Tying Trout, Thinking Steelhead, and Dreaming Carp

Day 87 of the Snowpocalypse...

Three days ago we exhausted our stores of craft beer and ate what was left of Charlie. Vodka is running low; we've been forced to cut it with orange Tang and grape Shasta. Only one bottle of scotch remains ... One bottle. Yesterday morning, Ana washed down two Xanax and an Ambien with half a bottle of Nyquil. Thirty minutes later she wandered off into the drifts singing Do You Want to Build a Snowman. We haven't seen her since; she was our only hope for re-population. God help us all.



It's that time of year when Jack Frost does his very best to remind us he's a badass. This year especially, winter is making it a point to keep its frigid little rat claws dug firmly into the northeast and Great Lakes regions. As of February 13th, ice covered 88.4% of all five of the Great Lakes. For the mathematically impaired, 88.4% is pretty damn close to 100%. In most high schools and junior colleges, 88.4% gets you on the honor roll. This is the year Frosty gives the valedictory address.

Wonder what it is that keeps that last 12% from freezing? ... warm springs? warm air? nuke plants?

And with an especially harsh winter comes a correspondingly bad case of the shack nasties. Cruise the Facebook fly fishing circles, and you'll see what I mean. Bug chuckers are everyday killing other bug chuckers. Steelhead usually help to assuage such senseless slaughter, but conditions have been poor for fishing and prime for nonsense. Let's hope spring comes soon. Fly guys sometimes thumb their noses at dropbacks, but this year a little dropback fishing might just save a life. Some people - myself among them - need desperately to get out of the house. 

As it does for many bug chuckers, tying flies helps me to assuage all the temperature induced craziness, and lately I've been a bug wrapping machine. My bugger barns are full to the point of being overfull. I gave dozens of last year's marabou monstrosities to a friend in order to make room for this year's batch, and still there are feathers sticking out past the seal of the waterproof boxes. In addition to all the usual suspects - buggers, zonkers, etc. - articulated behemoths will have a place in this year's stash. I first fished articulated flies some years ago, but I figure it's time I jump on the bandwagon in earnest.

The nymph boxes are also full. Just this morning I finished up the last few cased caddis, and tonight I'll start filling in the gaps amongst the dries. Of course, I'll have to see what remains from last season, but I already know I'm in need of hennies, olives, and green drakes. Maybe a week's work, which means that in only seven days I'll be back to daydreaming.

Winter dreams are warm dreams, aren't they? Steelhead have only just begun their spawning dance, trout season is not yet open, and already I've carp on the brain. I've plans, big plans. If even a few come to fruition then I should have plenty of blog fodder come August. This year, my flies and my tippets will be lighter. Time spent stalking the flats has taught me that lead eyes and beads spook fish. This year, the weight is gone and most of my carp bugs will be little more than chemically sharpened steel wire and blended fur. I'll get to tying them just as soon as I've wrapped up those drakes.

And so goes day 87 of the Snowpocalypse. I think it's colder now than when I began this post, and tomorrow is likely to be colder still. I suppose I'll survive; I suppose we'll all survive, but I don't see any way we make it out of the season completely unscathed. It's too damn nasty out there.

Winter Coats

My son is a behemoth of a boy. He weighed 65 pounds when he started kindergarten back in September; now he tips the scales at just a few ounces under 80.  That kind of growth - 15 pounds in roughly nine months - is difficult for my wife to abide. She wants her baby back, but we won't be seeing him again. Baby boy has left the building. Little man has taken his place.

For my part, I enjoy watching my children grow. Sometimes the process is slow and subtle; so slow and subtle in fact that I hardly recognize it for what it is. Still other times the changes are so enormous that they seem surreal - if not unreal - simply because of the scope of their enormity. These moments sometimes bring a tear to my eye, but more often than not they make me laugh. The things kids do - the things they say ...

One night, after corraling the triplets into the tub for baths, my daughter Emma screamed at her sister, "Get the F out of the Tub!" When I ran into the bathroom - all full of daddy fury - to chastise my daughter for her language, I discovered there was a foam letter "F" floating in the water.

