Time On Our Side

Yesterday marked two annual milestones in our household, one especially dear to me, the other to Kristine.

Last night, clocks all over America moved back an hour. Kristine, being especially fond of her morning sleep, treasures that extra hour. And not only on the Sunday after the clock falls back, but for as long as standard time remains in effect. She claims she never quite adjusts to losing an hour in the spring, and my observations seem to confirm that.

Yesterday afternoon, I mowed my lawn for the final time this year. I can't say I'm fond of any lawn-related tasks, and after the last cutting of the season, always just before Halloween, I relish the thought of not having to mow again until April. Between taxes and turf maintainence, April really would be the cruelest month, were it not for the steelhead run and the opening of trout season.

The upshot of these events is that the layout of time as we experience it has shifted just slightly in our favor. More than yesterday, time is on our side. Having gained that advantage, here's hoping we make use of it.

Fishy Haikus

At MidCurrent, I found a link to Wayward Fly Fishing, a site devoted to "alternative approaches and attitudes to fly fishing." I thought it was somewhat in the spirit of FTR, though with a much wider range of fish-related content (and without the self-absorption). One page featured fly fishing haikus; check them out for a Saturday chuckle.

Wild Grouse Chase

Disappointed with the local hunting situation, I made a mad dash trip to near-northeast lower Michigan yesterday in hopes of reminding myself what a grouse flush looked like. Left home at about a quarter past four AM, got where I was going a bit before legal shooting hours. I stood for a while in the chilly air watching the glow of dawn spread over distant treetops. It made a good transition between the drive, where I was seized by impatience to be where I was going, and the hunt, where I needed openness to what was immediately present.

I parked next to some gorgeous looking stands of aspen, and spent about an hour working those. Webbed with boot trails, they had been hunted pretty hard already this season. But as I neared where one thicket met an open field, I flushed three grouse in about ten minutes. Shot at all and missed.

After returning to my car to dump a now-unneeded jacket, I walked farther into the woods on a two track that shortly became a narrow, overgrown foot trail, then a deer trail. I turned off what was left of the trail when I reached a semi-open area where aspens, alders, and young oaks grew in between stands of tall spruce. I thoroughly worked through and along several of the hardwood islets, flushing two more grouse in the process. One burst up about thirty feet to my left behind a large spruce. He briefly materialized between the top of the spruce and the branches of some taller oaks, but not long enough for me to shoot. The next flushed about ten feet to my left as I worked an unusually thick phalanx of aspen. I turned, but saw only a dun-ish quivering that immediately melted into the trees. Its wingbeats mocked me for a moment as I stood there, my gun uselessly slanted across my chest.

After some lunch, I hunted through a creek bottom, hoping but failing to move some woodcock. That produced the day's only sour moment. While walking, I rammed my left knee into the sharp, torn end of a broken log. Never saw the log in my way as it was hidden by tall grass. I postively howled when I hit it. After setting my gun somewhere safe, I dropped to the ground and stayed there several minutes, wondering when the freaking endorphins were going to start flowing. The blow actually broke the skin on my kneecap, though, curiously enough, it didn't rip the fabric on my jeans. I eventually limped back to my car as rain began to fall, and though I probably shouldn't have, I drove to try my luck in one more cover.

That area was a nicely mixed forest, where clumps evergreens and young hardwoods mingled, with lots of dogwood spread throughout. Rain fell off and on, sharpening the musty-sweet odor of fallen leaves. I didn't move any more grouse, so after about an hour, I called it a day.

For the last week, I've been having problems with my right knee, which becomes very sore when it stays still for some time. This happens about twice a year, and usually passes after about two weeks. Driving to Toledo (and driving up north yesterday) has been an ordeal of late. After yesterday, one of my knees hurts when I walk, the other when I sit still. The next couple of weeks promise a lot of discomfort.

But I'm not sorry I got out yesterday. If I could, I'd grit my teeth and go stalk a few grouse today, too. Or wade for some trout. Cold water is good for inflamed joints, isn't it?

Prosperity Gospel

Today, a number of media outlets reported on an MIT study that found a correlation between regular church attendance and increased income levels.

