Gray's Sporting Journal (Legacy) - The Fly Fishing Edition 2019

Gray’s Sporting Journal The Fly Fishing Edition VOLUME FORTY-FOUR

ISSUE 1

MARCH/APRIL 2019

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Features VOLUME FORTY-FOUR ISSUE 1 • MARCH / APRIL 2019

8The Adams

by John Gierach It endures.

20 Still Life with Brook Trout

14

Electric Ponoi

by Isaias Miciu Nicolaevici A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNAL

by Jason Rolfe Hiking into alpine country for brookies and fishing through unmoored sadness.

26 A Hundred Fish

by Ron Dungan Catching fish on the swing, on dead drifts, and while stripping and daydreaming.

38 Proving Up

by David Wickline III Misery and mercy on the Madison.

44 Seasons Past & Those to Come

32

Options by Bryan Gregson A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNAL

by Nigel Ling Thoughts of an enduring love.

95 EXPEDITIONS The River That Thunders

by John Shewey Exploring the unique history, geology, and etiquette of the North Umpqua.

FRONT COVER: Sunday Afternoon, by Lou Pasqua

Acrylic on board • 13 x 18 inches

50

The Chalk Stream Experience

by Dušan Smetana

A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNAL

Columns & Departments VOLUME FORTY-FOUR ISSUE 1 • MARCH / APRIL 2019

58

4 JOURNAL

74 ART

by Russ Lumpkin

by Brooke Chilvers

Neighbors and Friends It takes more than curiosity to be a fly angler.

58 TRADITIONS The Capture of My First Salmon

by George Dawson Edited by Will Ryan

Some early tales of battling the king of fishes.

68

64 ANGLING

Bullets & Bombs

by Miles Nolte

Nostalgia, climate change, logos, and a luddite’s eventual embrace of weighted flies.

68 SHOOTING

Rod Crossman You can’t photograph a memory.

78 EATING

Fishing and Foraging in Early Spring

by Martin Mallet

A cure for cabin fever.

118 BOOKS Artistry

by Chris Camuto

120 POEM Church

by Michael Hill

The Heirs of Zam-Zammah

by Terry Wieland

Rock Island’s “Great House of Wonders.”

74

56 Gear Guide 111 People, Places, & Equipment 112 The Listing

Gray’s Sporting Journal Group Publisher John Lunn A s s o c i at e P u b l i s h e r Michael Floyd

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Gray’s Sporting Journal (ISSN 0273-6691) is published seven times a year in March/April, May/June, July, August, September/October, November/December and January/Expeditions issues by MCC Magazines, LLC, 643 Broad St., Augusta, GA 30901. Subscriptions are $39.95 for one year, $68 for two years. Canada and Mexico add $20 per year (U.S. funds only). Outside North America, add $40 per year (U.S. funds only). Periodicals postage paid at Augusta, GA, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address corrections to Gray’s Sporting Journal, P.O. Box 433237, Palm Coast, FL 32143-9616.

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March / April 2019 · 3

GSJ

JOURNAL

Neighbors and Friends It takes more than curiosity to be a fly angler.

by Russ Lumpkin

F

ly anglers have lots of curious friends. At least that’s been my experience. My wife and I have bought and sold a few different houses, and with each move, a new neighbor or two would eventually see me load fly gear into my truck or discover I work for Gray’s. In casual conversation, the man of the house next door would usually say, “I’ve always been curious about fly fishing. Never tried it, though.”

Without fail, I’d offer to lend a rod and volunteer to take him fishing. “Use it as your own. Practice casting in your yard, and maybe sometime, we’ll go to the river. You’ll enjoy the fishing a lot more if you learn to cast even just a little.”

The reasons for encouraging newbie anglers to practice are twofold: One, they actually would enjoy the fishing more if they learned to cast. And two, I would enjoy it more also. On the water, instead of teaching rudiments of casting, I’d prefer to help someone learn to read the water—often instructing by example.

It’s not that I mind trying to help a nascent angler. I mean, I’ve been there—at one point, I was only curious about fly fishing. These days, however, time on the water is precious. And my home water, the Savannah River, which serves as the border between Georgia and South Carolina, often leaves me at the mercy of the Corps of Engineers. On its run to the ocean, the Savannah is dammed several times. The J. Strom Thurmond Dam stands 22 miles upstream from where I fish for striped, smallmouth, and largemouth bass, and it creates Clarks Hill Lake, which covers 111 square miles and generates about 700 million kilowatts annually.

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The demand for electricity is usually highest when the fishing is most productive, and the higher the demand, the more water the corps releases. And when the corps releases a lot of water upstream, the river downstream is often too fast and too dangerous to wade or even canoe. Frequently, an entire year will pass with very few days fit for angling—and even fewer days when my schedule allows me to get to the water. Needless to say, I don’t fish enough, and I’d prefer to fish with someone than help them learn to cast, which is something they could have practiced in their backyards regardless of water levels.

More often than not, the fly rods I lend come back to me unused. Once, though, I had a neighbor whose curiosity got the best of him. I lent him a rod and took him to the river, but he had not practiced. On the water, he couldn’t grasp the concept of casting a weighted line, which proved problematic. Eventually, I advised him to leave a bunch of line in the water, flip a popper into current, and let the water carry the fly out before he stripped it in.

He’d have had more success and more fun if he had sought a little help prior.

He never fished with me again, and that might be my fault—I didn’t babysit him. It’s a shame, though.

Fly angling could have added a lot to his life, and he and I could have been better friends—and I know through experience, fly fishing friendships tend to blossom into lifelong friendships, the types that help turn acquaintances into brothers and sisters.

Some of my very closest friendships are bound or partially bound by fly fishing. Among them, my

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friend Glenn. Like me, he’s a preacher’s son, and we’d been tight friends for more than 10 years when, by chance, he discovered fly fishing about the same time I did. That was 20 years ago. My friendship with Glenn has led to friendships with two other local fellows, one a well-known medical illustrator and the other a local hero for helping revitalize downtown Augusta more than 20 years ago with his restaurant and bar. I had known of these two guys for years and had chatted with them, but I never really knew either of them until we fished together. Eventually we made a hiking-and-angling trip to the Smokies, then made it an annual adventure—about 16, 17 years running now.

These days, the ties between my fly angling friends and me are more intertwined than just fly fishing, more braided than the currents on the Savannah, and it’s rare that more than a few weeks pass without one of us texting the other three to say, “We all need to get together soon,” or “We need to plan a trip for the spring.” I could use more friends like that—and more time with such friends.

And then there’s Sid, a friend who’s neither a fisherman nor very curious about it. He’s also my brother-in-law, married to my wife’s sister. He and his family live in New Mexico. Sid is originally from Brazil and is a great cook, a devoted father and husband, and all-around great guy.

Several years ago, my little family and I had been visiting Sid and his family for a week, and he said he’d take me up into the Jemez Mountains to fish for trout. The Jemez is home to many small streams that are full of native Rio Grande cutthroat.

Early one morning, Sid packed his spinning rod and I my fly gear, and we headed for the mountains—about a 90-minute drive. Traveling northeast on Highway 4, we entered the settlement of Jemez Springs, where we stopped and bought him a box of worms. I purchased a license, two cups of coffee, and a couple breakfast burritos. Sid drove slowly as we ate.

In that country, the river runs a rough parallel to the highway, and at times, we could see it snaking through the valley and other times crossed bridges where it intersected the road. Soon, we found a pull off, parked, and rigged up.

Getting to the river amounted to walking down a deep ditch through very loose sand. Willows lined the banks of the river and provided decent shade 6 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

on a day that would be hot as soon as the sun rose a bit higher. The little river, which often ran as narrow as three or four feet and rarely deeper than a couple feet or three, ran clear and pretty through a bed strewn with big rocks.

We had only three hours or so to fish, and so we got to it. I told Sid to run his worms through any shade he could find, especially near the rocks or where the water appeared deep. He sat on a streamside boulder and wished me luck. I walked the bank downstream, tied on a Bead-Head Pheasant Tail, and began wet-wading and plying shaded water.

Most of my casts were straight out in front of me—more like a flip instead of a cast, and I kept only a few feet of line or only a few inches beyond the tip top. I knelt often to avoid throwing my shadow on the water or catching my fly in overhead foliage. To great delight, I discovered nearly every shady spot held fish and nearly every drift paid off. I pulled trout from the shade of rocks and from water with any depth. The deeper, longer pools, especially beneath willows, often yielded two or three trout— all smallish, all less than 10 inches, but each a genuine gem, sparkling little Rio Grande cutts and an occasional buttery brown.

By the time I made it upstream to Sid, where he sat on the same boulder, I’d caught about 15 little jewels.

“You catch any?” he asked.

“I’m catching a lot, yes,” I said. “You?” “No. Nothing.”

“You want to try the fly? You’re almost guaranteed to catch one.”

