Google Translator

My wife is a teacher - a very good teacher by all accounts - and like all good teachers she has stories to tell. Just yesterday she came home from work and told the story of an 8th grade boy who had been caught cheating on a final exam. For whatever reason, this young man was allowed to use a computer to type his answers to the test questions, which covered the student's second year of foreign language - Spanish. Apparently, the he was very quick on the keys (or the proctors were oblivious to everything around them - a distinct possibility) as the student used Google Translator to devise an answer to nearly every question on the test. It wasn't until after the test that the cheating was discovered, and the boy was called to task.

As my wife told the story, my mind wandered off - as it is prone to do during the unabridged versions of my wife's stories - to the water and all things piscatorial. I thought about brown trout on the Delaware and carp on the Hudson, bass on Ballston Lake and bowfin on Champlain. In one instant, I was on the oars of my buddy's low-side Clack, and in the next moment I was casting to lily pads from the bow of a Coleman canoe. Before long, I was at the confluence of my wife's story and my own rambling stream of consciousness, and I found myself wondering if Google Translator might not help us bug chuckers better communicate with the rest of the world.

So ... what if? What if Google Translator made possible the translation of Bug Chucker to standard English?

Common Bug Chucker: "The wind is brutal today."

Standard English: "Listen, I am paying you $400.00 - FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS - to row me down this ditch of a river and set me up on fish. How about you take one last drag off that Camel non-filter and move this friggin' boat just a little bit closer to shore. I obviously haven't the zip on my double haul that you expect me to have. If I was Steve Mother-F@%king Rajeff, I wouldn't have hired you in the first place."

Common Bug Chucker: "Fish on!"

Standard English: "Look at me! Look at me! I hooked a fish! Get the camera! Get the net! Get the camera and the net, but be careful with my camera. It's not waterproof, and still has pictures of the kids' birthday party on it. If that camera gets wet and I lose those pictures my wife will divorce me before she murders me. They'll never find my body. Look at me! Look at me! I hooked a fish! Get the camera! Get the net!

Common Bug Chucker: "My rod broke."

Standard English: "As a consequence of my own careless neglect and/or inability to cast in such a way as to prevent the collision of 2.5 troy ounces of lead with the carbon fiber blank of my (insert brand name and brief description of fly rod),  I  (insert owner's full name to include middle initial)  have broken my fly rod. I hereby absolve the manufacturer of any culpability, which might otherwise be associated with the destruction of said rod. Furthermore, I pledge not to harangue - with an equally fantastic and false narrative of the rod's final moments - the minimum-wage fly shop employee who will assist me in the repair and/or replacement of my fully warrantied (insert brand name and brief description of fly rod).

Common Bug Chucker: "It's good just to be out."

Standard English: "F@%k fly fishing! I spend ... what ... somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000.00 on flies and gear, plus another $200.00 on a hotel and gas, and all I have to show for my investment is this f@%king sunburn and a couple dozen mosquito bites. F@%k these fish! Tomorrow, I go at 'em with dynamite and bleach." 

*** NOTE: In Steelheader Parlance (a dialect of Common Bug Chucker endemic to the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions) the above quote translates quite differently. "It's good just to be out" simply means, "I need a beer."

Common Bug Chucker: "While you're getting rigged up, I'm gonna' run down and check out the water."

Standard English: "You are a better fisherman than I am. As a matter of fact, you are a much better fisherman than I am. If you get to the water before I do - or even at the same time - there is no way I will catch the fish we both know calls this run home. So ... in order to give myself a fighting chance, I have arrived riverside with my rod already strung. While you looked off the bridge, I hid your rod tube under the van's bench seat and your wader belt in the center console. The time it takes you to arrange your gear should be all the time I need to get half a dozen drifts over that brown trout. Hopefully, six drifts will be all I need."

Common Bug Chucker: "Nice fish. Where'd ya' get him?"

