Streamside Reading: The View from Rat Lake

For some reason that currently escapes me, the first Gierach book I read was not the game-changing Trout Bum, rather it was his second* book of essays: The View from Rat Lake. Afterwards, I went back and devoured Troutbum; Sex, Death, and Fly Fishing; and just about anything else I could get my hands on with Gierach's name on the cover.


* Assuming one doesn't count Fly Fishing the High Country as a book of essays. I should probably read it before I make such a judgement.  

So a couple of months ago, when I re-read some of my favorite fly fishing books, I pulled out Rat Lake again. Our brains are wired such that we cannot help but use the first of any series as a baseline for comparison. For me, this book is the one I compare all other Gierach books with, simply because I read it first. When I read Troutbum, I found myself wondering a little bit what the fuss was about. Of course, the fuss was that no one had written with that particular voice, in such an appealing and agreeable way about fly fishing before. And no one had done so from the perspective of a fly fishing hermit living in a shack in Colorado.

But even now I feel like Gierach's writing style and skill grew considerably between the first two books. The first  and last essays in Rat Lake are two of my favorite pieces of writing about fly fishing. The initial essay, titled 'The Big Empty River," is an ode to the Henry's Fork and opens with a signature Gierach passage that gets right to the heart of the personality of his fishing buddy Koke.

He somehow managed to achieve a spiral fracture--the classic downhill skiing injury--and so naturally someone down at the health club asked him, in the snide way people have when you're hurt, "How's the skiing?"

"I don't go in for sissy sports," Koke answered, "I'm a trout fisherman."

I've always though Koke's response would make a great T-Shirt.

The last essay in the book is titled "Enough Fish." It follows Gierach on a solo journey touched off by a rumor of large brook trout. And ends with him making the unlikely (yet perfect) choice to not even string up a rod once he finds them. Something about the piece (and the fact it is set in Eddy Country) makes me simply love it. Maybe (as I touched on in a recent post) its because I start to feel the way Gierach felt that morning at this time of year, when the winter hits and I've fished hard all fall.

Is it possible to have caught enough fish, at least for the moment?  You know you can't catch them all, and there's no reason why you should want to. A year ago--maybe even to the day--I was standing at another piece of water puzzling over other fish. No, I don't remember the exact situation, but it was August; what else would I have been doing? Given half a break, I'll be doing the same thing somewhere else a year from now...

Today is New Year's Eve. And I can't help but hope that we all catch "half a break" and get to fish the way we would like this coming year. Be it more often or better or bigger--whatever your goal is for 2011, The Eddy wishes you well.
 

The Eddy's Best Photos of 2010

As promised, here is a slide show of my best photos from this past year. Most of these turned up on The Eddy at some point during the year, but I enjoy this kind of thing so you'll have just have to put up with it. As I look at this one compared to 2009, I feel like I am getting better with the camera (or else I just got lucky more often). I'm learning more and more about the relationship between aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. And I am learning more about the that fickle beast: light.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. Check out the full screen version (which is really the best way to see the sunsets and sunrises).

Savoring the Moment

We are in that strange period between Christmas and New Year's when the whole week feels like a holiday. Especially if you are lucky enough to have the whole week off of work. Today I got up and played basketball, came home, played with the kids, tied a few flies while listening to an excellent M. Ward Album I got for $5 on Amazon, and then watched Arsenal dismantle Chelsea to the tune of 3-1. Thats a nice day.

I had planned on fishing today, but the wind was blowing and I managed to talk myself out of it. Every year I have this week off and every year I make a plan to go fishing, then often I end up staying home. I just don't have the severe cabin fever yet.

But it is coming.

My apologies to T.S. Eliot, but I think January and February are in a dead heat for the cruelest months.* These coming winter months are the two that eat away at my soul. I go into them planning to work endlessly and save my vacation for the spring, summer, and fall. But at some point in February I'll often spy a day in the coming forecast that breaks 30 degrees (or better yet, 40) and I'll be unable to keep from scheduling a vacation day and hitting the river. Its the endless daily repeat of ice, cubicles, fluorescent lights, and temps below freezing (or zero).

* Obviously Eliot wasn't a fly fisherman. April gives you some nice lake fishing, caddis on the Madison, and Blue Wings on some of the colder rivers. Plus pretty good streamer fishing. I rather enjoy April. January is best known for the ice flow on the Henry's Fork. 