“I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I enjoy the quiet.”

I moved on and continued catching fish. The final hour flew by.

Late that night, I remained perplexed by Sid’s lack of curiosity. I told my wife, “I kept asking Sid if he wanted to fish with the fly. He said no. He would have enjoyed catching a beautiful fish.”

“Earlier, I had asked him if he tried it,” she said.

“He told me he wanted you to just have that time to yourself.”

I wasn’t surprised. Sid’s a great fellow, but I couldn’t stop thinking, A guy who will drive me to new water and enjoy sitting on a rock while I fish . . . He’d make a great neighbor. n

hen I asked my artist friend, Bob White, to do a pencil drawing of a trout fly on the half-title page of a book of mine (what artists and book people call a “remarque”) he said, “Sure, what’s your favorite pattern?” and without thinking I said, “The Adams.”

W

Bob knew what I meant: not the original downwing dry fly invented by Len Halliday in Michigan in 1922, but the earliest variation of the pattern that most fishermen now think of as the classic Adams: the Catskill-style, divided-winged, collar-hackled pattern that, for a few generations back when things were simpler, was everyone’s favorite dry fly.

As anyone who’s ever written about this pattern has said, the Adams is custom made for the generalist. It looks a little like everything without looking like anything in particular, and its barred grizzly wings and mixed brown and grizzly hackle suggest motion in the same way a canary-yellow Ferrari looks like it’s going 97 miles an hour even when it’s parked at the curb.

Fishermen sometimes invoke the pattern to indicate largely undisturbed streams where the trout are wild and eager as opposed to “selective,” as in, “It’s the kind of creek where you can clean up on nothing but an Adams.”

Non-fishermen say of the Adams, “Jeez, that looks just like a real bug” even though it really doesn’t. Or maybe it does, since trout have been eating these flies more or less dependably for going on a hundred years now. Who the hell knows what trout think anyway?

I want to say I caught my first trout on an Adams. I can’t actually swear to that, but in the way of all apocryphal fishing stories, it at least sounds true. I do know that for a long time the backbone

8 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

of my meager fly selection consisted of Adamses in four sizes. That was probably because every flyfishing writer of that era put the Adams at the top of the list of the five fly patterns every trout fisherman should carry. The other four were usually the Elk Hair Caddis, the Gold-ribbed Hares Ear, the Muddler Minnow and the Black Woolly Bugger.

As I said, simpler times.

This was before I started tying my own flies, so there was the added advantage that anyplace that sold trout flies, including gas stations, was bound to carry the Adams. My late father once told me to stay away from weird rifle calibers—“Never own a gun you can’t buy bullets for at any hardware store” he said—and that seemed like sound advice for fly patterns, too.

God help you if your favorite dry fly was the Ratfaced McDougal and you couldn’t tie your own.

When I did start tying my own flies, the Adams was one of the first patterns I learned. (The mixed hackles gave me fits until a friend told me to wrap them one at a time instead of together.) And when I decided to keep a small flock of chickens for eggs, meat, and feathers, I chose barred Plymouth rocks, the birds grizzly hackle comes from. I wasn’t so naive as to think I could raise top-quality dry-fly hackle, but at least when I killed pullets I’d get not only free-range fried chicken, but also good Adams wing feathers.

I lived out in the county where my little flock could forage freely, but at around that same time a woman I knew got a ticket for illegally keeping

The A dams

It endures.

by John Gierach

DAVID KLAUSMEYER

March / April 2019 · 9

chickens inside the town limits. Instead of just paying the fine she went to court and when her case was called she said, “Your Honor, I’m afraid I’ve run ‘a fowl’ of the law.” It was a risky move, but the judge had a sense of humor and she got off easy.

Not long after that the statute was changed to allow people to keep chickens in town as long as they penned them up so they couldn’t peck holes in their neighbors’ heirloom tomatoes.

For a few years after that chickens multiplied like rabbits. This was in the early days of the natural food movement, and before people learned how much trouble they could be, backyard chickens became such a local fad that our local square-dance band began calling itself Poultry in Motion.

Learning to tie my own flies seemed like a good idea at the time and still does, but it didn’t exactly go as planned. For one thing, I expected to save money.

After all, I was paying as much as 65 cents for flies that consisted of nothing more than a 3-cent hook, a couple of chicken feathers and a pinch of fur. But

there were so many flies to tie. I want to believe in a golden age when there were just a few classic patterns to choose from—the Adams, Quill Gordon, March Brown, Blue Dun, and so on—but that was never true in my lifetime. In 1950 J. Edson Leonard published a book called Flies that catalogued the dressings for 2,200 fly patterns. All the familiar names were there including the Adams and the Female Adams with its little yellow egg sack, (although not the palmer-hackled Delaware Adams or the Adams Irresistible) but most were flies I’d never heard of before or since. I wonder what kind of look you’d get if you walked into a fly shop today and asked for a Red Heckum or a Welshman’s Button.

But even as Leonard was compiling existing and obsolete patterns, books were being published by idiosyncratic fly tiers who were out to reinvent the wheel. The first one that made an impression on me was A Modern Dry Fly Code by Vincent Marinaro, the book that introduced the Thorax Dun. The so-called Thorax Duns you see now are just col-

Almost overnight, innovation replaced tradition and the new goal was to invent something unique enough to put your name on and cash in on a thin slice of notoriety.

then the initial investment in tools and materials (the cheapest I could find, naturally) plus a copy of Western Trout Fly Tying Manual by Jack Dennis was more than I expected, and I still didn’t have a single fly to show for it. Somehow I hadn’t factored in the learning curve. And then, sometime later, there was a second wave of investment after my friend and mentor, A.K. Best, told me that the most I’d ever be able to do with dull scissors and mediocre materials would be to tie mediocre flies. It was a long time (if ever) before I started saving money, but my tying improved with practice, and there was a fascination with the process and a sense of self-reliance I liked, so it didn’t really matter.

The trouble with tying your own flies was that 10 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

lar hackled dry flies with the hackle trimmed off on the bottom, but the originals had oversized teal flank wings painstakingly shaped with rocker-style wing cutters (wing burners hadn’t been invented yet) and a kind of figure-8 or crisscross hackle that I struggled with and never mastered. Thorax Duns were the precursors of parachute flies, but they never caught on because they were too damned hard to tie.

Later there were books by Caucci and Nastasi, Swisher and Richards, Gary Lafontaine, Randall Kaufmann, Chauncey Lively, A.K. Best, Ken Iwamasa, and too many others to list here, all with their own peculiar ideas about flies. A publisher of outdoor books once told me he loved to print books about fly patterns because there was a small but

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Once, the goal of fly tiers had been to make the best possible copies of existing patterns following recipes that were considered inviolable. But then, almost overnight, innovation replaced tradition and the new goal was to invent something unique enough to put your name on and cash in on a thin

stretch of the South Platte River in Colorado, an Adams in size 18 or 20 would still get you by on the spring and fall Blue-wing Olive hatches. But then in the mid-1970s when the Canyon became the state’s first ever catch-and-release area, hatchmatching fishermen began inadvertently training the trout to be more discriminating about artificial flies. An Adams would still pass most days,

The Adams is one of those flies I don’t fish very often but that has special status as a pattern I wouldn’t be without under any circumstances.

slice of notoriety. (It’s little enough to ask and a lot safer than doing something life-threatening with a GoPro strapped to your helmet.) Whole new families of flies started coming out every year like spring fashions, with the same expectation that you’d either keep up with the latest trends or be left in the dust by the cool kids.

Some new patterns were just curiosities that sank out of sight within a few weeks of publication.

Some became standards, at least for a while. Some developed regional cult followings but never really caught on elsewhere. The most successful went on to become generalized fly types that were tweaked and adjusted by hundreds of tiers until, in some cases, their origins were lost to the collective memory.

And, it must be said, some fishermen simply tied their own flies, tinkered with them as they saw fit, kept it all to themselves, and caught fish in happy anonymity.

I think this explosion of new fly patterns was caused in part by the growing popularity of fly fishing—which increased competition on the water—and catch and release fishing—which is a useful management tool that’s had the unintended consequence of making trout smarter. And it was probably helped along by the entry of a whole new generation of fly fishers who appreciated the sport’s long tradition but weren’t necessarily enslaved by it.

When I first fished the Cheesman Canyon 12 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

but those in the know started backing it up with a few Blue Quills and Blue-wing Olives for picky fish in slower water. When those flies started to be greeted with suspicion, they were further backed up by Parachutes, No-hackles, Comparaduns, assorted cripples and stillborns, all manner of floating nymphs and emergers, plus a whole slew of other bright ideas that never got so far as being named. It became possible to carry a dozen fly patterns for a single hatch, and some did.

