The Drive Home

A road trip gets all the cards on the table. The usual hardships of getting out early, getting in late, getting lost, getting rained on, getting skunked, and all the other things you can get tend to reveal character in a matter of days. Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.

                                                                        John Gierach, The View from Rat Lake

            I have always loved road trips. It started with drives from Southern California across the Arizona and New Mexico deserts in July and August in the mid-1960s to visit my grandparents. My parents, three sisters and me would pile into a Buick or Bonneville and make our way with the obligatory stop at a Best Western or Motel 6, depending on how the finances were shaping up. If we drove straight through without a motel stop, that was a pretty good sign that money was tight. We did it all: Flat tires, gushing radiators, cracked head caskets and, of course, car sickness. My mother dealt with the latter by doping us with Dramamine.

            There was the obligatory “hamburger, french fries and a milk shake,” which was pretty much the only food I ordered at any dining establishment until I was about fourteen. Around then, I took the bold step of trying pizza. And, of course, there was music. My sisters would sing and harmonize while my mother sang along sweetly, if very quietly.

            By the time I could drive, the die was cast and I was routinely planning the next driving adventure. The drive from Los Angeles to the Rockies to explore colleges with two of my best friends in the dead of winter during my senior year of high school could be a thrilling novella in and of itself. My two-month odyssey around the country (with a bit of Canada) after college with one of the same friends remains etched in my memory as among the most carefree times of my life.

            In the years since, I have done road trips with my own family as well as solo, shorter trips. While the former are more memorable, the latter usually involved some fishing. Sometimes those fishing trips were only overnight, sometimes they were for a few days and nights. Most of them happened in Colorado, and then Alaska.  Thanks to a very patient wife, there were a lot of them.

            A few years ago, J said, “You know, we really need to do some Western U.S. fishing road trips.” Now, J and I have fished a lot of different places together over the last thirty years and, from time to time, we had to do some driving to get where we were going. But the driving was always incidental to the other completely necessary transportation we had to take to get to where we were going. We never talked in terms of the driving being a significant feature of the trip—only the fishing.

            J was right. We’re blessed to live in a part of the country that has great trout streams sprinkled around within a thousand mile radius. We could do a trip every summer for the next fifteen years and not come close to covering them all…and never have to endure jet lag.

            So, a few years ago, we made a start. We had mixed fishing results but loads of fun. Well, there was the time that J slipped in a high mountain creek after a great day of fishing and I had to put his wading boot on for him the rest of the week since he couldn’t bend his leg. But he assured me he was fine. “Just put the *&%! boot on and let’s go fishing.” J has always been tougher than me.

            This year, I started the summer with a fishing road trip and finished it with another trip. In late May, J and I set out for Grey Reef near Casper, Wyoming. But not together. In general, I am the organizer and planner for our trips because, well, I am better at that than J. This year though, despite my best efforts, J managed to book another trip the week following our road trip which involved him getting on a plane in Denver the morning after our last day. Without belaboring the details, this necessitated two vehicles rather than one. By midday, J was apologizing profusely for our inability to sit in one vehicle and solve the world problems that we would forget about the moment we strung up our fly rods and made the first cast.

            Sure enough, once we were fishing Grey Reef, all logistical snafus were forgotten. We had two peculiar days of fishing. Normally, J and I tend to have fairly comparable results. He is a better caster than me but I see flies and fish better, largely because J is color blind and I am not. On Grey Reef, J caught at least a dozen more fish than me the first day, but then I caught at least a dozen more than him the second day. We both know this happens sometimes and we wouldn’t still be fishing together after all these years if either of us pouted about it, but it does introduce an element of awkwardness as the prolific fisherman lamely tries to assure the other that he’s still a very good fisherman and there are just days like this and blah, blah, blah….

            We moved on to the Big Horn in Montana. J and I have fished the Big Horn before but were excited to get out with a guide who some Black Hills friends recommended. He turned out to be very knowledgeable as well as personable. The weather, however, was not as appealing. The first morning Biblical amounts of rain descended on us. We gamely tried to fish through it but it was very slow going. By noon, the jacket that J mistook for a rain coat was providing no protection and he sat shivering in the front of the boat for about an hour before saying “I really need to get out and go warm up.” As I said, J is a lot tougher than me, so this was roughly akin to Donald Trump saying, “I may have lost that election.”

            We did go warm up and the rain slackened enough to allow for some decent fishing that afternoon. The next morning was still slow when J had to get in his truck and head for Denver to catch his plane the next morning. Of course, the fishing in the afternoon after he left was nothing short of spectacular. I had fun, but the drive home would have been much better if J and I were regaling each other with our assumed brilliance when we were landing fish after fish just hours earlier.

            I ended the summer with a road trip with my son, J.C. As I have written before, J.C. has become a good fisherman. He has honed the most important trait for successful fly fishing which is perseverance, which is not the same as robotically flogging the water until the sun goes down. It is the ability to keep studying the fish, the flies, the water and everything else that is going on and changing as you fish. Those who persevere eventually find the right combination and catch fish.

            We drove to Southern Colorado where J.C. had scouted some locations the summer before on his way back from a wedding in New Mexico. We set out from Denver with Jessica by the Allman Brothers blaring through the truck speakers (The McKims start all their road trips with Jessica--as tradition goes, it’s not going to threaten turkey at Thanksgiving or Christmas trees, but, it’s our thing).

            We fished the Rio Grande the first day. We hiked a few miles to get to the water we wanted to try out and the effort turned out to be worth it. We didn’t catch loads of fish but we caught enough fish several different ways, which, for a fly fisherman, is about as good as it gets. It was pretty and, remarkably, we saw no one else all day.

            Then came the type of mistake that almost always afflicts every road trip. Sometimes it can rob the trip of all its potential. Other times, it leads to a lot of laughs on the path to setting things back on course. Fortunately, this was predominantly the latter. Suffice it to say that when Plan A proved unfeasible due to low water levels, I conceived Plan B, and we drove three hours to fish a river…that was not the river I was thinking of. It was in a beautiful valley and was beautiful water. And we got skunked.