Another evening I walked into the house to find my girls sitting on the couch and singing, "I've got the moves like Jagger, I've got the moves like Jagger" over and over again. While the girls sang, my son - naked as the day he was born - was doing his best imitation of Mick Jagger, shaking his money maker across the expanse of the living room ... in front of an open window.

My children's frequent growth-spurts have forced my wife and I to adopt a semi-seasonal ritual. Most parents likely do the same. As summer turns to autumn, autumn to winter and winter to spring we rummage through closets, dresser drawers, and laundry baskets for the sake of removing from the daily rotation those items of clothing that are just too worn or too small to keep their places in the lineup. Denim jeans, dresses, tee shirts, hoodies, and even socks and underwear are sorted into piles for donation (to either family, friends, or The Salvation Army).

This year, we'll be donating the kids' winter coats. We somehow managed to get two years use out of them, but there's just no way we'll make three. The triplets have sprouted, and the coats that were once so roomy are now nearly too tight to zip. I suppose it's a good thing that the days have grown decidedly warmer; unless the weather gods fancy themselves comedians, we won't be needing parkas and mittens for a while.

And last night - as I folded the coats and put them into a box with other items slated for donation - I had something of an epiphany. I realized that we bug chuckers mark time by the seasons. As removed as we sometimes are from the natural world we cannot escape its cycles; the end of one cycle generally marks the beginning of another. For the next several months, I'll be counting time by hatching mayflies, but in that moment my mind drifted off to steelhead. Packing those coats away - one atop another - I realized that in many ways steelhead fishing is for me a kind of winter coat.

When my corner of the world wraps itself in a swaddling of snow and most anglers go into hibernation, I turn to Lake Ontario and its tributaries. The annual run of winter steelhead insulates me from what would otherwise be a bitter, fallow season. Sometimes I swing streamers or spey flies, but more often I'll dredge the bottom with ridiculously simple and ugly nymphs. Each method pleases me in its way, but ultimately the method does not matter as it is the fish themselves that sustain me.

And now it's time to fold that coat and put it away for the season. I had hoped for one more trip, but  hope is never enough to keep the days from turning. After a long and especially tenacious northeastern winter there is now warmth beneath the clods. Herds of deer and rafters of turkey have moved out of the thickets and into open ground. Trees are budding in pastel greens and yellows, and hendricksons hatch in earnest. Brown and rainbow trout are rising from the miasma to gorge on the first course served at Spring's table.

Still, it pains me to have to box up a season of chasing steelhead and place it on a shelf. I'm sad to see the winter go in much the same way I'm sentimental about my children growing out of their clothes - each box donated or stowed is full of moments we'll never again experience. Squeezed in between the folds of those moments, however, is also a hopeful anticipation of what's to come. As I shelve this most recent winter, I look forward to seasons still before me, and I take some solace in the fact that while I may have to set steelhead aside, I'll never outgrow them.

     

Bacon

While in his early twenties, Shawn Brillon (the current Orvis fly and fly tying product developer)  was a collegiate wrestler and power lifter. He wasn't nationally ranked, but neither was he unsuccessful; I've seen proof in the form of trophies and VHS video (imagine Sloth from the Goonies in a unitard). Now over forty, Shawn is still one of the strongest men I know, but every bit a gentle giant (in a stocky, Gimli the dwarf kind of way). I wouldn't want to go three rounds with him anymore than I'd want to bathe in brisket drippings and tangle with Lily - Shawn's outsized bull mastiff.

"I won't have no pointy eared elf out-fishing me!"

I mention all this not to inflate my friend's already substantial, mastiff sized ego, but in the hopes of impressing upon you just how drastic was the weather's change.