A friend said he thought that in the search for efficiency we’d lost the simplicity of the sport and vowed to fish an entire season with nothing but the flies of his youth: the Royal Coachmen, Grayhackle Peacocks, and Renegades that had gotten him by just fine in the 1950s. But then simplicity may also be overrated and in November of that year he said he was glad he’d gotten it out of his system.

There were the usual growing pains. The first parachute dry flies I ever saw were tied on special hooks with steel posts sticking off the top of the hook shanks. That made the hackle easy to wind, but added weight to the hooks and ruined their balance so that the flies floated on their sides or upside down.

It wasn’t until smarter tiers than me realized you didn’t need rebar to wrap the hackles that I bought into parachutes. Later I became a true believer when Continued on page 92

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P ONOI

ELECTRIC

Photography by Isaías Miciu Nicolaevici

March / April 2019 · 15

F

From the moment you step out of the Russian Mi-8 chopper onto the Kola Peninsula, you can see and feel the electricity. The streams of aurora in the night sky over the Ponoi and your fly line singing through the guides add to the charged atmosphere.

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March / April 2019 ¡ 17

A

And the Atlantic salmon. Most numerous in the fall run and the biggest fish of the year—silver bolts of lightning, one after the other, shocking in their power, arcing and surging, keeping your switch—and your comrade’s— in the “on” position. If you could connect your screaming reel to a generator, you could light up a small burg.

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For more information, see page 111.

March / April 2019 ¡ 19

Still Life with Brook Tro Hiking into alpine country for brookies and hing through un oored adne

by Jason Rolfe

20 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

out BROOK TROUT RISE, BY ROD CROSSMAN

I

n a dream, my wife turned to me and asked, Why is the river so loud at night? The dream conversation continued and I eventually awoke with a start, looking at her as if she were a stranger. We lay in the dark of a tent beside an alpine lake. There was no river. No sound.

We’d spent the day hiking up a steep valley through successive treescapes: stands of pine down below, then dark, close groves of fir, and finally airy larches higher up.

My wife, Jen, is the hiker. I’m not the biggest fan of wandering willy-nilly into the woods unless there’s a good reason for it—usually for fish. I’ll happily trudge seven grueling miles into the mountains if at the end of it I am reasonably well assured that I can cast a fly into some water and expect a fish to eat it. Jen needs simpler things. She sees the mountains, the long ridgelines, the glacial tarns and dwarfish pines, and it’s all she needs to see.

As we planned for this backcountry trip—what food to pack, how to split up our gear, what new gear we’d need—I got down to business researching the lakes and streams we’d be passing on our way.

I’d get to fish some lakes above 5,000 feet stocked every couple of years with brook trout. I loaded my fly boxes with Woolly Buggers and bushy dry flies, packed a 2-weight rod, a pair of nippers, a leader and some tippet, and prepared for a few days of catching fish after fish from sunup to sundown. I knew they wouldn’t be big, but they’d be hungry, and that was good enough for me.

T

he dream came our first night in the wilderness, and in the dream, Jen was pregnant with our first child. It did not show on her physically, but I knew it to be true. She was pregnant in reality as well. She had been for nearly two months.

Each week since a faint blue line had appeared on a little stick she’d saturated with urine, we’d sat down on the old leather couch in our small, rented house to look through a pregnancy book borrowed from a friend. It illustrated what the baby forming inside her looked like, how it grew and evolved in those first months.

At the beginning of week four, it wasn’t much more than a jumble of cells loosely resembling a misshapen cashew. The book said Jen might feel joyful,

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confused, anxious, moody, fatigued, and guilty, and fully elucidated the outward and inward signposts of each emotion. In weeks five and six, the book said it grew hands, eyes, feet, heart, spine, and nose—appendages that brought it closer to reality. Jen and I sat on the couch and laughed at the strangeness of it all. In week eight, a few days before we left to walk into the mountains for four days, we sat down for our weekly update from the book. It said the fetus was the size of an olive. It had legs and toes, arms and fingers that looked like tiny, dimpled paddles, a nose and more developed eyes. The book said our emotions would intensify. The book didn’t say half of it.

A

ccording to the book—and the internet, and friends, and the midwife—one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage within the first 12 weeks.

Because of this, it’s recommended to hold off on announcing a pregnancy to friends and family until after this waiting period is over. This is to avoid the “trauma of untelling.” Jen and I acknowledged the possibility in the abstract, the way one acknowledges the possibility of getting cancer, being struck by lightning, dying in a car accident. Despite the greater odds, the idea of miscarriage was distant,

I’ll happily trudge seven grueling miles into the mountains if at the end of it I am reasonably well assured that I can cast a fly into o e water and e pect a h to eat it and the possibility of it seemed inconsequential, a blip along the way. There was no other way to reckon with it, because it was wholly new.

When it came, it did not come with drama. Halfway up the mountain, Jen told me there was some spotting, which I knew—from talking to her and from reading the book—was to be expected. The

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female body is a living thing, a unique organism itself; it needs time to get used to it all. Though my instinct was to rush down off the mountain, Jen told me there was probably nothing to worry about. Light spotting was normal, according to the all-knowing book. Jen is a nurse, and even if it was something more than just the to-be-expected light spotting, she said there was nothing to be done.

Why is the river so loud at night? It roared and dug its way into my en e a pli ed y the attenuated stillness of wilderness.

Later, high up on the mountain, the chores and tasks of setting up a backcountry campsite took over. We prepared dinner, purified water, and found a place to hang food out of reach of critters. The night was cold, it being still so early in the season.

In shadier places around our camp, snow lingered in dense, wet patches, dusted with a scrim of winter dirt. In the moonlight, these patches of snow glowed among the trees, and tree shadows drifted through the gloaming.

By the time we’d climbed in our tent and settled down on stiff sleeping pads, the day’s eight miles had caught up to us. There was no talk of spotting.

We lay back, the lake 20 feet away, and though I thought there were things we might like to say, we didn’t have the energy for it. We slept.

T

hen, the dream.

Why is the river so loud at night?

What? I say. For a moment, I don’t recognize her and I don’t understand the question. I didn’t think there was a river here, but I wonder if I’m wrong. I wonder if I’ve forgotten, somehow, where we placed our tent tonight before we made dinner, ate, then crawled in and fell asleep.

24 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

Why is the river so loud? she says again. I turn my head to look at her. Moonlight blazes on the white walls of the tent. She is propped on one elbow, looking over at me, as if to have this conversation in the middle of the night as we lay encamped in the wilderness is the most normal thing to be doing at the moment. I listen hard for the river, expecting a din, a sudden rush of fluid noise across my consciousness that I’ll no longer be able to sleep through. But I hear nothing.

I say, I don’t know.

And I wake up. Startled.

T

he next day, Jen hiked farther into the wilderness with friends who had come along. Another friend and I stayed behind to fish our way around the lake.

Near camp, a couple of rocky outcroppings jutted out into the water and provided a platform for short roll casts that plopped our flies amid what seemed to be ravenous hordes of trout. They took the fly often and eagerly. They whipped their bodies in a fury that set the little fiberglass rod atremble, and some of the bigger specimens, the 10-inchers, managed short, darting runs, pulling hard for deep water.

It may be that brook trout are the most beautiful of trout, at least in North America. There are not many single organisms in which one finds such a symphony of color. A few insects, perhaps. Certainly plenty of birds. A couple of other fish species come close. Yet there is the blaze of orange along the brook trout’s belly, the lush forest green of its back and sides, the pink spots haloed with the sky’s blue. Each one is a pilgrimage of color, a gathering of supplicants pleasing to some god, somewhere.

When we held them before release, it was hard to believe those colors could come together just so. Each one hooked brought a reprieve from that crashing of thoughts at the back of my mind. Each one hooked was a small act of forgetting.

When the ladies returned from their day hike, they were elated. Their faces were chapped and red from sun and wind and cold, and they told stories of the mountains higher up, sliding down snow hills, the somehow-hilarious loss of one of my trekking poles that had been borrowed.

I searched Jen’s face for clues as to how she was feeling. Whether the spotting had stopped. Whether Continued on page 94

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atching

A

h on

the wing on dead drifts, and while stripping and

daydreaming. y on

ungan

Hundred

Fish

26 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

SMALLMOUTH WATER, BY ROD CROSSMAN

March / April 2019 · 27

li

towered a o e

all outh fed elow

and the day got etter with e ery ca t a on and hed oolly ugger with ru er leg and lot of lead ran hed a ig ny ph t didnt ee to atter The Red River (not its real name) snakes through rough hills of oak, juniper, and tall ponderosas in eastern Arizona, with feeder creeks and side canyons spilling in along the way. Thin dirt trails lead from rim to river, rambling off into boulder fields, river crossings, willow thickets, and bramble. Miles come hard on the Red, where you must pay attention to every step, eyes peeled for rattlesnakes or agave spikes, but the next fishing hole could be right around the corner. So you walk, and you walk, until you get tired of walking. Then you fish.