            I will never be the featured fisherman on a Saturday morning fly fishing show but I can safely say it is very rare for me to get skunked. J.C. did a little better getting a few half-hearted splashes at a dry fly but we ultimately hiked out shaking our heads and dreading the two hour drive still ahead of us. Thankfully, J.C. is still relatively young and intrepid and was willing to drive. We managed to find some mediocre Mexican food on the Sunday before Labor Day and at least had the pleasure of a bed after two nights of camping out.

            Our last day started slow on a small creek but picked up nicely by late morning. We fished together taking turns with two rods—one strung to throw dries into shallow riffles and one strung to throw streamers into deep cutbanks and bends in the river. We knew we needed to get on the road early to compete with Labor Day traffic and so that J.C. might get some sleep before returning to work the next day. But we probably stayed an hour later than we should have because, well, we were catching fish.

            Nonetheless, we did leave earlier than we would have if we had nowhere to be. The hike out was difficult for the third day in a row, but our spirits were good because the effort seemed roughly equal to the pleasure. We chatted a little about the fishing but soon were consumed with trying to navigate our way back into Denver by the most efficient route. I lived in the Denver area for twenty years so it was remarkable that our efforts led us to two roads that I had never traveled before.

            As I make my way through another Wyoming winter, I will look back fondly at my summer road trips with one of my best friends and my son. And, if history is a guide, I will start planning the next road trip. As I plan, the lessons I will take from this year will be one I already knew, and one that I probably knew, but had forgotten.

            First, notwithstanding droughts and threats of global calamity, there is a lot of water to fish in the West. Patience is usually rewarded. But, occasionally not, and those are the days that separate the passionate from the mildly interested.

            Second, never sell the drive home short. It’s the part of the story that is hardest to write, coming as it does after the climax.  It’s where the insights, laughs and the memories that are worth incubating are shared, where the successes start their journey to legend and the failures begin the process of moving from tragedy to comedy.

            Getting safely home from a road trip is always a blessing. But, done well, the drive home is why you will turn off the TV, throw the rods in the bed of the pickup and do it all again next year. Not because you have to catch fish, but because you have to share a road and a river with someone who appreciates the road and the river as much as you. In ten years, your companion will readily confirm that it was as wonderful as you remember. Whether it really was or not.

J

J.C.

Hopper and Mouse Fishing: Communing with Killers

My first fifty-five years were spent living in cities. Some of my more cosmopolitan friends would not include my six years in Anchorage, but Anchorage is to Alaska as Mexico City is to Mexico. There’s nothing else close to it in terms of size. Heck, it has two Costcos. Anyway, Los Angeles, Denver, Houston and London definitely meet the relevant criteria, so I won’t quibble if you want to hold Anchorage against me.

The point is that, like 80% to 90% of city dwellers everywhere, I spent a lot of time professing my longing to be outdoors “communing with nature.” I think I can safely say that I was among the 10% or 20% that actually did something about it. For two or three weeks a year, as vacation benefits and weekend commitments would allow, I got out and fished, hiked and “communed.” Or, at least I thought I did since I was never entirely sure of the steps involved in “communing” which is defined as “being in intimate communication or rapport.” Nonetheless, after fifty-five years I concluded that what I wanted more than anything else in retirement was to live in the country so that my wife and I could “commune” with nature more regularly.

The good news is we were blessed to find a place that friends and family enjoy coming to visit as their vacation benefits and weekend commitments allow. We love where we live and love hosting our guests. They typically drive off content after, in so many words, advising us of how great it was to “commune” with nature.

So, no matter what I say after this, don’t get me wrong, life is good.

With each passing season, however, I have a stronger sense of being party to, as a former President liked to say, a hoax. My study looks out at a pastoral scene of swaying grass or golden leaves or sparkling snow as the season dictates. Out the back windows I can watch the creek roll on interminably with trout dimpling the water, mink and muskrats cavorting, osprey and eagles cruising and Blue Heron fishing. Out the front, white tail deer and wild turkey graze on acorns, apples and whatever else the trees and bushes bestow upon them. “Idyllic” is a word that frequently drifts up and down this canyon.

In small helpings, this is nature as most of us envision it. In the large helpings I am privileged to consume now, if I am honest, it is a horror show of mayhem, death and destruction.

The osprey and eagles don’t just soar gracefully overhead, but regularly seize unwitting small animals like fish and squirrels and voles and snakes and fly away with them in their talons that they then use to rip their catch into bite size pieces. Our small dog was in danger of such a fate but was saved thanks to the intervention of our large dog. Since that day, they never get far from each other.

One night, I watched off and on from 6:00 in the evening until 6:00 the next morning as an owl that looked (as a neighbor put it) like a flying shoebox methodically sat across the creek from me and stripped a muskrat down to the bone with violent jerks of its beak. Sitting 50 yards away staring through binoculars I was still nervous and ready to bolt for the back door in case I was next.

The Blue Heron are marvelous fishers. They can remain motionless far better than any of the humans I have tried to keep still while fishing. But rather than presenting their fly or bait with finesse, their inertness is broken with a vicious stabbing of their beak that has to be a terrifying shock to the fish, just before the life is squeezed out of it. 

The muskrat and mink are adorable…until they meet and the mink crushes the back of the muskrat’s skull before dining on it. You can almost hear the mink saying “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

The deer and turkey are the essence of “communing” themselves, until you happen upon their remains littered in the tall grass or the shade of a tree or rock where the mountain lion that seized them made camp. “Back away slowly” is good advice that is almost impossible to follow in these instances.

None of this begins to touch the tenacity of the plants and insects. The whole “survival of the fittest” thing plays out every day here in the place we call “nature.” I have yet to find a pacifist in the whole lot.

My beloved trout are no exception. As I learned to fly fish, Stan Spangler instilled in me the notion that there is nothing more satisfying than presenting a small dry fly well and watching the nose of a rainbow barely disturb the surface as it slurps the fly and descends again, having burned the minimum number of calories possible in the process. I still relish those catches.

I have concluded over the years, however, that trout do not succeed in their quest to be the “fittest” by slurping mayflies day in, day out. To take things to the next level, they eventually have to graduate to meals of greater substance. In short, they need blood and protein.

From the first time Stan showed me how to chuck a streamer, I knew that the fly was intended to mimic a crippled minnow. For the most part, the action happened below the surface and I was only a party to the jolt of the fly line that told me it was time to set the hook. It was great fun if you didn’t think too hard about what the fish was trying to accomplish.

