Soggy Smallmouth Venture

This week has brought a steady stream of obstacles to my fishing plans. First I abandoned my trip up north. On Tuesday, some home chores kept me up too late and took too much out of me for my Wednesday morning bluegill venture to happen. But last night, I did take my first shot this year at Huron River smallmouth. It was a fairly disappointing trip, though not mainly because of the lack of catching.

I got on the water around 6:30 in the spot pictured about. This is my go-to smallmouth water, on the edge of downtown Ann Arbor.

The Huron is often too high to wade until well into June, but after a few relatively dry weeks, I thought it would be manageable, and it was. Though the water was higher and the current swifter than I'd like, I never felt I was risking my neck, as I have on some other early season Huron outings. The water is never very deep at the spot where I wade in, so sometimes I've blithely entered the river there only to find myself in trouble a couple hundred feet downstream where the river narrows and picks up speed.

I worked different weighted streamers along both banks, drawing a few strikes and landing one very small bass. When I reached my favorite bend, the water was becoming too deep to continue. It was still early, though, so I packed up and drove upriver above the town of Dexter. I often hit the hex and ephoron hatches up there later in the summer, but had never ripped streamers there early in the year.

I was encouraged at first, since I had a large bass follow my streamer on one of my first casts. Soon I had a few other strikes. Things were looking up, but I should have been looking down. While I was wading through a waist-deep slot, I collided with a log, and while I didn't fall in completely, I was knocked forward enough so that a gallon or so of water shipped in through the top of my waders. I had it coming, I suppose, since I wasn't wearing my belt. For some reason, I'll wear a belt when the water is cold, but usually forgo it when it's not, no matter how deep the water is. I may rethink that.

My shirt and jeans were sopped, so I slogged back to shore and headed home. A thudershower hit just after I got on the road--maybe I hadn't cheated myself out of too much water time.

It was, as I said, disappointing. On the positive side, my smallmouth season has nowhere to go but up.

Kolke Creek Victory

Great news on the conservation front this morning. A state court in Gaylord blocked Merrit Energy Co. from proceeding with plans (previously approved by the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality) to dump 1 million gallons of treated water into Kolke creek, one of the headwaters streams of the Au Sable river, every day for twenty years. The full story here.

This dumping would have happened if not for fierce litigation by the Anglers of the Au Sable, supported by donations from its members and supporters. I'm sad to say I was not among the contributors, but my bug dope-stained boonie hat is off to those who stepped up.

A comment that nicely summed up the situation and what it means appeared this afternoon on a fly-fishing bulletin board:

What's wrong with these people?

Merit Energy/Shell pollutes the groundwater and decides to dispose of the contaminated water into a creek flowing into the Au Sable river. The Michigan DEQ has jurisdiction and a mandate to protect the environment in Michigan. They tell Merit no problem - the hell with the streams and the citizens who live by them. So, to protect their rights, the taxpayers have to pony up their hard-earned dollars to pay lawyers to sue the DEQ to get them to do their job. And the DEQ is funded with taxpayer dollars to begin with. And they wonder why people are cynical about government bureaucrats? [emphasis mine.]

It is a bizarre pass we've come to, though maybe not a surprising one. Though the DEQ does have a mandate to protect the environment, it was split off from the state DNR in the 90s in part to facilitate environmental permitting for industry. Existing practices of stewardship apparently were inefficient. I get a feeling that settling these matters through the courts is not streamlining things.



In other news from the Grayling area, rumors are afoot that the Fly Factory is in foreclosure. It would be sad to see that place close. Its rough-hewn atmosphere was in pleasant contrast to many fly shops that resemble fussily maintained boutiques. It was supposedly the oldest fly shop in the state, and when you went in there, you got a whiff (both literally and metaphorically) of the history that has unfolded along the river.

Memorial Day was a labor day

Did I say I was going to write a book review last weekend? I didn't even have time to come here, let alone post.

Spent a lot of time working around the house and the yard. Yesterday I used a chainsaw for the first time and suffered no blood loss whatsoever. Took down a bunch of nuisance trees, the remains of which (at least the parts not suitable for firewood or landscaping) are now stacked in my yard awaiting disposal. Figuring how to to dispose of them is going to be the major task today.

If things had gone according to plan, I'd be in camp now getting ready for a float on the Au Sable. But I have a lot to take care of before Kristine and I leave on a trip next week, so the trout will have to wait. I will try to get out to a local lake tomorrow to harvest a few bluegill. And hopefully I will also come home with something to write about.

Big D Walleye Report (& a literary catblog)

Met my dad at the Wyandotte public boat ramp yesterday at 8am and motored out for 11 hours of fishing the Detroit River. Yes, 11 hours. I don't think we've ever spent that much time on the water at one stretch, though as little as my dad gets out anymore, I suppose he needs to make the most of it.

Judging from the amount of time we spent out, you can probably guess the walleye didn't exactly throw themselves at us. We did catch a bunch of silver bass though we only kept a couple. I've heard contradictory reports about whether they're edible. There's only one way to find out, though I'm leaving that adventure up to my dad.

