prairieflyfisher

I was the only car on the four lane interstate that morning.  Not surprising considering it was 5 am on a Sunday, but it still felt novel.  The vastness of a 4 lane interstate when there are no other cars around is both freeing and a little freaky.  The wide open pavement means you can drive with abandon.  At the same time it almost feels like standing on a roof top.  There no constraints to stop you… also, there are no constraints to save you.  It is not that it isn’t what I thought it would be like, the empty road.  It is that I couldn’t pre-create the feelings that it being like that would evoke.  About a week earlier I had received permission to fish a pond that I was very excited about, and I was finally on my way to give it a shot.  I had been told that the panfish and bass fishing in this pond would be something between falling in love and losing your virginity.  I had an idea that slight exaggeration was occurring, but none-the-less, I had the excitement of a man on his way to…. well…. get some.

It was a gorgeous morning.  Not a thought of a cloud in the sky and so still that exhaled cigarette smoke would just hang in front of you like the world had gone into slow motion.  The sun was just causing the collision between earth and sky to become visible in the east.  When she was up and in full fury that day, the sun would warm my little spot on the earth into the high 80′s, but not yet.  No, it was still a pleasantly cool 60.  It was a damn shame the 99% of the population would not being experiencing this little gift of time.

On a morning like this, the valleys of rolling hills in the area can sometimes be full of a dense fog.  I am not sure if it is a product of temperature differences, or moisture differences, or if it is natures way of ensuring that the requisite number of deer experience death via Chevy in order to keep the population in check.  But that is how it is, and it is cool to see and nerve-wracking to drive through.  This morning happened to be one of those mornings.  With no wind and the sun still not up to burn off the fog, some of the low spots were so full of this mystery vapor that for maybe 200 yards of driving the outside world had been erased.

I eased off of the pavement and onto the winding gravel that would descend into the area of the small pond.  This was not one of those hardpacked, straight as a string, gravel roads that one can comfortably traverse at 60 mph.  Rather this was a seldom used meandering little stretch of crushed rock and brown/orange dirt.  The lack of traffic and large looping curves made this a 30 mph job unless you thought you were a dirt track racer and are comfortable in a fishtail.  This is the kind of road that is there to remind us that slowing down and seeing can be worth alot more than the 6 minutes you save by hauling ass.  Despite my – Junior on his way to prom – excitement I was taking her as she comes.  The road looped and lobbed and slowly flowed down toward the pond.

I was just entering the curve that would whirl me directly toward the pond when the wall of white loomed up in front of me – ready to swallow my entire jeep.  The lack of impact as I entered the dense fog was almost surprising.  I am not used to seeing something so apparently solid and yet being able to move through it as though it doesn’t exist.  This was a serious fog.  I couldn’t see more that 5 feet beyond the windshield.  The only thing keeping me on the road was the change in sound as my tire left the gravel and began to tread on grass.  At that point I would know to correct my steering to keep me on the road.  So I pinballed my way down the road at about 5 miles a hour, eyes open as wide as they would go – not that that helped because I was driving by sound. I may as well have been blindfolded.

Eventually I parked in a small turn off.  I would later discover, once the entirety of my surroundings was unveiled, that miraculously I had found the right turnoff and parked as though I was an old hand at this.  I threw on my vest, strung up without tying on a fly, and started on foot in the general direction of the water.  You can always tell which way the water is because it is downhill from wherever you are.  The putt breaks towards the water.

Walking in the fog was stranger than driving in it.  Each step revealed an incrementally changing world. A slow progression as one plant was replaced by another and one tree grew slightly larger as it slowly entered the tiny bubble of reality that I was able to comprehend.  It was like watching time lapse photography of evolution. Behind me the fog swirled and eddied and slammed shut.  I was not cutting a path through the fog any more than a scuba diver cuts a path through the ocean.  All I was doing was fleetingly bringing into my tiny sphere of sensory perception pieces of a larger and hidden outside world.  Simply to have them erased from my immediate consciousness by my next step forward.

Eventually the water edge came upon me, as though I wasn’t moving forward, rather the rotation of the earth had brought it to me like a conveyor belt.  I sat on a rock and decided to get my wits about me.

The tiny piece of water I could see was smooth, making the pond look like it was made out of a mix of corn starch and water, rather than just water.  Like if you ran fast enough you could get all the way to the other side, but if you stopped for a second you would be slowly swallowed.  The sounds were incredible.  I don’t know if it was the lack of vision, or the moisture in the air, but all sounds seemed amplified and non-directional.  The birds were everywhere and unseeable.  From the Non-Newtonian pond came the splash of jumpers, the pop of Bluegills eating surface bugs and the BLLOOOOP of Largemouth Bass opening a hole in the surface of the water for the small frog to fall into.

The reason that reality no longer existed was immediately clear; silvery white cobwebs of steam lifted from the entire surface of the pond like cotton candy pulled for a cotton candy machine.  I sat in wonder and watched as the soul of this pond left it’s body and ascended.  After 20 minutes I decided it was time to fish.  I tied on a nice little yellow popper, stripped out some line, and pulled it into a backcast – bending my rod backward – and then rocking into a false cast – bending my rod forward – rocking back into a backcast and then into a false cast.  Holding 30 feet of line in the air.  On the 3rd false cast I shot my line forward streaming it through the line guides on my rod and into the unknown soul of the pond.