Standard English: "They've not yet developed the metric by which we might measure my laziness. I have neither the time nor the desire to trudge through the mountains looking for water that holds fish like the one in your photograph. Instead, I'll ply you with the expensive IPA of your choice and several Slams from the Denny's breakfast menu in an attempt to beguile you and loosen your tongue. Once you've told me where you caught that fish, I will post GPS coordinates on the internet. In the process, I will completely destroy your faith in humanity."

Been Busy ...

Been busy lately - too busy to write anything of any substance that might be worth the time to read. The little bit of time I've had has been spent on the water ... hence the lazy photo dump.

Probably Knot

When I worked in a fly shop - a time in my life that is lately much on my mind - I was frequently asked mundane questions about the most mundane aspects of bug chuckin'. It was just the nature of the job. New fly fishers ask new fly fisher questions.

At times I found the questions tedious, but the people asking them were usually sincere and well intentioned so I always did what I could to offer my help. From time to time, I couldn't help myself and tried to have a little bit of fun with folks - usually the shop regulars who were used to some good natured ribbing.

My waders are leaking. How do I patch them?

I wouldn't know. Our shop's waders never leak. You should buy your next pair from me.

Are you a swinger or do you nymph for steelhead?

That's a conversation you need to have with your wife.

How long have you been fly fishing?

Eleven days. No ... twelve. Twelve days as of this morning.

Do you have a favorite knot for connecting  fly to tippet ... tippet to leader ... leader to line ...?

Probably Knot.

While I suppose it's possible that you've never heard of the Probably Knot, I can say with absolute certainty that you've used it from time to time. The Probably Knot is often the knot of choice for angling neophytes and experts alike. Sometimes, the Probably Knot is the only knot a fisherman knows how to tie. The Probably Knot is neither a Bimini Twist nor a Blood Knot. It's not a Palomar or Perfection. It's not an Albright or an Improved Clinch, and it sure as hell isn't a Surgeon's Loop. It's none of these, but at different times it steals bits and pieces from each.

The Probably Knot is the knot we tie when we're in the final three hundred yards of a twelve hour float. It's the knot we use when we can't control our excitement at the oversized snout slowly sucking spinners from a foam line. It's the knot we're most likely to tie just moments before stinging the largest fish of our lives. It's almost invariably the knot we use when we blink into the rapidly darkening sky as we try desperately to tie on a #18 trusty-rusty before the light fails completely. The Probably Knot is the knot we're most likely to use at both the dawn and dusk of our angling lives.

What's best about the Probably Knot is that it doesn't derive it's strength so much from the principles of chemistry or the laws of physics as it does from an angler's hope. Hope may not have 100% breaking strength, but as Emily Dickinson once penned, "Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul."

In.

The.

Soul.

The strength of the Probably Knot comes from the soul - from an angler's faith that the knot will work when the angler needs it to work. Wars have been fought and won - whole nations have been conquered by faith. If given a choice between fluorocarbon and faith, I'll take faith every time.

But for those of you for whom faith is never enough ...

Dear River ... Nevermind

Dear River,

Never mind my last post. I was out of my mind when I wrote that letter. Someone must have slipped me some bath salts or a badger tranquilizer. We're fine. In fact, we're great.

I love you Baby,

Rusty

Dear River

Dear River,

Hey. We need to talk.

No.

Wait.

Scratch that.

We don't need to talk. I need to talk. You need to listen.

We've been together for a long time now; this season marks 21 years. When we first met, you were a mystery - nothing more than a faint blue line winding its way across a forgotten page in my Gazetteer. I was eager and full of energy, and you were the undiscovered country - an unknown whisper of a trout stream in an otherwise forgotten corner of my world. I had heard whispers - of course. Old men spoke of you quietly and with a gleam of fond remembrance in their eyes. "If only I were still your age," they'd say. And the stories they told - they were too fantastic to believe. They were too fantastic to be true.