I saw my first bear on this river, about three decades ago. I had walked in with my dog, a barrelchested German short-haired pointer bitch with a stubby tail, and made camp under a cluster of bent oaks. I rose early, crossed the river, and caught a couple of nice bronzebacks out of a deep pool. It was midmorning on a summer day, and a sound fluttered above the trees—a soft clang, a metallic note. I stopped to listen and heard nothing but wind and water, so I kept fishing.

Not long after this I heard a splash and looked up to see a bear swimming across the pool. It got out and shook itself, black fur rippling, water spraying in sunlight.

I grabbed my gear with trembling hands, whispered to the dog, and eased away. The bear walked along the stream toward me, then peeled into a dark wood, slipping through a tangle of brush.

I crossed the river to my camp—the tent flat and rumpled like green and white sheets, poles splayed; my sleeping bag poked in a couple of places; my foam rubber mattress dragged into the bushes, a corner eaten; my pots and pans, clean and off the ground when I left, lying in dirt and juniper berries.

My food was where it was supposed to be—hung from a tree, but my camp was a mess. I caught a couple more fish, gathered my gear, and hiked out, my boots sloshing with river water, the top of my pack lopsided where the bear had torn it.

In those days, a couple decades before news was free, then fake, the whole world up for grabs, 28 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

I worked 10-hour shifts on the copy desk of a suburban daily. I worked hard, chased girls, drank beer, my dreams just out of reach, going to the river whenever I could, going with friends when I had the chance. I studied topo maps, thinking the fishing would be better far from the road, and it usually worked out. We bumped along the gravel, then dirt two-tracks, parked at the canyon’s edge, and sometimes walked for miles before wetting a line.

We stopped at deep holes and fished, made camp on dusty benches or sandy flats, or we car camped, dropping down to the river by day. At night we fried fish in flour, egg, and cracker crumbs.

The days passed quickly and are mostly forgotten, though pieces of them have broken off and burrowed deep: Joe standing on a bend in a river, singing a Jimmy Buffet song about a bear and moonshine, the shorthairs swimming, buckets of crawdads, big fish, bears and turkeys, the flashes of whitetail deer, driving up in the dark, and sitting on the tailgate near the canyon’s edge, watching a meteor shower. Thick juniper trees, shady groves of oak, tall ponderosas.

It was as if I lived two lives, each wrapped around the other. One life was spent on rivers, lakes, forests, and high desert ground. In the other, I sat in an office all day, half the night. Both lives changed over time, the inevitable and unconscious changes that come with age, choices made and unmade, time passing, and events unspooling behind the scenes. I got married and divorced, took out a mortgage on a suburban home. Watched the local economy soar, then crash.

But the Red sparked an obsession with wild ground that was hard to shake. I took up fly fishing and started releasing fish. I fished tailwaters, lakes, and small streams. I traveled all over the Southwest, hiking, fishing, and rambling around Indian ruins, ghost towns, and trout streams, blank spots on the map.

Strange times were on the horizon. Bobbers had become strike indicators. This seemed harmless enough, but there were other changes afoot.

The polar ice caps were melting, perhaps because

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of the world’s energy cravings. We could look this up on our phones, which needed electricity.

Reservoirs dropped, Phoenix nights grew warmer, walls of dust blew up from the south, wildfires consumed the ponderosa forest, and streams filled with ash. The first time this happened, a highcountry trout stream got hit hard, though the fish have since recovered.

I knew nothing about the West when I first arrived, but it seems odd to me now that days on the water passed so quickly, given that rivers are produced by the slow grind of geology: water cutting down, stone heaving upward. Out in the mountains the volcanoes have fallen silent, plates shift, peaks rise or wear down. Most of it’s painfully slow, but it also includes the present, as Edward Abbey observed, which means that geological time can pass quickly—a rock falling on your head, a flash of lightning, a fish striking.

One day a bunch of friends and I bounced down a rocky road to the Red. By this time I had it in my head to see every mile of the river and marked on a map sections I had fished and walked and planned trips accordingly. We shouldered packs and crossed the river a couple of times until we came to a big sandy beach, where we made camp. Jason and I fished the next day, and the walking got harder as we moved downstream.

The next day a cinnamon bear approached our camp, then thought better of it and went around.

We had kept a few fish, and we cooked them for lunch after the hike out—golden brown fillets, served with a side of fresh pineapple. We talk about that meal to this day.

About a year after the cinnamon bear showed up, a wildfire took out about half a million acres of forest upstream. Word spread, like that fire. The fish were gone, mostly, and it would take time for them to recover.

Y

ears after the big fire, Jason, Jill, Fran, and I met for a trip to the Red. Without getting into the details, we drove four hours on blacktop in separate cars, then piled into the same vehicle for an hour of gravel and another hour boulder crawling. We spilled out of the truck, fiddled with our packs, and started downhill, passing a few fishermen walking up the trail. Two of them dragged big stringers of smallmouths, gleaming in sunlight. We asked them about 30 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

the fishing, but they had difficulty forming complete sentences. All they could say was “A hundred fish, a hundred fish.” The river whispered below.

The trail spilled into the riverbank, and we moved downstream along a flat stretch of dirt and sand that was quickly choked off by boulders and willows. After about half a mile of this, no end in sight, and fishing light disappearing, we turned back to a shelf covered in dark sand, a few tent spots, and piles of bear scat.

We dropped packs and started fishing. Most of the fish were small, but it took the edge off the long drive and set the tone. Everyone gathered wood in the gloom of the day, and as dusk bled away to dark, a fire of oak, pine, and juniper burned, the tents pitched, our gear spilling out into heaps. Cairns marked the way to the bear-bag rope.

Burritos warmed on the fire ring, slowly, until it was time to drop them in coals, which not only turns them golden brown but also makes them taste

e had ept a few h and we cooked them for lunch after the hike out golden rown llet er ed with a ide of fre h pineapple. We talk about that eal to thi day better than they do at a taco shop and less likely to spill in your lap—an important consideration in bear country. So we waited patiently, sipped beer and wine, and told stories. After dinner we burned the fire down to ash.

The next morning I took my time, gathering everything I would need for a push downstream and hours of fishing. But the boulder hopping got old fast, and temptation got the best of us. Instead of working far downstream, we began fishing within 10 or 15 minutes and stopped at a deep pool. At first it was just a fish here and there, nothing to get excited about, but they started to add up, and it kept getting better until it seemed as if we were catching fish with every other cast.

Continued on page 89

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OPTI 32 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

ONS Photography by Bryan Gregson

March / April 2019 · 33

T

he altwater flat around ndro land are fertile with ga e h e pecially one h which are the pri ary target of o t i iting angler who a e o t of their ca t fro the ow of a i ut it a ig i land with a lot of horeline angro e e tuarie cay and tidal wa p n fact there water to acco odate your preference or co pel you to change your approach

34 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

March / April 2019 ¡ 35

A

hard- and flat i a le ing t grand to ta e o on foot toting only a few flie and tippet to hunt one n occa ion though the predator that eat one h will gi e you an opportunity o it pay to eep hea ier tac le on hand ay e o ething with a wire ite tippet to handle toothy arracuda ou ight tu your poc et with a couple ali too gi en where you are to cele rate that catch the right way or ore infor ation ee page 36 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

March / April 2019 ¡ 37

PROVING UP

Misery and mercy on the Madison.

Article & Painting by Dave Wickline III

38 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

March / April 2019 ¡ 39

T

he headwind splinters the river’s surface into confetti that slaps me cold in the face. It catches the prow of the drift boat and blows us back upriver. I tug on the oars, but it’s no use. It takes all my strength to turn the boat even slightly in this gale.

“Here,” Gary Beebe says. “Let me have it.” He sounds perturbed.

We’re in southwestern Montana on the Madison River, and I’m going through Bressler Outfitters Western Rivers Guide School with eight other trainees. Gary’s the school’s chief instructor, my instructor, and the boat’s owner. He’s helping train me in preparation for guiding clients this season if the opportunity arises. It’s part of the deal I struck with Joe Bressler, the company owner. To fully understand this business, you have to understand these boats, standard watercraft for guiding fly fishing clients on big western rivers. It’s important I learn to feel at home in manning a drift boat, which is part office and part carnival ride. As it is, four boats are ahead of us and none are behind. Gary’s not pleased with that.

I switch places with him and go sit in the bow seat.

At six feet three inches tall, Gary’s a trim 45 years old. With his Stetson, he looks like the Marlboro Man, square jawed and square shouldered. He’s a likable guy, even charming, but he doesn’t brook much incompetence in his boat. I can forgive him that. He’s the Rocky Mountain sales representative for a drift boat–manufacturing company. He takes pride in the lack of dings in his boat, especially on this river. The Madison is a slalom course—fast, boulder-strewn, flanked to the east by the Gallatin Range, a wall of 10,000-foot peaks, which are wrapped in dismal cloud banks today.