Then J went to Alaska and came back telling me of how he fished mouse patterns and, shockingly, said it was the most fun he ever had with a fly rod. That did not seem particularly genteel to me until I tried it about a decade later and, I am a little abashed to admit, had as much fun I ever had with a fly rod.

I stood in a creek a few years ago and looked down to find a two foot long brown trout nestled up against my wading boot. It was in shallow water and did not move when I lifted my boot. That was when I noticed that its midsection bore the perfect shape of a small muskrat. Much like me after devouring a whole pizza, movement was simply not an option. I could almost see the plea for a Pepsid in its eyes. But I was still grateful to have missed the carnage as it undoubtedly drowned the muskrat before it could return to its den.

Then there are the terrestrial flies like grasshoppers and dragon flies that large trout will explode out of the water to chase, knowing that success will more than offset the calories burned. This summer started out very wet leading me to believe that it would be a weak hopper season, since I usually associate hoppers with dry conditions. But, the lack of rain the last month dried things out enough to cause me to break out the hopper flies as I watched the trout exert themselves to an extent rare on our placid little spring creek. The gurgling of the flowing water is interrupted only by the splashes of trout intent on murder. Well, that, and my laughter as I egg them on. And then I release them so they can continue their homicidal tendencies.

We tend to put ourselves at the center of nature. We think of ourselves as all that stands between the destruction or preservation of the great outdoors. But as I watch “nature” continually do anything but “commune” among itself or with me, I have come to appreciate that my fly rod and I are bit players in a drama/comedy where I will never be privy to the full script. More importantly, my immersion in “nature” has strengthened my passion for human vs. natural rights. To paraphrase Timothy Keller in The Reason for God, we do not hold “animals guilty for violating the rights of other animals.” If we truly are ruled by natural law and nothing else, then there is no reason to hold us guilty for violating the rights of other humans.

My wife and I continue to enjoy the beauty of nature with our family and friends, delighting in both its order and its chaos. But we don’t commune. We are privileged to watch nature do what it has to do to exist, and would still do if we had never been born. Then we take those lessons and pray that, as humans, we strive to “commune” with one another.

The View from the Study…

Hopper fishing

Presentation vs. Choice: Sons & Fathers

In Alaska: “It Gets Down in your Soul” last year, I mentioned that I would be going back this year with my sons. I did. This was the year I turned 60. I decided that, more than anything, I wanted to fish with my sons in Alaska at one of my favorite spots.

            My wife and I often reflect on how blessed we are to have two children that presented us with few challenges. They got along with each other to an absurd extent, they showed up for school, got the grades that were expected, participated in school and family activities without drama, excelled at what they liked and never groused when their parents declared their home a Nintendo/video game-free zone. They had their moments like any kid does, but they were remarkably infrequent. In short, we have always enjoyed their company.

            But, as I approached 60, I had this nagging feeling of unfinished business when it came to fly fishing. I took both boys fishing growing up, to be sure. But my efforts were often clumsy.  I am not sure why this was but I suspect it was because the sport was too dear to me to be anything less than beloved. I also vaguely understood that the pressures of career and life imposed an artificial urgency on catching fish. That urgency was largely the result of striving to “maximize” the moment rather than enjoy the moment, because I sensed the moment would be brief. It’s the lesson every parent learns later than they wish they did.

            My oldest son (as tends to be the lot of oldest sons) got the “I love this sport and you must love it too!” approach from me. I signed him up for fly fishing lessons at the fly shop that I frequented when the owner said he’d let JC attend for free if I’d help him out on “graduation day” when he took all the students out on the water for the last lesson (that was the day I figured out I would never make it as a guide).

            JC is blessed with an innate wisdom that he usually communicates only after he is confident of its relevance. He never said the words but, by the time he finished the four session class (which he participated in with some interest but not what I would call passion), I realized that he seemed to be perplexed by a father that farmed out teaching his son to fly fish to the local fly shop. I decided to rectify that error by gracing JC with personal lessons from his father. As I said, I probably was not cut out to be a guide so the personal instruction soon failed as well. We went back to baseball and hiking and sharing things where I could keep my zeal in check.

That is not to say my sons and I did not fish after that. We did, but I left the choice to them of spinning rod or fly rod and gave them opportunities for choice rather than prescriptions for happiness on the water. In this way, my younger son picked up a fly rod.

After my hapless attempts with JC, I purposely did not discuss fly fishing with Cal. When our family lived in Alaska, J and I took JC and Cal on a 5 day float trip. The guide set them up with spinning rods while J and I fly fished. The boys caught a lot of fish and we had a great time. The last evening, however, I came back to camp after exploring a back channel. The guide was getting some dinner going and commented “That little guy of yours can really cast the fly rod.”

I said, “Yeah, JC took some lessons so he knows a bit about it.”

The guide looked at me and replied, “Nah, JC is with J. I mean Cal. He’s just around the bend.”

Cal was about 13 at the time. He had not quite hit the growth spurt that would come in the months to follow. I walked upstream a few hundred yards and saw him casting the fly rod with the late day sun glimmering on the water. I would say I wish that iPhones existed then so I could have taken a picture but I am glad they didn’t because the image could never match what remains in my head.

“Cal, where did you learn how to do that?”

He laughed. “Oh, just watching you and J and when you gave JC lessons.”

I forgot that when I would take JC out to fish, his little brother was usually with us waiting obediently at the edge of the water. I stifled my enthusiasm and just offered, “Well, let me know if you want to do more of that sometime.”

So, the boys and I fished from time to time and had fun but fly fishing was not a prominent feature. I proceeded to enjoy the balance of their childhoods as much or more than they did as they grew into men of depth with roughly equal measures of kindness and humor.

Part of what allowed me to not push fly fishing further with my sons was that I came to understand that fly fishing had the unique effect (along with my wife) of keeping me in balance when life was trying to knock me off my feet. My sons didn’t need that from fishing. They needed that from me. So while we could speak from common ground on hiking, baseball, music, movies, books, tennis, skiing, traveling, their mother and any number of other things we enjoyed and even loved, fishing was harder for me to share in a way that preserved its sanctity for me but kept it wholly approachable for them.

