Things have been uncharacteristically dry and hot in this normally wet, cool place, and you can figger what that’ll do for a honkey needing a fix. But that oppressive dome of high pressure has broken down, the rains are rolling in, the temps are dropping and you can feel that it’s on.

After a barley-fueled pre-emptive strike prior to launching down one of those loose, steep dirt road descents that leave you wondering how the hell you’re going to get out later in your falling apart, 2WD Ford Ranger that’s on loan from a friend (unbeknownst to him…), we did verily and mightily connect with thee exiled Troutski, and yea, he did feel the sting of our icepick repeatedly till the revolution was feebly televised on the hand crank a.m. radio typically reserved for The Bunker. In other words - “puta, huevon – la pesca ayer fue increible.”

Nevermind that vicious rumors of Kings (yes – Kings, introduced and now wild) running up a threadbare tributary pan out to be the last week’s news we should have known it to be prior to setting out an an ungodly hour this morning – the critical is that work is temporarily on hold, the check has been deposited and the hunt is on for serious with new and equally obsessed co-conspirators…

A selection off the end table:

Charles Bowden, Down by the River

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

James Welch and Paul Stekler, Killing Custer

Ruben Martinez, Crossing Over

Larry McMurtry, Boones Lick

Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang: A Novel

Luis Alberto Urrea, By the Lake of Sleeping Children

Don Delillo, White Noise

Jim Harrison, True North and Returning to Earth

Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

Lisa Margonelli, Oil on the Brain

being a firm believer in the irony of dichotomy; you farm a fish and then you cultivate one, i gotta give a bit of shit where shit’s due.

thus, i give you the man who mighta somehow farmed a laser giant grab in what many of my crew believe could very well be The Best Steelhead Riffle on the Planet (in actuality, the fish hit him so gotdam hard the rod tip buried a foot under water and then, as some very cruel joke, the fish decided not to stick).

swear on my eyes, banknote, i saw the fish and it was every bit of 18 lbs. maybe prolly bigger. you and i both know that system gives ‘em up big and healthy.

stains, sunrise gave us 60° and shirtsleeve sunny here in the great Northwest in a time when it oughta be pouring rain and dark. gotdam gorgeous day, tho i suspect we’d a been happier to see some clouds and drizzle despite it all. shit’s real funny that way when you’re a sad clown.

the banknote, tho, he’s never one to falter, he rolls with a pound of jerky, minimum, in his jacket and he’s a fishy motherfucker, so his redemption came some 7 hours later when a fancy little bright girl went wild climbed up onto his shit and proceeded to do tabledance like the wild ones do.

quick up and out before she went back about her way:

good day to be on the water. two rivers, boat rowed well, flies swung slow, lotsa sun behind the fish, Hamm’s talls and Tim’s Jalapeno Potato chips rocked the ride home and all is right with the world about now. hells’ j’yes.

to quote Saint Patterson Hood, who played us a badass show (with a four song encore) at the Roseland friday night:

It’s great to be alive. It’s really great to be alive.

Yeah? Well it’s Friday out here, thee crankypants, but to keep you happy I give you Lydia
the Tattooed Lady.

And here’s some hippy horseshit, just to prove you right.

“They hung the jerk that invented work” good stuff there -Wally.

Howlin’ Wolf – Smokestack Lightning

Bill Hicks on Fife, Alabama:

no, it ain’t youtube friday yet (at least not on the left coast) — so i ain’t gonna waste this SOLID GOLD AMERICAN GUFFAW — on that scrapheap of unadulterated hippy horseshit. press play, my friends, and get in touch wiff yr inner baboon.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, there is “fishing content”…  or  something like it…
yr welcome…

“Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.”

-Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 2

There’s a proposed open pit copper mine down my way, The Rosemont Copper Mine, that will be centered in the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains. The mining project is running into some fierce local resistance, as can be naturally expected, especially in an area as scenic as basin and range southern Arizona. To assauge the local citizens, the Augusta Resource Corporation, parent company to the Rosemont Project, commisioned a series of economic benefit studies if the mine were approved. One of the big points of the Rosemont studies was the estimation of 500 direct jobs at the mine and 1,200 additinal jobs providing goods and services to the mine, with an annual payroll of about $14 million.