The problem we’re fighting is the convergence of two currents—the river and the headwind—that are at odds with each other. Unfortunately, the wind is having its way as it pushes against us, intent on keeping us from proceeding downriver. We’re stalled on

40 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

this big, angry river by a bigger, angrier wind. We’re halfway through the day, and I’m wondering if this isn’t too much for me. I nearly drowned once in high water, and that memory is never far.

I was 29, sitting in the bow of a johnboat on the James River near my home in Virginia, when the boat capsized in a heavy rapid, the anchor jammed under a ledge. The painter wrapped around my leg as the current pressed the boat to the bottom, dragging me down with it. I raised my arms, reached up for the bright-sky surface that grew dimmer and farther away. It played out in slow motion. Looking down at my leg, I unwound the rope, freed myself, and then kicked for the surface and swam for shore, spitting water. When I got there, I sat on a rock and shook, a half-drowned rat that had been spat from the belly of a big fish. The whole thing lasted 30 seconds. I lost the entire rig—the boat with a flotation chamber was pinned to the bottom in 10 feet of heavy water.

Somebody said that wasn’t possible. I said go look.

When my father heard about it, he said, “You’re lucky, Buster. You should know better.” He’d spent a lot of time on the James, knew men who had also but then one day drowned. He said it always surprises people; it happens so fast, unexpected. That’s what scared me. “Pay attention,” he said. “You can drown in a bathtub.” I took his point. Anything at anytime could go wrong. That episode has been my shadow.

The first rule Gary taught me for guiding clients is to keep them safe. The second rule is to try to keep them warm and dry on a wet, cold day. Today, I’m supposed to be guiding him so he can critique my performance, but I think he’s had it with me.

We’ve long since stored our rods. It’s been poor fishing anyway, the river churned up with high, roily water from the spring snowmelt.

Gary flips the stern around and starts to row backwards downriver, putting his broad back and shoulders into the task. It’s the only way we’re going to get out of here anytime soon, and soon is what we want. Wet snow blows sideways, smacking us in the face like soggy spitballs. Even though I’m

covered in neoprene and a storm suit, I’m freezing.

“Gary, can we pull over and light a fire?”

He keeps rowing. Maybe he didn’t hear me over the wind. I will my mind elsewhere. These boats, 16 feet long, look like sleek, hydrodynamic hybrids between a bathtub and a canoe bent bow to stern in a gently curving rocker shape and with flat, smooth undersides lacking keels; sweeping prows; and squared sterns for mounting motors on the transoms.

Designed to drift downstream in the current, they’re steered with two oars braced in oarlocks mid-boat, bow headed downriver. The guide skulls in a fashion that angles the upstream stern right or left to indicate the lateral direction he wants to go, like a fish’s tail flipping this way, then that. The current catches the exposed, upstream portion of the hull and pushes the boat downriver on a diagonal course in the intended direction.

Depending on where the guide wants the client to fish, he ferries the boat to one side of the river or the other, back and forth, as the boat drifts. Fishermen, one in the bow and one in the stern, stand against mounted knee braces and cast unimpeded. These boats are at their best finessed, not muscled. And if you’ve ever canoed, you have to unlearn all that. It’s a different set of dynamics that occur as counterintuitive. When I first rowed Gary’s boat yesterday, I felt as if I were learning to ride a bicycle backwards.

and breathe. Gary’s form is nameless, a hooded machine, his arms the metronomes measuring our misery—stroke, jam, stroke, jam—leveraging what he can. He’s worn out but loath to give up the oars even for a short break. Whitecaps break over the gunwales, water sloshes across the deck. He says he could surf on this stuff if he had his kayak.

I lean over and rummage through my dry bag, search for more clothes. It gives me something to do

The problem we’re fighting is the convergence of two currents—the river and the headwind—that are at odds with each other.

T

he wind tries to corkscrew us as it whines and spits cold spray. The sky looks black, the water blacker except for whitecaps. I hunker down, shivering. I want this day to end. Gary shoves the oars into the water and pries us back around after a gust broadsides us. He’s set a rhythm rowing. One quick shallow stroke with the oars, then he jams the blades in the water and leverages the stern around so it slices downriver into the wind, not broadside to it. In that instant he catches a deep breath. Quick stroke, jam the oar, and breathe. Stroke, jam, and breathe. If the wind grabs an edge, we lose the little he earns. The oarlocks rattle and the oars slap the water as Gary strokes, the wind blowing more spray in our faces. Stroke, jam, and breathe. Stroke, jam, 42 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

other than watching Gary and the whitecaps while I sit and shiver. A gray wool balaclava is all that’s left, so I slip it on under my hood and hunch down in the seat, gloved hands shoved between my legs.

“Damn, how much farther, Gary?”

I can barely make out his face, tunneled back into his navy blue storm hood, so I let it go. He knows what he’s doing; he’s guided on this river for 19 years. He moved to Jackson from Buffalo, New York, in 1972 to ski. Then he broke his back.

When he recovered, he started a paint-contracting company, then got to be friends with Joe Bressler’s father, Vern, who started and ran the fishing-guide business at the Crescent H Ranch, a high-end guest ranch near Wilson, Wyoming. Gary decided to become a fishing guide. He had long hair with a gap-toothed grin and a smooth rap. Drove an old pickup. Vern told him to cut his hair and be on time.

Since then, Gary has created a lifestyle that makes me envious. I didn’t know it was possible for anyone to live as he does. He’s a fly fishing guide in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana from May through October, then spends a month or two in Latin America (Chile this year) kayaking and fishing. He returns to Jackson in January, where he works for three months as a heli-ski instructor, jumping out of whirlybirds, skiing down virgin powder with clients. I like the sound of that. It opens up Continued on page 91

&

Seasons Past Those to Come Thoughts of an enduring love.

44 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

by Nigel Ling

SEPTEMBER BROWN TROUT, BY JOSH UDESEN

Our altered naiad ever learns Some deadly trick, with eyes of lead.

Edmund Blunden

BEFORE THE END OF WINTER, THERE WILL BE DAYS when the South of England is swept by easterlies. High pressure to the north and storms over Biscay squeeze the isobars together and draw from a cold continent the icy blades that somehow penetrate the heaviest coat—only winds straight from the Arctic are as cold. This is the worst time to be out, especially for fishermen. The sea is too rough for plaice fishing, the rivers too numb for roach: “When the wind is in the east . . .” Daffodils shiver in the garden, the lawn dries out, and the turf becomes springy; we know the change of season is coming—and with it trout fishing.

March / April 2019 · 45

While I wait for the mad winds to subside and maybe for a chance to get some late coarse fishing, I am thinking of a personal milestone that passed barely noticed. I have been a member of the same fishing club for 40 years, the best part of an adult lifetime—a very long time at the start, not so long at the end. How have the rivers I’ve fished for so long changed during those years? Not so much as the club membership—many are scattered by time, some are no more.

The mourning is done; the past lengthens. The rivers have not changed that much; banks have eroded, of course, weirs have been replaced, favorite runs lost and remembered in fishing diaries. But the fish are still there, and my favorite river (I’ll call it the big river), also a wild-trout fishery, is now sparkling with a population boost. Some fertile combination of weather and water has produced more trout than I’ve ever seen on this chalk river. What a season of wonder! If only everyone could appreciate that. Yet the coarse anglers complain about catch-

What is it like to be on a trout river of an evening when the mayfly is up and wild trout are rising everywhere? Closest to a feeling of joy that I can get. . . . ing trout, and the club in its collective stupidity introduces a rule specifically for the game fish: anglers can kill two trout per visit. That’s wild trout. All the coarse fish, no matter how numerous, are protected.

Bigotry takes many forms: even fish are the victims of prejudice.

Enough of committees and fools. What is it like to be on a trout river of an evening when the mayfly is up and wild trout are rising everywhere? Closest to a feeling of joy that I can get, intensified by its rarity in the South. I have fly fished this river for about 20 years; before that, I knew only coarse fish46 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

ing. Trout are invisible for most of the season; only during the mayfly do they appear, and even then only when you catch things just right. The river once had a reputation for fish more than 10 pounds at this time of year, but they disappeared long ago.

Big trout (three-pounders) are still caught by those in the know, those who go to the right spots at the right time of day. It took me a long time to get to grips with the place. I would go down and see no rises, sometimes no fly, no sign of fish. Toward the end of the mayfly, I sometimes met a lugubrious figure, one of the local experts with a fatalistic outlook: “Oh well, there’s always next year,” a reminder that one season there wouldn’t be.

