Got this shot from the BirdDog last night; the weekend’s final tally and it’s damn impressive. I guess unlike steelhead fishing, morel picking is about numbers. A few Mason jars loaded with dried morchella tastes like sweet, reminiscent paydirt next winter when it’s time for dutch oven elk stew around a winter campfire. An old friend I wish I saw more often once described camp food as ‘not needing to be very good, just fairly hot.’ and I tend to agree, but elk and morels defy rules of convenience.

This here’s about triple the load his basket held when we last saw him Sunday morning, knife in hand, the look of mushroom bloodlust scanning those wet, southfacing slopes and thinking maybe. We said our goodbyes around 10 am. He cracked what was left of our Tallboy stash from a weird, cool party/sorta Dead show named the Goose Creek Massacre even though we were no where near any Goose Creek, and then he headed off toward another a patch of Grand Fir. I’d guess he stayed in that Fir cove for a few hours to find a stash like this. But that’s when morels and fish are the same. Like steelhead, you never leave mushrooms to find mushrooms. Never.

Git thee to eastern Idaho, lads and lassies. And leave your trout rod at home (everything else is flooded anyway…).

For more info, and to register: Carpfest 2011

“The truth is that at least 26% of the registered voters don’t want to deal with tomorrow,

They are holding on to some image of America’s past,

But America has changed in the last 20 years from a producer to a consumer,

And all consumers know that when the producer names the tune,

the consumer has got to dance, that’s the way it is”

And the message has a groove

RIP Gil Scott Heron

“Remember the whip finish you guys made me when I was like eight? A domestic associate tried unlocking the bathroom door with it yesterday and it has finally died. A tragedy of sorts…”

- An email to me from T-mos. 5/25/11 -

This is a picture of a whip finisher built by hand. Of coat hanger, bead heads, solder, emery cloth. Of pen sleeves when they were still made of brass. It was on the desk the day it met its end. Not in a drawer or under a pile of dubbing. The matarelli played second fiddle to this unit for a long, long time.

A testament to a guy who can still catch fish with pillow feathers.

Got one solid yank and that was it, aside from the scattered smolt-erference.

Before:

After!

Feathers reclaimed from Portland’s SE Lincoln bike route (just added a little arctic fox and Finn racoon.) North Williams ought to be worth a look, too.

After twenty years of letting these rivers beat the hell out of me and taking the occasional steelhead out of them, I started to get the feeling that I had seen the most of what the territory had to offer. At least once a year I drive north to take a pulse, see if the fish are around and  try to cross a particular tailout that just keeps getting deeper and faster. Upon reaching the first piece of water, I happened to notice that the fish were not only in the river, but also attempting to leap a five foot cascade of water over shale. I laid my gear down, sat down on a comfortable hunk of granite and with the old beater digital camera (the poky one with no video), attempted to make a sweet shot of a large silver fish in the air. An eddy graces the east side of this particular plunge pool and as I waited and watched I witnessed several fish deliberately swim with their heads out of the water. I could see their pectoral fins doing the doggie paddle around this swirl. And see their eyes. Looking at the falls.

?!!

I’m undecided. Are these fish freaks? Can they reason as well? The nearest nuclear facility is a hell of a long way from here. I’ve seen and fished the awesome steelhead waters of the northwest, the driftless region in Wisconsin, the Battenkill. I’ve floated the fish tank called the Green. I had best sex of my life with lady luck on the Miracle Mile. I thought I had a lot of fishing under my belt.

Not enough, I guess. Never enough.

This, believe it or not, is the headwaters of the Everglades.

I come back from Florida and people sound incredulous about it. You fished for what? Not tarpon? But I am, after all, a working man, and the bass is that fish.

I’ve fished out of Clewiston on rocket boats from Mr. Martin’s marina, but there’s more to it than the great lake. The largemouth bass in Florida are like Led Zeppelin on the radio, always on somewhere.

The canal by the hotel, the pond by the cell phone waiting area at the airport, the creek that starts the freshwater flow south to Florida Bay. Something will be forthcoming, with big fat slobbery paydirt.

After a weekend of cold rain and snow, the weather broke to sixty degrees and full sun. I keep telling myself that summer doesn’t get here until July. But myself doesn’t listen. My oldest daughter and I busied ourselves with shoring up the yard fence, spring cleaning the grill and lightly sea-salting and fresh-ground- peppering the not-so-store bought t-bone steaks that we put on it.

After cake (and an Inversion IPA from Oregon) my wife asked me the question that would bury any type of a sport who has recently fathered two:

“Are you going fishing?”

Most would just about drop over. I took the question in, thoughtfully considered it, and answered that no, I was not going fishing. I continued my day, washing out the kennel, airing it, calculating water conditions, and taking calls from an old friend that wants me to play a bass guitar in a jam band.

I also took tomorrow off.

I’ll post pictures if you’re lucky.

Each year, right about this time, the serious fish arrive. They slip in with no warning, no fanfare. They are here on business. They travel under cover of darkness, cloaked by the high tide, aided by snowmelt. They come in, make their appointments, and leave. They do not often reveal themselves to the casual observer, and when they do, the vision is fleeting. They come from far-off currents and seamounts, and find shelter in the wildest water. The serious fish do not seek attention.

With the onset of spring, the snowfields begin their diel cycle of melt-freeze-melt, the Morse code of which can be read in the river. The flows rise and fall with these pulses of fresh blood, and where the sweetwater slides over brine, they do not go unnoticed. The serious fish feel the pulse, and go looking for the source. The rising tide lifts them over the bar, and the night shepherds them through the meadow and into the flow, proper. They rendezvous under logjams and in backeddies, resting and regrouping. The serious fish do not dally.

The annual spring freakout has arrived, and not a moment too soon. The Game has begun. It is now time  to seek out the serious fish, to hold brief meetings with them in beautiful, clandestine places. It is time to not feel bad about lying to your best friends while looking them straight in the eye. Now is the time to stock up on granola bars, red bull, 2-cycle oil, AvGas, and PBR. Hot flies become currency, and first water is the holy grail to you and your ragtag collection of knights-errant. If your affairs are not in order it is too late, for The Game has begun.

Over the next 19 days, Game-plans will be drawn up during hours of darkness, and courses of action undertaken in the still hours before first light.  There will be many miles flown, boated and walked, and there will be many meetings both planned and actualized. There are many metrics with which to measure The Game, but there is only one that is relevant.

473 hours left in The Game.