Now, the anit-mine group “Save the Scenic Santa Ritas”, contracted the Sonoran Institute to complete another economic study looking at total cost-benefit to Pima and Santa Cruz counties if the mine were approved. Study author, Josef Marlow stated that:

“the potential economic benefits of this mine are small compared to potential significant economic risks. People need to inform themselves on these risks.” He added that studies, such as one written by veteran Arizona mining economist George Leaming for Rosemont Copper on benefits last summer, “stress only the positive aspects of salaries, sales and taxes.” and he also stated that “Although we were contracted by Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, that doesn’t put us in their pocket nor bias us. We have no position on this mine, nor on reform of the 1872 Mining Act“

One of the big points of the study is that toursim in the region brings in $2.95 billion, yes with a “B”, and that even a 1% reduction in tourism due to the mine would cost the region more than twice the annual payroll at the mine. Also layed out in the study:

“that Pima and Santa Cruz county draw little overall economic benefit from mining compared to government, service, clean manufacturing, and especially retirement and tourism. Scenic Highway 83 would become dangerous to drive with 600 trucks a week on it: polluted, hard to commute and expensive to maintain”

As a disclosure, I commute on Highway 83 and I couldn’t imagine trying to negotiate that narrow two lane highway with it laden with dump trucks. But that’s just me.

Now, here’s the best part, Rosemont’s reply, straight from Jaime Sturgess, VP at Rosemont:

 “Mining communities such as Tombstone, Bisbee and Jerome provide excellent positive examples of increased mine-related tourist visitors and revenues in Arizona,” Sturgess said. “Tourists are interested in mining, and it’s a key component of this area’s long and rich history. Were the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show visitors and their economic impacts even considered in the Pima County data analysis?” Sturgess asked. “It’s hard to see any tourism reductions there, since mine tours are so popular with that sector of tourism visitors. I have no doubt that the Rosemont Copper mine will actually increase the number of visitors to this area.”
 

Jim, can I call you Jim? here’s the thing; people go to Tombstone because of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. Bisbee, while home to a huge working pit mine, is also an art center. People don’t visit open pit mines for the scenery.

Friend of a friend connections can go a long way down here. We meet and chat for a while, as he sizes us up. Next thing we know we’re being invited to their lodge on the Rio Pavo Caliente for a couple nights, gratis, while they don’t have any clients around.

We spend the afternoon fishing the Pavo, picking up some nice browns on hoppers, and then make late-night plans over vino tinto to hike up to a remote lake he has the inside scoop on. Next morning we’re hiking in 4 miles to an otherwise inaccessible gem, and arrive to find an Avon with a 30hp. motor stashed under a tarp. Minutes later we’re torqueing against the wind across the length of the mile and a half lake into a sheltered cove.

Before we’ve even hit shore we’re seeing rises. And then, my unbelieving eyes spy an even more incredible stash – a 2-person Outcast raft with a casting platform that he keeps up at this end of the lake. Turns out both of these boats were horsepacked up here in pieces. Jeezus, he’s got it figured out.

We spend the rest of the afternoon cruising the fringes of the weedbeds and deadfall, finding one gorgeous, rusty-yellow brown after another, all on big dries. Hike out in the evening spent and grinnin.’

been hovering near 50° F here in the sweet smellin’ Northwest for more than 5 days running and fishing last Sunday, me and the lab couldn’t help but notice a distinct smell in the air that even superceded our Saturday Rainier festival pants. swung flies until exactly 5:47 p.m. last night, so the afterwork program’s returned. about time, the dog and i were starting to go windigo.

it’s feeling like late winter, stains.

the first few spring salmon have gone over Bonneville Dam, so i skated down the East Bank Esplanade on the Willamette the other day to see how many souls were out on the water already hoping. saw four of the first few springer boats out spinning herring, looking to be the earliest man on the totem pole.

You gotta have a pile of love for these early springer guys. esoteric, out there burning the candle, looking for some sorta confirmation that this year’s shitty run predictions are off and that one symbiotic early fish is gonna be evidence of a pile of upriver springers, just like it was back when they and pop used to skip outta work and school for a kind of learnin’ far more valuable than any classroom could teach you. makes me think maybe gear and fly fishermen aren’t diametrically opposed, despite what some might try and sell you. the Willamette used to be insane for springers, but now it’s like your dying aunt in adult care. except, you wonder what, exactly, the caregivers motives are.

Also means the hatchery steelhead season’s coming to an end, confirmed in my boat by the first wild kelt tailed briefly on Sunday. downriver fish, already done her business. little girl, a skinny 8 lbs, beat up, stupid with hungry. gonna head back to the ocean, make a go at coming back a four-salt fish, she’s thinking. you’re hoping it all works out as she goes back over the soft gravel inside and out into the green, but you know the probabilities. there’s a lotta seals in the bay. seals are fast.

the first kelt of the year’s our measure, it seems. from here, it’s all a bit more natural, as evolution intended. fishing upriver late winter steelhead and pulling your fly outta the soft water before the hungry downriver kelts have a chance to climb on.

