9 Months of Winter

The Alaska Folk Festival is the most fun thing to do in Juneau, period, no ifs ands or buts. Look, this place is ok, the skiing is great, the fishing is pretty dang good especially if you love gorgeous little fish, bushwhacking, and adventure fishing. Heck I caught a sweet cutt last Wednesday practicing for spey casting.

Fishing however, doesn’t help the socially awkward, but there is something about a 6 day party fueled with blue skies, beer and bluegrass that makes nerdy geeks like me meet a ton of folks. You can stand in the lobby of the hall and see a million people you know at any given time on any given night. You can walk up to the seemingly random and infinite groups of musicians and pick up the key and start playing along. Its truely amazing.

This year there was a few highlights, first seeing a bit of music with my mom, who was down for work. Then on thursday I caught a little bit of Guy Davis, this years guest artist on the radio, who sounded fantastic. Friday one of my best friends in the world came, and the sun came out. Oh it was glorious, the sun, the lack of clouds, spending the afternoon wearing a t shirt with a guitar slung on my back, wondering around town, going to parties, seeing people I knew, performing a couple songs I wrote for my kindergarden music teacher. Hell even the flat tyre out the road didn’t suck to much, we just pulled out the guitars and sat around waiting for a buddy to bring a can of fix a flat

Sunday we performed, which was pretty fun, if you listen closely you can hear my string break and it messes me up a little, thanks to the guy with the guitar who let me use it. Singing Dublin Blues with Nicole was awesome, she has one of the best voices I have ever hear if you don’t believe me give a listen to her set
Nicole At Folk Fest

If you are a masocist you can listen to my set too
Blue Wing, Dublin Blues, Drinking Whiskey
Never Satisfied

Sunday night was just epic, totally epic, the sunday evening concert was great, then Guy Davis came and played an hour long set, with some folks he met at the festival playing great blues harmonica and blues mandolin (yeah, blues fiddle is AWESOME BTW). Then probably the highlight of the festival about 40 of the performers including myself got on stage and sang “Goodnight Irene” with Guy, people were improvising versus, including a little girl who was like nine, just awesome that music could bring that many people together. Music is really the only thing that can get thousands of people to consistently do the same thing at once, it is an incredible force, just incredible.

Then came Sunday night, the new Saturday, we went over the the world famous (at least it should be) Alaskan Bar and listened to the Great Alaska Bluegrass Band until closing. They play bluegrass like nobody’s business and we danced like nobody was watching. Then we slipped upstairs cramming 30 people into a teeny hotel room, drinking cheap beer and playing music. I had my guitar in my hands but it was all I could do to just keep up with a basic strumming pattern, there was just hot playing, especially fiddle, god every verse someone yelled fiddle. I’ve had banjo and stand up bass stuck in my head for about 23 hours now. I sat in that hotel room playing G C D for hours before finally deciding it was time to sleep.

8:30 in the morning rolled around too quickly and I saw Nicole off at the airport and went to work, bringing me back to the real world. This afternoon the clouds rolled in, I bet it snows tonight.

Hey its April! That means I’ve basically made it through another Alaskan winter, I’m sure we”l have another snow squall or two, but who cares. Today was one of my favorite non fishing day ever. First I’ve got a couple of good friends visiting, second, its FOLK FEST. Folk Fest in Juneau is a holiday, it is easily the best party in town. 6 days of live music, 6 days of people from everywhere on the streets jamming. Today I walked around town with a guitar on my back, picking blues after a sweet workshop with Guy Davis. I ran into an old friend who had been away for a long time, then I played a couple songs at a songwriter’s showcase, featuring some of Alaska’s better singer songwriters, and I felt I held my own, that felt good. After that it was dinner, then a party with the Great Alaska Bluegrass Band, who bought a few cases of beer, and got the coast guard bar to give it out along with free chicken wings. Finally it was the evening concert and a sweet little blues in G jam session.

Did I mention there was not a single cloud in the sky? AWESOME

Tomorrow I get on the big stage and play some tunes! Sweet!