He caught the day's lone walleye a little after 5.



It's a female, loaded with eggs, though most walleye spawned a long time ago. It's also the largest walleye he's caught.

The fish put up a decent tussle, though most walleye won't until they get at least that large. Later in the evening, after hooking another fish, my father offered the day's most memorable utterance with this tribute to the walleye's fighting prowess: "Maybe this one's another walleye...no, it's fighting, it must be a bass." Spot on, pops.

Though it wasn't as productive as our DR trip last year, it still was a nice day. Hot as it was, a steady breeze off the river made it tolerable to be out through the heat of the day. Of course, when the wind shifted and blew from shore, it instantly felt about five degrees hotter.

I wish we'd gotten out earlier in the season, when the walleye bite would have been better, but the point of the day was to spend some time with my father. We've been hitting the water together for damn near 40 years, and I'm not sure how many more of those there will be. I give thanks for every one.



I know Friday catblogging has gone out of fashion, but here's a shot too good to pass up. I mentioned last week I was reading Wild: An Elemental Journey by Jay Griffiths, and when I left it lying open on the sofa Tuesday night, my cat decided to check it out too.



That's his review. I'll have mine up sometime over the weekend. Happy Friday, all.

Urban Angling Awaits

I'm hitting the Detroit River with my Dad tomorrow. I'll try to get something up tomorrow night.

Looking for temps in the upper 80s. We'll be lucky to last past noon.

Resident Aliens

Gardening confers to one a Godlike authority, the power to decide who lives and who dies. Via the seed catalogues and by collecting cutting and seeds, you call your chosen peoples to the land you have set aside for them and you provide for their every need. You lay waste to the armies of invading aliens who would displace them. Or to put this in Christian and escatological terms, you get to seperate the sheep from the goats (native plants and invasive ones, respectively), destroying the latter in fire.

I don't let this go to my head, though. If the chickweeds and lambsquarters in my meadow could read that they'd laugh. Their abiding and robust presence there reveals that I'm far from omnipotent. And my current state of indecision about what to do with weeds in the meadow indicate I'm not all that wise, either.

As I said the other day, I haven't weeded as aggressively as I did last year. This partly because I don't want to tromp on otherwise harm the young wildflowers and native grasses that are spreading, and partly because I believed that the natives, without too much help from me, would eventually push out the invaders. The further we get into the spring, though, the less certain I am in this belief. So I wonder: should I get out there and weed as ruthlessly as I can while stepping carefully around the good stuff? Should I deploy chemical weapons (Roundup) in thickest sections of weeds and take the chance of collateral damage among their desireable neighbors? Should I just wait and hope?

In response to these questions, someone might fairly ask, "Why are you worried?"

Aren't the reasons obvious? One, I put a lot of effort and money into bringing this meadow to where it is, and two, the plants I'm trying to establish belong here. They were here before the dandelions and garlic mustard moved in. They evolved in this landscape and defined it when people moved in.

OK, when white people moved in. White people who brought or helped spread the invasives, essentially redefining the "normal" constitution of the landscape.

As many writers have observed, conservationists' preference for native plant species reflects or at least parallels certain dubious assumptions or prejudices that play out in political and social life. Certainly, the rhetoric of protecting native plants against aliens resembles that surfacing in debates over immigration, implying alien plants are outsiders, often here illegally (at least without a gardener's blessing) who need to be deported or at least carefully controlled. (I guess the lawful migrants would be the aliens we gladly admit to lawns and gardens, like russian giant sunflowers, or petunias). They are fundamentally not like us. The perceived need to exterminate the aliens corresponds to the logic behind ethnic cleansing. Nature essayist John Tallmadge suggests that the desire for a presettlement plant community expresses a desire for a pure, edenic lansdcape that will allow us to disown the history of degradation that euroamerican settlement imposed upon the landscape; it may represent a bid for spiritual purity.

But as as all know, there is no path back to Eden (not that one ever ever went there), and there is no undoing the history that has given us the society and the land we know in the present. We might try to change conditions as they exist now, but we will carry along our accumlated baggage as we do. Some of that baggage consists of non-native plants which may well have radically transformed the places where they established themselves, and different degrees in different places, the natives are going to have to make room.

To bring this back to my own situation, it occurred to me that I had scant grounds on which to complain about weeds in my meadow when I let them run free in of the rest of my lawn. When it comes to lawn care, I'm content to keep it mowed. Dandlions, quackgrass, creeping charlie, and the rest are free to go about their lives as long as they stay in front of the row of logs that sets off my meadow. The pursuit of an immaculate bluegrass lawn actually seems pretty ridiculous to me (it's certainly a waste of valuable fishing, or blogging, time), though, ironically, if I kept an All-American monoculture lawn, I might have fewer problems with weeds in my meadow.