But they were true. Every story. Every time. They were true. You were every bit the river those old men said you were. Nearly a quarter of a century has passed, and I'm still wading your runs; our history only makes more difficult those things I have to say.

I never thought the day would come; I can't believe I have to say this, but I think we need some time apart. I want to say, "it isn't you ... it's me" but that's just not true. The truth is that it's you - entirely you. For years you were constant as the north star, a friend whenever I needed a friend, a confidant who helped me soldier through my worst moments of worry and regret. You made me feel loved, but something is different. Something small but significant has changed. You're not the same river with whom I fell so desperately in love all those years ago. It's like I don't know you anymore - if ever I did.

There was a time when I knew - with absolute certainty - that the first week of May meant fiddle-head ferns and a tremendous hendrickson hatch. Fish would rise - big fish - with the carelessness born of a long winter, and I would leave the river every evening having been reminded that I am a man. After the hendicksons were sulphurs, and after the sulphurs came drakes, olives, and white flies. Every hatch - every fish - was an assurance that you loved me the way that I loved you.

And as much as it pains me to say, it's over, isn't it? Seems I just don't know anything anymore. Last year, the hendricksons came in March. March? Really? This year the hendricksons have been sparse at best and entirely absent at worst. Why?

How could you so easily discard my favorite hatch? You must know that the first hatch of the year is always the best hatch of the year. Was it deliberate? Did you want it to cut? Did you want it to hurt? It did.

So that is why - as much as anything else - I've decided that we need a break from each other. You need time to become whomever it is you're becoming, and I need a chance to explore other corners of the world. Please don't misunderstand. I love you. I will always love you, but I am afraid that I cannot go on loving you if things continue as they are. Maybe after we've spent some time apart we'll discover that what we really need is each other. I hope so. I do.

Affectionately,

Rusty

Project Healing Waters ESPN

Not much to say really ... a good organization doing good - and necessary - work.

How Much Wood?

Day 117 of the Snowpocalypse witnessed me trudging across the wintry landscape (80 degrees just two days ago and five inches of frozen misery in my driveway this morning) looking for those trout that might have sense enough to abandon the main river's swollen currents and run into its less torrential tributaries. Two hours into my foray I realized my error: trout haven't any sense. Neither have I ... apparently. I should have stayed home and watched re-runs of Murder She Wrote on the Hallmark channel.

But I didn't stay home. I went fishing.

So what do we angling optimists do when the river gods hand us a basket full of lemons? We wander aimlessly through the woods looking for something, anything that might help us repair our fragile male egos.

I didn't find anything like that - no bikini clad Scandinavians whose Jeep was stuck in the mud - but I did find a woodchuck.

Staring contest ... starting ... now!

The groundhog was working rather assiduously on widening what I assume to be one of the entrances to his burrow. He disappeared as I approached, but on a hunch I set up my camera to record the door to his man-cave, and I wandered off long enough to let him get into trouble.

This is what I found when I returned (I don't think he quite knew what to make of the DSLR looming over him so oppressively) ...

My Opening Day

Here in New York, the opening day of trout season comes on the first of April. For many Empire State bug-chuckers, opening day signifies the end of a frozen season and relief from a particularly nasty strain of the shack-nasties. My life (read: my wife) required me to be elsewhere on opening day, but that didn't stop a close friend and fishing buddy (read: a real son-of-a-bitch) from doing his best to make me jealous via text messages and email.

Photo: Adam Kettering

For five days I stewed over those messages. When finally I found myself stream side (read: my wife granted me a 1/2 day pass) the season had been open for nearly a week, and even the smallest streams were spilling their banks. I gave it a sincere effort, but the fish - no doubt too busy dodging rolling boulders and avoiding falling trees - did not cooperate. Most of the day I walked the woods with a camera in hand.

And in the course of my wandering I found something very interesting; something I've somehow missed in twenty years of strolling through that little patch of woods.