while it’s much less of a numbers game (and it’s really never ever that anyway), this is the time a few of us wait on all year. a shot at the egg wagons, they call it. the really bigass mainstem fish. not too many of these specimen pieces of perfect left and fewer still are your chances of finding a river in shape enough to go at one. matters not, they’re ghosts all the same. remember a year when we sorta landed a dime-bright, damn-near 20 with sea lice out of a deep green, greasy run and broke the slob off on a snag while trying to be ginger landing her, saw it and the 5″ pink intruder in its craw on a redd two days later in a shallow tailout not 100 yards from where it kicked our asses, and then hooked it three days later on the high inside seam of a fast slot 50 feet above reach of tide.

that’s the way it goes with these big girls. you remember everything; every fucking thing, cause you sure don’t find them too often, even if you’re looking often in the right spots. fucking ghosts. beautiful apparitions.

Course, this is the season of snowmelt, too. a few rivers you love go out until may, unfishable. the others drop and clear with less rain than normal winter precip and the fish head to the tanks, unreachable with flies. it’s a guessing game, even more than normal.

some years it’s epic. mostly tho, it just hurts and then it’s May.

but that’s ok. it’s how the whole metaphysical cycle of wild fish mojo’s supposed to go. steelhead fishing—or any sorta fishing, really— is all about being an active motherfucker in the ju-ju, feeling it, being in touch with the day-to-day idiosyncrasies going down— river flow, tides, temps, barometers, whether it’s cloudy or sunny and the mindblower backdrop from which a fish sees your fly (yep, huff a greenie and dwell on that one for a spell: is the backdrop green foliage? brown limbs? blue sky? black rock? how the eff does that effect fly color contrast from underwater as a steelhead’s perceiving that fly coming at them from 100 feet away and into their living room? ’cause you know they see that shit different from every run you fish. they’re witchy) to bad-ass laser awesome hunches, it’s how the game’s played proper.

guess, when it comes right down to it, i gotta think something far more poignant than a calendar marks our seasons. for most people, today’s just thursday. but ask any of the crew i run with and today’s the day we’ve got an 11:50 a.m. low tide, the river’s 8.5 and dropping with good turbidity, the air smells warmer,, the lichen on the big spruce three riverbends from the boat slide is greening up into a March glow, we’ve got good, low cloudcover and shit might just go off if you’re in the right place at the right time.

it’s not thursday for these dudes. everyday’s a saturday.

Whilst spending the weekend in San Francisco with family, my brother-in-law took me out to Golden Gate Park to cast a line at the GGACC.

The Comet, “Originated and tied by George Cole, named by Jack Horner.”

Old Timey Bass Bugs by Bill Segale

The rod locker room in the clubhouse.

Main Hall in the Clubhouse

The casting ponds.

From Sunday:

(Ruins of the Butterfield Overland Stage Station, Apache Pass Arizona)

“When the first Americans came to Arizona, Cochise had welcomed them…He did not object when the Butterfield Overland Mail established a stage station in Apache Pass…One day in February, 1861, Cochise received a message from Apache Pass asking him to come into the station for a conference with a military officer. Expecting this would be a routine matter, Cochise took along five members of his family- his brother, two nephews, a woman and a child. The military officer…had been sent with a company of soldiers to recover cattle and a half-breed boy stolen from the ranch of John Ward. Ward had accused Cochise’s Chiricahuas of taking the cattle and the boy.

As soon as Cochise and his relatives entered Bascom’s tent, twelve soldiers surrounded it, and the lieutenant peremptorily demanded that the Chiricahuas return the cattle and the boy.

Cochise had heard about the captured boy. A band of Coyoteros from the Gila had raided the Ward ranch, he said…Cochise thought he might be able to arrange a ransom…the lieutenant ordered the arrest of Cochise and his relatives, declaring he would hold them as hostages…Cochise slashed a hole in the tent and fled under a volley of rifle fire…buit his relatives were held as prisoners. To get them free, Cochise and his warriors captured three white men on the Butterfield Trail and tried to make an exchange. Bascom refused the exchange unless the stolen cattle and boy were included.

…Cochise blocked Apache Pass and besieged the infantry company…After giving Bascom one more chance to exchange, Cochise executed his prisoners, mutilating them with lances, a cruel practice the Apaches had learned from the Spainards. A few days later Lieutenant Bascom retaliated by hanging Cochise’s three male relatives.

It was at this point in history that the Chiricahuas transfered their hatred of the Spainards to the Americans. For a quarter of a century they and other Apaches would fight an intermittent guerrilla campaign that would be more costly in lives and treasure than any of the other Indian wars.”

- Dee Brown, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” Henry Holt and Company, New York 1970. Pages 193-194

It’s cold.

