Spring & Speeches; or, On the Gestation of a Black Bear

Living in two worlds makes you anxious, like multiple personalities will put you on meds (or wine, I suppose, lots of wine).  And when the daffodils have started blooming in the plains off the Front Range, there is still a thick covering of snow in my canyon, just below 8,000 ft. I see them as I walk to work through Boulder’s University Hill, peeps of yellow and small purple crocus, bulbs of memory, year after year.

The trout fishing I love won’t open for a few months yet, I don’t go to tailwaters or large rivers that keep moving through the year, with unrelenting currents of people and bugs. No, my trout are small. And still under snow; just like the cabin. So come spring, I start itching for warmwater – for carp and bass and the odd crappie or two.

On a day when Jay and I both had nasty headcolds but the sun was shining and snow was melting in clods off the roof, puddling loudly in the stainless steel dog food dish out the back door, we couldn’t stay in. Call it cabin fever or shack nasties, or poor judgment from sinus pressure.

We head to lower ground. To spring, and warm(er) temps.

And halfway down the canyon the speech begins, like clockwork – the alarm set only on fishing days -- when we cross under the railroad bridge and there is still snow. Jay pounds the steering wheel, “We’re jumping the gun a bit….what the hell was I thinking?” he chides. We’re going to have to work hard for these fish. That’s always in The Speech somewhere, working hard – and that the conditions won’t be optimal. They never are. Like they never are for hanging out a load to dry in the mountains. It always rains. I’ve come to expect it.

And I know it’s never easy, it can’t be, but I wonder if we don’t like making it more so --- like young women and boyfriends….they like the drama. And just like fishermen, they hash and re-hash it – waffle maker for Valentines Day 1998, or the Blue Winged Olives on the Arkansas, Mothers Day, 2004. They boil down to the same thing at a simmer.

I smile at the familiarity of it all, looking out my window at the elk, muzzling away snow from the new green shoots of fieldgrass, leaving the flats pocked like the moon.  The Speech means the season has started, and it’s been a long winter. Not in measurable snow so much as measurable time, and words piled up like cordwood: reversal of the decreasing pile out by the shed, with files and folders growing and being named. Mine, with increasingly incoherent silliness. Imagine the delusions of nearing the end of a long race.  

It has been a long winter in a chore done. And chores feel especially satisfying when you’ve had to get a little dirty in the process.

“The water’ll be cold,” Jay breaks in, predicting, “but we’ll have a decent chance for crappie and yellow perch….they’re active early.”

The warnings continue down highway 93 -- the game plan – for you see, we’re always on a mission. And there are always old army hand signals involved, too. I’m getting better at understanding them – and if not what they mean, then what I should do as a result.  

“There might be some bass in close, too…they move in before staging to spawn.”

I nod. Prepared.

Perhaps I should be taking notes.

A calm surface often belies interior movement – but just like a human, it’s findable when you know where to look, when you know the ticks and troughs. That’s one of the addictions to stillwater, you just never know; and that’s the fly fisher’s eternal cry, isn’t it, one last cast, because you have to see how it all turns out – a hard thing, usually, to know the last page without The Brothers Grimm’s convenient The Ends. We depend upon stories, long after they don’t get read to us at bedtime anymore.

But that’s why we keep going. To get to the page where it’s a surprise.

She looks much the same after seven months, the gestation of a black bear. Although it feels like I’m visiting a sick friend, and am unsure whether she’ll remember me or not. Whether she’ll babble on about Phillip (who I apparently know) or peas in tea. Or how cilantro tastes like soap and that there’s an alien in the knotty pine.

Jay sticks a fist in the water as soon as we reach the bank, cool, but not too cold. Code for possibilities. And so we split up, scouting the perimeter, making long casts out deep with heavy flies. Banjo runs back and forth between us, like a calf released from Malachi’s proverbial stall. Pure joy.