Five years ago, my wife and I moved to Wyoming. JC and I started backpacking again but with him leading rather than me. As it has always been with me when it comes to backpacking, there has to be fishing involved. JC found a series of hikes over 3 or 4 summers that got us well into the backcountry and where we could catch fish. Suddenly, he was asking questions about flies and techniques and he was fishing. He’s learning his home waters and is a few fly rods into a burgeoning collection. He’s an analytical sort so he’s becoming a student of the sport which is all any decent fly fisherperson can hope to be. None of us are masters or even teachers, as I so clearly demonstrated in JC’s youth.  We’re just students sharing our class notes which I now enjoy doing with JC unburdened by my expectations of what fly fishing can do for him or me, but content in what it does for us.

Cal lived with us for 4 or 5 months after we moved to Wyoming. Living on a creek with your retired parents and no one else around is a great way to take up fly fishing. Cal got very good at casting in those months so tends to be able to place the fly better than people who have been doing this for years, including me.

In the old argument of what matters most, fly presentation or fly choice, Cal will likely end up a presentation guy, JC a choice guy.

As the pictures below show, this year we shared our love for fly fishing together in Alaska. It was not just because Alaska is an easy place to fall in love with fly fishing but because it’s where the three of us started the process that fathers and sons go through when they head for the same destination by different routes. At 60 years old, as with so many other things over the years, I arrived at common ground with my sons regarding fly fishing. I think it took longer than it did with other things because, for me, somehow, it mattered more. And, as it goes with fathers and sons, it had more to do with what they taught me about me than with anything I could have ever taught them.

Cal caught the most fish including a whole lot of silver salmon.

JC caught the fish that all three of us wanted most, a 27 inch rainbow. A flesh fly more nudged than stripped got this beauty to wander over and dine. Almost politely.

But I can still catch a fish or two here and there.

My boys and me.

COVID, Fly Fishing and the Dangers of Addiction

One year ago, when COVID 19 became and caused all the rage, like everyone else I spent the first few weeks huddled in my home scanning the internet to learn about all the ways the virus could hunt me down and kill me and my loved ones. By late March it became clear that as long as I kept my distance, I should be pretty safe, particularly if I was outdoors. By April conventional wisdom was that the virus was most dangerous to the elderly and people with respiratory or other serious conditions. I was neither, although “elderly” looms on the horizon.

It was somewhere in the early spring when I realized, “I’ve been training for this moment my entire life.” As a red-headed, pasty white kid growing up minutes from the beach in Southern California, joining my friends in the sun and surf was not really an option. So I went with my family to the High Sierra and learned to fish. As my father learned to backpack, he took me along. Backpacking was not really my thing but, being astute, my father grasped that I would accompany him over any number of grueling mountain passes if there was the promise of trout on the other side. I was a spin fisherboy in those days. My fishing “finishing” was completed when Stan Spangler put a fly rod in my hand when I was a young lawyer.

So, my Dad and Stan were the building blocks of my passion for fishing. Other than a few lost years in law school in Wyoming and some skimpy years when I lived in London, I have always fished. Why I wasn’t fishing in Wyoming during law school and sampling the famous trout streams in the UK I can only ascribe to a temporary bout of insanity.

Before I retired, I admit to spending a lot of time daydreaming about all the fishing I would do when my working days were through. I have realized that dream over the last five years. But, unexpectedly, COVID appeared and made fishing not just one of several activities I enjoy, but the most socially responsible activity I could do. For the first time in my life, fishing was not just something I could do to escape work stress or kill some free time, it was the only thing to do.  

I was not alone in my realization. Many of my usual haunts were suddenly occupied with people who clearly said to their bosses, “You mean I can work from anywhere as long as I stay away from the office?”

I laughed at a Jason Gay column in the Wall Street Journal late last year when he said,

  “This was a year of family fishing. I’d resisted it all my life—my late father loved to fish, and I couldn’t be bothered. But now my seven year old son is crazy for it, and my father is up there somewhere laughing. I grew to love the chase, and the disconnect of the natural world. Fish don’t know it’s 2020. I don’t even think fish watch cable news.”

Even with all the new weekday fishermen and fisherwomen, I have a ready store of “secret fishing spots” so, with a bit of creativity, I started fishing last spring and fished hard though the summer and fall. The only time I tempted fate was a trip to Alaska in September. Otherwise, I fished in Wyoming and South Dakota, exploring new water and pursuing a PhD in waters close to home. And I got good. Really good. I began to notice that I was catching “the fish of a lifetime” almost every time I went out. At some point in the early fall I realized that I was, incredibly, becoming blasé about fishing.

This was troubling because I have a long history of working at jobs, hobbies, knowledge, etc. to the point where I can claim competence but then move on to the next thing. Fishing has always been the impervious exception to my pattern of pulling up short of mastery. There is something about the problem solving involved in catching a fish coupled with the beautiful places that trout and salmon hang out that has never failed to fascinate and leave me wanting more.

In short, I was very concerned about not needing to fish.

My father-in-law was a dedicated smoker for most of his life. For the first several years that I knew him, I do not recall him going for longer than a half hour without a cigar (or occasionally a cigarette) in his mouth. Quitting smoking was brusquely dismissed whenever it came up. One New Year’s Eve, however, after a long-time colleague and fellow smoker died at a young age of a heart attack, my father-in-law quit smoking “cold turkey” (he did puff away on a cigar right up to the stroke of midnight). He never touched another cigar or cigarette. It was one of most amazing feats of willpower I have ever witnessed.

I don’t know what the opposite of cold turkey is but I became anxious that my addiction to fishing had abated due to my COVID-induced fishing binge and my suspicion that I had, unwittingly, mastered fly fishing. Rather than going without, I may have overdosed.

Then, one day in late October, I went to one of my favorite stretches of water. The creek is reliably uninhabited by anything other than me and a lot of large, healthy trout. I fished all day. I switched flies a couple dozen times. I dredged nymphs. I chunked streamers. I floated dries. I flung dries with droppers. Despite the water almost boiling with rising trout, I did not catch a thing.

I was filled with joy and gratitude. Once again, I was hopelessly obsessed with trout, how to catch them and reveling in my mediocrity.