Tallmadge suggests that we re-think what we understand to be a "normative" or authentically local landscape. Timothy, smooth brome, nutsedge, and others need to be accepted as continuing members of our ecological communities. That doesn't mean we need to cede the field (offer amnesty?) to them. But there is no need to be their implacable enemies, either, to cast ourselves as a cosmic soveriegn avenging his chosen ones. We should not dismiss the fact that at least some of them are beautiful or useful. Beyond that, they, with their native counterparts, are an enduring record of how people live and have lived in a place. Maybe more than the native plants which were often disregarded or extirpated, they are family.

Back to the Meadow

My efforts to establish a native plant meadow in my backyard continue. The plot is looking better this year in many respects. Many of the more desireable species have spread or grown larger, and some of the seeds I've collected in the last couple of years have sprouted to add to the stock I bought from my local connection.

I took some photos of it last Wednesday and not much has changed since. Little is in bloom right now, but there are some promising indicators for the rest of the season.

I planted a couple of small columbines last year. One, that did bloom last summer and has spawned a few seedlings, still is very small, but its counterpart that started the year in the same condition thrust up a foot-tall stalk around the end of April and has an impressive crop of blooms.



The established stalks of bottle brush grass are already about three times as large as they were last year, and most have put out multiple stalks.




I really like that stuff for some reason. Even before the bristly seedheads come in, the blood-red joints on the stalk are cool to see.



Other types of grass have this to some degree, but none as fully as the bottlebrush.

Those dark red lengths, evident even in the sprout stage, help me to distinguish the bottlebrush grass from grasses I want to get rid of. I haven't weeded as agressively as I did last year, partly because there are so many new desireable plants springing up beside or among the weeds. There are a number of spots where baby black eyed susans are thick, as here:




The susans have the slightly fuzzy, ovular leaves. The rounded, wrinkly stuff in the center is creeping charlie, garden enemy #1. The charred stalk on the right site is a remnant of my controlled burn at the beginning of April.

Woodland sunflowers are also spreading rapidly--even into my lawn. Here's large cluster of them just in front of my larger columbine. Note the dandelion seedheads plotting their assault on the bare ground to the sunnies' left:



This is a larger swath of the meadow, nicely accented by lilacs.



So far, not much more than a green tangle. But that will change very soon.

Though my aim is to cultivate species native to southeast Michigan (and most are cultivated from locally gathered seeds), all these species have a much larger range, and some of my plants connect me to my favorite parts of it. All my milkweed has grown from seeds I gathered on a bank overlooking the Manistee river near Deward. Last summer I collected seeds from bottlebrush grass I found growing near a favorite access point on the Au Sable mainstream. I like the idea that parts of treasured riverscapes have become living residents of my household.

Saturday Quote, 5/19/07

This week I've been reading Wild: An Elemental Journey by Jay Griffiths. The book describes seven years of travels Griffiths made among aboriginal peoples in different corners of the world, seeking to understand how closeness with the land sustained and enriched their lives. Having undertaken them at a point when her own life seemed unsustainable and meaningless, these investigations have more than an academic significance.

I've been enjoying the book very much, and may write a longer review at some point. In passing, I'd describe it a furious book, both in the sense that it's fueled by a visceral anger at the ways western society has distanced people from intimacy with the earth, and in the way it strives breathlessly to convey the vitality of the wild places she visits and the significance they take on for those who dwell there. Sometimes I almost break a sweat reading this.

I've always been interested in continuities between natural processes and language. Here's Griffiths on the confluence of language and rivers:

Rivers flow like language--we say that someone is "fluent" in a language, their speech flows like a river. Languages, like rivers, run roughly the same course, but always change their details: you never step in the same language twice, because a meaning has shifted here, a connotation has just been formed there. Rivers and languages are both gloriously wild. Careless of their courses, rivers won't run straight. Both languages and rivers are extravagant--who cares how a river wastes its meanderings? Who asks why language wastes its windings in splendid, luxurious, uneconomic curls of meaning? And then there are rivers that double back, meet themselves returning from an aside in the conversation they were having with the land....[I]magine how in a season of fast flowing water, the river would push for a more direct route, going straight from one tine to the other....Similarly, language, finding a more rapid route to communicate, will leave unused obsolete words behind, still in the dictionary and perhaps in memory but no longer in the "currency" of the language, where the language is flowing fastest.

I wonder if at some point Griffiths readThe River Why.

Beyond Natural, Pt. 2

In our political life, "freedom" is something we often speak of in absolute terms but practice in relative ones. In our economic, physical, and imaginative lives, the concept of "naturalness" receives similar treatment. We sharply contrast the natural with the "man-made," though in most things, not least in what we eat, the line between those becomes fuzzy. But the belief that there is a line suggests we can identify a natural quality to what we eat. Relatively speaking, of course.

I would say we can call foods natural to the degree that that non-manipulated natural processes and environmental factors have a role in their production. Crops that can thrive in a particular area without irrigation would be more natural than those requiring it. Products that require less processing would be more natural than those that do--an apple, perhaps even one raised with the aid of chemical pesticides, would more natural than a granola bar. A granola bar sweetened with cane juice (mechanically extracted but produced by the sun, the plant, and its environment) is more natural than one sweetened with refined sugar. Beef fed on wild grasses could be considered more natural than that from feedlots.