And sometimes, even when conditions aren’t optimal: even when you’ve jumped the gun a bit, or even when the wind is hauling ass like it’s nine and a t-ball coach is yelling “hustle,” (and you do, because you want to round the bases to get to that generic-Coke filled cooler). Things still work out okay. Better than, really, because you weren’t expecting it.

Just as I wasn’t expecting the largemouths that latched on and fought hard, even still pale from lack of sun. Just like me. But that will change; I’ll redden and peel and they’ll darken and stripe.

And so it turns out, the pond, she’s very healthy indeed. Sane -- and remembers us well.

On the walk out, a lone meadowlark sits on a barbed wire fence; separated from its flock of winter, calling for the season to begin.

And he’s beautiful, even if a little late.

For it already has.

I don’t think he was expecting that… 

Carp Fishing in America

Many things seem like great ideas at the time, yet most are only figments of a hopeful imagination or intoxicated faculties. Few actually take off with the vengeance of sprinters after the start gun. Few actually work or have legs to stand on. And although they are there if you look hard and long enough, success stories are few and far between. We cheer them on, those long shots. And I’ve always been partial to the underdog.

So had I been around in the late 1800s, I would have cheered on the carp. Facing pressured fisheries and depletion of native stocks, the U.S. Fish Commission (just as English monks had done in the 1300s) made the decision to import what they thought to be the most economical food source for their country’s growing population, the best return on investment: the carp. Having proved their worth over centuries in Asia and Europe, it seemed the most logical move to make.

However, what was not foreseen was the success of that idea; or rather, success of the carp and failure of the idea. Based upon the well kept carp ponds of Europe and the model of the thousands of acres of ponds maintained by the Schwarzenberg princes of Austria, the newly arrived carp in the United States were placed in a series of New England ponds -- and although still harvested, were found to be far less tasty than the selectively bred carp of the old world.

Within the twenty years following, carp had been distributed throughout the states and were already being viewed as a nuisance and invasive species. Their population burgeoned just as wild game fish’s decreased in unfortunate synchrony. For in truth, it was the turn of the century’s increased manufacturing and mining at fault. Yet much like other erroneous assumptions of the past, people noticed the concurrence and concluded that the pollution of rivers and fall of game fish must have something to do with carp. They were thriving. Obviously, there must be a correlation.

Tough and determined, adapting and changing with their environment, carp were revered by the ancients for their persistence and stoicism. In manicured ponds, for luck; or in abandoned gravel mine mud pits, forgotten -- they keep on. And they always will. They will always do their thing. They’re survivors. And they’re smart; too smart, it was once thought, to be catchable.  
 
But then in mid-20th century Britain, carp began gaining popularity as a game fish. Quarried with breadcrumbs and bait, they were prized and respected as a worthy opponent. Yet it would be almost fifty years before they achieved that same status as a game fish in the United States. And strangely enough, it would come by the fly.

In late 1990s Colorado, with damsel nymph and crayfish imitations, fly fishermen such as Barry Reynolds and Jay Zimmerman, designed flies, wrote blogs, authored books, and brought fly fishing for carp into its own -- proving that carp can indeed be caught on the fly and validating those who do. It wasn’t easy though – it still isn’t -- stereotypes of carp as bottom dwellers and rough fish abound, and they were thought unworthy of being chased with a fly rod.

Yet carp aren’t easy themselves, claiming some of the highest places for game fish IQ, and as otophysans they have intense auditory sensitivity due to the design of their inner ear. They will hear you coming and they will remember your fly. While trout are hailed as picky, carp are many times worse. And that is a vast understatement.

Things must go just right: the cast, the presentation, the hook set. Rarely will you blindly catch a carp on the fly: it’s precision sight casting with a five or six weight, and you must be deadly accurate with primarily short casts, keeping the line off the water and the carp’s back when they’re in close, feeding in low water. Also easily spooked, you’ll quickly be familiarized with the stomach sinking wake when you set one off, when they take off for deeper water. They might come back, but then again they might not.

Your best bet is to move on.