Other than politicians and the media, I think it’s safe to say most of us are not going to miss COVID. We will miss the discoveries we have shared such as our appreciation for just what extraordinary people most health care workers are and how much we admire their courage; how “technology” became a real thing rather than just a “market sector” as we watched big, bad, evil corporations like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson save our lives with vaccines in a timeframe that has left even the most cynical blinking in disbelief; and how much the simple act of a hug became one of our most coveted dreams.

These are big things for which we should be thankful. They are things that get me misty when I contemplate them and how God can take anything, even COVID, and help us understand what is good about our lives.

For me, there will probably never be a year where I will fish as much as I did in 2020. But, it won’t be for a lack of desire. That’s a small thing I will give thanks for when I remember COVID.

A 2020 Trout

Alaska: "It Gets Down in Your Soul"

At the end of my first trip in 1999, I looked at J and said “Alaska is like the deepest breath I’ve ever drawn.”     

Little did I know at that point that I would later get to live in Alaska for six years and travel back several times after that. In 1999 I figured I had just completed the trip of a lifetime. And I had. I’ve completed that same trip over and over since and I never grow tired of it.

It’s not just the fishing. Well, that’s a huge part of it as the pictures below will attest. But, there’s something more. It’s something that causes people to make vague allusions that are arcane outside of Alaska but are crystal clear once you’re there.

“I came here for a summer 30 years ago and never got around to leaving.” That sort of comment is bandied about from time to time in many places but, in Alaska, it is the standard explanation for why people live there. As far as human habitation goes, there is a subtle feeling of impermanence. Everyone has a half-baked plan to leave that usually only gets fully cooked when life somehow forces the issue. Until then, it’s always a matter of staying just a little longer.

“You just have to get out in it.” This is how people in Alaska deal with winter. I hated it because being cold is one of my least favorite things. But Alaskans (and faux Alaskans) attack winter like they think they can intimidate it. They “snow machine” (or snowmobile as we call it in the Lower 48, as if we have any concept of snow), cross country/back country/downhill ski, play hockey, go orienteering, snowshoeing, etc. And not in the “I tried snowshoeing last weekend—that was pretty fun” sort of way. They will work all day and then go out under a full moon to do an excursion with something strapped to their feet in 10 degree weather (if it’s nice out)…and then do it again the next night…and the next. Folks in Boulder, Colorado like to think of themselves as uber-athletes. But they have been known to sit out blizzards. Not in Alaska.

“It’s all about the gear.” This isn’t something that men in Alaska say to establish their testosterone bona fides. Well, OK, actually, they do but, everyone says this. Men, women, children, grandmothers. Why? Because it is. If you have the right “gear” (layers of clothing, skis, fishing rods, “snow machines”, trucks, boats, planes, dogs, sleds, guns, knives, nets, backpacks, bear spray, rafts, boots, blankets, to name a few), you can venture out with some hope of surviving. This includes trips across town in your car in January.

“Termination Dust and Break Up.” Termination Dust is the first time snow reappears on the mountain tops, usually, in the early fall. Sometimes it happens in the late summer which is really alarming for the uninitiated. For folks in the Lower 48, the first snow is often a welcome change after summer’s heat, little league, family vacations, barbecues, etc. Even if it isn’t welcome, it’s not an ordeal. To Alaskans, the arrival of snow is an ordeal. Not the sort of ordeal that can’t be managed and, indeed, no one this side of Nepal manages snow like Alaskans. For Alaskans, the weather itself is not the ordeal. The ordeal is the transition between the weather.  It’s the ordeal of putting away all the toys of summer in order to unload and make room for the toys of winter. Despite the somewhat fatalistic nature of the phrase, the appearance of termination dust is not the end. It’s yet another beginning in Alaska, a place that seems to be constantly “beginning.” If you live there, you can feel and hear the collective, “Well, there it is. Here we go again.” This is followed by a shrug of the shoulders and a wry smile. The same thing happens in April. Then they call it “Break Up” and it’s not nearly as pretty as a dusting of snow on the mountains. Honestly, Break Up is a big, slushy mess where a winter’s worth of trash “breaks” free of the melting ice and floats “up” to the surface. But, it has the same effect as termination dust because, as always, there is more fun ahead. But only after you’ve picked up your toys. 

“It gets down in your soul.” This is my favorite. Virtually anyone who has lived in Alaska has said this at some point. After six years the winters got to be too much for me to stay on. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t get a yearning to “feel” Alaska again. I love traveling to developing countries because there is always that sense of “they’re just making this up as they go” and that tomorrow they will do it completely differently. Alaska is that way but with the accent on nature rather than people. In fifteen minutes, you can drive from your home in Anchorage and be out of sight of any sign of civilization and may even run into a bear or moose. In a half hour you can fly to a wilderness location that makes even the Tetons look suburban. That’s what gets down in your soul. And there’s no shaking it.

My wife has a particularly acute case of Alaska deep in her soul. If her husband wasn’t such a wimp about the cold, I suspect we would be living in the hills above Anchorage now. So, she settles for trips back every few years. She has been all over the world but Alaska is the one place that calls her back again and again. And she answers because she knows contentment and beauty await.

I recently got to visit Alaska again and, COVID and whatever-other-surprises-are-out-there willing, I’ll go again next year with my sons. We will fish because that’s what you do in Alaska. But we will also have moments like the first time I realized that Alaska had got into my oldest son’s soul. We had only lived there a few weeks and he was still in the “will I ever have any friends again?” phase of the move. We arrived home after a full day of work and school. He didn’t go directly inside but stood in the driveway looking out at Cook Inlet. I walked up behind him in time to hear him say “Cool” which, for a teenage boy, is fairly garrulous. I asked, “What’s that?” He kept looking at the Inlet and answered, “Alaska.”

If we gave our sons nothing else, I would still be proud to say they have got a bit of Alaska down in their souls. J.C. wrote a song about it called “Great Northern Lights” that I have included below.

Rainbows are my favorite fish. Obviously, I have a preference for Alaskan rainbows.

The good news is that J caught the fish. The bad news is that it broke his rod.

There were actually two of them in the water. A nimbler iPhone operator would have got that picture.

Residents. They scoff at all our fishing gear.