It sure isn't working that way for me.

But apparently, the pious earn on average 9% more than the general population. The study attributed this to a number of factors: churches provide more social and business contacts, religion promotes a sense of well being that improves performance at work, churches provide emotional and financial support to struggling parishoners, etc. All these explanations are likely valid. However, the study didn't just examine "churchgoers" at large, but focused on communities where a large part of the popluation associated with a particular religion, and where frequent churchgoing was the norm. In those situations, religion does help cement community ties and provides a common frame of reference. This got me wondering if a strong sense of community itself lay at the root of this increased prosperity. However true that may be, the study's findings do question, or qualify, the notion that the basis of wealth is the untrammeled efforts of individuals to fulfill their desires in the marketplace. As would any honest reading of the Bible or any other scriptures I know of.

I'm dead Syrias

It appears the leadership of Syria is being fingered for the assassination of Rafik Hariri last spring. I wonder what the odds are of an air strike on Syria to boost Bush's sagging poll numbers?

At the bottom of the page linked above, one finds the following ads:

See the Real Syria
Affordable small group trips. Get off the bus & see what others miss.
www.intrepidtravel.com

Syria Travel
Find deals for Syria Travel. Search Travel Bargains and Save!
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Syria Telecom News
Stories You Won't Find Elsewhere. Fee Based Service for Professionals

Targeting readers with keywords is a risky undertaking. Who knows in what context those words will turn up? After reading about violence and political turmoil in a country, do you think your average Times reader is going to book a trip there?

If the Hariri case eventually goes cold, maybe the investigators could book the "Real Syria" trip to find out what they were missing. And save the UN a bit of money in the process.

Feathered Feud; Fish Power!

Yesterday, while driving home from the hardware store, I witnessed an incident of avian intimidation. A large flock of seagulls was milling around in front of the Pfizer complex on Plymouth road, when crow landed among them, then charged one group of gulls. They quickly scattered, and the crow ran toward another group, which flew a few yards off. Another crow dropped from the powerline overhead and joined in harassing the gulls. To my left, some distance away, I could see another crow gliding down on a trajectory to join the mayhem, and sure enough, he landed smack in the middle of it, chasing after a handful of gulls left previously unmolested. The trio of crows didn't settle for pushing gulls away once, but attacked several bands of gulls repeatedly.

I know some birds or animals won't tolerate one another, but I had never seen antagonism between gulls and crows until yesterday. Is this typical? I drive past the Pfizer lawn fairly often, and may start paying more attention what happens there.

Here's one of the better arguments I've seen for NOT releasing fish, or at least not the first one. I wonder if I could rig one of these jobs up to propel my pontoon?

(Thanks to Notional Slurry)

(Eloquently) Talking Heads

Kristine and I went down to the State Theatre last night to see George Clooney's docudrama on Edward R. Murrow, Good Night and Good Luck. The film was very well done, but what stood out to me most about it was how literate the reporting of fifty years ago was. The reproduced broacasts used transcripts from the originals, not watered down for today's audiences accustomed to showbiz journalism. Their language was precise, direct, and graceful. Even more astonishing, they did not shy from being intellectually serious.

I couldn't find a transcript of Murrow's 1953 broadcast on (Dexter, MI native) Michael Radulovich, the airman drummed out of service for having family members with alleged communist sympathies, which I thought was one of the best examples in the film of Murrow's ability to present issues seriously and engagingly. But his 1954 attack on Sen. Joe McCarthy is available, and presents some fine prose and very conscientious argument. Take Murrow's opening, for instance:

Murrow: Because a report on Senator McCarthy is by definition controversial we want to say exactly what we mean to say and I request your permission to read from the script whatever remarks Murrow and Friendly may make. If the Senator believes we have done violence to his words or pictures and desires to speak, to answer himself, an opportunity will be afforded him on this program. Our working thesis tonight is this question:

If this fight against Communism is made a fight against America's two great political parties, the American people know that one of those parties will be destroyed and the Republic cannot endure very long as a one party system.

We applaud that statement and we think Senator McCarthy ought to. He said it, seventeen months ago in Milwaukee.