You also must judge the direction and speed of the carp, casting ahead and stripping in until the fly is in the carp’s line of vision (you have to make it easy for them), and then twitching to get their attention – sometimes they will turn and pounce like a skeleton of a barn cat on a mouse. In early autumn when the water levels are low and cooler from longer nights, the carp will feed more aggressively on what they can get. Like cold winter nights when darkness and snow are falling, your options are limited, and it’s past hours for the delivery place down the street: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich scavenged from the pantry will do just fine. Yet most times they don’t pounce. Satiated and fed, and far too cunning to play with a toy. The success rate of carping is very low most days.

And carp have a knack for getting into your head, making even the most seasoned and accomplished angler feel inept. Only the most self-deprecating even attempt. But when the weight of a take finally comes, you realize that in those three straight hours you cast to carp (and logs and rocks when you’re extremely dehydrated, which is often), you could have caught many more trout (perhaps into the double digits): brookies and browns eager to take dries in midsummer. Yet you’d take this one carp any day. And when your old fishing friends say you have lost your mind, they are most likely right. Fly fishing for carp often has that effect on people – making them walk softly and carry a big rod. And like any other addictive stimulant, you’re always left wanting more. One cup of coffee is never really enough, is it.

Yet trumping all, as my carping partner tells me, the most important thing you can have (or develop) for fly fishing for carp is short term memory: the willingness and strength to try again. I suppose that goes for life, too. Looking back and fretting over mistakes and blown opportunities isn’t going to get you ahead unless you have a time machine. But even then, we humans are widely known for repeating our mistakes. So you have to cast again and again, and in the process clear your mind of self-doubt. And a true fly fisherman will always have at least one last cast left in them if asked.

The day he told me it was hot, even at 7:30 a.m. rigging beneath shade at the truck. And the reservoir low in summer’s heat, gaining us five or more feet of shoreline enabling stealthier movement, wallowing through mud instead of rocks that give way to noise underfoot. And the familiar golden hump of a common carp rose and fell, aggressively feeding in close. “You’re up…” I heard from behind, and so I unhooked my fly and wetted it down quickly. Feeding carp change their minds faster than a rabbit in a garden (or your stereotypical woman), nibbling here and there, and often the window of opportunity is nothing more than cracked. So without much planning but sure of my aim and placement, I made a cast out to the left trying not to spook it; and holding my rod high, stripped in the fly letting it drop right in front. The carp turned, my line tightened, and it ran. Muddy water splashed up and wakes of nearby feeders spooked. I grinned and started getting line on the reel. It ran again -- and farther this time, too.

Until my line stopped.

Now, carp will take you into your backing, but I’ve never been taken to the very end of the line. Confused, I looked down to see my line tangled in the reel. I tugged and pulled with all I had. So did the carp, in fact. But with another burst he was gone. My fly and tippet, too.  

I looked down and breathed slowly, knowing that was possibly the only carp I’d get that day. But I remembered the advice of my fishing partner: short term memory. I knew I couldn’t dwell on the one that got away. There were other carp in this reservoir, and they are hungry too. So I repaired my leader, tied on a new fly, and moved down the mudflats.

There are times in fly fishing, and life too for that matter, when things are just right -- like goldilocks’ chair. You settle in deep down, and it feels good. Made just for you, even. Your size, your place. Yet in both those moments are few and far between, because the winds will start blowing, you’ll stick your foot in your mouth, or maybe your timing will just be all off. Your head won’t be in the game. But when those moments do come (and surely they will) when everything lines up, you’ll feel like a million. You’ll smile even, while knowing it won’t last. And that’s why we keep on casting -- for the hope of those times when things will go just right; for the belief that sometimes, the long shot does win.  

 
 ~ Originally published in Waterlog Magazine, September 2012, Summer Issue, 80 ~ 

On Walking Wrinkles Out

I’ve never done too well with goals -- or houseplants, cream sauces, and realizing stripes shouldn’t be worn with plaid flannels.  

My father always said one should have some, though, goals set at the start of the year. He told us this, my sister and I, on the cold evenings of January the 1st -- year after year -- after pallets had been placed in the rockrimmed firepit, hot dogs roasted, and after my grandmother burnt her marshmallows for s’mores to perfection. After I’d whittled away green elm branches for roasting sticks, I was sure to be asked: what is your goal?