Brett hiding behind a silver. Or maybe they’re just that big.

Simon, Gary and me with a few silvers. We caught more than a few.

Randal and me with a couple of prehistoric grayling

This is how all these pictures happen.

My Last Trip to the Middle Fork of the Powder River

We were a couple weeks into the COVID 19 isolation vortex when the weather started to ease and the yearning to fish started up. While the creek we live on fishes nicely year round, I like to explore other creeks and rivers in the Black Hills and the Rockies in the early Spring before the kids are out of school and the crowds start to descend on the public waters. I had a few terrific days close to home but I soon realized that COVID 19 was the answer to prayer for every fisherperson who had spent their Spring days trapped at work just wishing they could go fishing instead. I had never seen more than 2 or 3 cars in the parking lot for one of my favorite creeks. After the “lockdown” started, the parking lot was filled and cars were parked as far as the eye could see on the dirt road that led to that parking lot.

Clearly, I was going to have to get creative. I decided that I needed to head into the heart of Wyoming where nobody is and nobody goes. To my surprise, I found a few articles on the Middle Fork of the Powder River and that stream’s blue ribbon trout stream designation. The articles all commented on the unlikelihood of running into other people because of a steep hike to access the creek. In my experience, when fishing writers speak of a “steep hike” it usually means they are trying to discourage me from going there so they can have it to themselves. Some of the best fishing I have done over the years has been on streams and lakes that some writer said was a lot of work to get to. More often than not, the exertion amounted to little more than a slightly elevated pulse rate.

In early April, I set out for Kaycee, Wyoming and found the dirt road that would take me to the trailhead for the Middle Fork. In the late afternoon I reached a gate with a lock on it and a sign saying that the road was closed until April 15. I walked in a little ways and decided that I couldn’t be that far from the trailhead. I planned on sleeping in my truck that night anyway so I figured I would have plenty of time the next morning. There was one other truck parked at the gate. Within a couple hours, a group of 20-somethings came walking down the road, a couple of them with fly rods. They confirmed that I wasn’t far from the trail and that the fishing was worth it.

I am almost 60 years old. I still backpack with my son in the summers and, while I have never particularly enjoyed sleeping on the ground, I can still do it, especially when there is the potential of good fishing. I figured sleeping in my truck would be the lap of luxury compared to sleeping on the ground in a tent. By midnight I determined that my 6 foot long body could not fit comfortably at any angle in the truck. No matter the position I was in, the length of the truck’s cab appeared to be approximately 5 feet, 10 inches long. Those two inches were the difference between comfort and cramps. For those wondering why I didn’t just get in the back in the bed of the pickup under the shell, that’s where the dogs ride and the odor is not real conducive to sound sleep either.

Around 6:00 a.m. exhaustion finally caused me to fall into a deep sleep. About 6:30 a truck pulled up. I sat up quickly. To be honest, I was committing a mild form of trespassing and was worried that the rancher who owned the land on this side of the gate was coming to inquire as to what I thought I was doing. I was relieved to realize it was just another fisherman.

But then I was a little annoyed. After spending the night out here, a guy who slept in a bed was going to beat me to the creek. He introduced himself as “Chad” and he seemed nice enough. He doubted we would see anyone else all day. He set off and I told him I would be along soon. I ate something awful for breakfast, put on my waders and boots, strung up my 6 weight rod and headed for the trail.

It turned out to be about a mile to the trailhead. It was mostly uphill but not bad. The trail itself, however, was a different story. It did not appear that it was that far down to the river but, unfortunately, I surmised that when a Wyoming writer says “steep hike,” he means “steep hike.” The river was in the bottom of a fairly deep, narrow canyon. I could see the water just fine and, from where I stood, with a running start I could have probably landed in it after about 10 seconds of flight. Think of Butch Cassidy telling Sundance “The fall will probably kill you!” I started downhill with more than a little trepidation.

“Steep hikes” are a challenge but I have done plenty of them. What I have learned is that steep hikes that still have several patches of snow on the trail are an excellent way to speed your descent in ways you had not planned. The trail down to the Middle Fork was just such a trail in early April this year. Despite resorting to sliding on my rear several times, both intentionally and unintentionally, I was down to the river in about a half hour.

Chad waved to me and gave me a couple generous tips on flies to use. The river was not that high but it occupied most of the floor of the canyon. That meant that there would not be a lot of sitting by the side of the creek. Instead, I would be wading. A lot. I am OK with that but I am definitely not the wader I used to be, particularly on rivers with lots of big boulders and pocket water like the Middle Fork of the Powder River. Suffice it to say that I did not conduct a Master Class in grace that day. Whenever I stumbled though, I noticed Chad a discreet distance away. I was more embarrassed than relieved.

I fished for about four hours. And I caught a lot of fish because there are a lot of fish in the Middle Fork of the Powder River. Nice fish. Pretty fish. Wild fish. Fish big enough that if you lose your angle in the tight quarters of the canyon, they can snap a 6 weight fly rod. I know. I did it. Fortunately, my rod’s demise occurred after I had satisfied myself that the Middle Fork was as represented.

Chad was waiting near the place where I first entered the river. I sat down to break down my rod (further) and steel myself for the “steep hike” out. Chad started up before me. As I climbed I noticed that he would stop and wait for me to come into view before continuing. Going up steep canyons is hard but not nearly as dangerous as going down them. When I reached the top and started walking down the road back to my truck, I saw Chad just disappearing around the bend below me. When my truck came into view, Chad’s taillights flashed on as he started his truck. He waved out the window as he drove off.

My quest to “get away from people” and fish on my own turned into a lesson on my limits and my assumptions. I am glad I went and explored the Middle Fork. I wish I had gone 20 or 30 years ago when I was closer to Chad’s age and still had something resembling agility. It’s a young man’s creek. I’m in good shape. But I am not young man.

 I started the day slightly disappointed that I would have to share the creek with someone. I finished the day thanking God that He sent Chad to look after me. Some days the trout humble me. Some days the trout are incidental to learning something more important. I love those days.

2020 is off to Fly(ing) Fishing Start

J and I went to Christmas Island in January and the Black Hills’ weather has cooperated quite nicely so far. A couple shots from the first quarter highlight reel.