Not sparkling prose by any means. But it does offer a serious idea as a proposition to be examined, which the show goes on to do at some length. How often do you run across that today, particularly on the commercial media? The formality and deliberateness
of the language conveys the importance of the topic, while telegraphing the nature of the critique to follow. Today, TV anchors tend to rely on somber emotion to preface matters of gravity (think Tom Brokaw), a gesture which never quite does justice to reporting of a truly grave event. Today, I think Murrow's lead-in would strike many audiences as excessively arch and quasi-academic, a prime example of elite media's supposed contempt for ordinary heartland viewers (and the mere mention of the word "thesis" might touch off flashbacks of horror in survivors of College Composition classes). I'd agree that this tone might not be ideal for the present day, but I think the style could be revised without sacrificing the rhetorical edge.

Murrow's summation of that broadcast has to be among the most memorable utterances in television history:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

The merits of this require no commentary to reveal. It's worth noting, though, that the last sentence of this would never get past most TV or magazine editors today--too structurally complex, too dense with ideas and allusions.

The quality of Murrow's reporting/editorializing stands out to me at the moment partly because of an example of the opposite I saw last week. Last Monday morning, Kristine and I were watching CNN in our cabin, getting the morning news from one of those shows where cheerful, attractive people sit on a couch and banter playfully with one another over coffee. They ended one segment with a story about the principal (also a professed monk) of a Catholic high school on Long Island who was cancelling his school's prom after receiving reports that the families of several students had raised $20,000 to rent a house in the Hamptons for an after-prom party. The principal felt this was an example of out-of-control materialism that shouldn't be condoned. The onscreen coffee klatch followed up with a debate about whether the monk-principal walked around in a "burlap robe," and scratched their heads about why someone would want to deny the kids their prom before lapsing into reminiscences about their own proms.

I don't know whether the principal's decision was sensible or not--certainly we didn't get enough information from the broadcast to form an intelligent opinion. But the story does raise issues that touch many people's lives (parenting, materialism, the limits of schools' authority over students) and are worth discussing thoughtfully. All the "journalists" could do was blurt out knee-jerk reactions shot though with presumptions worthy of a 13 year old.

Silliness and superficiality have their place in life, especially in private moments. They can offer great relief and pleasure at times. I just wish the public square wasn't overrun by them. Murrow's words from half a century ago remind us that it doesn't have to be.

Lone Gunman; Free To Buy?

Got out hunting again this morning. Unlike opening day, I think I was almost the only person out. Not that it made a difference. I hit stands of dogwood, some grape arbors, and the brush around some apple trees hard, but couldnt move a grouse. Unfortunately, I also hit some rose vines hard, with my hands and face. Ouch.

The little birds were very active today. Most of the brush I hunted was positively dense with chickadee, robin, cardinal, and sparrow bodies, and songs. I did flush one woodcock and took a couple shots but missed. On the first I actually had a decent chance, but on the second I was probably kidding myself.

Saw a couple of puffballs that were nearly the size of basketballs. Also quite a few buck rubs and scrapes. They're starting to feel their oats.

Driving home, I caught some of the second hour of the Diane Rehm Show, where the guest was Thomas Barnett, a researcher from the Naval War College who discussed the changing security challenges facing the US. The part of the interview that stood out was his comments about development in poor countries. Democracy, he said, shouldn't be the focus of US participation; economic development should. You improve people's lives, he argued, by increasing their economic opportunities and by providing capital for development, not by establishing political freedom. The strong hand of a dictator or a theocratic regime might be necessary to stabilize countries as they make the difficult transition to modern nationhood.

There is some merit in that last idea, up to a point. Modernization is never a smooth or bloodless process. But I was a little shocked to hear democracy and personal freedom dismissed so casually. And considering the current leadership of this country (as well as some of the people who'd like to take over after 2008), it's not hard to hear those ideas being turned against us. A further comment by Barnett underscored this: "Think of your own life: What freedom do you exercise the most, the economic or the political?" So perhaps in the not-so-distant future, you could, with the government's blessing, secure payday loans to finance mall outings after you've maxed out your cards, operate a business in "voluntary compliance" with worker safety rules, or build a home that displaces endangered creatures, so long as you don't make a fuss about your vote being diluted, your speech being restricted, or the occasional arbitrary detention. And who would? After all, how much time do you spend each day engaged in political activity as opposed to, say, shopping?