The inscription reads, "MIKE KANE / Killed here by / unknown assassins / July 26, 1930." I find it difficult to imagine that for twenty years I've walked those river banks in the shadow of a murder. A little digging on the Google machine revealed that Kane's killers were eventually caught - six years after his body was discovered in that spot by the stream.

Several years ago, I came across another interesting piece of history only a quarter-mile from the site of Kane's assassination. My best guess is that it was the foundation of a home or perhaps a root cellar. Whatever it was, all that remains are four walls of stacked stone. With the exception of some moss and a few trees growing up through the center, I imagine those walls today look much as they did a hundred or more years ago.

When I think of all the history tucked quietly into that little valley I find myself wondering what I've likely missed. Too often, I don't look away from the water. Too often, I don't take the time necessary to explore the river's history or to appreciate my part in that story. Maybe when I next go fishing I'll do a little more than just go fishing. Maybe I'll go for a walk, or maybe I'll just sit on the bank and think. Maybe I'll discover some of the river's history, or if I am very lucky, maybe I'll make some history of my own.

Daydreaming

My fingers tap heavily on the desk like a metronome counting time for an elegy that only I can hear. I stare out my classroom's solitary window - a post-modern monstrosity, which was no doubt designed for a prison before it was diverted to my school. With the open-mouthed vacancy of a Hindu cow, I watch snow fall heavily in the courtyard beyond the glass.

I cannot help my blank expression. I've had enough of winter, and the nor'easter blowing outside has me wondering if I've done something to anger the river gods. Clearly they're angry. Why else would they conspire with the weather gods to trap me here, at the frozen center of Dante's Inferno. I should be off chasing steelhead or trout.

Two days ago, the air tasted of spring, but today the wind wrestles violently with itself, conjuring little cyclones of sleet and ice that battle each other in the square. Mr. Roe's greenhouse - built by last year's departing seniors to teach this year's incoming freshmen the value of all things green - rattles and shakes, its spring hinged door flapping open and slamming shut in time with my finger tapping. I'd be surprised if it survives until April. I'd be surprised if I survive until April.

Today's study hall is overfull. I've been assigned 39 students this semester, but there are only 27 desks in my classroom. Typical. Students squat where they can; some stand while others recline on the floor. To my front sits a young woman and her boyfriend. The boy wears a Volcom t-shirt and what I believe to be his sister's jeans; he smells strongly of menthol cigarettes and unwashed nether parts.

I smile and nod when the girl turns to look at me, but in my mind I'm screaming, "Dear God! Can't you smell it?". Of course, the stench may not belong solely to the boy. Perhaps the girl smells of Newports and the boyfriend of body funk. Perhaps their unpleasant, pubescent aromas have mingled like explosive binary chemicals, and in doing so formed an odor more repulsive than either could achieve if left alone.

Regardless, the wintry mix outside prevents me from opening my classroom's double paned porthole to better ventilate the too small space, so I turn on my fan and quietly hide from the stink in the vortex created by the blades. Kids are great; they're talented, insightful, and uninhibited in ways that adults simply are not, but there's a steep learning curve when it comes to hygiene that many find difficult to master. Some don't even care to try.

)

Before long, my mind - if not my nose - is quieted by the gentle thrum of the fan's motor. With my gag reflex momentarily suppressed, I drift off to happier times.

In the space of a moment, winter has given way to summer, and I'm no longer a teacher. The world is green and warm; everything is fresh and new - as it would be when seen through young eyes. I'm six years old, younger by a year than my own three children, and my father (who was then younger by a decade than I am now) has only just given me my first fly rod. We're together, dad and I, each of us in cut-off jeans and running shoes and standing in one of the Battenkill's shallow riffles. One quarter mile above us is Shushan's covered bridge.