Kiritimati translates roughly to Christmas which is the name Captain Cook gave this island in the South Pacific. This is a typical bonefish which seems like a much better use of the island than the nuclear bomb testing that went on there in the 1950s.

This beauty took a size 20 midge in very skinny water in the Black Hills. That’s as far as I’ll go…

Some Quotes From My Favorite Fly Fishing Authors

Fall is my favorite time to fly fish. The creeks and rivers are down and the fish start rising to load up their bellies to help them weather winter. It’s been a very wet summer here in the Black Hills so it may be a different Fall but, at some point, it will be good. It always is. 

 As it gets cooler, fly fishermen start to wax philosophical. This is where the fish caught earlier in the year start to grow larger and the promise of the fish to be caught in the next year starts to germinate. Many fly fishermen feel compelled to write about it. Some of them, like John Gierach, Ted Leeson and a few others are quite good.

 Here are some samples from a few of my favorites.

 Fishing in general has always seemed to me a form of subversion anyway.  In a world that insists upon “means” and “ends,” that dooms every path to a destination, fishing elides the categories and so slips the distinction altogether.  You become engaged in the nonterminal, participial indefiniteness of “going fishing.” It exists wholly for its own sake, productive (at least in the late-twentieth-century sense of the term) of absolutely nothing. Measured against the ledger-sheet sensibility; corporate or Calvinist, it is a form of anarchy, and that legions of bottom-liners haven’t yet sniffed it out as something dangerous baffles me a little. To go fishing is essentially functionless, though that’s not at all the same thing as saying it is without purpose.

                                                     Ted Leeson, The Habit of Rivers

 I enjoy fishing too much to risk my life at it. Death can really cut into your fishing time.

                                                      John Gierach, Trout Bum

 A road trip…gets all the cards on the table…The usual hardships of getting out early, getting in late, getting lost, getting rained on, getting skunked, and all the other things you can get tend to reveal character in a matter of days. Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip. 

                                                       John Gierach, The View from Rat Lake

 Fishing is a chance to wash one’s soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook, or with the shimmer of the sun on the blue water. It brings meekness and inspiration from the scenery of nature, charity toward tackle makers, patience toward fish, a mockery of profits and egos, a quieting of hate, a rejoicing that you do not have to decide a darned thing until next week. And it is discipline in the equality of man—for all men are equal before fish. 

                                                       Herbert Hoover, Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul

 The purist fishes exclusively with a fly rod, which means that he owns a spinning rod and sometimes uses it, but he doesn’t talk about it much…and stores it separately from his fly tackle.

 Chances are it’s a very good rod.

 The snob is exactly like the purist except he doesn’t own a spinning rod. He used to, but he gave it away years ago, not wanting to have the filthy thing around the house. Furthermore, anyone who does fish with a spinning rod is sleazy and cheap and his parents were probably not married. This guy is not nice, or very happy either, and the time will surely come when he gets pretty lonely too. Snobbery occurs as the result of a logical fallacy. We all want to experience and appreciate something of excellent quality, but it doesn’t follow that we’re every bit as good as what we do. 

                                                       John Gierach, The View from Rat Lake

 You get over these small losses the way a lizard grows a new tail, and you end up remembering the great uncaught fish as vividly as you do the caught ones—and just as fondly too, because there’s a part of every fisherman that roots for the fish. 

                                                       John Gierach, Even Brook Trout Get the Blues

 If you’re weary, sick but still ambulatory, fed up, overworked, angry, frustrated, heartbroken, need to think things over or need to stop thinking things over for a while, you should definitely go fishing, and you should go alone so you don’t bother anyone. But then fishing, like most other simple human pleasures, is better when it’s done out of love than when it’s used as a painkiller. 

                                                       John Gierach, Another Lousy Day in Paradise

 A fish like this doesn’t count. I meant to catch it, but didn’t catch it the way I meant to—a distinction that nonanglers often find idiotic…Luck and happenstance are always part of fishing, though for the most part, I think, in small and subtle ways that an angler never notices. But the aim of fishing is to fish well, and the aim of fishing well is to make chance count for as little as possible. Much of the pleasure comes from knowing, or at least preserving the illusion, that we are agents of our own success, that we have orchestrated the whole affair ourselves, that a trout is not hooked through some quirky turn of events, but that it willingly and predictably responds to our own ideas about how it ought to behave. The accidental trout fails to satisfy because it is an unrepeatable phenomenon; it means nothing but that accidents happen…It has, at best, a sort of fluky entertainment value, like a tee shot that caroms off the clubhouse for a hole in one. 

                                                       Ted Leeson, Jerusalem Creek

 For one thing, like many fly fishermen, I enjoy watching another angler fish nearly as much as I enjoy fishing myself, and on some occasions even more…Watching somebody fish is a good deal more like watching baseball, a slow-paced game with studied aspects, than it is like watching, say, a stock-car race, where spectators may gather in the simple hearted hope of witnessing catastrophe. To split a rod with someone is a leisurely thing, and if that someone is any good, watching him lay out a cast and drop the fly and work the water feels very much like fishing, even though you’re not holding the rod. The stakes are low because you are there in part for companionship, and if you choose your partner wisely, the company is always good no matter what the fishing is like. 

                                                       Ted Leeson, Jerusalem Creek

 That Presidents have taken to fishing in an astonishing fashion seems to me worthy of investigation. I think I have discovered the reason: it is a silent sport. One of the few opportunities given to a President for the refreshment of his soul and the clarification of his thoughts by solitude lies through fishing…Next to prayer, fishing is the most personal relationship of man; and of more importance, everyone concedes that the fish will not bite in the presence of the public, including newspapermen. Fishing seems to be one of the few avenues left to Presidents through which they may escape to their own thoughts, may live in their own imaginings, find relief from the pneumatic hammer of constant personal contacts, and refreshment of mind in rippling waters. Moreover, it is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humility and of human frailty. It is desirable that the President of the United States should be periodically reminded of this fundamental fact—that the forces of nature discriminate for no man.  

                                                       Herbert Hoover, Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul

 I agree with a friend of mine who says that if fishing is really like sex, then he’s doing one of them wrong. 

                                                       John Gierach, Dances with Trout

It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us…

Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

 
I am haunted by waters. 