The mayfly is the only time you might get a big trout, though 20 years ago, you would occasionally see a rise of the smaller fish during April. One fine warm day when the trees were only just beginning to green, I saw the grannom billowing over a bridge like cherry blossom in the wind. The sun warm on my face, the nettles beginning to grow, and a few daffodils poking through the tough grasses, a legacy of an old fisheries officer—that’s when you’re glad you’re a fly fisherman. Down on the broad water, the grannom crawled up my wader and took to the air, the trout picked off those on the water. I caught two fish during the rise. Days like that were unusual. Then in 2000, the floods were so high that part of the bank was washed away, along with the grannom. I’ve hardly seen one since.

Gradually over the years, I came to know the river and found the right anglers to speak with, who bit by bit began to tell me where they fished and when to go. I lived a long way off; it wasn’t easy to find these things out for yourself. From the odd fish on a nymph, I began to get the stockies in the top reach on dry mayflies but never saw a sign of the great wild trout that, I was told, rose quietly and never advertised their presence with the wild slashes of the smaller fish. Some would lie close to a trailing branch or a tree root; others would station themselves in the charging current, their rises audible but barely visible, the symmetric rings fast absorbed in the chaotic turbulence. You watch; the water races by and nothing happens.

These trout are deeply serious. I have fished

on the expensive, heavily stocked chalk rivers in Hampshire, but their adopted fish, though often educated by daily pressure, rise to flies as they rose to pellets in the hatchery. Even the delightful wild fish of a small stream I visit, as pretty as ornaments, have none of the mystery of the trout in the big river. I saw one of these special fish for the first time as I stood irresolutely by a deep pool. The river churns around a bend, then shallows to a few inches, and the water belts across the gravel. A huge fish appeared side-on to the flow, straightened up and held in the current for a moment, then slipped back to the deep water.

One gets the feeling these fish have been around a very long time, were acquainted with Sheringham and Skues. Fanciful thinking is an inevitable consequence of these trout still being there to fish for and so hard to catch. Another is the danger of anticlimax. Eventually I caught two in the ridiculous space of five minutes, a feat so easy that I left the river that evening in subdued dismay.

Such is the futility of achievement based on return. But those two trout are another story. This one is about loving this river, a river I fish too infrequently to get blasé or bored. The best part cuts a steep gradient through a series of sharp angles.

Deep pools have been gouged into the bed on the outer bends, and speeding shallows join them up.

The ranunculus is heavy and the flow sucks at your legs and the gravel shifts under your feet as you wade for position. From the pools, the river slides like glass, then takes off where it hits the rising bed, dragging fly line wildly; you have to keep the rod up. They may be only chub, but the heavy rises 20 yards away get you double-hauling until your casting crumbles from the effort. Then if it turns out a chub, you laugh with disappointment and vow to dispense with this casting pool nonsense.

The pleasure of these rare May visits begins with the scent of cow parsley and tall nettles. If there are mayfly dancing along the line of hawthorns on the walk down, you feel exhilarated; if at the river you see duns oozing from their shucks, you know there are going to be fish rising pretty soon. And this year was exceptional. When I reached the weir, newly reconstructed and surprisingly elegant, a man was 48 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

sitting on the bank with a fly rod. Some people you like almost straightaway. He looked as though he had just changed out of his office suit and put on fishing clothing; a fly rod lay beside him, and he fiddled with flies and line; he told me he had lost one fish. The trout were hitting the mayfly in a chute this side of a fast panel of water; across the river, they were rising along the bank. Clearly a beginner, he seemed happy in his awkward experimentation, and the fish were dancing for him. Here was a man, I felt, who worked for a living, who had not staked his life on a career. Later he told me he’d had a couple of bites, invited me to fish in front of him and show him how. He said I made it look easy; it was easy that evening.

Tall grasses and wildflowers along the bankside path, entangled pussy willows where the Cetti’s warblers are detected only by their explosive song, the day at its warmest—I have only to wait. There is little waiting this evening, the fish are rising nearly everywhere. Across the river stands a bed of high sedges, last year’s stems leaning over the water, where a fish rises. The mayflies are coming off, not in great numbers but steadily enough to bring up the trout, maybe the big ones. Casting under the stems is awkward. When a cast goes right, the trout takes my fly, and I have a strong silvery wild fish to work toward me in the quick water.

The river is not the typical transparent chalk stream. Turbidity is present all through the spring and now through the summer months, too. Several reasons for the cloudy water come to mind, and none of them are likely to go away. The truth is, few people really care about improving the environment; those who claim they do will draw a line before their cars, lawn sprinklers, air travel, buying lots of stuff. Even anglers don’t care that much. Sea fishermen still insist their impact on marine stocks is negligible compared to commercial fishing, despite the data that show otherwise. Catch-andrelease is in its infancy around the coast. Trout and salmon anglers now understand the self-benefit of returning fish, although they tend to have the most money and therefore pollute the most. All those fishing galas bound for Tierra del Fuego and the Continued on page 89

The

Chalk Stream Experience Photography by Dušan Smetana

50 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

March / April 2019 ¡ 51

mong the famous chalk streams of Southern England, the River Test is perhaps most famous— partially due to the writings of Frederic Halford, whose time on Test helped form his practices and theories about fishing the dry fly. Much of the fishing is still the same as in the late 1800s—upstream casts only, one hook only. Plus the weedbeds and the mayfly.

A

52 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

March / April 2019 ¡ 53

54 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

he attire . . . Well, that has changed, but you can still have the full chalk stream experience without tweed. You can count on quaint fishing houses, manicured banks, crystal clear water, and nice browns rising to drys presented as a gentleman would—with bamboo rods and silk lines.

The chalk stream experience.

The browns are just a part of it.

T

For more information, see page 111.

March / April 2019 ¡ 55

GSJ

GRAY’S GEAR & LIFESTYLE

W

hile we’d all like to fish for weeks at a time from rustic lodges far from home, the truth of the matter is, most of our windows of opportunity come on short notice, in one- or two-day stretches, within driving distance of the house. For these far-more-common scenarios, wise fishermen know packing light and remaining nimble are the secret to quickly escaping for a brief sojourn to nearby water. Filson knows it, too. That’s why it created the Rugged Twill Compact Rod Case ($375), a water-repellent, abrasion-resistant carrier with room for a pair of 9-foot, four-piece rods with tubes plus plenty of space in its two outer pockets for reels, fly boxes, and accessories. With its stylish bridle-leather strap, the case is perfect for hanging on a hook beside your back door, where it will not only wait patiently for your next opportunity to slip away, but also make sure you look good doing it. www.filson.com

O

rvis and Michelin have long been highly respected industry leaders in their respective fields, but the closest you’ve probably come to putting them together is rolling your rig to a favorite fishing spot atop a trusty set of tires. That’s about to change with the Orvis Pro Wading Boots ($229), a collaborative effort between the Orvis Research and Development team and engineers from Michelin’s rubber division. While the boots are designed for the angler who walks miles over rough terrain and fishes hard all day, they’re also perfect for those who need a bit more support and stability to stay steady in the stream. A generously padded tongue and collar, paired with a pull tab at the heel, give the Pro comfort and accessibility that rival a favorite pair of hiking boots. But it’s the exclusive tread pattern, inspired by Michelin’s agricultural tractor tires, that makes for better adhesion to slippery surfaces. A self-cleaning design makes sure each step washes the boot free of mud, clay, or river slime to ensure maximum traction. www.orvis.com

E

very fisherman understands that not all reels are created equal, and thanks to Finn Utility, the same can now be said of the cases that store them. The Sutherland Reel Case is made of extremely soft, 3/8 -inch felted wool, and its simple, hand-sewn pocket comes in two different sizes to suit your needs. The smaller ($78) fits reels 3/4/5 and measures 3½ inches deep by 3½ inches long, while the larger ($98) is designed for sizes 7/8/9 with two additional inches of depth and length. Each lives up to the Vermont-based company’s goal of creating uniquely beautiful products that get better with age. www.finnutility.com

56 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

H

ook & Gaff recognizes that outdoorsmen and gentlemen are often one and the same. That’s why it creates timepieces that are equally at home on the boat or in the boardroom. The newest addition to its hand-assembled, American-made product line is the King Tide ($750), an analog watch that tracks the tide at your specific location. Meanwhile, 24-hour tritium technology gives it continuously illuminated hour markers and hands, making it the ideal choice for any angler who leaves port before the sun comes up.

Watertight to 200 meters, it’s available in white, blue, or gray dial colors and can be dressed up or down for most any occasion, thanks to a wide variety of band options.