Anyway, so far I am okay. I don't hate old man winter yet. I don't wish he would die a quick, painful death. So I plan to enjoy this week. And maybe I'll sneak off and go fishing, but I am not going to be too disappointed even if I don't. I am going to savor the moment. Its not every day Arsenal beats Chelsea.

Hitting the Links: Ridiculous Window Sticker Edition

Christmas Eve is probably a great time to get away from the crowds on your favorite trout stream. Maybe someday I'll find out first hand, but I'm not in a hurry. Unwrap these links like a 10-year-old who asked for a Atari 2600 back in the day.

• TU has helped open up some access on the Clark Fork. Now that's a nice Christmas present. (hat tip: Ted Williams Fly Rod & Reel blog)
• If you aren't checking out FocalFish, you are missing out on some great images. This PMD is just fantastically good. Look at that water membrane bend.
• Finally, if you look close at the world's most ridiculous truck window sticker, it appears (at least to me) as though its the property of these guys, which I don't think is a real surprise. (hat tip: troutbugs).

The Fountain of Youth

I’ve always thought that one of the great stages in the life of the American male is the summer of his tenth year. A ten-year-old boy is too young to have discovered the weight of the world, the angst of adolescence, or the irresistible (yet, too often unattainable) enigma that is the female of the species. Unencumbered by these stresses, a ten-year-old boy with a two-wheeled bike on the first day of summer—the long procession of sunny days stretched out before him like a century—is a free man. He is old enough to be an old hand at school and friendship and skipping rocks, yet still young enough to experience things like a major league baseball game or a high dive for the first time. Things like catching a trout.

I’ve often thought that part of the allure of fly fishing—of all fishing—is the chance to transport back to those times, at least in spirit. On every trip, for several hours (or if we are lucky, for several days) the fisherman’s adult life drifts away like the water around his boots and he is left alone with only the wondrous places were trout rise or steelhead swim and the simple yet perfect problem of how to catch them. In short, fishing has the unique power to make us all feel like kids again. Or at least it does for me.

In the past, I have acknowledged this fact and pondered it now and again. I was completely comfortable with it. But unbeknownst to my conscious self, my subconscious was perhaps obsessing over it.

I am currently reading John Doyle’s excellent book The World is a Ball, which the subtitle tells me is about the Joy, Madness, and Meaning of Soccer.* In the introduction, Doyle makes a simple observation about the nature of sports—especially about the nature of attending sporting events—and why they are important to us.

Stumblin'

If you've ever waded the Madison, perhaps this video will remind you of the experience. If only Sir Paul was on the bank playing a tiny harmonica...

Comment Period Begins for New Yellowstone National Park Native Fish Environmental Assessment

As part of my day job, I get the opportunity to occasionally read and edit environmental assessments. I can tell you right now its not one of the more exciting document types I get to see. Still, they are pretty straightforward in their structure and style: spell out some goals and objectives and then present some different plans (called alternatives) for achieving those goals and objectives.

The Yellowstone National Park (YNP) assessment is currently out for public comment (another standard part of the environmental assessment process). You can check it out on the Park Service website. So far, I have only read the executive summary (always the most exciting part). In doing so, I had the same question that many anglers probably have: how are we going to get rid of the lake trout in Yellowstone Lake? The Park Service's preferred alternative is to increase the current netting program by hiring "private sector contractors" and then returning the fish carcasses to the lake. A secondary alternative seems to include having the contractors sell or donate the dead fish.

My guess (I am no biologist) is that the carcasses would significantly increase the biomass in the lake. That might help the cutthroat bounce back, I don't know. All those dead fish could probably be used for a ton of useful things, in or out of the lake. The important thing is that the increased netting is needed to reduce the populations of lake trout. The current netting program--from what I understand--is just breaking even. I can't foresee a time when netting isn't required on the lake. Once the laker population is cut down sufficiently, netting will still be required to keep the population in check. Its a present and future program funded by millions in (well-spent) taxpayers dollars all because some group (or individual) thought it would be cool to play bucket biologist. Another triumph of ego and stupidity over reason that we all end up paying for.

Other highlights of the assessment include plans for preserving grayling and cutthroat spawning areas. Give it a read and provide your comments. And lets all hope we can preserve this unrivaled gem of a resource against past and future stupidity.  