I'm sure Mr. Barnett would scoff at these concerns and assure me that such things could never happen here. But given the increasing influence of corporations over our political life, and our government's ongoing adapation to meet the needs of its corporate sponsors, I don't think I'm being unrealistic at all.

Season Finale, pt. 2

Our venture up north last weekend wasn't really a fishing trip. Most of our days were devoted to hiking. Not too much to say about that, except that the autumn colors were splendid, the trails mostly deserted, and the weather pleasantly cool. I'd love to revisit Higgins Lake State Park near Roscommon in winter for XC Skiing. Saw lots of wonderful grouse cover that I'd like to hunt one of these years, too. One notable wildlife sighting was an Eastern Smooth Green Snake, the first I'd ever seen.

They're fittingly if unimaginatively named creatures.

Monday afternoon I got back on the water. We had moved up to Wolverine on Saturday to a cabin overlooking the Sturgeon river, which has an extended season below the village. It began raining hard at midday Monday, and a bit after three in the afternoon, I headed down to the river to fish in a downpour.

I've had some very productive afternoons fishing in the rain, but Monday wasn't among them. I started fishing at the Scott Road public access, where the river is clear and swift with midstream boulders and deeper bankside runs for cover. I tossed all kinds of streamers and never got a nip. Around four, the rain let up, and I went down stream to the Haakwood state forest campground, where I remembered were some deep bend holes that might offer good nymphing. Once again, I got blanked.

The moment that sticks in my mind from Monday's outing didn't occur on the river itself. At Haakwood, you walk to the river across a wide field, where the grass was now brown and brittle. As I began crossing the field, I looked across to the line of evergreens bordering the Sturgeon and thought, "I'm going down there to finish my season." In itself, the thought wasn't sad or particularly satisfying, but it did bring on recollections of the fine moments I've had on the water this year. Running through those, I couldn't deny that it had been a very good season. Aside from the usual and inevitable scarcity of water time, I could find little to regret about it. It's a shame the rest of life can't fall together so neatly.

And so begins the wait for the last Saturday in April...

Season Finale

No, I didn't die. Kristine and I took short getaway over my university's fall break. Got back last night and just found my first moment of breathing space since.

Last Thursday evening, we headed to Roscommon, where we checked into a cabin on the banks of the Au Sable's south branch. Barely enough room in it to fit a twin bed between the walls--we had to leave most of our luggage in the car. When the alarm went off at 6:00 Friday morning, I didn' t feel inclined to linger under the covers. I needed some leg room.

I drove downriver to the water below Chase Bridge that's open year round. It was just becoming light enough to see down to the river's bottom when I waded in, though the fog was thick enough that I couldn't tell for another hour whether the day was clear or cloudy. I figured streamers would be the ticket, so I worked my way downstream trying a variety of patterns, dark and light, large and small. Almost despaired of getting a strike until after 8:00, when a modest brown smacked my olive wooly bugger, and held on to it until he got about five feet from my net. Twenty minutes later, I hooked and landed a 10" brookie on the same fly. Both fish came from deep pockets in stretches of riffle water.

Fished the next morning a little farther downstream without hooking a thing, save for the yellow or brown leaves that were tumbling into the river. Hardly a trace of fog, with clear skies above. Was that the difference?

I don't have enough data to say. If I could choose any time in the season to fish more often, it would be autumn. I've had some good days trout fishing in the fall, and also some complete duds. I've yet to get in on one of these great afternoon BWO hatches that come in autumn (though I saw one in progress--with trout feeding--on a closed portion of the Rifle River that we looked at on the way up), nor have I had a streamer hunted down by some gargantuan brown determined to bulk up before the onset of winter, as they are reputed to do. Fall probably presents me with more unexplored fishing possibilities than any other point in the season. Given my work schedule, that's likely to remain true for some time. The quality of the fishing aside, autumn is a colorful and peaceful time to be on the water. I'd gladly risk a skunking to fish through more of it.