And I always had one…one at least…made up with best of intentions. Often it included feeble attempts at journaling or the more substantial of fattening a steer for slaughter. I was always pretty good at that.

But as the years went on, I stopped. Perhaps it just got too complicated, too overwhelming as life began involving saving relationships or ending them, jobs and grad school, eating or not. Perhaps the years piled up behind each other like the neck-rolls of a Shar Pei -- and in those wrinkles there was time…there are lives -- lives of my own choosing and living, or lack thereof. And what is that saying, anyway? Let sleeping dogs…lie?

Perhaps it was just as depressing as beginning to receive kitchen utensils for Christmas instead of books and Borders’s gift certificates.

The wrinkles though...they’re still there. (And the serving spoons and knifes keep coming). The characters, stories, and plays are fuzzy in between the folds -- like fresh-laundered jeans stored away -- but they’re all still alive, and not too awfully far away.

Yet all “perhaps” aside, I know I was frightened to fail. I know I am now, too. Putting down evidence, convicting myself. Putting down words. But they’re in my head anyway, I figure, so what the heck. What have I to lose.   

I was recently asked: Have you found what you were looking for? If now – in a cabin, in a canyon, with a man and a dog and a book. Is this it? 

Is this what I’ve always wanted?

And I did think about it for several seconds. And it’s easy to look back into those wrinkles and see how actions created reactions, which resulted in failure, strife, and moments of success and yes…happiness, too. But in the blackest of nights there was no moon and there were no shadows. Only tripping over things I should have seen coming.

But I didn’t. (And there were a few traps set). Like Jeremiah Johnson’s Caleb…move your hand back, boy.

Thankfully, I still have all of my fingers.

Because I wasn’t looking. I wasn’t setting goals. (Maybe that was the problem, now come to think of it).

I was just walking -- straight on ‘til morning -- upon the belief that one day the night would end -- like when you’re winter-camping and you’re stuck in a tent for 14 hours…reading by headlamp, listening for avalanches in the distance and realizing you forgot to put your CamelBak bladder in your sleeping bag and now your water supply is frozen. Or when you're waiting for pike to strike at dawn -- somewhat like that. Upon the belief that one day I would see something -- anything -- something that was perhaps in front of me all the while, something that would remind me of home. Walking upon the faintest belief in shadows, one foot after the other with a mind running wild. 

But this year I do have a goal. Oh, I’m still afraid to fail, and of traps, and of riddles being asked of me in the dark. But I have a goal. A sight to look through the coming twelve months. The coming 365 nights and 4,380 hours of darkness.

And I think my dad would be proud; I’m ready if he asks.

I’m going to just keep walking, upon that same belief that someday, I’ll see something.

"The View from Coal Creek: Reflections on Fly Rods, Canyons and Bamboo"

"The View from Coal Creek is a reflection on fly rods, fishing, and life seen from the vantage of a canyon in Colorado, but these are props in a larger story about life, love, and tradition. Erin Block is a young, powerful voice carrying the torch and passing on lessons, values, and history of this great, literary and vibrant sport."

December 2012, Hardcover, Limited Edition
$44.95 Retail Price -- SPECIAL $39.95

December 2012, Softcover 
$21.95 Retail Price -- SPECIAL $17.50

Pool by Pool

Light comes slowly in a canyon, here at the bottom. They’re a reminder, Gierach writes, of the human condition. They’re a reminder of our coldness, our stubbornness, and yet in the end our ability to carry on although we may be in the lowest, harshest, bitterest place possible.

Because still here, there is life.  

There is water and there are willows, and raspberries in the summertime. 

David Goodrich , Jay, and I drive north – to another canyon. We’re in no hurry. Because remember, light comes slowly. As if everything and everyone’s pulse calms a bit come wintertime. Gets sluggish, like oil and lube that’s sat overnight in many-degrees-below-zero. That’s how it feels, my blood, for an entire six months, and how it has felt for the past three; thick and reticent, reticent to begin on what it knows it must.