Attention Science:  I would like to formally announce one of the greatest finds in the history of history.  Newton… Einstein…  Mr. Wizard…. Bill Nye… Move over, there is a new sheriff in town.

Tonight I discovered a species of fish previously unknown to Science.  The fact that it is previously unknown is not surprising.  In what must be the greatest act of camouflage in the animal kingdom,  this species of fish looks EXACTLY like every other species of fish.  In fact, in all ways it is completely indistinguishable from any other species that science has discovered.  All ways but ONE!  This new species never ever eats.  Nothing, not ever.  I know this because I have seen the fish and have thrown every damn fly, streamer, nymph and terrestrial at them and they NEVER EAT IT.  Clearly they have adapted to never eat. It is the only logical explanation.

I know what you are thinking, “Dan you are a genius! But how can this benefit me?”  Simple.  Now that modern science has learned of the existence of these masters of dieting, guys in white coats can simply take out whatever lets the fish never eat and stick it in people!  Or better yet, stick it in a pill and let the person take it themselves as that sounds less painful!  Then we will never have to eat again!  Think of the lives that will be saved from choking alone.  Not to mention accidents in Mcdonald’s drive thrus, fights over forgetting your wife’s order on the way to Taco Bell and coming home with the wrong Gordita, and the hours wasted saying, “I don’t care, where do you wanna eat?”

I know what you are thinking now, “Dan you have removed some of the worst scourges of our time, but I enjoy eating. What should I do?”  What you should do is stop being such a nearsighted, selfish, nincompoop and shut the hell up.  Farmers that have been saying they were going to retire next year since they were 60, but at 108 still haven’t gotten around to it, can finally catch Wheel at 3 in the afternoon.  Ethiopian children will all sing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” in unison as now never eating will be cool rather than stupid.  AND we will no longer find any constraints to growing human populations!  we can put 100 billion people on the planet now!!

Again, I know what you are thinking, “Dan I am sorry for being such an idiot before.  This is obviously the greatest thing to ever happen, but what precedent is there for fishing changing the world?”  What precedent is there??  Jeez open a history book every once in a while.  Fishing made permanent settlements possible on coastal regions in cave man days.  Which was good because T Rex couldn’t swim very well.   Lobster fishing is the only reason Maine exists.  Plus, what about Moby Dick?  Also, crabfishing (which is kinda like real fishing) gave us The Deadliest Catch and got Mike Rowe a Ford sponsorship.  And he used to sing opera!  Think about that! An opera singer slinging Ford F450′s!  Now that is the kinda miracle that only fishing can bring about.

Ok I know what you are going to say.  “Dan do you think putting your head on Mt. Rushmore would be gaudy, if we did it before the Nobel Prize arrived?”  No, No I do not.

In conclusion, there are fish everywhere that never eat anything, as far as I can tell.  This discovery will save mankind from itself.  Eat THAT Malthus.  Or better, DON’T eat that!

The other night was a rare opportunity in the realm of fly-fishing.  We were coming off of 3 days of stormy and windy weather and we got one of those bluebird evenings that come in the spring and make you pretty sure everything is right with the world.  There was virtually no wind, the sky was a color blue that would make a topaz self conscious, and it was in the mid 60′s.  This would be one of about 6 evenings like this all year here on the plains.  Naturally I was quite disappointed.  I had my rain coat already in the truck and I was ready for an entire evening of drippy droppy fishing.  The kind that gets you the water to yourself and the air full of hatching bugs.  Instead I was going to have this heavenly evening, which would ensure that the bug maternity ward would stand empty and that would fill my little spot with men on buckets flinging skewered worms to fish that weren’t interested.  So I did the only sensible thing that a person can do when they are disappointed…  I went fishing.  (See how I did that?  You like that?).

I left work late (no sense in hurrying on a day like this) and headed straight for the water.  The spot I was going to fish is about 5 miles on gravel off of the main road and is a nice 30 minute drive from work.  Just far enough to feel the tension leave and the thoughts of tasks unfinished settle into the spot in your brain they go to hibernate until the fishing is over.  Just long enough to get into the present and begin to actually see the things around me and enjoy the sights and sounds.  To see the world as it is rather than to see through it.  The drive is perfect for me.  As I turned onto that little gravel road I was just settling into the more attentive state of mind and I noticed a particularly large quantity of bug guts accumulating on my windshield.  Now I may be the only person in South Dakota that gets excited about seeing his windshield caked in the unearthly concrete that is a bug’s inner juices.  Hell the stuff could be used to plug the leaking oil well in the gulf, but when I get those guts as a follow this little road along the river I know that there is a fair chance that the bugs are coming from the water… and that means a hatch.

The road approaches this spot buy a slow accession up an almost imperceptible incline, followed by a crest and view of the entire river valley and a screaming ride down what we called as kids a “roller-coaster hill” to the bottom where the parking area is.  You know the hill, the kind that as kids you would put your hands up in the car like you were on a roller-coaster and drive your parents mad by screaming weeeeee all the way to the bottom or until your breathe gave out, which ever came first.  To this day I get a kick out of these hills and this one serves 2 purposes.  It is just damn fun, for one, and it gives me a view of all of the water that I will potentially be fish that evening.  I was shocked to see that I would be all alone.

