Fresh from the latest SRC newsletter!! Make me laugh and get a limited edition “If the Trout Are Lost, Smash the State” bumper sticker.

Or…

“Who needs carp when you can have these things ignore your fly all day?”

Got a better one?*

*-My fairy godfather (or is it hairy goat father?) Wookie sez that you chumps will expect stickers and other schwag just for chiming in with your little witticisms since I gave a few away last time, so here’s the deal…you make me laugh, you get a sticker. You don’t, well…talk to the hairy one about the consequences.

The Tweed, Coldstream, Scotland/England border
Aug 26, 2010
Rod had to take a leak, so convincing him to stop along the banks of the River Tweed was a cinch. The Tweed, for at least part of its journey, forms the border between Merry Old England and Grumpy Olde Scotland. And even though Scotland is, indeed, grumpier than England, I tend to like Scotland more. Sure, the food is just as horrific and the beer just as crummy, but Scotland is funnier, more scenic and the whisky is, well, it’s Scotch, fay fook’s sake. Sounds great, huh? In fact, you may even be thinking of thumbing it out to the Boise airport and booking a cheap flight to the highlands. Well, think again, Angus. Scotland is expensive as fuck. There’s no fishing on Sunday and if, unlike me, you actually get around to fishing, be prepared to take out a second mortgage on your home.

We were heading north, up to a gig in Edinburgh, and I hopped out of the car on the English side of the Tweed and high-tailed it down a path toward the water, camera in hand. I had just crossed a gate and was 25 yards from the river when I came up short.  Ay! Fay Fook Sake. Wha thay bloody fook? But there it was, the sign that confirmed my worst fears regarding fishing in the UK — all that permitting, private water, upstream, dry-flies-only-on-days-ending-in-y business. There it was — finally — proof!

Like most right-thinking individuals, I cannot abide the notion of “private water.”  The phrase kickstarts my inner anarchist, compelling me to jump fences, deface signs (BWTF stickers are great for this, btw!) and pontificate on the internet. My indignation springs, I guess, from my general anti-authoritarian mindset. However, this was the first time I’ve been confronted by a sign marking that strangest of UK fishing regulations: beats.

This was, to me, an entirely new sort of outrage/affront/injustice and I rolled its sour taste around on my tongue. Fishing a “beat” is absolutely foreign to the constitution of a Western angler. We are built to ramble. We are inclined to strap on a pack and load it with water, cans of Rainier and beef jerky and get the fuck away from the assholes fishing right next to the road, at the boat launch or any of the various “idiot holes” found so easily along American fly water. We love taking off into the outback for the mere fact that 1) we can. 2.) well, what the hell is around that corner, anywho? 3.) i am not the type of angler who’s gonna be seen fishing with the likes of the fucking rabble. Sorry, it’s just my issue, man.

Needless to say, I was hopped up and I fairly stomped the rest of the way to the river, high off the delicious self-righteousness of it all. There she was. The great river. So much history, so much tradition. So much of our sport flowing inches in front of me. I could smell it all, mixed with the water, the grassy bank and the trees spilling pollen. She was much broader than I had imagined, but we were by the coast. It was an impossibly scenic river — castles, old rowboats, a stone bridge. Off in the distance, two old dudes sat in a boat, rods in hands, waiting. Directly in front of me, ya know– in the good water — a fish jumped. Fuck.

What were those dudes doing sitting in the goddam frog water? Just what the fuck are they thinking?  I dunno. I never know. Yet every time I see a dude fishing the frog water I think, “What the fuck are you thinking?” It’s like driving down the road and seeing a cow and not thinking “cow.”

The fish that jumped right in front of me was, of course, nice and big. I am certain I would have caught it if I had actually been fishing the Tweed, which I was most certainly not. I walked back up the bank, past that stupid goddam sign, got in the car and drove over the river and back into Scotland.

If there’s a better carpin’ anthem, I’m not sure what it is:

“Moving higher my thumping chest recites the names
of a dozen friends who have died in recent years,
names now as incomprehensible as the mountains
across the river, far behind me.
I’ll always be walking up toward Antelope Butte.
Perhaps when we die our names are taken
from us by a divine magnet and are free 
to flutter here and there within the bodies
of birds. I’ll be a simple crow
who can reach the top of Antelope Butte.”
-Jim Harrison “Hard Times”, In Search of Small Gods, Copper Canyon Press; 2009

Dove season began a few days ago. Normally, this event is preceded by the obligatory stamp purchase, a fresh case or two of shells, a cleaning and maintenance session with the shotgun and maybe shaking the vest out over the front yard’s gravel.  Those smaller rituals occurred, although standing on the berm this fall, what really marked the start of this season is all that happened since last year’s. Two more relatives’ portraits joined the household gods above the mantel, marking the end of one generation. They had been alive when last I stood here. My latest niece hadn’t been born yet, although she is damn near crawling now. I needed new field pants this year; not because I wore the old pair out, but because this brush with mortality changed my own trajectory. I quit smoking, got healthy and in the words of Nofoolin, I’m “doing stuff now”. I dropped enough weight that cinching the belt up on my pants gave me a distinct hobo appearance, not altogether a bad thing.