I remember the day I learned to ride a bike, its one of my earliest and most vivid memories. I had been trying for a while, but it never quite worked until this day. We were on a field at some elementary school, it had a sledding hill. I was there with my dad, one of his coworkers and her daughter. I had a hot orange and black huffy, an eye catching single speed bike which had it been an intruder would have surely caught steelhead. I pushed that bike to the top of the hill, and sat down. There I went down the hill, it worked, I didn’t crash or anything! In that one gravity fed ride something clicked and I got it. They say you never forget how to ride a bike, its as if in that instant I had remembered, like it came back to me from a former life, all of a sudden I could ride.

Without my bike I would not be a fisherman, there is no way. The walk to the creek by my house is just too far for an eight year old to go in an afternoon, but with a bike those spawning humpies and hungry dollies were easy to get to.

Anyway the girl who was there with me that first day, its her birthday. Happy Birthday K.C. Even though I hardly know you, and haven’t actually talked to you in years, I’ll always remember you.

Here’s the result of the bike, expeditions to faraway trout streams

The risk and fear, and gratification, and sheer joy of being in love, and the sheer sorrow of heartbreak cannot be replicated in a trout stream, no matter how hard you work to slot yourself into a canyon, no matter what you give up to be a trout bum.

St. Patrick’s day, Sitka Alaska, the world today is awesome, sure I have a cough, sure I’ve got nobody and I’m sleeping in a tent in some person’s backyard tonight. Whatever, tonight the Guiness will flow freely and I will enjoy the P Bar with some of my new friends and toasting my father for naming me Patrick, which is one of the best names in the world. Snap, its the morning after, I wake up gulls croaking, thrushes calling their shrill morning alarm clock call. I wake up expecting my head to be hurting, lie there on my back on my deflated air mattress thinking if I get up now I’m in for a long day. Finally my need to pee gets me out of the sleeping bag, I wonder to the car and turn it over, it starts, another good day. I smile as the sun shines through my windshield drink it in like I photosynthesize, I drive to a point on the coast, the tide is low. I string up the seven weight tie on a clouser and wonder out there.

Twenty-five sea lions great me at the kelp bed, whales surface everywhere, the herring are coming, the animals know it. I snag the kelp, loose my clouser and reel my line to sit and watch. I sit in the morning sun and soak it all in, nothing can touch me today, nothing. My head is clear, clearer than it should be, every bit of beer from the night before is gone, every bit of sorrow is quashed by the sheer joy of watching nature.

I came to Sitka to be with a girl, strait up, I’m not gonna hide it anymore. If she reads this I don’t care, I’m not under the illusion that I could be more than friends with her anymore. I asked her out, I’m not sure she got it cause she responded, with “lets go up to Eaglecrest (the local ski area)” I shoulda just stopped there when she told me she loved being single. I should love being single I suppose, but I don’t, I hate it, maybe its the masochist in me but I like having someone around to answer to, to try and explain my addictions too. A year ago I had nothing to complain about, life was perfect, spring was springing, snow was melting, and things with the lady were looking up. A year ago, and for the almost four years before that life was perfect. All I needed was that person to sit there loving me, thats all that was missing, that’s all that’s missing now, honestly thats all I need, and really having that the only thing missing from my life should feel good right?

There was a point in my life I decided that all that matters in life is love, and everything else is just an avenue for love to follow, and thats why I feel like shit tonight, the only thing that matters to me is gone. Its gone, and it will be gone for a long time, there is nobody to love me but myself, and it’ll take a long time for me to love myself again, she tore down every little bit of my being, she took every bit of self esteem I had and threw it under the bus. How do I love myself? All I do is fish for trout, all I do is drink to much beer, its all I can think of anymore, all I can fathom, I don’t remember love, I don’t remember what its like to love, I don’t remember what its like to have someone who really really misses you.

These thoughts go through my head and I look at the sea lion again and the otter sitting in the kelp. I cry, tears flow down my face, like they did when I was five, like they have for every night for the last eight months. I wish she was here with me, what is she doing for spring break? Why can’t I just be happy for her? Why can’t she date someone worthy of her? Why does he have to be such a douchebag, drinking more than me, treating women like animals, making her stuck in Juneau, where there is nothing for her, none of her dreams will be met here, unless she was lying about her dreams. She should be here in Juneau, she should be following me, instead of me following some girl who doesn’t even like me too much.