When I parked and caught by breathe from screaming weeee for the last quarter mile; I hopped out and strung up.  The bugs were everywhere.  Apparently there were a couple of hatches going on simultaneously.  One of large golden mayflies and one of smaller caddis.  They were so thick that I was worried I would inhale them if I were to breathe carelessly.  It was shaping up to be an unbelievable evening.  A cross-over hatch of 2 different species of bugs without the required sopping wet hat and cold fingers.  I was thrilled.

I approached the stream at a plunge pool and looked down to see that things were even better than I had thought.  The surface of the water was covered in bugs and beneath the surface were thousands of minnows looking like tiny underwater bomber squadrons; all moving in formation.  This was unbelievable.  There were flies everywhere, for the panfish, mooneye, carp and bass, and there were minnows by the millions for the walleye, pike, gar and well… everything else, the weather was unbelievably gorgeous AND I had the water to myself.  This was reaching once in a lifetime/lightening striking/win the lottery proportions. I was so excited I nearly wet my pants.

I started the way I always do, by sitting on the bank, lighting a cigarette, and watching the water to see where the fish are.  I saw positively nothing.  Not one fish grab a bug, not a splash or push or flip or flop or flash.  Nothing.  Ok fine, so nothing we eating the bugs… surely something was eating the minnows.  I work every inch of that stream at all depths with a few different patterns and I didn’t get so much as one hit.  Nothing.  I fished until sundown and then drove home.  I wouldn’t say I was satisfied, but I wasn’t distraught either.  I had the comfort of knowing that I had picked the right place, the weather change had brought the bugs and I had fished well if not successfully.  Every part of the evening that I could control I did as well as I can at this point in my flyfishing education.  If the fish were not there, or were dead, or asleep or possessed or had all gone vegetarian as part of the liberal movement… well I couldn’t control that and there is not a damn I could do to change it.  If you get too worked up about the effects of things beyond your command as a fly-fisherman, you are liable to go bonkers.  You have to understand that sometimes even the perfect situation can go sour for a reason you can’t affect or even detect.  It just is.

I have yet to find something that swims that I don’t enjoy fly fishing for.  However I do have two favorites.  Bass fishing, and Trout fishing.

Bass fishing is like the X-games of flyfishing.  You heave some big hairy looking bass bug, something that resembles a frog, or a mouse, or maybe even a duckling.  It is a gaudy looking thing – made of strange man made materials in colors not found in nature (or even in 56 crayon Crayola boxes).  A splash when it lands is just fine and may even be preferred.  Then you let your fly sit a while and see if anything happens.  If it doesn’t you start twitchin’ and yankin’ it; causing a stir and alerting anything in the pond that something is happening over here.  Suddenly a hole is torn in the surface of the water and your fly just isn’t there anymore.  You set the hook forcefully and then horse the fish out into open water so he can’t wrap you up in the damn lilly pad stalks that he lurks in.  When you finally get him played in, you stick  your thumb in his mouth and lift him right out of the water, get your snap shot and then drop him back in.

Trout fishing is a little different.  It starts by a quiet hike along a crystal clear cold water stream.  Water so clear and icy that the smooth parts look more like an antique window, with its varying widths and distortions, than running water.  You have already spent 30 minutes scanning the water and finding what bugs are floating in it that the fish may be feeding on.  You are staying low and keeping your shadow off the water.  Suddenly you notice, in a likely spot, tiny ripples where a fish is rising to eat tiny bugs off the surface.  The fly you have chosen is made from all natural materials – muskrat fur, tiny feathers – and is so precise and perfectly hand tied that you feel like you are casting art.  You can see the glass of scotch that sat on the desk in the fireplace lit room while the artist rendered this tiny replica of a real bug.  The fly is tiny, no bigger than a pinky fingernail.  It has to be,  that is the size of the bugs.  You gracefully arch your line into the air, careful not to let it spook the fish, and lay the fly on the water like a sleeping baby in the cradle.  There can be no disturbance of the water.  If there is, she will be gone.  You mend your line so the fly floats as though it is unattached.  Even though your leader and tippet line are thinner than a human hair, they can still affect the fly drift enough to scare her off, without diligent attention being paid.  Perfectly free to drift like its emulated brethren.  By the 7th perfect drift over the fish, without her so much as looking, you get nervous.  You know if the fly is one shade of olive off, or if the body is slightly too chunky, or the fly is slightly too big, she will refuse it.  But you can’t change now, it may be on the next drift that she takes.  You put yet another perfect drift across her and this time she stirs, gliding – smooth as a ghost – to the surface and allowing the fly to come gently to her mouth,  within centimeters.  When she takes the fly it is with a sip so gentle it would break your heart.  You bring her in thoughtfully and gently.  No horsing her, yet not allowing her to play herself to exhaustion.  When you get her to you, you cradle her gently in your hand, never taking her out of the water and as quickly as possible slip the hook from her mouth.  You don’t release her until you are sure she is fully revived.