Emptying out the Backlog: Best of 2009

I started to put together a slideshow for my best photos of 2010, and quickly realized I had could speed up the backlog emptying by doing the same thing for 2009. So here's a show that features photos taken on a variety of outings including a backcountry trip I wrote about in Fish Can't Read (before it met the big sleep), and trips to a half dozen of my local rivers (using the term 'local' a little generously). Hope you enjoy.

Check out the full screen version.

Hitting the Links: Mixed Emotions Edition

I am slightly giddy about the Phillies signing Cliff Lee, while at the same time completely bumbed that Arsenal once again lost to Tom Chandler's Manchester United. I suppose its the sporting gods' way of keeping me from getting too high or too low. For all of you that could care less, I offer up these links.

• Check out FocalFish, a daily photoblog from a bunch of guides that are pretty handy with a lens. For a bit of history about the whole affair, check out the Headhunter's recent post. 
• Brandon over at Catching My Fair Share recently published perhaps the single longest post in the history of fly fishing bloggerdom, complete lots of good wisdom. Its in a similar vein as the first (and still the only) edition of Eddy Conversations.   

Hope In the Basement of Winter

A couple of weeks ago I started making lists. Not Christmas lists. Lists of flies I’d like to tie this winter, blueprints for how I want to re-imagine my fly boxes. Lists of “the thing with feathers.” Lists of hope.

Its almost cliché to quote Emily Dickinson’s poem titled “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers when talking about flies. Ted Leeson probably did it best in the Habit of Rivers, and since I first read that it seems like I have seen a half dozen or so other occurrences. But overuse doesn’t make Dickinson’s metaphor any less valid when applied to flies and fly fishing. Flies are miniature carriages of hope—hope for the next trip, the next fish, the ones we didn’t catch last year, presumably because we didn’t have the right fly.

Is it self-deluding? Yes, I am certain it is. I didn't catch those fish last year for several dozen reasons besides having the wrong fly. A poor cast, or no cast at all, or maybe I never fished the river I should have. And this year I’ll make many of those same mistakes again—but hopefully less often.

That is not what fly tying and the hope that goes along with it are about. Here at my desk in the basement—while the world snows and ices itself into a deep, harsh winter—I can wrap feathers and thread around hooks with a hope that is unique to something new, something untried. The old flies still work. They always will and as long as they do someone will get an inordinate amount of pleasure from telling everyone else that all you need are Hare’s Ear nymphs and Adams dry flies in a variety of sizes if you want to catch fish in the West.

Bravo, my friend. You may be right. And yet, I do not care.

There is something exciting in the new fly (or the old fly that is new to me) that keeps me tying and reading and tilting my head to understand what I am seeing in a photo of some fly pattern I have never seen before. That excitement is hope, the hope that this fly will surprise me, or fool some previously uncaught trout, or solve some problem that has heretofore flummoxed me.

Gary Lafontaine said: “Even if an assortment of three flies could cover 99 percent of trout problems, it would still be the other 1 percent of the fish that would be worth catching.”

I think that quote sums up why I tie flies and why I tend to look at my boxes and wish I had a about seven dozen more flies to choose from. Because I want to catch the fish worth catching.

And here at my vise, in the basement of winter, I start with the hope that this fly will be the one to make it so.

Hitting the Links: Native Fish Edition

Its still early days of winter. So most folks are focused on the holidays or some inside project. Of course that is just most folks. A few--the unfortunate few--are already starting to feel the shakes begin in their bones. They dream of long summer evenings and hatching caddis and wonder if they didn't just see a trout rise in that slush puddled up in the gutter while they were waiting for the light to change. They have early stage acute cabin fever. These links are for them.

• Idaho Fish and Game with a few details about the native fish populations in the gem state.
• In light of the recent game warden shooting in Utah, Rocky Barber (an Official Eddy favorite) talks about the danger fish and game officers face (the comments are worth a read as well, not a lot of sympathy on display).
• Rene Harrop pens a letter to the editor supporting the soon-to-be official ordinance regulating motors on the Henry's Fork.
• Snowpack: so far so good, for the most part, at least in our corner of the planet (also, check out these Google Earth snotel data overlays).

Gear Review: REI's Flash 18 Daypack

I got to thinking about the best piece of gear I bought this year. The realization that I didn’t buy much gear made me slightly happy (from a fiscal perspective), until I realized that plenty of my gear needs to be replaced (ala the worst pair of waders I have ever owned). Still, I did pick up one excellent piece of gear: a daypack.