Which, on Monday, I did.

Funny Pages

A few humorous links for you.

How to have fun with Fishing Guides

Fly shop clerks, under scrutiny. (Imagine if Wallace Stevens had been a trout bum)

Enjoy.

(Hat tip to Brookid of Michigan Sportsman.com)

Needy Meme

OK, here's a meme for you. Type "[your name] needs" into Google and see what comes up. Here's a few at the top of my list:

*Paul needs to go to the bathroom

*Paul needs volunteers to help with sorting school uniforms

*Paul needs to be untied from the wheel chair and lifted into the bed.

*Paul needs long term housing

*Paul needs your support!

*Paul needs help now, lots of help, to make his dream come true.

*Paul needs more education

*Paul needs volunteers every day at Nicholson warehouse Baton Rouge,
LA (70802)

*Paul needs €1000

*Paul needs a haircut

*Paul needs a luuden Trugoy

*Paul needs enough light to create a nice, even "wash" across the stage.


Actually, I needed to edit the search parameters to screen out links to info about a 70s Welsh rock star named Paul Needs. But what do you need?

Action In Place, 10/7-10/9

The conference I went to last weekend focused on different sorts of place-based learning. I heard a number of presentations on projects intended to foster greater awareness--from both social and ecological standpoints--of the localities where people live and study.

The details of any of these aren't terribly important here, but it was a pleasure to spend time with people who are thinking hard about and trying to resist the trends make all places look like each other, and that disconnect people from the spaces where they reside. There were no manifestoes advancing sweeping changes to lifestyles and values, but many accounts of well-conceived, small scale, practical work-in-progress that is changing habits of thought and behavior in the people who have participated in it. These included: envrionmentally and socially responsible development of decayed urban areas; college courses bringing students into sustained interaction with the ecology and the permanent residents of a rural community; ongoing work to bring green values to all aspects of managing a university campus; a coalition of homeowners, environmentalists, and local politicians in San Diego that successfully steered new housing development away from sensitive wild areas; all sorts of strategies and activities for promoting place-sensitivity in a variety of classes or gatherings.

As I said, it was a pleasure to learn about these things, but a bittersweet one. Listening to all those encouraging presentations, I couldn't help thinking of just how strong and widespread are the institutions and attitudes that oppose the efforts discussed at the conference. Still, I'm not tossing in the towell. I've long been interested in connecting writing with the exploration of place, and by next fall, I'll have a class dedicated to that. Maybe next time around, I'll be able to give one of those inspiring presentations.
_________________________________________

Working too much? A fine presentation at the conference described how the disappearance of personal time from our lives carries significant physical, psychological, and environmental costs. Learn more about time deprivation and what you can do about it here. (Hat tip to Rebecca Gould, Middlebury College)

Personal History Meme

TroutGrrl tagged me for this recently, and I'll play along. Not often I get to join in these fun little blogosphere antics. (K.--sorry I wont' get a "bird piece" in; one of these times.)

10 years ago:1995. I was in the first semester of my PhD program at Michigan State. I was in some classes I liked, and had the luxury of a fellowship that didn't require me to teach. I was generally happy with what I was doing, though I was a bit foggy about where it all might lead. My wife and I were living in Fenton at the time, that being a compromise location between East Lansing and Troy, where she worked. Of course, Kristine got laid off from that job during my second week of classes, and was looking for a new one. Soon she'd find a job in Lansing, and we'd move there the following summer. I remember that in Fenton, you couldn't drink the water--it came out of the tap grainy and chalky-tasting. We got it bottled from the grocery all year long.

1995 had been my 3rd season fishing with a flyrod, and maybe my worst ever. I remember that as the year I didn't catch a single fish on a dry fly.