So I have been thinking about relationships…

If you ever see me on an airplane, I doubt you would know it.  Being stuck in a dildo shaped steel tube with 15 too many people shoved into it and 3 arm rests for the 6 arms present in your row always causes me to screw my hat down over my eyes and turn my thoughts inward.  If I look around or pay too much attention to the snoring guy across the aisle, or the sweat from the fat lady’s arm next to me that is dripping on our shared armrest, I begin the think about the situation I am in: eventually reaching the conclusion, “you can’t breathe and you are never fucking getting out of here!”  It takes some effort to not……..hell I don’t know what, but doing about anything in that state of mind seems like poor judgment.

On a recent flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis, for the third leg of my 4 stage journey home, it occurred to me just how antithetical this situation was to the one I had just left.  I had just finished a fly-fishing trip to Hilton Head Island, SC – my first ever saltwater fly-fishing experience.  Fishing those mud flats for redfish on the (aptly named) Broad River just outside of Beaufort, SC was a lesson in largess and openness.

We awoke early and headed for the boat landing, arriving at just after dawn on a gorgeous South Caroline morning in early March.  I really didn’t know what to expect, short of the fact that we would be in some kind of boats and casting 8 or 9 weight rods (presumably Orvis) to redfish.  I was in a group of three; my dad, brother and myself.  We had enlisted the services of an outfitter and guiding service out of Beaufort called Bay Street Outfitters.  This is a top notch, Orvis-endorsed, outfitter and the head guide, Tuck Scott,  (one of the two that would be with us) was known in the area as a real good guide.  He brought another guide, Owen Plair, who knew where the fish were and how to find them.  These guys are great guides and great sports and they worked their tails off to get us on good fishing.

We split into two groups, with my brother going with Tuck and Dad and I going with Owen.  Immediately I was struck with the immense size of things and the openness of it all.  We were fishing an area at the mouth of the Broad River where it drains into the Atlantic.  To say it drains is to present it wrong.  It is more like the ocean breathes in the river; sucking water out at low tide and exhaling it back up river as the tide comes in.  This breathing of the ocean seems to drive everything.  The entire water scape changes, laying naked vast fields of oysters and mud when the tide is low and then hiding the fields and creating deep channels and drop-offs when the tide is in.  Fishing in a place where you could not move your boat and yet be in an entirely different place in 4 hours is not a concept I can entirely wrap my head around.

The scenery was spectacular and everywhere you looked there was water.  In this low country nothing is either ocean, river or dry land.  Everything is all three, simply vacillating among them – leaning towards being mostly one and then moving to being mostly another.  Everything is one good storm surge from being ocean floor and one low tide from being shoreline, with an impossible amount of area being both a couple of times a day.  I guess it is like anything… not really exactly anything.  More of a combination of all things, just in differing proportions.

Moreover, the landscape itself contains no obvious demarcations to give you a sense of being contained.  I mean, there are trees and hills, but nothing like the edge of a forest as it opens into a meadow, or a line of trees scarring the prairie as it slices along the banks of a river.  As you followed the horizon only the changing colors would tell you if what you were looking at was vegetation or ocean.  A colorblind person may try to walk to France from here.  This all made for an eerie sense of being exposed.  Like the feeling you get when you lay on your back in your bed with you arms at your side.  It can be exhilarating and halting all at the same time.

When we arrived at the boat ramp, Tuck and Owen were waiting for us with their boats and ready to go.  I had never been on a flats boat and I still can’t believe these things draft 8 inches.  It is trippy to look down into the water over the side of a boat and see that you could step off and barely go in over your boots – like looking out of an airplane and seeing that you could just step off if you wanted too.  It just ain’t right!

Tuck and Owen proved to be spectacular guides.  Tuck kept my brother on fish all morning (until the tide made it impossible) and in the process taught him a thing or two.  Owen was the kind of guide you want badly in a situation like this.  He grew up fishing the area and was some kind of savant, owning his first boat at 8 years old.  He knew this water as well as it can be known.  Additionally, he was a great guy and fun to be around, which was a real plus given the long periods of poling that needed to be done.  He worked hard to keep us on fish and succeeded sporadically, in the way that makes for a great day of fishing to a good redfish fly-fisher and getting skunked to a poor one.  For the record, I am officially a poor one.

Of the three of us, we hooked up three times, and all three times it was my brother that did it.  Once into a nice redfish that got him into one of those grip and grin hero pictures, once into his hat and once into his cheek.  That last one caused a little bleeding, but hell who am I to talk, I didn’t set a hook all day, and if you had told me, “you get to hookup on a redfish, but you have to hook your cheek first,”  I just might have done it.

The old Impala with a trunkload of fishing paraphernalia was just no longer doing the trick.  There were section lines I needed to drive down, minimum maintenance roads that needed explored and there was beginning to be smell emanating from the trunk that I feared was becoming permanent.  The time had come to get a vehicle that was more in tune with my habit of standing in water and whipping a stick around.  In other words, I needed a fishing truck.

I began my “search” in a way reminiscent of how I like to approach a stream.  I sat, thought, ruminated, pondered, and excogitated.  Once I had that out of the way, it became time to ask and answer some serious questions.