You can see where this is going, though likely you can also can poke some holes in the standard I've laid out. For example, you could ask whether it's more natural to raise green peppers with pesticides here in Michigan or raise them organically in Mexico and ship them 2,500 miles to my local market. I could counter that green peppers are native to Mexico (or at least were first cultivated there), and we could go back and forth for as long as it takes a naturally farmed salmon to go from fry to frying pan.

However, that does not mean that concept of natural food for the mass market is ultimately hollow and suitable for promotional purposes only. It it valuable if only because it provokes such scrutiny. It leads us to think about how and where we get our food, and in a time when so many of us are far removed from the physical circumstances of its production, that's a very good thing.

Beyond Natural, Pt. 1

This morning, NPR reported that the FDA pronounced salmon from a "natural" fish farming operation free from melamine, the contaminant that recently showed up in pet foods, resulting in many deaths of dogs and cats. That's good for consumers of farm raised salmon (and that's most of us who order salmon in restaurants), but what really interested me about the story was the farm operator's claim to produce "natural" Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound on pellets tossed into large holding pens.

The difference, Miller [the operator] said, is the feed.

"In the natural feed there is no land animal protein. So all the protein sources come from either vegetable or fish," he said.

Miller said the theory is that since wild salmon eat fish, farmed salmon should eat feed made from fish.

In fact, the fish dine on a mixture of anchovy, herring, wheat, soybeans and corn. I suppose that is an improvement over pork bone meal, but would Atlantic salmon "naturally" consume soybeans?

Maybe, as is the case with many midwesterners, their tastes change once they move to Seattle.

To his credit, the fish farmer readily admits "natural farmed salmon" is a vague concept.

"This is kind of a (fish) diet that we made up. Because there are no criteria for what should be in the 'natural' or 'organic' diets," he said.

This is a problem with all kinds of foods seeking the "natural" or "organic" label. Critics have pointed out many ironies and inconsistencies in our ideas of "natural" food, though the one that the salmon story brings to mind is that the naturalness of many designated natural foods derives from certain techniques of cultivation and processing--from kinds of artifice. And in some cases, the cirmcumstances of producing natural items or ingredients, no matter how sustainable or chemical-free, may be themselves be stunningly articifical or contrived--Atlantic salmon eating soy-enhanced pellets in Puget sound, say, or tomatoes growing, thanks to giant dams, in what was once known as the Colorado desert. Conventionally, "natural" refers to things that form or exist without human interventions. I think this is generally a good definition, but how far can we legitimately apply it to food we don't actually gather or kill ourselves? And should we worry about that?

(To be Continued)

Where Two or Three are Gathered; Ice, Stranded

In the infancy of this blog, I wrote about the contemplative prayer group I participate in at my church. It still meets every 1st and 3rd Wednesday in the church basement, though we now count only three members as opposed to the five we had then. In the group's first year we had 10-12 people at each meeting. It got a little crowded, though I suspect we'll never have that problem again. I have worked on promoting it, through announcements at other church gatherings and participating in "minstry fairs" (where organizers of different church groups put out food and set up booths to talk to fellow parishoners about their activities and entice them to join). All that has produced only couple of email queries, which never resulted in a visit. Maybe the prospect caught a whiff of holy desperation in my enthusiastic replies.

The low attendance is discouraging, though it isn't the primary reason why, lately, I've found myself wondering more and more if it's worthwhile to continue attending. My own meditation "practice" has been pretty tepid of late. At times, the prayer group at church is its only vestige. And that gathering feels increasingly rote. Or rather, like an obligation or imposition, not like a need, a gift, or a priveledge.

Kristine and I, having the church keys, are in fact obliged to be there. As the group's "coordinator" I lead the group (i.e., my wife and one elderly woman) through our three part ritual in which one of us share something we have read that they found interesting, then pray silently in whatever form we like, and end by saying the Compline office together. I've encouraged the others to play "leader" on occasion but they're happy with me doing it.

I actually like the routine, especially the opening discussion. Talking about texts--that's me all the way. And I find compline a soothing, centering conclusion to the day. It's the time in between I struggle with. Most of the meditative "techniques" I've relied on--focusing on breath or words, prayer beads--seem to fall flat. I remain as inert as a rock, though nowhere near as calm. The sort of quotidian thoughts and fantasies I usually try to empty from my mind easily jump the fences of practice and run riot. I've taken to directing more scrutiny on them (I have to do something for 45 minutes), which I suppose is still a valid form of contemplation, though it is one I could do that anywhere.

But Kristine and Alice still think it's worthwhile to meet in the church croft every other week to be alone with God together. I'm not wholly in agreement, but I don't want to take away what they still find meaningful. I used to go to prayer group for what I got out of it--peace of mind, stillness, intense religious emotions, what have you. What motivates me now is the good that others get from it, whatever that is. It has become primarily a way to serve others. And so in a sense it is a gift and a priveledge, perhaps fulfillng a need deeper than that for cool water and trout.