I walk back to the car and start it, I back up and go forward. My car stops, it doesn’t move at all then it goes tire dragging on the ground. FUCK I call the tow truck and start walking. Someday life will be simple again, I guess today I should be happy its not raining and just move on.

Spring has sprung here in the banana belt, well in that it was like 50° all February and the lakes opened up enough to wake up a few fish.

I don’t know if my readers like mountains, hell I don’t even know if I have readers, but they were spectacular at the start of the month

Oh and also with spring it finally snowed, and I skied some powder, and climbed some mountains

Here’s to a good spring and summer

Now is the time for hope, its spring, well not officially, but according to my calculations it is spring. There is no snow anywhere, its raining, and today I capture five pink fry while sampling invertebrates for a class. Five humpy fry and only two caddis flies by the way. Things are looking up, I think the run is two weeks early, I guess I could check some numbers or something, take average temperatures, average water temps, and all that jazz, calculate some sort of trend line and project it to calculate when the fishing will be good this year, in fact I’m pretty sure I’m suppose to be writing a paper on the subject for ecology right now. Of course the only thing I know about weather, is that it never does anything like its suppose to. Its even sometimes spiteful, like I’m sure they are gonna close the ski area and we are gonna get like 4 feet of snow, just out of spite. But I’ll maybe be optimistic its gonna be the best spring of fishing EVER, I’m gonna get into some steelhead and some cutts and finish all my classes and graduate, and have a great job, and meet a great woman, and go on a great trip to the lower 48 and catch a lot of great fish, drink some great beer, and on and on.

I don’t know if these things will happen, in fact there’s only one thing I know that will happen for sure, and that is that something will happen, and I’ll just have to hope that its good, and if its not I’ll just have to roll with it or die, and a bad life is better than that alternative, that’s for sure.

Well the super bowl is over, its 45° outside, no snow on the ground and I’m staying up all night in a vain attempt to get my sleep schedule back to something like a normal human being’s. You know go to bed at say midnight and get up, oh I don’t know at like nine or ten. Maybe its my bodies way of saying, “Patrick you should work the night shift.” Anyway its already February 8 and I haven’t had the February twitch yet, where I just want to go fishing and catch something so bad I compulsively check weir counts just too see if the first humpy fry has left the lake yet (now that I’m thinking about it I suppose I’ll do that now… nope the weir wasn’t even in till march last year). I figured it would be really bad this year, what with being alone and all. I think that mild weather over Christmas allowing me to fish four times really helped, plus there’s the whole building rods and tying flies thing. I’m not ready to fish yet, I’ve got so much to do. I’ve got to order some new gear, tie a new batch of steelhead flies, and a bunch of little stuff for the lower 48, like size 20 blue winged olives. I need some tungsten head pheasant tail nymphs in all sizes, like a few dozen of them, then of course some stone fly nymphs, oo and some grayling flies, I’m gonna do more grayling fishing this year, go to Fairbanks again, see my friends. So far I have a box of wooly buggers (I could use 2 dozen more I think) 5 size 18 parachute adams, some huge intruders to swing for kings this July and tonight I tied 3 stimulators for hopper fishing in Montana next september. That reminds me, I need to pick up some number 10 hooks for green drakes, aka the only hatch in Alaska that fish remember. I also have some mice that need to get finished, and more big nymphs to serve as split shot in lower 48 fly only waters. My flesh box is in shambles, I only have one egg sucking leech and I didn’t even tie it, and my zonkers are rusty. Yeah I’ve got a lot of tying to do.

As far as rods go, I need a 9 weight, especially if I’m gonna be working a certain river this year, that a 7 weight just won’t pull fish out of trees from. I also need a 13.5 foot 7/8 weight or something for the clearwater next fall. I’m almost finished with a cheap little two weight that will be a fun rod for grayling, and if I’m ever in Juneau during the summer. Of course I need a bunch of new lines, a 750 grain skagit for my 14 foot 10 weight, a new running line for my setup, my 5wt and 7wt lines are about due for replacement and my 9 wt line is like 4 or 5 seasons old. I need some rod tubes too. Ooo and fly boxes, mine are all rusty and they aren’t waterproof.