The result is high performance on the water paired with stylish practicality ashore. www.hookandgaff.com

S

ince its inception in 1973, Ross Reels has carved an enviable niche for itself in the fly fishing world by consistently building overperforming, underpriced reels from its home base of Montrose, Colorado. For many anglers, its Gunnison and Cimmaron models of years ago were the first high-quality reels we ever owned—and the fortunate among us still have them in our arsenals. Now, Ross is at it again with the newly designed Animas ($295), which features an increased arbor size, a canvas reel handle, and a machined silhouette of the Rocky Mountains on the back side of the reel. It’s also substantially lighter than its predecessors, while upgraded components increase the strength of an already reliable drag system. www.rossreels.com

F

ew sporting apparel companies today are threading the needle between tailored excellence and rugged quality as well as Ball & Buck. With its new dry-waxed cotton, water-resistant pullover, the Anorak 2.0 ($348), it has again created a highly functional garment that is both outstanding afield while maintaining a look of gentlemanly refinement. Solid brass antique hardware, genuine leather cording, and roll-tab dual breast pockets make sure you’re covered from a style perspective, while tool attachment D-Rings, a generous front pouch, adjustable Velcro cuffs, and their proprietary Versa Patch attachable fly system mean you’re always prepared on the stream. A waist leather drawstring clinches tight to keep the foul weather out and your body heat intact. www.ballandbuck.com

March / April 2019 · 57

GSJ

TRADITIONS

EDITED BY WILL RYAN

The Capture of My First Salmon o e early tale of attling the ing of

he

By George Dawson (Adapted from lea ure of ngling with od and eel for rout and al on New York: Sheldon & Company. 1876)

HEAVY WATER, ST. JOHN, BY OGDEN M. PLEISSNER (1905–1983) COURTESY OF PETER L. VILLA FINE ART, PEAPACK, NEW JERSEY

58 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

March / April 2019 ¡ 59

Somewhere on the Cascapedia River in Quebec . . .

It is never in a spirit of mere boasting that a true angler alludes to his achievements, but because of the simple pleasure which, like the old soldier, he derives from “fighting his battles o’er again.” To rehearse the incidents connected with the capture of some famous fish, is to re-experience the thrilling sensations which accompanied the feat itself.

They remain, like the recollections of some pleasant spoken word, or of some beautiful picture, or of some grand scene in nature, a joyous memory forever. He is an unhappy man who has not some pleasant wells of memory to draw upon, if it be true, as some thoughtful philosopher has said, that “half the joy of old age consists in the recollection of the pleasures of youth.”

A single incident [shortly before my arrival] is especially worth mentioning. Near the close of a day of fine sport Chief Justice Ritchie [the secondlongest-serving Chief Justice of Canada’s Supreme Court, to this day, ed. note] struck a thirty-pound salmon, which he tried in vain to kill before nightfall. It is a herculean task, requiring the highest skill and every possible favoring opportunity, to capture such a fish. The chances are always against success at the best. But the venerable Chief found himself tied to this monster long after twilight had ceased to fall upon the face of the waters.

The pool, always dark in its great depths, soon became black as a starless midnight. There were rocks on either side of him, rushing waters above him and boiling rapids below him. His line was invisible, and the only perceptible sign of life around him or before him, was the tugging and rushing of the maddened salmon fighting for his life amid the thick darkness which everywhere prevailed. Under any circumstances, the venerable angler would rather, a thousand times, subject himself to the merciless criticisms which a wrong judicial decision might provoke, than to lose a fish. But under the circumstances in which, at this time, he was surrounded, he would rather have taken that fish than to have been placed on the wool-sack of the United Kingdom.

And yet how could it be done? It was useless for him to soliloquize, as he did, “You beggar, I’ll fight you till sunrise before you shall beat me.” Long 60 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

before sunrise the fish might escape, the canoe be swamped in some merciless rapid, and the venerable Chief left stranded and dripping upon some inhospitable rock, with nothing to cheer him in his wretched loneliness but the roar of the thundering waters or the plaintive notes of the hooting night-owl.

Fortunately, neither an all-night fight nor a possible shipwreck awaited him. His co-Chief Justice [Horace Gray, who was Chief Justice of the Massachusetts State Supreme Court, and later an associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court, ed. note] took in the situation as readily as he catches the point of a lawyer’s brief, improvised a few flambeaux and started off to the rescue. It was a timely interposition, resulting in perfect success. The flambeaux made the surroundings of the combatants bright as day, and in due time the salmon gave up the fight, was duly gaffed and brought into camp, escorted by the first torch-light procession in which either Chief had ever before been the principal actor.

M

y impatience to make my first cast and take my first salmon was so great that the hours consumed in pitching tents, unpacking stores and arranging camp generally, seemed a sinful waste of precious moments. I did not wish, of course, to take advantage of the useful industry and greater patience of my companions; but I mentally voted them over nice in their anxiety to “make things comfortable” when, in my state of mind, the only thing which seemed requisite to the supremest comfort was the capture of a salmon. With that result achieved, I felt that I could be abundantly comfortable sitting upon a bare rock at high noon munching hard tack and bacon. I must in some way have manifested my restlessness, for the General, trying to hide his kindliness under a very thin veneering of brusqueness, said to me, “D., you are of no earthly use here. I wish you would get out of the way and go a-fishing.”

As this remark was made several hours before we had mutually agreed to begin work, I felt some little delicacy about taking advantage of the “ticketof leave” offered me. But as in the language of modern theology, I had an “inner consciousness” that I

really was of “no use” as a tent-pitcher, and had no tact as “a man of all work” in camp preparations, I soon found myself moving canoe-ward, with my salmon and trout rods strung and my nerves in a tremor in anticipation of “the good time coming” when I would no longer have to say “I never killed a salmon.” I honestly meant to show my appreciation of the General’s kindness by confining myself exclusively to trout waters. And my resolution was adequate to the emergency until I became weary of the slaughter I was making of one, two, three, and four-pound trout, and until (after floating below the shallow water) I was “brought up all standing” by the remark of my Indian canoe-man [that we were now in a salmon pool, ed. note]. . . . My first impulse was to go immediately back to camp, and I had given the order to that effect. . . . [But he, the guide] could not comprehend how anyone could enter a salmon pool and leave it unfished. [That] induced me first to hesitate, then to countermand the order, and then to appease my conscience by the remark: “Well, I will make a few casts by way of practice.”

No sooner said than down went the anchor at the head of what I afterward learned was one of the best pools on the river. As I seized my great salmon rod—which seemed like a cedar beam after the eight-ounce switch with which I had been fishing—and began to gradually extend my cast, I felt as I suppose the raw recruit feels when he first hears the rattle of the enemy’s musketry, or as some very timid men feel when, for the first time, they stand up before a great multitude of free and independent electors to entertain and enlighten them with those profound ebullitions of wisdom and those brilliant bursts of eloquence which are commonly considered the all-sufficient and matter-of-course ingredients of a stump speech.

I had reached a cast of perhaps fifty feet, in a direct line, and was watching my fly as intently as ever astronomer watched the unfoldings of a newly discovered planet, when a monster head emerged from the water, and with distended jaws—disclosing his red gills so distinctly as to make his throat look, to my excited imagination, like a fiery furnace— made a dash (which seemed like the splurge of a sea-horse) for my fly. It was my duty, of course, to accept the challenge and “strike” at the right moment and so hook my fish and take the chances for 62 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

the mastery. But I had no more power to “strike” than if every limb and nerve and muscle was paralyzed. My rod remained poised but motionless, and I stood gazing at the spot where the apparition appeared, in speechless amazement, while the fly— which had, for a single moment, been buried in that great open sepulchre—reappeared upon the surface quite unconscious of the terrible ordeal through which it had passed. I do not know that any one could have “knocked me down with a feather” at that particular moment; but I do know that I never before came so near “going off in a faint,” or found a cup of cold water more refreshing. I had heard of those who had had the “buck fever,” and I shall hereafter have more sympathy and greater respect for them, for I undoubtedly had the malady in its most aggravated form, and felt, as my astonished guide said I looked, “pale as a ghost.”

But this state of ridiculous semi-stupor lasted but for a moment. The slight twitch I felt as the fly slipped from the mouth of the fish operated like the sound of a trumpet. Every nerve tingled and the blood leaped through my veins as if every drop was an electric battery. In a very few moments, however, I was myself again. I had marked the spot where the fish had risen, had gathered up my line for another cast, had dropped the fly just where I desired it to rest, when, like a flash, the same enormous head appeared, the same open jaws revealed themselves, a swirl and a leap and a strike followed, and my first salmon was hooked with a thud, which told me as plainly as if the operation had transpired within the range of my vision, that if I lost him it would be my own fault.

When thus assured, there was excitement but no flurry. My nerves thrilled and every muscle assumed the tension of well-tempered steel, but I realized the full sublimity of the occasion, and a sort of majestic calmness took the place of the stupid inaction which followed the first apparition. My untested rod bent under the pressure in a graceful curve; my reel clicked out a livelier melody than ever emanated from harp or hautboy as the astonished fish made his first dash; the tensioned line emitted eolian music as it stretched and stiffened under the strain to which it was subjected; and for fifty minutes there was such giving and taking, such sulking and rushing, such leaping and tearing, such hoping and fearing, as would have “injected life into Continued on page 86

NO GOOD DIRTY NYMPHERS, BY JOSH DESMIT

GSJ

ANGLING

&

Bullets Bombs Nostalgia, climate change, logos, and a uddite e entual e race of weighted flie

by Miles Nolte

64 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

L

Panta rhei. (Translated as, “Everything is flux,” or more commonly, “The only constant is change.”)