This was the first time in a while that the cycle of year looked this distinct.Maybe I’m getting older, or at least more sentimental, but this dove season seems to have marked an end of last year’s grief. The passing of a year measured not by a calendar, but by a cycle of game and weather, has clarified things. Those who where here last season are not and those who were not here, are. For this year, at least, that has marked a new beginning.

I gathered my accoutrement under the watchful eyes of the household gods, men and women who lived close to the bone in Quebec and Northern Maine. I don’t know what they would have thought of hunting or fishing for recreation. I think that they maybe puzzled by it, or maybe they’d throw in with abandon. Standing on the berm, watching the dawn break east along the Dragoons, I waited for the whitewings and mourning doves to arrive. I think about all that has happened and what this season may hold. Fly them.

No offense to all my photographer buddies out there, but it is really sweet to see a cool painting on the cover of a mag for a change:

Sweet job, DeYoung. The new Drake is out. Git sum.

The River Tay, Scotland, Aug 21 2010
After last night’s gig up in the highlands one of the staff at the joint we were staying got a little too deep into the scotch resulting in, so we heard, an offense to some ancient clan, the muttering of disagreeable oaths and inevitably, a bit of a dust up. The Royal Order of thee Hee-lund Coppers were summoned, tears of regret were spilled and some punter was hauled off to the clink. Amidst all that donnybrook sleep was tough to come by so I took a wee doze on the drive down to Crail, on the SE coast. To get to Crail, you gotta drive right through St. Andrew’s, which is where a lot of serious golf is performed. You can tell it’s a golf town by the incredible numbers of “slacks” people wear in combo with those those tasteful shirts golfers are so fond of. St. Andrew’s is “quaint” and “charming” and, just to make sure one is aware that it is also “historic” and “Scottish”, they like to spell the word golf “gowf”. Yeah, that’s fooking hilarious, Alisdair!
I woke up about halfway to the gig, outside the town of Pitlochry, just as we were crossing over a big, fishy looking river. Generally there are no signs in Scotland telling you where the fuck you are, where the fuck you are going or how long it’s gonna take you to get there, but for some reason there was a sign and that sign said, “Hey, Fuck You Thee, Here’s The River Tay And You Ain’t Fishing It.” Shit.
To make an already shitty situation even shittier, just as we were crossing the bridge there was a dude stepping into the drink with a spey rod locked and loaded. We, of course, drove right on by. God. Fucking. Dammit. As they are fond of saying over here, I was gutted.
I bribed our driver with a cold, half-eaten chunk of Steak and Ale pie that I had been saving for my lunch and we were able to pull over about 20 minutes later. We pulled into a sorta high-end subdivision and I jumped out of the car, ran down a dog-shitty path, found the river and took a pic.  If, like me, you’ve never fished the Tay before, you might be a bit surprised to find that it’s one huge fucking river. The bit I saw — which I now believe was pretty cost to the Firth (estuary) of Tay — really didn’t have any discernible features other than it’s bigness, and to tell ya the truth, it looked a lot better up by the bridge where the dude with the spey was about to battle the constant — and I mean constant — 40 mph winds.
I got a magazine-thing called “Fish in Scotland” from the Scottish tourist board the other day. The word on the Tay is that, “It is one of the best Salmon rivers in the United Kingdom, and therefore the world.” I had a chuckle and thought, “yeah… sure” But who the fuck knows. It didn’t believe it because I am incredibly bitter and to accept that a river I crossed without fishing may, indeed, be one of the finest salmon rivers in the world is simply too close to self-flagellation. I am in enough pain.
In all honesty, the Tay really could be one of the finest rivers in the world. It could totally suck. Don’t ask me. I didn’t fish it the goddam thing.
We drove away and after a while we passed over the River Earn. I only got a quick glace and really have nothing to report about this sweet little river for alas,  there are only so many rivers that I can’t fish in a day.

Dean Ween on fishing and why making albums is a drag these days.

Money quote:

“The guys that work on these partyboats, they’re out working one trip in the afternoon, and then they’re a commercial scallop fisherman at night. They know everything. They know the tuna grounds, they know how to bottom-fish, they know how to drag for scallops. It’s intense. And it is a generational thing. Some salty ass guys. (laughs) Those are the people you want to listen to.”