If I can hold that thought until 8:30, I'll be fine.


Tim over at The Where Project posted some photos of what happens when a river freezes while receding from a flood. All I could nab was a thumbnail...



...but it's worth a visit to see the gallery of full-size images. Check it out.

The Price of Fishing Just Went Up...

I've heard people use the line in this post's title in refernce to goods from the Orvis company, but today, it applies to one of the humbler amenities of my outings...state forest campground fees. Michigan's state forest campgrounds offer a tent sites with picnic tables and communal water pumps and outhouses. I nearly always stay in them, or in comparable national forest facilities, on my overnight trips. Starting today, that priveledge is going to cost more.

When I first started camping in these in 1991, I paid $6 a night. That went up to $10 a few years ago, and as of today, it will be $15. That's still cheap relative to more developed campgrounds or to motels, but it will add a notable bump to the price of an outing. I never gave a thought to camping fees when they were $6 a night; I choked a bit at $10, but $15 is going to feel like a major pinch, probably as much for psycological as for financial reasons. I can afford it. But it will make me more conscious of how much I spend on my trips, and that may not be such a bad thing.

That's the personal side of this. Beyond that, the fee increase is part of a larger story of a state budget squeeze and a reduction in funds available for maintainence of recreational facilties. State parks and other DNR operations (including fishing and hunting law enforcement) have been steadily trimming personell for the last few years, and would have had to forgo hiring 1,300 seasonal employees this year had the department not received a special exemption from a state government hiring freeze. More than a few visitors and staffers have observed that the condition of facilities at state parks has been deteriorating during this time. Just how thinly can we spread our resources before public conservation and recreation assets can't be effectively maintained or managed?

I don't expect taxpayers to pick up the bill for me to continue rustic camping on the cheap. And I can live with the substantially higher fees (now close to $30 a night) to stay in a modern campground in a state park. But these fee hikes are just band aids on a gaping wound. They will ease the DNR budget crunch, but they won't eliminate it. Things will limp along for a few more years, and then what?

I hope that a state banking on tourism as a path to economic recovery will have a good answer.

Saturday Quote

While I was up in Grayling on opening weekend, I picked up a copy of Rusty Gates' new book Seasons on the Au Sable. It's basically a collection of some of his weekly fishing reports, spanning the course of a year. I always thought someone should anthologize some of them. As of yet I haven't looked at it much, but I expect the book should offer some comfort on long winter nights when the new trout season seems unbearably distant.

No long missive from me today, only this quote from the novelist Joseph Heywood (The Snowfly) included in a blurb on the back of Gates' book:

Envy not the man who lives on the river; envy the man who the river runs through.

Have a good weekend, all.

Anchored

So far this year, I've taken four float trips in the Meadowhawk, my pontoon. That doubles the usage I gave it all of last season, and I may manage half a dozen or so more floats before the end of this one. However, I'm tempted simply to leave it home on my next trip.

Not because I don't like floating in it. I love feeling the current carry me along. I see places I never would otherwise. Rowing has turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant form of exercise, and I've liked the challenge of maneuvering around snags, boulders, and logjams. It's nice to feel competent at something vaguely athletic. I've gotten used to the 45 minute setup and 30-45 minute takedown. Some people spend almost as long loading or unloading boats that don't require assembly.

What I don't like about my boat is the feeling of obligation it has imposed on my fishing life--I now feel that, having spent the money on it, I HAVE to use it. Since I have to use it, I have to fish streams that can accomodate it, and I have to plan my fishing there around concerns about ease and safety of navigation. Which, pratically, means that fishing certain favorite streams is only possible at certain water levels, and that I need to plan to be off the water before dark, or at least plan to spend the evening on water big enough so that navigation isn't a problem.

I don't like to be pinned down--especially when fishing--but in many other areas of my life as well. I like to keep my options open, and be able to choose another one at the last minute. I like to explore new experiences, and most certainly new trout waters. If I want to be on a small stream or a low-running stream, I don't want to have to fish a big one that I'm not interested in at the moment. If I want to fish very remote waters where there is no car spotting service available and which I may find impassable once I'm a mile from the launch, I'll feel shackled returning to Grayling, or Baldwin, or Newaygo (terrible places, I know!). And if I just feel like just throwing on my waders and hitting the stream, I want to do that instead of inflating a boat. I want spontaneity, freedom. Good times, no strings attatched.

Yet...I have a contrary tendency to want to fulfill obligations once I have assumed them. I can't stand the thought of letting people down, or of appearing shiftless and unreliable. I hate letting things go to waste, whether the pears I bought last weekend or an inflatable pontoon.

Over the years these two needs have left me confused, conflicted, and medicated. Unquestionably the second one has done me more lasting good, so I would like to say that the Meadowhawk represents an opportunity to cultivate that tendency in the context of something I love unreservedly. An agreeable way to anchor myself in a life of greater stability. But more likely, it will serve, for now, as another point of internal conflict.