There is no rush though, there is no pressure – to beat crowds or thunderstorms -- to make early morning hatches. We rig midges and nymphs and I dig out an indicator for the first time this season. A small white thingamabobber, reminding me of Whatchamacallit's --bought at a 7-11 on Leavenworth, at the bottom of The Big Hill, with pocket change from $0.05 can returns. Ten-speeded cruising in the neverending days of childhood. Neverending, like that hill on the way back home. 

And we all add layers, gloves, and hats. Knee-high wool socks for good measure.

Dropping in, we stagger out -- pool by pool. That’s how you fish a winter river, skipping over the pockets and runs you’d hit during the summertime. Now the trout are held up in the deep places, bracing for the weather to turn. Now it’s one thing at a time, baby-step by baby-step, believing it all worthwhile (or not, but even so there’s no place to go but on. So embrace the pointlessness of it all, I'm told, embrace it. Make it your own. And somehow through that process, something worthy does in fact, evolve): pool by pool, bird by bird…word by word, that’s how you have a conversation, give a speech, write a book. None of which I’m very good at doing, especially presently: leaving all behind except one thing. Just one thing. That's what I've got to figure  out. Concentrating, studying, what’s she up to today?  My mind wanders and I end up with riffles, American Dippers, and any and all similes for cold running races in my head.

The Dippers win, and I watch them bathe for a while. They scold – you’re kinda in our pool, lady. They've got attitude. But I don't move (so I suppose I have something verging that, too).

They keep polar-plunging anyway.

And light hits the pine tops at last.

And then a large pool below a bridge where we all migrate: basking in the sun like reptiles on rocks. Following the sunspots through the afternoon – like a cat on a living room floor -- there are midge hatches and rainbows and browns enough. Laughter and stories among good friends; split shot and curses occasionally, too.

There are all of these things. And there is more…much...

…until light takes its leave as slowly and quietly as it came, reminding me of where I am. Here, in this low place. At the bottom of something majestic from far away. Something beautiful...enough it can make me cry. And does. Yet it's cold and dark here, up close. I can't feel my feet, but I hear Jay and David stomping theirs on the bank. 

I am not alone.

The human condition.

And as goodbyes glow in headlights, we all promise – let’s do it again soon. Because at least I know, I'll need the reminder. 

No Man

There is a painting, somewhere, of a lone man in a black suit and bowler hat. Standing in a sea of grey. Back turned. Head cocked sideways, and down. Looking for something.

Perhaps everything.

Maybe it was in the impressionism wing of Joslyn. Or SFMOMA. Or maybe you dreamed it up when you felt alone. Painting it up out of words. Adrift (one of those “a”-prefixed words crossword puzzles overuse, your father says). At sea. Like Ocean Beach west of Twin Peaks.

But now here you stand. Faceless, nameless, confused -- and looking for carp.

Wildfire smoke drifting over four states of mountain ranges erases close and familiar peaks, and for the day, you are on the hazy plains. Standing in the mealy water of autumn, after a hot season boiled over. There are still a few days left though. A few days left of sun that pounds its fists down, burning your nose, fading your cap, bleaching streaks into your hair that your mother got with lemon juice in high school.

Underlying ploofs of reservoir mud lead the way. Atomic eruptions of what you’ve done wrong. Of where you haven’t cast or waded quietly enough. Muck grabs your boots, fingers your calves, makes you trip. Cleaning off your glasses, all you’re left to do is wait for the water to calm and for cruisers you can see. Shadows of movement. Nebulous clouds, mirroring what’s above. In the meantime you cast to tires, reflections, wallowing holes, weedbeds.

Show yourself, dammit...you hear over the planes dropping voluntary people out their side-doors.

Looking up -- that ain’t for real -- you remember. Because it’s daylight, he says...we always jumped at night.  