We were anchored near the head of one of the river's largest pools. The riffle to our front wore the swollen, grey-green raiment of the previous evening's rain; we almost certainly should have been fishing some skinnier water, but at the moment the sun was shining and the boat was safely anchored in an eddy that formed along the near bank. For lack of any active fish, each of us enjoyed the rhythm of casting (as much as heavy sinking lines attached to tungsten laced streamers can be rhythmic) and the moronic, testosterone-laced banter that usually accompanies a day in a drift boat.
 

Clackacraft ... it's what all the cool kids are doing.

I don't know that any of us paid much attention when the first dark clouds rolled over the peak of the mountain. We knew that the weather was likely to change; sunshine never lasts on the first of April, and rain had been part of even the most hopeful forecast. When the sun disappeared altogether, however, we couldn't help but take notice. We tried to laugh off the sudden darkness as we pulled our rain gear out of the boat's dry-boxes, but each of us realized that we were still very early on in the float. Nasty weather - if at all prolonged - was going to make for a very long day.

No sooner had we donned our semi-breathable, occasionally water repellent shells and tightened the belts around our waders then the first drops descended on the boat. Before long the river gods let loose their full fury, and we were assaulted by phalanxes of rain attacking from all sides. Sitting in the bow - slightly miserable and doing my best to disguise my shivering - I found myself wishing I had done the right thing and kept my appointment with Dr. White, my proctologist.



But wishing didn't get us off that river. In fact, my wish seemed to have quite the opposite effect. Instead of being magically transported to the take-out where a scantily clad Kate Upton eagerly offered to teach us the Cat Daddy and then crank the boat up onto the trailer - we were instead blasted with winds that rather ironically took our breath away. The gusts were so strong - in fact - that Shawn's low profile Clackacraft eventually pulled its 35 pound anchor free of its cobblestone mooring. Like a zephyr we slid upstream and across the riffle straight into the jagged rocks that lined the far bank. Generally speaking, if one owns a fiberglass drift boat then it is a good idea to keep that splendid fishing platform as far away from knife-edged rocks and outsized, boat-eating boulders as one possibly can. And so we come full circle.   

Keeping the Clack away from the rocks required all of Shawn's considerable strength. He cut into the water as deeply as the Cataract oars and his power-lifter's frame would allow. The boat slowed to a stop only inches from the rocks, and with a pit bull's tenacity Shawn pulled her back to the relative safety of slack water.

"She's a hell of a boat," he said slightly winded as the anchor once again found its bite.

"With a hell of a skipper," I replied.

And so went the remainder of the opening day of the 2013 trout season. Rain came and went; the torrents grew worse with each renewed assault. On a vision quest of sorts, Shawn refused to relinquish the oars; whatever demons he may have had were certainly exorcised (or perhaps exercised) by the effort. By the time we reached the take-out (the otherwise Uptonless take-out) we were soundly beaten. Eight hours on the water had brought a single strike and no fish to hand. We were relatively dry, but the damp air was relentless; our faces and our hands were numb. Every fifth or sixth breath would bring chills and shivers from our cores. All of our fly boxes were lighter when we finished the day than when we began; at least one spool of tippet had been emptied. 

But still ... we had a great day.

"How?" you ask. How did we manage to enjoy ourselves in spite of the river gods' bad intentions? One word ...

Bacon.

Near the start of the float we stopped for breakfast. A sixty year-old Griswold #7 fry pan and the dual burner Coleman made quick work of a dozen eggs and a pound of slab bacon. That bacon stayed with us for the remainder of the day - rain and wind be damned. The pungent aroma permeated our clothing; the greasy sweetness coated our tongues. Every breath - stained with the slightly acrid taste of salt and pork fat - was a mental middle finger to the river gods and their bad intentions. And therein lies the moral of an otherwise anti-climatic trip report.

There is no such thing as a bad fishing trip. Regardless of the gods' malice and our own ineptitude, there is always a worse way to spend the day. Every trip - every last one - brings us some twist, a new rub that makes us stand up and take notice. I would trade any day spent away from the river for even the worst of days when I'm wading her currents because no matter how bad it is there is always going to be that one little something.

No matter how bad the day might be, we'll always have that bacon. 