This of course brings me to where I’m gonna get the money for all of this? Well I suppose I should make some more mugs and sell them, my grand plan is to spend a weekend and throw 100 pounds of clay, make 75 mugs, and decorate them all with salmon and trout and bass and stuff, then sell them to someone for $25 each and then have like $1500 to buy rods and stuff with, of course each mug takes a half an hour at a minimum so I’m looking a like 40 hours of work just on mugs to pay for all this, which on top of actual work and school is a tall order.

I guess the bottom line is that I’m keeping busy, and that eases the pain, but still I want to be in a t-shirt drinking a cold beverage in an anchored chunk of aluminum, after watching trout fight for a big mouse pattern like right now damnit!

Until then, I guess I’ll just have to roll with it

I remember back when I was a little kid, my dad would be taking me fishing the next day and I could never sleep. I think I was more likely to crash out on Christmas Eve then to fall a sleep before a big morning fishing trip, and this was before college, before working nights all summer. I would roll around for hours and think about what big surprise I would find in the river the next day. I remember very well a trip to a creek way up north, that we had heard about at a party a few nights before, I’m not sure what the gathering was for, and it was weird because my family goes to few parties and when they do, fishing is rarely discussed. Anyway a guy said he had caught some silvers there that day and he saw someone catch a burbot. This was before I started fly fishing so I must have been between eight and twelve. Anyway my little brain couldn’t wrap around sleeping, it couldn’t stay clear long enough for a dream to pop in.

Come 5 a.m. we were off and rolling, I had a bucket of cured salmon roe, my favorite salmon rod and a grin as we went north for a few hours. I remember how the sky looked that morning, the clouds looked like giant rounded spirals, bumpy and blue, until the early light hit them and the spirals disappeared giving way to a vast blue sky, with fuffly clouds that can be described no other way but happy. It was late August, I know that because the state fair was going, it was possibly the first day of the fair. We followed the guys instructions in this old silver van we once had, we got rid of it in ’99 so I must have been younger than 11. We drove along the beach to a stream where we found a bunch of folks sitting there fishing.

I put on a bobber, a hook and a clump of eggs and started casting while my dad sat in a chair and half watched, half read a book or the paper or something. I remember watching the subtle tick of the bobber as fish hit, then suddenly it sank. My years of drowning worms at the local pond left me ready for this possibility, I struck, the hook went deep and I fought a nice silver to the shore. My guess is that it was just turning red, what Prince William Sound commercial fishermen would call blush. The fish still had a metallic sheen, still very silver at first glance, but also a deep reddish glow, like a anodized piece of metal. My dad upon seeing my luck started fishing, he was using a green Pixee, I’m not sure what he was doing but it looked like he was just standing there with a rod in his had and a slack line, which even at the age of 9 or whatever I was I knew that you didn’t fish a pixee like that. I was just about to say something when, he unceremoniously landed a fish, just reeled it in, no fighting no hook set no nothing. His was also a nice coho, very pretty for that late in the season.

I’m not sure but I think that might be the last salmon I ever saw my dad land. I’m sure as soon as we got back in the car I fell asleep, probably waking up to gaze at the mountains that you can see when you are 45 minutes from home, a great sign on a long car trip. I’m sure my mom cleaned the fish as I was too grossed out by fish guts to do it myself back then (one of the reasons I started releasing most of the fish I caught). I probably slept well that night and went back to school with another good story to tell that probably nobody really listened to.

Maybe this summer I’ll go back to that creek, pull up a lawn chair, throw on a glob of eggs, crack open a beer, and toast my dad as he sits and reads a book and I watch a big red and white bobber drift down the slow current like the clouds drift overhead. Until then I’m awake early in the morning, with my mind fill with the excitement of seeing a girl I really like pretty soon, of plans for the summer, of the nervousness that comes with getting done with school, starting another new life, and my mind is filled tonight for some reason with the story I just told you, and how much I wish that the prospect of staring at a red and white bobber for hours was enough to make roll around in bed like a little kid on Christmas. It was so simple back then, no decision on whether it was the right time to make a move on a woman, how to afford what I want, or what I was gonna do in 3 months. Back then it was just me and the river, nothing else, I wish I could have that again.