Which also reminds you -- you’re not in that painting. You’re not a lone man in a suit and bowler. And you’ve always wondered what’s outside the frame, anyway. Because you know there’s more. You’ve seen the process of Story -- the photograph to canvas; conversation to page; fish to rise. And you know there is a lot left unseen, told, hooked. So perhaps -- perhaps there was another figure in that sea, too. Another someone standing, looking down. Because before The Lettermen it was Donne who penned those lines about men and islands. Perhaps you can’t see see them, still fighting their own way up from underwater. And you worry, because you need them to. You need them to show themselves.

Damn them.

But then again, sometimes what you need is someone standing close by your side, whispering in your ear that you can do it -- that this fish is yours. 

Sage CIRCA Rod Review

I was once reprimanded for speaking too readily. Many times, actually, at music conservatory. Lesson after lesson, week after week, my professor would stop suddenly: think about it first, he’d say.

And although I would then walk across San Francisco’s 19th Avenue with my feelings hurt, and once home vented the injustice of it all to my housemate Valerie (who responded, if I remember correctly, with the suggestion of chamomile tea. Soothing, I suppose in theory), I knew that my professor was right. I wanted to get things right, but even more than that, I wanted to know the answers. In many cases, those are two different things entirely. In fact, figuring out the answers most often results in getting things wrong, again and again.

And so I didn’t know them, not until long after I’d graduated and my guitar sat in its case under a bed -- and then a basement.

However eventually, I did.

I figured out that firsts (answers, marriages, kisses, cars) are not always the best, and that eager answers (no matter the amount of conviction behind them) are not always speaking the truth.

Now, it’s a long way to stretch this to the action of rods. 
Yet I’m going to. 
In fact, I already have.

So when I was contacted by Kara Armano about testing out the new Sage CIRCA, (given my penchant for bamboo, she said) I agreed.  

But I did think about it first.

And I think that I like these slow action rods for their reminder to measure…to sink into each cast and stroke. To find a rhythm, to find your own (because it’s not going to work with anyone else’s). It’s not easy. It’s not easy to think first, to count, to measure, and not be found wanting. As with most other things in fly fishing, I think it’s as much a reminder of life as an escape from. Here on waters we meet a microcosm of life refracting back to us – in lighting where we can see.  And we can rush through that (to hasten the catching of big fish and hero shots); or we can listen, thinking about it first. We can let the rod load, giving its answer back. Although it’s hard to wait. It is. But when we interrupt the cast fails, falling flat, spooking whatever fish to that point we’d snuck upon.

I fell in love with slow action rods (good, slow action rods), after making my own bamboo. The ritual of it, the reminder that we are all works in progress. The pride of our history.  Split cane and fiberglass. Words written long ago about contemplation. Penned perhaps, while waiting for a willowy rod to load.

Who knows.

However, I asked to test out the 8 foot 9 inches 4 weight CIRCA and proceeded to put this graphite rod through some paces. Like test-riding a horse, you want to see what it can do before you dig out the wad of cash in your pocket you stopped for at the bank on the way out of town.

So I cast it at a backcountry lake in gale winds, and caught in the salvation flowing down. Cutthroats and brookies in tight quarters, with a door quickly closing. The CIRCA proved responsive and light. And most importantly, extremely accurate. I was (and remain) impressed. The beauty of a slower action rod, I think, lies in this: the better caster you are, the more you can make the rod do. You can control angles and curves, getting the fly into those hard-to-reach pockets – the ones with low branches on which hang evidence of previous tries.

And the CIRCA can do a lot, as I discovered.

Because I also decided to take it carping. Now carp fishing on a 4 weight (and a slow action 4 weight at that) might sound like crazy talk. And I suppose it is. But I will take a responsive and precise rod over a stiff and fast action on the mudflats, any day. And really, carp fishing and small stream trout fishing require very similar techniques at reduction: stealth and precision. An accurate and quietly laid cast.  It took a bit more umph on this softer rod to set the hook, but it performed. In the end the point being, it can do it and it can do it well.

If you know how to ask the question, the CIRCA will have an answer for you.