of which never used to speak and one notorious for insanely stupid mousing, fishing the morning session from 8 a.m. to noon, because out-and-out competition when fly fishing is agreeably pretty wrong. Far be it to deny some soul fishing to these two steelheaders on what may be their only day trout fishing all year.

The Metric: Sheer awesomeness, as measured by guides Trevor Covich and Garrett Sullivan.

Horatio Nailknot’s High Stakes: Loser leaves Team Awesome and goes to Solitude. Ouch.

Blow-by-blow accounts from T and Gary (no one else was there) say the Morrish Mouse pulled ahead strong in early rounds with many and big, and Kenny went deep into a world of smack talk that had the Kid Hickman flustered as anyone named T or Gary had ever seen. Then, outta the tackle bag came Hickman’s secret weapon, his hairbrush. After getting his headmuff right, tight and talking like a dying poo-mouse skating across the surface on ten hits of blotter, we heard Mr. Hanky pulled out a handsome 11th hour save with a pile of rainbows that tore up the top. So much so, that a tie was declared and the Mousecapades were forever deemed a draw, they hugged it out in a uncomfortable-for-everyone-else kumbaya moment and two age-old agreements were reached:

There ain’t a damn thing wrong with mammal-eating A-rok rainbows, and someone really oughta get that flask away from Horatio and his diabolical ideas.

Fine time, guys. A precious few prono shots from the trip:

“I believe it is the purest form of fly-fishing.”

- Daniel Galhardo, Tenkara USA

You know, Danny, I really don’t care how other people fish. Honestly, as long as you’re not raping the resource, do whatever you want. But can you spare us the sanctimonious bullshit about how, just because you don’t have a reel, you’re somehow doing something that’s more “pure” than the rest of us?

But let’s take your logic forward - if ditching my reel makes me “more pure,” then ditching all of my tackle would mean a full state of never-ending satori,  right?

I give you His Venerable Noodleness, the Dalai Jerry Wayne:

(Photo by Pete McDonald)

After hearing way too many stories about the filming of this and, despite plying said filmmaker with a liberal amount of brown truth serum, never any damn mention of the places filmed, um, we’re still pretty jacked up about seeing this one:

“Eventually, all gutters merge into one canal, and something kind of resembling a river runs through it. The channel was cut by the Army Corps of Engineers and runs over riprap from the basement of time. On some of the riprap are timeless pieces of plastic and other detritus. Under the riprap are things best left alone.
I am haunted, and sometimes a little scared, by urban waters.”

Reason #438 why June rules…

Now appearing on a grill near me.

Native Fish Society Board President, badass stick and all-around salmon/steelhead warrior Peter Tronquet warming the inner fire and reveling in the heavy vibe of a swung fly 35+ lb. Kanektok Super Tanker chinook release.This moment was easily the heaviest soul I’ve seen rolled in many, many years.Addendum: Just got a shot of that fish prior to release. Freightliner? :

Have at it scamps

Regarding on offshore drilling

“And while we’re at it, let’s expedite the regulatory and permitting and legal processes for on- and offshore drilling.”—Speaking at the Tea Party conventionon Feb. 26, 2010, about six weeks before the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

“Unless government appropriately regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable, the public will not trust them to drill, baby, drill. And we must!” —Facebook note, June 8, 2010.

A big thanks to Palinisms on Slate for the quotes demonstrating naked political ambition and not a shred of intellectual consistency.