5 years ago: 2000. Kind of an odd time. I was slogging through the late stages of my dissertation, having long since lost interest in the project. I was working as a writing tutor in the law school at MSU, on campus once or twice a week at most, and generally out of touch with people I'd hung around with since I started my program. We had been living in Ann Arbor for almost a year. I felt pretty disconnected--working and having "official ties" in Lansing, but rarely there; living in Ann Arbor, but commuting elsewhere, and usually too busy to see much of the town. We didn't start getting out around AA until we'd been there over a year.

I took a couple of interesting fishing trips in the fall of 2000, both to the Muskegon river. I went up to do some late season trouting early in October, and did well on nymph and egg patterns. However, the salmon run was getting underway, and I went back a week later to try my luck with those guys--I hadn't used a flyrod for salmon before. It was probably the most enjoyable salmon experience I've had--reasonably fresh fish that were willing to bite, and a fair amount of elbow room. An image that stands out to this day is landing a fresh, 15 lb. king under a full moon.

I remember listening to the first Coldplay album a lot; also Radiohead's Kid A.


Yesterday: Got up at 4:00 AM in Burlington, VT to catch a flight at 6:10. Walked with my luggage 1/2 mile to the airport. The flight took off late and I nearly missed my plane change in DC. My luggage did miss the connection, though the airline delivered it to my doorway later that night. Drove to Toledo in the afternoon and taught two classes, dead on my feet. Came home and updated FTR.

5 songs I know all the words to: hmmm hard to say.

Radiohead, "Everything in its right place." (what are there, a dozen words?)
The Clash, "Lost in the Supermarket"
The Blasters, "Border Radio"
The Smiths, "William it was really nothing"
Donovan "Mellow Yellow" (heard it the other day, so fresh in mind. I'd as soon forget it)


5 snacks:

Potato Chips, peanuts, pretzels, sesame sticks, toast


5 things I’d do with $100 million:

Buy a house and a few hundred acres in the UP
Give a bunch away
endow a scholarship
start an environmental education center
collect bamboo flyrods and antique shotguns

5 places I’d run away to:

Places with deep forests and clear, cool rivers. how do you narrow to 5?

5 things I’d never wear:

*hilfiger anything.
*logo clothes generally
*speedos
*anything with fringe
* T-Shirts with hokey slogans


5 favorite TV shows:

The Sopranos
The Simpsons
Michigan Out Of Doors
Family Guy
Medium

5 greatest joys:

*Kristine
* Fishing
* Good food, beer, wine
* Intelligent, compassionate people
* Watching the seasons come and go

5 favorite toys:

* fly rods
* XC Skis
* shotgun
* the 'puter
* the Subaru

People I’m tagging:

Sorry, I'm far too shy.

Granite State Trouting

Last Wednesday, I landed in Burlington, VT around noon, had my rental car by 12:30, and beat a path across Vermont and into the northern tip of New Hampshire as quickly as the Green Mountains and the winding, picturesque roads would permit (which was about 4 hours). After checking in to our cabin at Lopstick Lodge, I left a note for my buddy March and drove off to try my luck on the "Trophy Stretch" of the upper Connecticut River, all of half a mile away.

A beautiful piece of water, but boy, was I out of my element. Near its source, the Connecticut flows through several natural lakes that have been "enhanced" by dams. The trophy water begins below the second-lowest of these lakes, and bursts out of the dam as a jet of whitewater. For two or three miles, it races over boulders and rock ledges, roaring and frothing all the way. My friend had made reference to several good pools near the dam, but I saw nothing that resembled what I think of as a pool, a still, deep pocket of water, often filled with brush or slinking beneath an overhanging bank. A pool on the Connecticut is just a spot where the current is temporarily broken by a rock, or a boiling soup-bowl beneath a waterfall.

On the first night, I took an 11" brookie from a dark bankside pocket on an olive wooly bugger. I tried other nymphs and streamers, but had no more hits.

The next morning, my friend and I got on the water about 6. Working nymphs and streamers, we picked up a couple trout apiece in the stretch just below the dam, all about 10-12". We tried some lower reaches of the trophy water later in the morning with no results.

After an excessive lunch, we fished the Connecticut below the next lake down, and my friend caught a 13" brown. I caught about 7 or 8 very small brook trout--we had actually seen a hatchery truck in the area that morning, and I may well have been introducing the stockers to the harsh realities of life in the wild. Around 3, we went back to the upper trophy stretch, where things were heating up.

