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.

Sunny and 75° is a pretty bitchin’ forecast, unless you live around a bunch of glaciers.

The lack of rain in the last week or so has shriveled up the muskeg flows into mere trickles, shadows of their former selves. A few of the smaller ones look like urban footpaths now, except for the flyblown humpy carcasses and the lack of little blue bags covering the omnipresent piles of bear poo.

The glacial systems, mostly larger rivers with a network of little feeders, are in total shock. Spewing out meltwater like brown blood, most of those aren’t gonna be fishable for WEEKS.

Damn.

While driving through the rainless rainforest one day - in shorts and a wife-beater tee - I had a song from a decade or so ago pop into my head, and I’ll be damned if I can get rid of it. Hopefully, the forecast of rain will bring some change to the brain radio and I can forget about burning a pig on an old mattress.

I wonder if jayj has holes dug all over his backyard…

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.

Yep, BP has hired Goldman Sachs as a financial advisor. What’s the over/under on Goldman helping BP declare bankruptcy to get out from under their very obvious liabilities? 

Fuckers

It’s been a long week, and I’m not sure where to start. Hell, I’m not even sure if I can properly convey an adequate sense of order to an insane week of fishing…

Maybe, if we were sitting in a dive bar somewhere and throwing back 24oz PBR’s, I could try to set a narrative about an awesome river system with ‘bows as big as your leg. With the broader range of emotive capability inherent in the spoken word, I might possibly get you to feel the fluttery, hyperventilating sensations that develop when a group of these large fish start busting smolt right in front of you on a sunny day. With the proper facial expressions and gesticulations, I might also be able to place you waist-deep in the flow, watching the birds working upstream, knowing that if you time it right, you just might have a shot at one of these fish.

After the second or third beer, I might find the particular word or phrase that would do justice to the strange, tunnel-vision feeling of swinging into grease so fishy that it practically glows. With any luck, I could probably describe the time-erasing sensation that you feel when you are going through a piece of big-fish water, knowing that each and every moment, all hell could break loose.

About beer number four, I could probably get something across about the wind, about my newfound love for the bug-removing wind, and my new respect for the cack-handed snap. I could probably set the stage for the two am stumble to the cabin door, fully clothed against the bugs, not quite ready for the sprint to the outhouse. By beer number four, I think I could have a pretty good shot at describing the zoned-out, goofy-ass mood that set in around day three, and the punch-drunk, rummy shamble through the holes on day five.

With  beers five and six, I might take a stab at the spare beauty of the place. This might not go over well, but I would probably, with the appropriate hand motions, show the bizarre path taken by the sun on its daily joyride around the horizon. I could probably get you to appreciate the zen simplicity that is tundra, bonsai for giants. We would probably rehash a bit about the wind, the bugs, and the huge fish, but that’s OK, they are an intrinsic part of the desolate, simple, and remote charm of the place.

After beer seven, it’s anybody’s guess. The conversation would start to deteriorate a bit, and in an odd sort of fashion, we might find ourselves at an impasse of sorts, an inability on the part of the speaker to properly manipulate the language in such a fashion as to convey cogent thought. Then we would be on the level we are now, the level of trying to thread an experience together that does not lend itself well to linear translation on the written page. Much like the old joke about dancing to architecture, the idea of typing about a trip like this is rather humorous because in the end, it comes down to a simple fact, a common phrase.

You just had to be there.