Would it make sense to trade in my car and get something new-ish?  This is a more complex question than it first appears.  First off, my 6 year old daughter loves that Impala like an old teddy bear.  We have had some serious adventures in it and there are memories in every nook and cranny of that interior.  Plus, it runs well despite having a lot of miles, making it hard to part with.  Lastly, and possibly most importantly, if I had a truck as my only vehicle I may balk at particularly hard driving.  Frankly, I was looking for something that would do the hard job, but that I could be fairly care-free with.  Or careless.  Or, some would say, reckless.  In all reality I was looking for something that someone else had already beat up pretty good, so I wouldn’t feel too guilty about adding to the damage at the margins.  I understand how little sense this makes.  I mean, something that hasn’t suffered any abuse can take more punishment that something that has, but for some reason the first dent is far more painful to me than the third.

What type of vehicle did I want?  The obvious answer is a pickup.  I needed something with high clearance and 4 wheel drive.  A nice (or more precisely not nice) used pickup would make the most sense.  The problem is I didn’t want one.  Pickups with the clearance I was looking for are pretty large.  I feel awfully manly in a large pickup, but I wasn’t looking forward to parking the thing.  I live in an apartment with limited parking and my space is pretty tight.  Ok, that is all just a lame excuse.  Did I mention I didn’t want one?  I wanted something fun.  This was supposed to be the vehicle I use as a way to go fishing.  And, despite how serious we become about fishing, it is more closely related to what you did when you called and asked your friend’s mom if Tommy could come out and play than it is to any serious endeavor of humankind.  So the vehicle is more like getting a skateboard than it is to getting a family car.  It should do what you need it to as a vehicle, but it should also be, well…………awesome.

So now I own a 1999 Jeep Wrangler.  Yeah I gave up alot of hauling room, and yeah it is louder on the highway than the cab of a new pickup, even with the hard top.  And yes, Barbie did have a pink one with a purple roll bar as her Barbie car at one point.  But hey, Patton rode around in one, and the freakin’ windshield lays down!!!  I pulled up to a fast food window to order and the lady asked me, “Can you please turn off your vehicle so I can hear you order?”  My daughter, in the backseat, patted the wheel well and said, “That’s just how beasty this sucker is.”  That is all the endorsement I needed.

My first flyfishing experience was a (very well) guided flyfishing trip in Breckenridge, Colorado.  I had not so much as picked up a flyrod in my life and the amount of information that was thrown at me on this first weekend was astounding.  Our  guides presented us with a half day class on entomology, knot tying, casting, the names of various stream structures (such as riffles, undercuts, etc.) and a primer on what types of locations fish were likely to me found.  It was really an astounding to me how much there was to know.  These two men did a fine job of explaining the why’s and wherefore’s of everything they were teaching us and I left that half day class feeling well armed to undertake this proposition.  I mean hell, I had been fishing as long as I could remember, how hard could it be?

Well, it was like anything.  A class on it, or reading a book, will leave you over-confident and under-prepared for actually undertaking the tasks being described.  The casting was atrocious, I was totally befuddled by the fly box, or more precisely what fly to choose from it, and locating fishy looking spots was a helluva lot easier on a whiteboard propped up in the back of a pickup than on the stream.  Still, I knew what I was SUPPOSED to be doing and it was just a matter of learning the nuances that would allow me to become more proficient at those tasks.

The one thing that I could absolutely not get a grip on was spotting the fish.  I mean, I can see a rise as good as the next guy.  A foot long fish eating a bug off of the surface is hard to miss.  But these guides could see fish that were underwater and that were STAYING underwater.  I have very good eyesight and I am really good at spotting game, but I couldn’t see this fish for the life of me.  I tried squinting, squatting, and cleaning my sunglasses.  Of course I had come with the required polarized lenses, but there must have been magic in the glasses these guys were wearing.  By the halfway point of the second day the answer had become clear.  These men were obviously super-human.  They had been endowed, on the planet of their origin, with the ability to see through water as though it isn’t there.  I mean we aren’t talking about peering to the bottom of a glass of drinking water after all.  This is moving water, with a choppy surface distorting everything.  And the chop is moving so the distortions are changing.  On top of that the sun in is shining and reflecting off of the water.  This was like trying to do an Eye Chart that is stuck on a pole while riding the Teacup ride at the fair.  A Herculean feat.

I found it truly disheartening that there was no way I would ever be able to spot fish like these people could.  Fishing for fish you can see is a big part of the enjoyment of flyfishing to me.  I love that fact that flyfishing is somewhere in between sitting on a bucket watching a bobber and stalking a deer.  Unfortunately, I was apparently deer blind.

As our final hours approached I found myself walking past my uncle, who was on the trip with us, as I leapfrogged to a new spot.  I stopped to chat and he mentioned his frustration with not being able to spot the fish.  We were standing together, looking at the top of a stream that others could see the bottom of and bitching to each other about our failings when one of our two guides approached.  I told him our troubles and he smiled.  Then then pointed far upstream of where we were casting and said,”Look up there.   Every once is a while there will be a small window of smooth water traveling down the stream.  Find one and follow it with your eyes.  It will give you a survey of what is beneath the surface.”  He then walked on ahead to help my brother get a fly out of his hair.