My friend caught two or three nice trout at the first pool we tried, then a couple more in pockets just below. I had plenty of action too, but couldn't get a solid hookup. We were fishing big stimulators with small nymphs or dries on a hopper. I had several fish smack the stimulator or flash at nymphs suspended below it, but when I struck I got nothing but air. We worked a quarter mile or so down, without any more hits. With an hour of daylight remaining, we decided to wade back up and try the honey hole one more time.

March generously allowed me first crack at the water, and also reccomended a small caddis pattern for the dropper. Within a few casts, that little caddis had fooled a couple rainbows of about 10." A cast to a seam just below a waterfall put a 16" rainbow on my line, which dragged me around the pool, then knocked me on my can when I tripped over a rock chasing him into the pocket water downstream. There I sat, butt-down in the current with a large trout on my line, and unable to stand up without putting down the rod to hoist myself onto some rocks. Ever the quick thinker, March released my net from its velcro loop, walked downstream, and scooped up my prize. Not the most graceful catch of my angling career, but a very satisfying way to cap the afternoon.

I don't know if I'd run back there solely for trout fishing--the best fishing seems confined to relatively few spots, and I understand that in the summer the crowds get pretty thick. But I did appreciate the chance to learn a new kind of water, and certainly the chance to spend some time with a good friend. If we'd caught nothing, a day wading among granite cascades beneath a canopy of blazing red and yellow would have been no less memorable.

I had to head down to the conference in Vermont that night, and I didn't get to fish in Vermont on Sunday as I'd hoped. But the days at the conference were also productive in their way. I'll report on those soon.

Confession

Some of my posts have made disparaging references to salmon snaggers. Each fall, when Michigan's rivers fill up with Chinook salmon on their spawning run, they draw hordes of fishermen, many of whom don't really care whether they can get the salmon to bite or not. In fact, many resolutely affirm that salmon won't bite when they're on the spawning run. They toss out treble hooks with a small piece of orange yarn tied around the shank (to preserve a threadbare illusion of using a lure) and lots of lead crimped on the line above. Some of more audacious ones will cast an enormous treble hook with a lead ingot cast around it--this is known as a "tippy spider." A few will tie on an actual fly or lure, and in truth, those can serve the purpose just fine.

They will toss whatever rig they use into a pod of salmon on the spawning beds, and give the rod a good jerk when they feel the hook hit something, or just when they think it's close to a fish. If the hook doesn't pull out of the fish's belly, back, or tail, the lucky angler is in for one heck of a battle. Snagged salmon jump way more than mouth-hooked ones, and they run downriver with all the force of a cow falling from an airplane.

When the fish gets close and the fisherman gets a glimpse of the hook embedded in the bellow or below the gill plate, he may shout "It threw the hook and rolled in the line," and he may actually believe it. Many don't even make the pretense of a legal catch. I remember a guy on Muskegon River fishing with a rod like a broom handle, loaded with what must have been at least 50 lb. test line. As soon as he had a solid hookup, he simply threw the rod over his shoulder like a rifle and walked to shore to get a better footing before he yanked in the fish.

It's illegal to keep foul hooked fish, though where there isn't visible and agressive enforcement of the rules, a lot of snagged fish end up on stringers, sometimes with a post-netting hook hole made in the mouth in the event that a conservation officer wanders by and questions how the fish was obtained.

Snagging is an ugly business, and a pathetic one, when you consider that salmon will indeed bite after coming in the rivers (although they bite best before they actually make it up on the spawning beds). It's a travesty of fishing, requiring no skill, no stealth, and no understanding of the river or the quarry, aside from where the gravel beds are and when the salmon reach them. It relies on brute force instead of artful persuasion--if there ever was a type of fishing that called for military grade hardware, snagging is it.

Having said all that, though, I have a confession to make. I used to snag. Not accidentally in the course of honest fishing--everyone fishing for salmon will foul hook one eventually, and I certainly have. No, I ventured out with snagging as my prime intention. I jumped in the cesspool by my own volition.