I spent most of this fall getting over betrayal from the ex, sucking at school, drinking entirely too much and quite frankly doing nothing productive. I caught one salmon and a dolly all fall, but I managed to build a rod, tie a few flies and come up with some dreams for the the future that require nothing from anybody but me. I started realizing that I was defined by fishing and every lesson I could learn about life could be gleaned from my lessons fishing. All of this came to late as the trout were under ice and the salmon were rotting by the time I needed the river. Finally I was able to get back to the cold part of Alaska, the part that is all ice and very little water. Went to a hot springs deep in the woods, soaked in a tub with the air temp -25 and the water 110° I saw old friends, I spent time with family, it all was good, but I still wasn’t happy.

Day one we arrive at the ferry and we were able to walk across the river which would be over our heads in the summer and fish the most fished stretch of water in Alaska, maybe the world, last year I caught a 24 incher here the day before the solstice, we work the water downstream, no fish, I’m nymphing a big flesh fly, S is throwing streamers, really big streamers, I’m dubious, but he is sure that techniques for Madison browns with translate to the pennisula I’m not one to argue this kid consistently outfishes me, I’m not sure its saying much about him but whatever. Today I worked down to my favorite winter hole and for some reason looked down at my fly patch covered with 3 months of torn up flies, one little nymph struck my eye as flies often will, I tie it on, dubious, its the middle of winter, the water temp is 36 and quite frankly why would a fish move for a size 16 caddis rather than a 6 inch long piece of rotting salmon flesh? Anyway I tied it on and fished it with confidence. Finally I get to the sweet water, this little deep slot next to a seam. My bobbercator starts dancing I set and work to tighten the line and get her on the reel, a few head shakes and I know this is no potatohead silver but a rainbow trout. She runs I bow my rod and let her take line and savor the click of the reel. I lead her into shallow water and admire her spots and her girth. Her mouth is torn but they all are like that, but like a woman you must love her today and not think about who she’s been with before, you must be happy to be with her today.

Day two I pick up M and N, who grew up together, I met them in high school where they constantly berated my crappy mending skills, and hid flies from me which I just learned how to tie this week 8 years later. We drive bleary eyed down to river, fueled by fast food and red bull we chatter about women and work. We tell fish stories that might actually be true. Our conversations usually end up leading to bowhunting and how awesome we are because we shoot stick bows (leaving out the part that non of us have harvested any big game animal with a bow), we talk ourselves up, perhaps trying to convince ourselves as much as each other of our greatness. We rag on folks who use bead, we talk about how manly swinging streamers is.

We get to the river and try a spot that looks good every time we float by but we never seem to catch anything there, we wade across the river, seeing the sporadic silver but catching nothing. I give a poor spey casting demonstration. Everyone tries to figure out the C spey and we finally get around to fishing what looks to be prime water without so much as a hit. We wade back across the river, that a year ago I could hardly wade into. The water is so low one can see where mid-river sockeye dug redds. I look at the cut bank I fished green drakes last august. I remember that night, driving to the south to get a burrito in town, and talking to my ex, back when she talked to me, joking and laughing like nothing had happened between us. Me hoping she would let me back into her life, her probably hoping I wouldn’t ask her to. Talking to me out of guilt or something. We climb over the ice bank and pile back into the van and drive looking at the lake seeing if its frozen, which is just an excuse to go for a drive and warm up our feet.

We stop at a store, pick up a six pack of mountain dew, some chips and salsa, and I buy a beef stick. We eat our lunch and drink our caffeine and sugar (M drinking four) and drive to another little spot. We stumble down a bluff and start walking downstream. Instantly 6 or 8 silvers spook leaving large wakes in the cold green water. “Let fish it,” N says and we cast.