Uncle and I stood there, looking for the magic window of smooth water.  Soon one appeared and sure as hell.  If you followed it with your eyes, and you worked to see through the water and not see the water, you could get a traveling view of the world beneath the chop.  A small moving square of knowledge and insight.  A fleeting pane of clarity.

Last Sunday night I had to do one of those things that make you lose your appetite.  Something that you have to do over and over, even though once seems practically emotionally unbearable.  Right on schedule, my old companion, the lump in my throat joined me.  The one that we have been trained to have, not so much as a prelude of crying, but rather as the obstacle around which the sob cannot cannot find a path.  It is a strawberry piece that gets stuck in the straw of your strawberry milkshake.  No matter how much better it would be to get the lump out and just let the milkshake come, there is no forcing it.  I wonder if I taught myself to have that at about the time I learned to not cry anymore when my feeling were hurt.  At any rate, that is where I was.

In the summer I would take this opportunity to try out a fishing spot.  I like to look for a new stream, somewhere that I had to be intellectually engaged in the fishing and thus distracted enough to wait out the sting.  I liked to look for new or challenging water, usually moving water.  That way the repetitiveness of cast and strip that I find attractive at times on lakes and ponds was not there.  It is those times when my mind leaves the fishing and I find it pondering relationships, or work, or other non-fishing topics.  It was this mind wandering that I looked to avoid.  So I found flowing water with fish that could see me.  More difficult, or at least engaged, fishing that demand my attention.  That is what I do in the summer.  It is early Decemeber.

I decided to get a bight to eat – at this point I am avoiding my quiet apartment at all costs – and head in the general direction of the eateries in my home town.  Somehow, I discover that I am on a hiway and have passed all the food joints.  Did I mention the loss of appetite?  I was driving out into the country and without even making the decision. I had apparently decided, unbeknown to myself, to head to the river.  I wish I had a better explanation than “it just happened” but I honestly don’t remember deciding to go to the river.  It was just happening and I didn’t have the energy to stop it.

There is no good explanation for going out there.  At 7:30 at night in South Dakota in December it has been dark for over two hours.  I did have my gear in the trunk and my license in my pocket, but the bank sign of the way out of town read 19 degrees so fishing was not a realistic possibility although I think that at the times I was still convinced that I would at least try a cast or two.  It was as though there wasn’t a question.  This was what needed to happen and I wasn’t going to have a say in it.

The place I was headed could safely be called my home water.  It is a 30 minute drive from my place and I have spent by far the lion’s share of my fishing hours working this stretch of water.  I am still learning about it, but it is the water that I know best.  There is nothing inherently attractive about this place.  It is not the greatest fishing spot around, in fact some people view it as an inferior spot that inexplicably works sometimes and can be defaulted to when the better places aren’t.  Nor is it a secret, I have fished with many different types and met some real characters on this stretch of water.  It is known to produce, although not necessarily in the size or type of fish that people around here are looking for.  Nor is it the most romantic water int he world, being in a cow pasture and near a road and all.  There is no magic here.  Well,  at least the magic here is not accessible to everyone.

What this place does have is sound.  There is a very nice riffle over large basketball size rocks, leading to a narrowing of the channel.  That, obviously, speeds up the water as it slides in a deep run under a Works Projects Association era bridge immediately into a nice little fall over some Volkswagen size boulders, splashing into a picturesque pool immediately adjacent and connected to a large still pond.  The current shoots straight through the side of the pond and exits in a beautiful riffle as it spreads across a gravel bed.  The cacophony created by this varied water-scape means that a turning of the head is all that is required to change the sound completely.

Alighting from the car, I realize that no fishing will occur on this night.  First of all, I am wearing my Puma tennis shoes with soles so grippless that bar floors can become skating rinks.  Secondly, I have on my leather coat that causes me to ponder why cows don’t freeze to death every winter.  Lastly, the sandpaper sensation on my face caused from walking in the 19 degree air does what it does ever winter.  It tells me “Screw this up, be unprepared or less than vigilant on a stone and you will be lucky if your ears are all it will cost you.”  I love that realization.  I force it upon myself at times.  The thought that I am in a situation that plausibly could kill me.  I require something like that, something to contrast daily life against, to remind me just where I am and what I am.  I think people say it makes them feel alive.  I would say it reminds me that that is all I am.

So, there I am, lump, pumas and all.  I put my hands in my pockets and walk out on the bridge.  I am here for some reason, lets see what it is.  Peering over each side of the bridge I get excellent views of the water, black and oozing it appears.  I can hear all the different instruments being played by this stretch of water.  Winter cold in SoDak means that the air can’t hold any moisture so the stars are close and obvious.  There happens to be a full moon on this night and it shines so brightly that as I meander back of forth across the bridge I continually jump thinking headlights are coming down the road.  I can hear a deer crash through the 6 foot high grass.  There is no wind at all, so if I stand stock still a sort of body heat bubble forms around me and I don’t feel cold at all.

I walked around for something like 45 minutes before I decided to get back in the car and drive home.  By then the lump was gone.  In fact I felt pretty good.  No major life realizations to impart, no new wisdom gained.  Just not as bad as before.  like maybe I should go write something.