                                                       Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

A Couple Pictures From New Zealand

New Zealand is a renowned trout fishing destination. Even as a less than renowned trout fisherman, I can say it’s different from other places I have fished for trout. It is definitely a matter of quality, rather than quantity. My buddy J and I fished three days and each caught one fish (OK, J caught two but one of them was only about 14 or 15 inches and that doesn’t really count in New Zealand). But it is exciting, challenging fishing with a big (literally) payoff. Crystal clear water allows you to watch the fish take your fly…if it hasn’t seen you too.

J’s 28 inch brown (caught on his 59th birthday!)

My mere 24 inch brown. Check out the water clarity. Don’t let recent events scare you off, New Zealand is a treasure. Serge Bonnafoux is the go to guide in New Zealand.

Stan's Gift

When I told my first boss Stan that I was going backpacking in Wyoming with my father, Stan said, “There should be good fishing up there. Take this fly rod with you.” With that, I was on my way to being a fly fisherman. 

The backpack trip happened sometime in the late 1980s. I took the 5 weight Orvis rod with me and tried it out on a high mountain lake. I grew up with spinning rods and did not know the first thing about how a fly rod worked. In both law and fly fishing, Stan was big on providing opportunities for experience but not particularly enamored with providing instruction. Just as he would send me into court or negotiations as a young lawyer with little idea about what I was doing, he did the same with the fly rod. My mental image of that first time is standing on a rock with fly line tangled about my feet. My first few trips to court were not that different. 

I landed a few fish that afternoon, all by retrieving line hand over hand like a longshoreman hauling rope rather than using the $200 reel that clearly had a function that I had yet to discern. But, I did notice that when I could get one of the flies that Stan supplied me with to rest on the water, the fish readily gobbled them up. I was intrigued but not sure what to do next with the fly rod (this was before one could pull up a Youtube video to show what people actually did with a fly rod). 

I told Stan that I appreciated the use of the fly rod when I returned it to him. I fudged a bit and said it worked great and I really enjoyed it. I suspected Stan was pleased to think he had a new convert. He told me to keep the rod and reel. I protested but ultimately thanked him and sheepishly took it home wondering how long it would be before he discovered that I was a less than deserving recipient of his largesse.

Not long after that, I received an offer to join a company as an in-house lawyer and had to tell Stan that I was moving on. A few days later Stan said he was going to take me out with a fly fishing guide as a going away gift (even though I wasn’t “going” far since my new office was just across the street). I responded enthusiastically while silently pondering the fact that Stan was about to find out how hapless I was with a fly rod.

A couple weeks later, Stan and I joined a couple other lawyers in the firm, some clients and two guides on the Colorado River. Todd was the guide assigned to me. By the end of the day, I not only understood the mechanics of the fly rod (and reel!) and had caught a couple fish, I began to grasp Stan’s passion for fly fishing. Like so many trout guides I have met since, Todd was both a marvel of knowledge and patience. And he cooked the best stream-side lunch I’ve ever had.

I knew that Stan would welcome fishing with me but not until I reached a reasonable level of competence. I did a very small amount of research and was told that there was great fly fishing in Cheesman Canyon. The Canyon was about an hour and a half drive from where I lived at that time in Golden, Colorado. I started going to Cheesman Canyon at every opportunity, often leaving the house at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning so I could be first on the trailhead leading into the river. 

My first few times in Cheesman Canyon were not exactly successful. I used the techniques that Todd taught me on the Colorado River to no avail, despite being able to see very large fish in the water. After a few trips I mentioned to my new boss Gary that I was trying to learn fly fishing but I was finding it harder than expected. It turned out that Gary had recently decided he wanted to learn to fly fish as well and had purchased equipment to that end. We started meeting in Cheesman Canyon from time to time or reporting in to one another when one of us would go solo.

We quickly discovered a few things. First, what works on one river rarely is of much relevance on another river. Second, starting one’s fly fishing career in Cheesman Canyon is a bit like trying to learn piano by playing Rachmaninoff. To this day, I have yet to fish a more technically challenging river. We learned to use leaders that made thread look like cable and flies that were best viewed through a microscope. 

Gary and I were clearly in over our heads (not literally, that’s dangerous in waders) but we persevered. After a couple years of regaling each other with alternating stories of victory or stupidity that was only revealed with the clarity of hindsight on the drive home, we began to consider ourselves quasi-experts on Cheesman Canyon. Feeling emboldened, I worked up the nerve to ask Stan if he would like to go fishing. He readily agreed and said to meet him at the Colorado River to fish the stretch he took me to with Todd a couple years before.

I found that the Colorado was less challenging than Cheesman Canyon. I held my own just fine with Stan, even catching a large rainbow near the end of our day. Stan showed me how to do a reach cast that day which helps manage slack in the fly line when the fish you want to catch is on the other side of the river, but there is fast water between you and the other side. Now that Stan knew I was committed, he gave me many more valuable tips on fishing trips in the ensuing years.

Stan was a man of few words right up until the subject was trout and their ways. I was never sure whether he was happiest on the river or talking about the fishing over a beer at the end of the day. But I knew those two options outranked everything else by a wide margin. 

Ultimately life took me away from Colorado but I have been blessed to continue to fly fish in some incredible places. I rarely fish when I don’t think of Stan and how, as both a fly fisherman and a lawyer, he gave me tools but knew that the passion would have to come from my own effort. 

When Stan died a few years back, I went to Iowa for his funeral. A few of us from the old firm were there along with some of Stan’s family. Stan had not stayed in close touch and I was struck by how little his family knew about him. I flew home feeling a little melancholy. I regretted that none of Stan’s family had stood knee deep in a river and watched Stan chuckle while he played a trout with the sun reflecting off the water and his aviator sunglasses. We’re all capable of moments of beauty. Those moments were Stan’s. 

Last summer, my son and I backpacked in Wyoming and did a little fishing. At the end of the trip, I gave him the Orvis rod that Stan sent me into the backcountry with three decades ago. My son does quite a bit of backpacking. There should be good fishing up there.

Stan with a big pike in Canada.

The Fly Fishing blog

I have always loved to fish. I only took up fly fishing about 30 years ago. Check here for fishing reports, pictures, observations and book reviews. Tight lines!