Donald Beaver, whom a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette freelancer describes as a “fishing preserve entrepreneur” has ingested a bowlful of invective from the chattering classes of the fly fishing world. Donald “Donny” Beaver has been depicted as the devil incarnate, a carpetbagging slimeball, a thief of public resources, a greedhead capitalist, a lying sack of shit and a duplicitous jerkoff. But are we being unfair to Beaver? Has he — and his minions, including alleged “fly fishing icons” the likes of Lefty Kreh, the late Ernest Schwiebert, Barry and Kathy Beck, Frontiers Travel and various captains of industry — done any good whatsoever?

Hell yes! I am here to defend Donald Beaver. Here’s why:

1. Thank Yuo, Donny, for bringing us together
Without your efforts, the fly fishing community would have remained a rather rag-tag collection of loners separated by distance, geography, species preference and/or technique. Once you came onto the scene, Donny, we became one — united against you. If only for a few months, fly fishermen stood together and said “no”. True, it’s sucks for you that we were saying “no” to you and your schemes, but for us, it was a unifying moment that we’ve seen far too infrequently in our sport.

2. Thank you for defining the debate and raising our consciousness
Before Donny Beaver became a bad word, the notion of stream access laws rarely received the attention that it now commands. What fly fisherman, prompted by Beaver, has not checked the access laws of his/her own state? Fly fishermen are now empowered by the knowledge of their local stream access issues and for this, we have Donald Beaver to thank.

3. Thank you for delineating the difference between the new fly fishing media and the old guard.
If there has been one issue that has illustrated the difference in the fly fishing media in stark lines, it is this one. While the traditional fly fishing magazines were placing gaudy pics of the Spring Ridge Club on their cover, booking full page adds for Frontiers Travel or — simply not saying a word about the issue — the new Fly Fishing media led the debate.
Fly fishing magazines need their Lefty Kreh’s; they need their Beck’s; they need large ads from TFO — hell, the publisher of free shop rag Fly Fish America is a paying member at the Spring Ridge Club, so it’s not hard to imagine why fly fishing mags took a powder on this issue. Too inconvenient, too much $$$ at stake, too uncomfortable upsetting the quiet status quo of the quiet sport. The matter of the fact is, however, that 99% of all fly fishermen were against Beaver and his club’s designs and were more than willing to say so — unfortunately, that 99% did not include the old Fly Fishing media, whose credibility took a rather large hit during this episode.
Their loss = our gain. Thank you, Donny!

4. Thank you for the exhibition game
Now that the first round is over and we won in a United States court of law, we’ve got precedent, a game plan and a PR strategy for defeating you again.

5. Thank yuo for the material
Thank you Donny, for the laughs and the easy jokes at your expense. Thank you for being named “Donny Beaver”. Thank you for propping up rickety arguments (“I’m a conservationist”) that we were able to tear down, counter and ridicule with ease. Thanks for the fodder you sent our way, leading to dozens of morally outraged posts which ended up sending thousands of hits in our direction. We owe ya, Donny! Thank yuo!

Via Kissing Suzy Kolber.

NFL fans, enjoy the Pro Bowl. And then get tyin’. Spring’s not far off.

Oh and eat a bagga dicks.

So I’m sitting inside West Seattle High school digging the caucus scene when, who do I see? Mark Arm. Yep… Thee Mark Arm.
God Bless West Seattle

Heading out in the AM to a creek that I haven’t fished since May of last year. Damn drought. Hopefully the fish are still there.

Since I missed the youtubelazyarsefriday: 

This is either astounding naivete on the part of the Lawrence Welk show or “Dale and Gail” are subversive as hell. Wait for Welk’s outro at the end, that’s the best part.

via the Chum

Half a kilometer past the end of the pavement and I’d bet my life that the axles of this aging Samurai are u-bolted directly to the frame. Fillings I’d completely forgotten about 20 years ago threaten to sheer my teeth at any moment like calving glaciers into the narrow fjord of my mouth. I hope Dave’s not taking me far in this contraption, though to be fair, he warned me, and natives of Novia Scotia are known for reserved understatement if anything.

A short walk through a cow pasture filled with needle-sharp calafate bushes and we’re hovering on the edge of an overhanging, less than-stable-bluff, drooling over a deep pool that gives way to a sweeping bend with several downed trees providing structure throughout. Eventually we find a way down a loose, gravel slope.

The first cast yields a nice brown, and then a hard-fighting rainbow shortly after. The next pool upstream and I’m in a protracted tussle with a beautifully-spotted, fat 18” brown….and so it goes till it’s too dark to thread the eye of a hook.

Like the ratcheting pull of an old rollercoaster lurching uphill, the Samurai takes us up and out of the valley and home to the best box of wine I’ve ever tasted.