Southeastern South Dakota, where I live, was having an unseasonably mild August.  By the middle of August the weather felt like the middle of a normal September.  Temperatures were warm all day with the evenings cooling off nicely.  The local flora and fauna were responding accordingly.  My five year old daughter and I had decided to do some fishing on a Saturday afternoon.  My daughter loves to fish, and the night before had been like an invitation to catch.  The sky had been clear and warm all day on Friday and right as the sun started to relent, a nice low pressure system had rolled in; bringing a little drizzle and a mating swarm of mayflies that, if they had teamed up, could have grabbed you by the shoulders and carried you away.  These things were gigantic, an inch or longer in the body, and were so numerous that your car would get covered with them at the nearby gas station when you stopped to pump.  I had never seen a spinner fall like this before and I had fished it alone and hard.  Fish were rising to these bugs and I caught many large ones.  The particular species that were partaking in the buggy feast are locally known as mooneyes.  Don’t feel bad, even with 20 years of fishing these waters I proclaimed, “Holy shit, I caught a piranha!’ when I landed my first one that day.  A google search when I got home revealed the real species.  These are flat, silver fish, with oddly upturned, toothy mouths and large scales.  The largest one I caught was nearly as big around as my net.   Anyway, I wanted my daughter to participate in this fishing bonanza.  While she wouldn’t be able to dead drift a mayfly look-a-like to them, I had noticed that once the feeding frenzy was on; these fish were aggressively biting anything that appeared semi-foodlike.  A minnow on a bobber should be particularly effective.  So I spent the half hour drive to the stream teaching her about the lifecycle of mayflies and the ensuing fish feast that would inevitably follow.  We fished for a few hours and the mayflies refused to breed and die.  My daughter was completely out of patience.

If you have ever been fishing with a 5 year old, you know that it can be a daunting proposition.  They want to catch fish, the bigger the better, just like any of us.  However, they would rather not wait for these fish to show up.  So you are left with a quandary.  Do you try to put them into some small bluegills, so they can catch many small fish quickly and eventually get bored with that and want to go home.  Or do you try to get them into bigger fish and run the risk of them not catching anything for a while and getting bored and wanting to go home?  The trick, in my opinion is twofold.  First, you embrace the experience for what it is; time in nature with your child and don’t be afraid to reel in and go look at the cow-patties and explore for pretty rocks.  It is the 5 year old equivalent to me sitting on the edge of a stream thinking about how buddha was right when he said life is like a river.  The inherent value in recognizing how truly unimportant our responsibilities can be and going to explore something new.  Secondly, and more practically, fish for the little ones without excluding the possibility of a wallhanger.

My daughter and I had been fishing on a prior occasion and she was catching bluegills as fast as I could get them off the hook and a new worm on it.  I had purchased a couple dozen crawlers for this particular fishing trip and we were going through them so fast it looked like we were going to run out.  I didn’t get to fish that day; I was too busy baiting her hook and taking her fish off. Despite the impending nightcrawler shortage I continued to put full, large worms on her hook and direct her to cast to the outside of the pingpong table sized area where the bluegills were hanging.  I thought there was a chance, with a nice looking worm and by being on the outskirts of the fishy circle, that we might pick up a big cruiser.  Sure enough, her bobber vanished and she fought with everything she had, nearly losing her pole in the process and, after screaming at me that this was her fish and to not help, she drug it on shore. She had landed a 19 inch walleye.  That is a fish that is nearly half as big as her.  She still talks about landing that beast and holding him and then letting him go.  The only thing bigger than that fish she caught that day was her smile.

Having the opportunity to share what you have learned about where the fish are and when, can be a very rewarding use of your fishing knowledge.  My mother and I had agreed to meet on dreary day at a spot near her house.  I got there about 15 minutes before her, and strung up and hit the water.  There was a beautiful seam that was easily fishable from shore right were I approached the stream and I swung a white wooly bugger into it.  I cast 5 times before Mom appeared on the bank behind me and I had gotten 4 hits and caught a beautiful dark gold walleye.  I was so excited that I immediately put Mom right where I was standing, pointed out the seam to her and suggested a lure (mom is a spin fisherperson) to her.  I then left to find myself a new spot.  Mom caught a couple very nice fish in that spot, including a chunky 17  incher.  I, on the other hand, didn’t get a hit for the rest of the evening.  I would say I got skunked, but the next morning she called me and thanked for the experience.  It seems she hadn’t caught a fish that size for a number of years.  I would call that a pretty good catch.