This was back in the 70s, when snagging was actually legal on a few rivers. My dad used to take me north in mid-october for a short fishing getaway, and on one of those, we took an afternoon off from walleye fishing at Lake Cadillac to watch the salmon running at Tippy Dam on the Manistee river. We saw them, covering the bottom of the river like quivering black logs. And we saw people tossing out bare treble hooks with heavy sinkers attatched, and hauling in salmon almost as fast as they could cast. I think my father was kind of disgusted by the spectacle, but my 11 year old eyes fixed on the heavily bent rods and the enormous fish thrashing in landing nets. That, by God, was fishing, I thought, not sitting in a boat on a windy lake waiting for bites that were few and far between, and usually from fish too small to keep.

Over the next year, I badgered by dad to take me up to Tippy to snag salmon on our next fall trip. His explanation that snagging wasn't really fishing went right over my head. Eventually he relented, and we made two trips to Tippy to pit our stamina against fish in their death throes. Incredibly, we caught none. Aside from a few suspicious bumps, we never even connected with a salmon. Looking back, I'd say that was a blessing, as our attention soon turned to real fishing for fall steelhead.

From my experience, I can understand the impulse to snag. All those big fish in plain sight give quite a temptation. There is too the rationalization that "they're going to die anyway," which left a well-worn neural pathway in my own brain. I outgrew the desire eventually, mostly, I think, because I started to enjoy more success and satisfaction with legit fishing; by some accounts, more and more people are shunning the practice. But if you go to a salmon river this time of year, you won't have to look hard to see people who aren't.

Snagging was probably legal for about a decade but it may take several to fade altogether. In the culture as in the ecology of the outdoors, the damage done in a short time may take generations to repair.
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I'm off to New England tomorrow morning. Reports next week when I return.

Concrete Jungle

Who says urban renewal can't work?

Now to figure out the two-legged side of the equation.

Au Sable Shoot-Em-Up; Blessing the Beasts

Interesting overlap of events Friday: Friday was the last day of the stream trout season. It was also the first day our furnace ran.

In need of some activity unrelated to either school or home and miminally demanding of time, I went shooting at Island Lake Saturday morning. Couldn't have hit the targets if they'd rolled to a stop at my feet: 15 and12 for 25. It felt like I was trying to remotely control some puppet who was actually handling the gun. Might be just as well that I haven't had time for hunting lately.

Speaking of guns, the Orvis ad I talked about Thursday, boasting about military technology employed for fly rods, reminded me of fishing parts of the Au Sable system that border on a National Guard training area. Occasionally you may hear bombs dropping, artillery rounds landing, or rifle pops as you cast to a wary old brown. Doesn't seem to bother the fish, and to be honest, when the fishing is good, I don't notice it either.

But it is a curious accompaniment to fishing, and more on some days than others. One July morning a couple years ago, I was fishing a trico hatch on the North Branch near the tail of a favorite pool. An older gentleman was at the top, working another pod of fish. From time to time, we heard short bursts of machine gun fire--three or four rounds, then a few moments of silence, over and over for at least five minutes. Then came a sustained burst, at least thirty seconds of continuous shooting. When that stopped, my neighbor turned to me and said, "I bet they got the son of a bitch that time!".

Wherever you fish, or seek out remote pockets of the landscape for any reason, you're going to run into odd happenings sooner or later. Certain locations seem to host strangeness of particular kinds. That was an only-in-Grayling moment.

This afternoon, our church has its annual Blessing of the Animals ceremony, in honor of the feast of St. Francis, which is coming this Tuesday. I'll be taking our cat, who, these days, needs all the help he can get.

When we drove home this morning, there was a squirrel sitting on top of the fence at the end of our driveway. I invited him to come for a blessing too, but he ran off. Maybe I lack St. Francis' legendary ability to communicate with animals, or maybe there are also four-leggers who identify as "spiritual but not religious." No matter--he and all creatures (if I may wax Franciscan for a moment) enjoy every day a full and sufficient measure of grace, even without priestly interventions. At least on a warm, mild autumn day, it sure feels that way.