I spent a couple of seasons looking for a good daypack to improve my time in the backcountry. When I go backpacking, I do so (mostly) to fish. I enjoy fishing miles away from the nearest car, the nearest power line, and the nearest building. My backpacking trips usually go like this: hike in, set up a base camp, day hike to various fishing locations, fish like crazy, hike out.

But such an itinerary requires a decent daypack. I tried a chest pack, but there was no place for the water bottle or lunch. And I didn’t want to carry a 3-pound daypack in my big pack, taking up valuable space and adding pounds.

Eventually, I found REI’s Flash 18. It weighs ten-ounces (or somewhere close to that) and doubles as a stuff sack (when its turned inside out). Really, its kind of a stuff sack with a pocket for a water bladder, shoulder straps, and a light hip belt. So it doesn’t eat pack space or add much weight. Its big enough to carry plenty of gear (rain gear, lunch, water bottle, maps, reels, tippet, and fly boxes) so that when you make that 6 mile day hike, you have what you need to catch a trout or two.

Ever since I broke it in this summer I have started using it more and more for non-backpacking fishing trips. I like to walk when I fish, I like to get away from the car and other anglers. So the Flash 18 has become standard gear containing lunch and a water bottle, a rain jacket, all that same stuff that is needed in the backcountry. Its bigger than the back pocket on my fishing vest and so light I sometimes forget I am wearing it.

The only real drawback is that its not waterproof so the gear can inside get wet. Beyond that I am quite happy. Its an excellent piece of nonfishing gear that turned out to be the best piece of gear I bought all season.

In Praise of Winter

We have entered full-fledged winter now. The roads in my town are packed with an odd snow-ice mixture that leads to surprising slides and endless fishtails—from trucks rather than trout. The sun is absent for days at a time and there is the ever-present foreboding that we are in month one of a three-month period when the mercury spends just a few fleeting moments parked above 32 and several icy days (or weeks) well below zero. When it comes to winter, trout fishing is not my primary concern. Rather I am focused on simply surviving the various dangers of the season—bad roads, cold, boredom, the flu, and American Idol.

There was a time when I hated winter. And I still don’t love it. If money and lifestyle were to permit I would likely ship out in November for the southern hemisphere and some fish that are just now waking from the clutches of Jack Frost rather than steeling themselves against the oncoming season.

But even though I would rather be on a plane to New Zealand or Andros Island I have found things in winter that I enjoy. The fishing calendar turns over for me in winter. It is roughly the same as the calendar on my wall. Come January, its time to start thinking about what fish lie ahead, how they might be caught, and how I’d like to catch them. Until then winter offers the chance to look back, sort through photos and fishing logs. Remember trips that were only talked about and fishing partners who have drifted away. The imagining and re-living and endless thinking about fishing adds to the enjoyment of fishing, at least for me.

And of course there are flies to be tied. There is something exciting about cleaning out half a fly box and staring at the empty white rows of foam, planning the new recruits that will fill those slots. You can spend an afternoon cleaning fly lines and oiling reels. Or spend a week or two (or a month) building a new fly rod. One winter I reorganized all my fly boxes and printed labels for them. Since then I have reorganized the boxes again and blacked the labels out with a marker.

These kind of tasks might distract me through December, or maybe not. But come the holidays I’ll be looking at the weather forecast trying to persuade myself that the roads to a favorite river will be okay, and that the midges will be out in the afternoons. Eventually, cabin fever will drive me to water. Its just a question of when.

Hitting the Links: Rise Forms Launch Edition

Today marks the launch of Rise Forms, an internet-based magazine where fly fishing and literature meet. Fly fishing has something of a history with this kind of thing in the print medium--James Prosek helped launch the Yale Anglers Journal in 1996, and of course Gray's Sporting Journal has always had a very literary feel to it. But Rise Forms is not so academic yet still maintains a high standard of quality without devolving into a destination-selling, thrill-a-minute, extreme magazine. Its the creation of an excellent team including Scott Carles of Cutthroat Stalker, David Motes of StoryArc, and Anthony Naples of Casting Around.

Check out the initial launch. If I can get into gear, you may see my name on a future contributors list.

And the to the creators of Rise Forms: Good work, gents. And good luck.