Instantly all three of us have a fish on, M and I have silvers, N on the other hand has what we are looking for, I had M my rod and he fights two fish at once while I tend to N and his fish. He leads it to shallow water and poses for a photo

The barbless hook slips out and the fish swims away, I get back to my rod and fight my fish. M lands his I land mine.

We catch more cohos and eventually get cold and head home, buzzing with the joy of fishing. Driving through the cold dark night, stopping for gas at a ski town laughing at the suckers who paid $40 to ski for a day in the rain, I wonder what those folks with their goggles around their necks and snowpants on would think of us with our waders with lanyards holding hemostats and tippet around our necks. We go to N’s house and we make buffalo burgers, drink good beer and talk like we had just met.

My good friends and I can talk for days before we run out of things to say, maybe years, we don’t need each other for anything more than getting each other on the river and having someone to brag to who will understand. We plot and plan, the next day, the next week, the next year. We talk about adventures we want to take, give each other advice, give each other crap. The conversation sometimes gets serious, I talk about my ex, how much she hurt me, N talks about his dad who is sick, M is eerily silent about his time in Iraq. We don’t understand each others demons but some times its good to let things out to someone who can smile and nod, offer some kind of lame support, or change the conversation to laughter.

The next trip is with the same crew, we find N who is semi unemployed in his house, his girlfriend wishes him well and and gets ready for work, surely secretly wishing it could be her heading to the river instead of him. Backpacks and fly rods are loaded in the car and we are off, stopping for a new fishing license, a breakfast burrito and a 12 pack of mountain dew. Guiding the car I drove in high school down the highway. In the pre dawn glow we drive, back to the river.

The cold burns my lungs as I stumble down the bluff, my fingers stung from the breeze. This time M caught the rainbow.

We caught plenty of cohos too, big toothy bucks, in full spawning colors, ragged from fighting. Aggressive enough to take absolutely anything including a popper. I don’t much like fishing for salmon, especially when they are this old. Salmon are food, or money, or nourishment for the trout. Its my belief that because they don’t feed catching them and releasing them weakens them to a point that they sometimes cannot come come back and spawn. I especially don’t like fishing for salmon who aren’t aggressive, who won’t chase a fly. Sure I like fighting a really big fish, its a beautiful thing feeling the throbs of a 20 pound salmon at the end of your line, but I feel so cheap force feeding them or flossing them like you must do to catch them in a lot of cases. I’ll do it to feed my family or until recently my ex girlfriend (who’s salmon is now sitting in my freezer, as barter I hope), I’ll even keep one to eat myself once in a while. I do get a bit of pleasure from being good at catching my limit quickly so I can get on to more important things (like trout fishing) but, given an unlimited supply of salmon I usually don’t even bother fishing for them. In January, when its cold and you know you are in for a good 3 months of not having a tug on the end of your line they are great fun to catch, even though I feel guilty every time I hook one, but not quite guilty enough to break them off. I play them as quickly as I can slide the barbless out and let them swim back to fight with each other some more then when something happens to the water temp or something they spawn.

I let each salmon go and look at the mountains cloaked in white. I think about how lucky I am to live somewhere with ample salmon to catch. Where there aren’t 15 dams between them and their natal gravel. Where commercial gillnets can take sometimes 90% of the adults and the habitat is so productive that the remaining 10% will produce runs of the same size. I wonder if it will be like this forever, if we can stop the population of people from exploding. If my children or children’s children will have the room they need to roam to connect with nature in the way I am blessed.

I will lay in bed tonight, missing her feeling like I imagine it feels when someone loses an arm in war. I feel like she is there but open my eyes and she isn’t. The weight of the world will weigh on me, the plight of the peasant in Haiti brings me to tears. I will remember my friends who have had loved ones die, I will huddle under my blanket and try to forget about what I have lost, reminding myself that my life is good, heartbreak is nothing compared to what others go through. Maybe I won’t sleep tonight even, but I know tomorrow the sun will rise, and that river will be flowing and I will hopefully hold a part of it in my hands for a second or two, and love it. I will love the moment, and my demons will vanish, my thoughts will be clear, and my time will be my own. I will love what I have, and not resent what I don’t.