My father, a dedicated bait fisherman, drifts his nightcrawler through the deepest part of the slot. I stand upstream of dad - as I always did when I was a boy - and whip the fly line back and forth as he had shown me only moments before. Throughout the morning, I managed a handful of casts to four or five yards, but for the most part the line would fall at my feet or wrap itself like a hungry python around the tip of the rod. When the line did stretch out in imitation of an adequate cast, the current would grab its thick PVC belly and sweep leader and fly at a sprinter's pace down through the head of the run. Mending was beyond this particular first grader, which meant the chances of hooking a fish were miniscule. This only made the brown's splashy take all the more remarkable.

"Dad?"

"Wrapped around the pole again?"

"I think I have one."

"No you don't."

"I think I do."

"Just keep casting."

"I can't. The line is stuck in the water."

"Stuck?"

And then the scene changes. I'm a grown man, albeit a younger, less rotund man than I am today. It's a Tuesday in mid June, and while I should be at work - I am not. I've played hooky from my classroom, and later in the evening I will be absent from graduate school. As late as it is in the school year, my students are checked-out, their minds on summer vacation. They won't even know I'm gone. Professor Kelsh and research studies will just have to wait. Today is a mental health day; one that I have been desperately needing. Today, I am neither student nor teacher.

The day is beautiful in the way late spring days so often are: a brilliant sun climbs high in the cloudless sky, the water is a deep aquamarine that reflects the sun in its riffles, and the air carries the scent of blooming cornflower and coreopsis. Unfortunately, beautiful days are sometimes harbingers of poor fishing, and such has been the case throughout the morning. My partner and I had a few half-hearted nips as we nymphed through run, but as we stepped away from the tailout we had nothing to show for our efforts.

"I think I'll head up top and give it another go. I know there's fish there, and I'm sure I can get one of them to take."

"Alright, I might switch over to a sinking line and try the slot down below."

"Give a yell if you zip one."

"Will do."

I cross the river in the shallowest portion of the tailout, and when I reach the far bank, I do as I said I would and switch over to a 200 grain sinker. My fly choice is simple: a #4 woolly bugger with olive hackle and a barred yellow tail - one of my favorites on this river. On my first cast, the line slips free of my off hand, and my double haul becomes an underpowered single that ends with leader and fly wrapped around the rod's tip. It's been twenty odd years since I caught that first brown, and my casting hasn't improved at all.

Fifteen minutes and four feet of tippet later, I'm again false casting. This time, I remember to hold onto the running line; the forward stroke and the second haul are timed as they should be, and everything is right in the world. The line slides through the guides with a pleasing "Pfffffffttttt," and the rod jumps a little as weight of the shooting head pulls against the reel. I watch the fly turn over the leader, the tuft of yellow marabou touches the surface, and the water erupts in a turquoise explosion. For a moment, I'm convinced a bobcat or shetland pony has jumped into the pool. I look to my reel, vaguely aware of an unfamiliar screech coming from its inner workings. When my eyes finally focus on the freely spinning spool, I witness a sight that until that moment I had only ever read about: backing - white as a sucker's belly - stealing away from the reel like a falcon diving on a hare.

Again, the scene changes, but this time I'm not looking back; I'm dreaming forward. And in my dream I see that next steelhead trip, which is likely to be the last for the year. I see the first day of trout season and the hendricksons that will soon drift in circles through the eddies of the Flats, the Ball Field, and The Springhole. I see snouts poking through the surface of the Delaware and ice cold beer and luke warm scrambled eggs served on the bow of Shawn's drift boat. I see cruising carp and slashing pike. I see bowfin and gar, brook trout and sunfish. I see the shadow of a musky, and the whisper of a laker. I see all the promise of a year on the water.

The bell rings, and it's all I can do to wade out from under the stupor. I look up from my daydream to find the room empty of students; the odor that accompanied them seems to have followed them out the door. I sigh heavily, knowing I have to put my dreams on hold for a while. In minutes, twenty-four young men and women will cross the threshold separating the chaos of the hallway from the tranquility of my little corner of the world. Some of those young people will need my attention.

Some will almost certainly want to spend the class daydreaming, and today - I think I'll let them.

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.