The box my pontoon came in says it weighs 64 pounds. Whether or not that's accurate depends on the buyer.

Angling East, 5/7/07 (Pt. II)

So I almost thought I was hallucinating when I rounded a bend and saw five or six rises in quick succession. I rowed to shore, anchored the boat and waded out , then tied on a comparadun (my go-to pattern for hendricksons) and cast to the nearest feeder I saw. It struck on the first drift and throbbed on the line a few times before throwing the hook. This happened with a couple of other fish, and when I finally did land one, it was hooked at the tip of its lower jaw. Usually when trout are solidly taking dry flies they will be hooked deep in the mouth. So I knew for sure that they weren't really interested in the pattern I was throwing. I tried a parachute version of the hennie and it went ignored altogether. Looking more closely at the rises, I could see the fish were porpoising when they fed, their backs rising slightly from the water; they wanted something just underneath the surface. I tried an emerger, which usually works when trout won't take a dry hendrickson. This also went ignored, so I tried a low-riding foam parachute version which had never caught fish before (that was a a trend Monday), and it did the trick. In the next half-hour I caught four more browns (up to 15") and one brook trout, my first ever on the trophy water, breaking off or otherwise losing some along the way. I'm sorry there are no pictures, but when trout were rising in flurries after I'd endured a fishless afternoon, I wasn't going to screw with the camera. If you would in that situation, you're clearly a dilettante unfit to share waters with trout. Go to the nearest DNR/MNR office and surrender your fishing license immediately.

Let's face it, I'm a fisher who blogs, not a blogger who fishes.

I finished my float around 7, and after packing up my boat drove upstream to one of my favorite spots to wade the big water, hoping to hit the spinnerfall. About five minutes after I took up my post, fish began rising. There weren't that many, but they were hot for my hackle-wing spinner. Most took on the first or second pass. I landed three rainbows, including one that reached 14". I lost a couple too, not surprising considering that the ones I landed spit the hook while in the net. I suppose it wouldn't have hurt to pause and hone the hook. My rational side deliquesces in the presence of rising trout.

The action lasted only about 20 minutes, and occurred when there were relatively few spinners on the water. When the bugs became heavy, the feeding actually trailed off, and the risers that remained wouldn't hit my fly, probably because of all the competition it was getting from the naturals. But after the day (or at least the evening) I'd had, I couldn't feel disappointed as i left the water.

During the long, sleepy drive home, I did find myself pondering if the trip had been worth it. I decided that if I could choose with the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn't do it all over again--actually, I'd leave the boat at home, fish the Rifle until about 3 then wade-fish a few spots on the trophy water to catch the peak of feeding on the hatch. But if the choice was doing it again as opposed to sitting home, heck yeah I'd do it. I've barely got the willpower not to go do it right now.

Angling East, 5/7/07 (Pt. 1)

I wanted another crack at fishing the hendrickson hatch this year, but another overnight getaway isn't in the cards for a while. So Monday I took a daytrip to the northeast corner of the state, which involved just short of six hours of driving for twelve hours of fishing. Given gas prices at the moment, a trip like this is an extravagance, but I drove the same distance to about the same locations last fall for no more than seven or eight hours of hunting, so this trip was a bargain by comparison. Especially since I actually brought my quarry to hand.

My plan was to float the trophy water of the Au Sable below Mio dam, but on the way up I stopped for a quick run at the Rifle river. I fished it a few times ten or twelve years ago and have wanted to go back, but I'm always pulled another half-hour north to the Au Sable system. It doesn't get the volume or diversity of fly hatches that its norther neighbor does, and most of the trout stocked. In summer the water gets very warm, and canoeists take to the stream in herds. But, especially in the state recreation area (where I fished Mon.), it is a pretty little river, and it is the nearest "decent" trout stream to me, so it probably merits further exploration on that basis alone.



It was still cold (air in upper 40s, water about the same) when I hit the water around 9. I figured streamers were the way to go, and since I had my 4-wt, I threw unweighted ones. This drew no interest from fish, so I put on a small, conheaded black and tan muddler that hadn't caught a fish in the ten years I've carried it. On the first cast (or rather, clumsy lob), a fish chased it, and about five casts later, I caught a 10" brown that ate the fly almost as soon as it hit the water and slid beneath overhanging alders. I had another strike a short time later, then nothing more durning the half-hour I continued fishing. The sun was getting high by that time, and the temperature was approaching 60. There were lots of black caddis in the air, and I thought that the afternoon might provide some good action on those, but I had my sights set on bigger waters and, hopefully, fish, so I left around 11. Not that my determination to get on the big river blinded me to the ambient sights and smells of the season.



And there was no need to rush, as it turned out. I launched the Meadowhawk at 1:30 and fished some of the large, weighted streamers that are popular on that water, drawing a couple of hits in my first hour. As the time of the expected hatch drew closer, I put on a hendrickson nymph and fished it through both riffles and deeper runs to no avail. The hatch commenced around 3:00, but not a single trout rose. It kept going strong for two hours, and still no trout rose. I kept fishing the nymph, assuming the trout had to have their eyes on these insects one way or another. If they were, they certainly weren't looking at what I had to offer. I began to resign myself to the idea that all the afternoon would yield was a nice boat ride.