Bacon ... kicking Sizzlean's nasty @$$ for 40 years and counting.

The Flat

There's a nondescript span of river that has been something of a fish factory for as long as we've waded its currents. It's a genuinely special run that rarely sees a bug chucker; in all the years I've fished the Flat (yes ... capitalized, proper noun ... she's special enough to be given a name) I've only ever met one other angler there, and he was using spinning gear and moving too quickly to be particularly effective. The Flat is like the very ordinary friend of the most attractive woman at the party in that she's often ignored in favor of water that appears more promising. Like that plain looking woman, however, the Flat will pay off in droves if you just give her a little of the attention she so deserves.

The Flat is about as long as a soccer field, which - for those uninitiated heathens amongst us - stretches roughly 20 yards farther than an American football field. At the head is a short but powerful riffle; above that riffle is a very deep pool. Below the flat is another large pool, this one shallower and longer than its big brother at the head. We've caught fish - big fish - in both of these pools, but our efforts have always focused on the the flat water in between the two.

Imprinted on the parchment of my memory is the indelible impression of the first trout I ever saw rise on the Flat: a brown of some twenty-two inches. The fish first appeared in the pool below the run, but with relative quickness he worked his way to the tail end of the Flat, slurping hendrickson spinners as he went. Perched on a bank high above the water, I watched until I could no longer play the part of spectator. The fish swallowed my spent wing pattern on the first cast, and fifteen years later I still frequent the run looking for rising fish.

And even though the Flat's fish will crush stripped streamers - and I don't use the word "crush" euphemistically, the strikes are decidedly vicious - it is the dry fly fishing that brings us back. The best of the Flat's fish rise like they do nowhere else on the river, which means the Flat may be the river's best dry fly water.

Nose, back, tail ... Nose, back, tail ... Nose, back, tail.

The dance begins with the emergence of the season's first hendricksons, and generally continues unabated until the sulphurs begin to thin. I spend the better part of the winter chasing steelhead if only to help me get through to the spring and rising fish on the Flat. It is amazing - simply amazing - to think that I can be completely isolated from the world, and casting parachute emergers to large, wild brown trout, less than one hour from the capitol city of New York State.  

That's the thing about the river, and perhaps it's the same for any river. Each run is a galaxy, vast in its way but still only a very small part of the much greater universe. The Flat, the Falls, Converse, the Bends, Betsy's Run, Confluence, the Bridge, the Pullout, and Ballpark ... each run and pool, each riffle and each flat, has its own particular charm. We fish them all in their respective seasons because we've spent a lifetime learning those seasons.

And as the Flat's season reaches its height and hendricksons give way to sulphurs, I find myself thinking that there are much worse ways to spend a lifetime than by wrapping bits of fur onto bits of wire, standing waist deep in icy water flowing through a river bed that was carved by the last ice age, and watching fish rise out of their element and enter ours, to feast - however briefly - on the bounty provided by a river that so nourishes us both.

When Choosing Friends ...

When choosing friends, consider all the variables that matter in the context of successful relationships. Start with this question: "Does my potential friend own a drift boat?" If the answer is "no" then proceed to carefully analyze all other variables (i.e. trustworthiness, sense of humor, oral hygiene) before committing to the obligations of friendship. If the answer is "yes" then bribe your way onto potential friend's boat with a cooler full of expensive beer and cheap "pink-slime" sausages. After the float, propose marriage if you live in a state that will sanction the union.

What the hell is wrong with the anchor ... Ahhhh ... Frozen ball o' anchor rope, gets ya' every time.

This fish was only 13" long ... Shawn held it really close to the camera

Not sure if Shawn Photoshopped himself into a photo of my fish or if my fish is Photoshopped into a picture of Shawn ... result is the same I guess.

The only decent fisherman on the river ...

Would you believe this fish was actually 32" long ... Shawn has HUGE hands.

Yes, I have an adipose fetish ... I am so ashamed.

Not only did I talk him into rowing all day ...

All the cool kids sold their Clacks and bought Hydes ... @#$% the cool kids.