My mom is not the only other person in my family that fishes.  My Dad and my brother do also.  In fact, I recently went on a two day fishing excursion with my little brother.  Now this was not your average, everyday flyfishing trip.  My brother lives in Minneapolis proper and we were fishing in the city.  So there we were, a couple of guys in chest waders, fishing vests and hats, wondering the parks of Minneapolis.  It is a wonder we weren’t arrested.  After a full day and a half of looking for fish and only catching one small northern pike, we were close to calling it a weekend.  But lady luck had something more in store, for me at least.  As we were walking back slowly along a stream, my Brother spotted a nice little school of bluegills.  At this point it behooves me to point out that my Brother’s recent domestication and his career as an attorney have severely limited the time he spends on the water.  And in fairness, we were both pretty excited to see some fish after a good 18 hours of fishing with nothing to show for it.  Any way, he spotted the fish and immediately pointed them out to me by thrusting his 9 foot rod at them like a fencing sword.  That caused the fish to decide to move, obviously.  I chastised him appropriately and then asked him to again identify precisely where he had seen the fish.  And, with an absentmindedness befitting a wacky haired college professor, he repeated the rod thrust motion, completely spooking the school of fish.  When we finally located the school again, or more likely another school that hadn’t had our presence broadcast to them, I stepped back to give my brother a shot at fishing these fish.  He was so excited that you could visibly see it, and that doesn’t translate into effective flyfishing.  He managed to knot his line while trying to strip out to prepare for his cast.  He then took one step too many in approaching the bank and nearly fell into the water.  After getting his wits about him, he attempted to cast and managed to get the line wrapped about his body and his fly hooked in the tree behind him.  After we had utilized some moves reminiscent of a top to get him all ready to cast, he hooked his fly on the back of his vest in his backcast.  Needless to say, the fish had left the area long before he put a fly on the water and we came up empty.  But I did get a nice ab workout from laughing so hard at him that I thought I was going to wet my pants.

Anyway, my Daughter had lost all patience and was ready to call it a night.  I took my fly off and was winding up when she said, “Daddy, what does a Mayfly look like?”  I began to describe it to her again and she interrupted me, saying, “Does it look like that?” as she pointed to the water.  And the Spinner Fall was on.

Examining the way certain species of fish are viewed by people and how that view changes from group to group is a very interesting study in group dynamics.   At our core, we are all fisherpeople, looking to somehow influence the behavior of a fish.   I was originally going to say that we were all looking to entice a fish to bite our hook and be drug onto shore, but I thought I might get the bowfishers and the pallid sturgeon snaggers offended.  They totally circumvent the whole “me fool fish” part of fishing and go straight to the fishhunting.  I was then going to say that we are all looking for a way to drag a fish out of water and into our hands, but I remembered the newly popular sport of hookless flyfishing.  These folks take the fooling of the fish as the ultimate goal and the enjoyment, for them, stops there.  For the rest of us fishing is something akin to being drug dealers.  We are trying to get the fish to put something into their bodies that they will ultimately regret.  Possibly we are more like tobacco companies.  At any rate, lets not get overly romantic about our place in this game.  We are not the fish’s friends anymore than a cat is a friend to the mouse that it plays with.  Ultimately, we want to catch the biggest of whatever fish we are after that we can, regardless of the fishes feelings on the subject.

The question is, what fish do we choose to fish for.  It seems that everyone has a view on what is the proper species of fish to pursue.  There is a loose connection between what the ultimate purpose of the fishing is and what species one pursues.  Sometimes this means that there is a connection between personal taste and the appropriate fish to catch.  I grew up in a town that sold Bullhead meat in the grocery stores.  Needless to say, there were people that would go out and specifically fish for bullhead because they ate it.  For them, the bullhead was the goal; actually the biggest bullhead was the goal.  Many people here, fish for walleye.  It is very tasty meat and a game fish to boot.  So it has a double draw.  In that way the walleye fisherperson and the bullhead fisherperson are effectively engaged in the exact same activity with the exact same goal.  They are both trying to catch the biggest fish possible that is made out of the meat that they think is tastiest.

Given the commonalities in our pursuits, one would think that there would be a very tight camaraderie amongst all different sorts of fishpeople.  However, like any community, there are fissures and fractures that cause different factions to spring up.  These factions tend to ignore the things they have in common with other groups and focus exclusively on differences.  One group finds that catching a certain species of fish is easy, ignoring the fact that catching THE LARGEST of that species is still hard.  Or that the official handbook has not designated a certain species as a game fish and it is therefore not worthy of a cast.  Or my favorite, that certain species of fish are non-native and are thus not actually fish at all, but actually don’t exist.  We use different tackle, different bait, or differ in whether or not we release the fish.  All of these thing are used to make one group of fisherperson distinct from others and therefore allow a superiority complex to emerge.

One of the things I love about flyfishing is that I can cross boundaries in terms of what I want to catch, and I am not limited by what I have originally gone out to pursue.  If I went out after Largemouth Bass and a spinner fall occurs, bringing the Mooneye to the surface to feed.  I don’t have the watch helplessly while all the fun passes me by.  I can tie on a dryfly and go crazy.  The point is, that flyfishing allows me to enjoy the opportunities that nature, or god or a low pressure system or whatever, afford me as they come.  I am not constrained by a rigidity in what is the right fish, because the right fish is the one I choose to cast too.  And if he isn’t there, then it is the next one.  I broaden my sources of success to include anything that is presented, allowing me to enjoy the world as it is, rather than as I had hoped it would be.

There is a certain species of fish that I would like to describe for you to guess.  It is an introduced species; very spooky but sometimes visible as it feed on the surface frequently.  Most of its diet consist of small underwater insects.  This fish can be a very choosey eater, and if it is feeding on a certain thing at the time it will not take anything else.  Give up?  It is a Brown Trout.  Also, it is a Carp.