To be continued.

The Will to Believe

Bill over at Muskoka Outdoors wonders if fishermen are too gullible when it comes to rumors about hotspots and "undiscovered waters" that give up fish by the bucketload. My answer offhand was yes. We--most certainly, I--can alter a perfectly reasonable plan for a day on the water, or abruptly drop other responsibilites, to chase down the whispiest of leads about some new place, or just some place other than where we had thought to go. Never mind what we've learned about familiar waters or what has brought us success in the past. The grass is greener, or rather, the fish are hungrier, and bigger, somewhere else. All we have to do is show up.

On one hand, this is comical, a simple example of how easily human beings can be manipulated by the promise of a quick reward. But on another level this behavior reveals a visonary streak. Often, random nuggets of information inspire not just a general hope of success, but fabulations of a sweet hereafter in which our triumphs play out in rich detail. We struggle to hold on to the rod against the force a strike, feel our hands tremble as a monstrous trout slides toward the net, or see a riffle glimmering with twilight as mayfly spinners drift by in mats. Even if we've never seen the place where we expect these events to happen, or if we've never experienced anything remotely like them in a place we know well. In fishermens' imaginations, one mustard seed of hope can--and reliably will--grow into a mighty tree of expectation.

Case in point. A week ago I was in Rusty Gates' flyshop in Grayling buying a new drying patch for my vest. I hadn't yet decided where I would fish that day, and after Rusty rang up my purchase, I asked him how the fishing had been the day before on the mainstream.

All he said was "glorious." So naturally, I took that to mean that the hendrickson hatch had been heavy and the fish had fed with abandon. If you read my report about the opening weekend trip, you know that doesn't at all describe my experience fishing the mainstream on Sunday. Was the glory revealed only to those fishing the previous day?

That would depend on what Rusty meant by "glorious." Where I, coming off Saturday's fish-poor outing, understood it to mean catching epic quantities of fish, he may well have meant that a long awaited Opening Day had passed in brilliant sunlight and shirtsleeve temperatures with a few fish caught along the way. That certainly qualifies as a glorious moment in an angler's life.

Quite often, as in Bill's case, the hot tip leads to lukewarm action. I've been there plenty of times myself. It's disappointing, but I would never want to stop letting my imagination play with the possibilities of new water or perfect timing. Anticipation is one of fishing's great pleasures, and the belief that out there somewhere is the spot that will give you the day, maybe the fish, of a lifetime, can revive a fisherman after a tough day. But like other kinds of beliefs, this one sets its adherents up for disappointment and confusion when framed in narrow, conventional, and literal terms. A generous understanding of what counts as a great spot, or a great catch, insures many more days of fishing in glory.
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I'll be chasing glory tomorrow on daytrip to Mio. Report to follow.

Take me to the river?

Freeway ramp sign in Toledo, OH, 5/3/07.

Weighty Matters

Lead...it used to be the fisherman's weighting material of choice. And why wouldn't it be? It's cheap, dense, easily moldable. Toxic, yes, but who worried about that as long as you weren't going to eat the stuff?

It still is far and away the fisherman's weight of choice, but that's slowly changing as anglers' awareness of lead's dangers grows. Lead can contaminate waters, and small lead shot can poison birds and other creatures that ingest them. Handling lead isn'tgood for the fishermen themselves, and I hate to think of all the lead
shot I handled over the years. If my prose sometimes seems a little
addled,that may be the cause. The waste from processing lead multiplies
considerably the environmental threat from this familiar anglers' tool.

Substitutes like tin and tungsten are appearing on the market, but for me at least,
these haven't been wholly satisfactory replacements. I did like the tin
split shot I bought a few years ago; it's lightness relative to lead
provided more natural drifts duringnymphing , though it wasn't heavy
enough to sink streamers where I wanted them. In spite of that, I would
have kept using them, but I haven't seen them in stores for some time
now. Tungsten is even denser than lead and is increasingly used in bead
or cone heads for nymphs and streamers, but it's expensive, and in
split shot form it doesn't mold easily. You can buy tungsten split shot,
but they don't pinch off easily like the old lead or tin shots did. For
the last couple of years, I've been using a tungsten paste which is
quite dense, but doesn't stay on the line very long. It does mold
easily around the leader--provided the temperature is at least 50F.
That mostly rules out use duringsteelhead season.

Despite the inconvenience, I'll keep trying to use non-toxic weights until I find
an acceptable one. And here I run into a problem--I can't seem to find
any, at least on store shelves. This confuses me, especially in shops
catering to fly fishers, because most of these preach catch-and-release
and low-impact angling like they're commandments from the lips of God
himself, yet stock only lead weights. Is a little consistency too much
to ask?

I often see non-toxic weights in catalogues, but, I
rarely find anything else I want to order (and I prefer to buy from
local stores anyway), and my congenital cheapness halts me from placing
an order whose shipping charge would exceed the cost of the
merchandise. This may be a rare case where thrift and logic are not
allies of responsibility.

So can anyone recommend a good non-toxic split shot?

07 Opener

My pursuit of trout fishing officially resumed last weekend. Blogging does today. As my blogging muscles are out of shape, I'd better start back into this slowly. Here's a quick rundown of last weekend's trip to the Au Sable for the trout opener.

It was raining steadily as I rolled into Graylling late Friday morning. To avoid setting up camp and making lunch in the rain, I went to The Fly Factory and bought a few streamers I didn't really need, then headed to Spike's for a sandwich. The rain finally tapered off as I drove to Keystone Landing to set up my tent, and stayed away for the rest of the afternoon while I fished near the lower end of the flies-only stretch of the mainstream.

I didn't particularly mind the weather--it was cold (high temp about about 48f, water temp about the same), so no flies would hatch, but the overcast skies and high water provided ideal conditions for streamer fishing.



I did take a couple of browns on an olive sculpin pattern in the first 20 minutes or so of my wade. Here's the first trout of the year, an 11" brown:



This one came as I let the streamer dangle in the water. Sometimes in the earliest, coldest part of the season, that works better than retrieving.

It was a long time before I caught my third, though I did have a couple of strikes in between. The last fish came on a dangle too.

Saturday morning broke clear and cold. I threw streamers in the waters near Keystone Landing from about 6-8:30 and had only one hookup. I decided to spend the afternoon on the North Branch floating the same section I did on the last opener. That wasn't the initial plan, but I figured that since the water was high, I would have an easier time floating over the shallow areas where last year I had to get out and drag my pontoon. And there is some nice water in that run. The hendrickson hatch I hoped for(and a fairly heavy one at that) did appear in midafternoon, but very few fish rose to the surface. I don't know which is more frustrating--having my fly scorned by rising fish or having flies with no fish rising. "Good hatches without rises" seemed to be the story with most fishermen I talked with over the weekend, regardless of the branches they fished (this held true on some other rivers too, judging from internet fishing reports), though few people in very limited areas did found some good feeding. I caught a few fish on wet flies and just one on a hendrickson dun. It was still a nice float.



Since Saturday had been quite warm (mid-60s), I thought the streamer fishing on Sunday morning would be better. I didn't find out. I discovered my first night in camp that the battery in my travel alarm had gone dead over the winter. No biggie, I thought: most mornings I wake up around 5 even when I plan to sleep later. I did awake on schedule, but decided to snooze just for a moment, which proved to be unwise when lacking the assistance of a snooze alarm. The next time my eyes opened, it was after 7. Now that's still pretty early, and certainly a decent time to throw some streamers into deep holes and logpiles, but I didn't feel like dragging myself into a cold river on a 30 degree morning in leaky waders. It is getting harder to pull myself out of a warm sleeping bag into a frigid stream as the years go on. I rationalized skipping out on fishing by reminding myself that I needed to break camp in time to make it on the river by early afternoon. So I ate a leisurely breakfast, drank several cups of coffee while resting in a chair and letting the sun warm me, then embarked on the slowest and most meticulous camp-breaking of my outdoor life, in the midst of which I paused to capture this record of a memorable piece of permanent camp furniture at my site:



And I was still at a river landing on the main branch by 11. By that time the temperature was nearing 70 degrees.

I parked my car and hiked to the next landing upstream. The fishing was again slow, to say the least. Over three hours, I picked up 5 or 6 brown trout on wet flies, swinging them downstream as close to brush or logs as I could get. When I reached the landing I'd parked at, I was ready to call it a day. Almost. I decided to sit in the shade and drink a cool beer before packing my gear, and after I finished that, I looked down at the river again and saw a trout rise. I was back in the water in about 30 seconds. A sparse hendrickson hatch was in progress, with equally sparse rises in response. Actually, I couldn't locate any consistent feeders. Five minutes of casting a dun to the spot where a fish had risen once did bring a 9" brown soon to hand. I drew one more hit below an oak leaning far out over the river, but that would be my last contact with a fish on this trip. The three or four minutes between rises stretched to ten, and soon a half an hour passed with no surface feeding at all, despite an occasional sputter of hennie duns.

Now with the day as warm as it was (78 according to my car thermometer), I would love to have stayed later and fished the evening spinner fall. But I needed to be on campus early Monday (in fact, I didn't get there...but that's a story for later) and I didn't want to go in on four hours' sleep. I was on the highway a little after 5, slightly disappointed with the fishing, but grateful for a weekend in the woods and waters as I mulled over the thought that had rewhetted my concentration during the fishless longheurs toward the end of Saturday's float: You don't get to do this forever. Every moment on the river you get is good, whether it unfolds according to your desires or not. Of course, that applies to all other moments, too. Every moment we get will slip away. This is no tragedy, unless they slip by without our gratitude and attention.

Maybe I should remember that the next time I'm torn between fishing at daybreak and sleeping late.