—Heraclitis, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

ast summer’s fishing around my way felt nostalgic. Swollen snowfields melted moderately, and rivers continued flowing at trouttemperate coolness through August and into September. This wasn’t true across the West: Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California, and Utah struggled through what we’ve come to expect out here, a scant winter and a desiccated summer.

But in Montana, we were gifted abundance.

Grasshoppers ravished the spoils of June rains. As the fields finally dried and turned tawny, they sought water, trout sought hoppers, and we sought trout, all three of us converging in slow-motion moments of necessity, predation, and deception. Heavy rainbows sagged bulbous bellies between elated hands. Misanthropic browns broke from deep haunts and reflected the palette of sunset back at the sky. Naive cutthroat flaunted their flamboyant slashes and soft skin.

Each day was fantastic, but my joy at the return of what was once our norm was tempered by knowledge and context. Heraclitis, the same Greek philosopher who described the concept of logos and gave anglers one of our favorite quotations: “You could not step into the same river twice,” counseled that the only constant is change. Past greatness cannot be made again, even if revisited for short moments.

From July into October, in all their myriad ways, trout rose for hoppers. Sometimes sneaky, a barely visible upper jaw vanishing a fly along a slow-water bank. Other times impatient, ambushing from the edge of a riffle like a defensive lineman trying to corral a fumble. Size and species can be difficult to guess. It might go 8 inches or 18, rainbow, brown, cutthroat, or whitefish. Smiles soaked my boat, some clients so sated, they set their rods down with miles left ahead and watched the landscape crawl past in windswept silence. It was a good year for eagles, too.

On one float, we counted 54 in less than 10 miles.

But seasons follow their inexact and perfect

cycles. Desire and nostalgia cannot move the moon or the axial rocking of our planet any more than they can reverse global temperature trends. Fall arrived. Nights cooled. Mornings emulated their shadowed siblings. After months of early-birding, the fish started keeping frat house hours.

Mayflies, the shoulder season bugs, resumed midair dance, first the Tricos, then the psuedos, then the sulfurs and Cahills, but the fish were truculent, loath to rise, as if they didn’t want to expose their snouts to such chilly air. The shifting season knocked me off months of boyish ease. Day after day, I knew that the fish would eat, and knew that they would do so on my terms. The change in temperature marked a return to scratching a groove into my already thinning pate while sifting through fly boxes in search of salvation.

I wasn’t ready for bobbers. Now, I have no qualms about fishing nymphs under indicators, but choosing to do so gives up all hope of seeing fish rise. The season had been so hopeful. I was reticent to relinquish that hope, to abandon buoyancy, the expectation that every drift might bring a gold-flecked or pink-flanked or orange-throated animal up to that dividing line between their world and ours.

The obvious and long-practiced solution is to hang a nymph below a grasshopper. Dry flies were probably the original strike indicators, after all, but I’ve never embraced this technique. Or rather, I never felt that I was doing it well. To me, the hopper–dropper always smelled of a cop-out, an attempt to fish everywhere that prevented me from fishing effectively anywhere. Either nymph or fish drys, I reasoned, but don’t try to do both and pretend you’re doing either well.

The problem, as I encountered it, was this: Most smaller nymphs, even beadheads, lack the weight and density to get very far under the surface of a river with any gradient. That’s fine if the fish are in slow or shallow water, or feeding on emerging insects, but that’s usually not the case. Hanging a size 16 Pheasant Tail, for example, off the back of a dry fly won’t reach deep or swift water, which is generally where you’ll find late-summer trout eating nymphs. Bigger subsurface flies, such as stoneflies

March / April 2019 · 65

NYMPH, BY NICHOLAS MARKELL

or drakes, can be heavy enough, but will either sink or drag any viable grasshopper pattern, which negates the dry fly, erases the hope.

So I stuck to the surface, clutched at an illogical hopefulness, at a season nearly gone, at a pastime mostly passed. The fact remained, however, that the clients in my boat had come to catch fish, not watch flies float over rivers painted by turning cottonwoods. This conundrum caused me to contemplate another style of fly fishing that I haven’t embraced: competition nymphing. It goes by various

I wasn’t ready for bobbers. Now, I have no qualms a out hing ny ph under indicator ut choo ing to do o gi e up all hope of eeing h ri e names—Czech nymphing, Euro nymphing, tightline nymphing—and continues to grow in popularity both in the United States. and around the world. Its effectiveness is difficult to dispute. I’ve fished a run with a standard subsurface setup and then had a friend follow behind me with a competition nymphing rig. I caught 4 fish; hee caught 40. This column won’t delve into a detailed description of European nymphing. Should you want that 66 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

information, books and websites abound. Besides, I’m not the guy to offer an explanation, because I don’t personally do it. While tight-line nymphing catches a lot of fish, it sacrifices some elements of fly fishing (namely long, elegant casts and complex mending) that bring me joy.

That said, I’m not so prideful as to ignore useful insights from anglers smarter and more successful than myself. European nymphing depends on getting flies deep in the water column quickly without adding weight to the leader. To accomplish this, competition anglers have upended long-standing paradigms in fly design. They focus on density more than profile, theorizing that putting a vague imitation in the fish’s face is more effective than drifting an exact replica above its head.

Following one of those inspired whims brought about by desperation, I dug deep in my boat bag and found the small container of European nymphs I’ve acquired over the years. In it were bulbous pink-and-purple point files of the Czech persuasion, sometimes called anchor flies, or bombs, that might be reminiscent of caddis pupae, scuds, or maybe stonefiles, if you take off your glasses and squint at them in shadow. Mixed in with those were a half dozen droppers that fall into the category of micronymphs and are particularly favored in the French style of European nymphing. They didn’t look like much—a scraggly tail sticking out of a palmered quill body with a flashback wing case and a tungsten bead, all tied on a jig hook and soaked in a thick coating of epoxy—but they were of about the same size and profile as the larger mayflies that had been hatching, and looked like they’d sink.

Continued on page 93

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GSJ

SHOOTING

TERRY WIELAND

THE HEIRS OF

68 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

ZAM-ZAMMAH Rock Island’s “Great House of Wonders.”

by Terry Wieland

Rock Island loot, from top: Stevens Model 47 “Model Range” rifle, in .25-20 Single Shot; W.J. Jeffery boxlock 12-bore sideby-side, and Webley “WG” revolver, sold by James Woodward & Sons of London to the 12th Baron Stafford in the 1890s.

March / April 2019 · 69

I

n the opening pages of Kim, a wandering Tibetan lama sees the boy sitting atop the Great Gun of Lahore, outside an imposing red building with minarets and tall columns.

“What is that big house?” he asks. “The AjaibGher,” Kim replies, “The Wonder House.”

“Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?”

“It is written above the door—all can enter.”

“Without payment?”

“I go in and out. I am no banker,” Kim laughed, and escorted the lama through the turnstile into the great hall of the Lahore Museum with its stone carvings of Buddha and, beyond that, the displays of artifacts, sculptures, and scriptures—all of history, it seemed, gathered all in one place.

Reading Kim the first time, I was much more interested in the “great gun”—Zam-Zammah—than in the intricate Buddhist paintings of the Wheel of Life.

Zam-Zammah, the “fire-breathing dragon” cast from bronze, was said to hold the key to the Punjab, and “who holds the Punjab, holds India.” Guns make their own history. Guns are their own history.

M

ore than a century after that scene in Kim, I walked through the doors of the Rock Island Auction Company, in Rock Island, Illinois, for the first time. Standing guard outside, not unlike ZamZammah, was an M41A1 Walker Bulldog tank.

And, as with Zam-Zammah, admirers were enjoined not to climb on it. Instead, everyone paused, ran their eyes over it, joked wishfully about buying it, and continued on inside to where, as in the Wonder House of Lahore, a great deal (if not all) of mankind’s gunmaking history was there to see.

The display room at Rock Island is a revelation in more ways than one. First, it is rare indeed to encounter an assembly of more than 3,500 exotic guns, all in one place, all at one time. Second, to be allowed not just to look at them from a distance, protected behind glass and barricades, but also examine them, handle them, and discuss their histories, is an experience worthy of Kim’s Red Lama in the Museum of Lahore.

Finally, if you have the wherewithal, the nerve, and the determination, you can acquire one of these treasures. Show me any museum in the world, any gun collection, any convention or trade show, where 70 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

all of this is possible. Quite simply, there is none.

The Rock Island Auction stands alone.

For centuries, old guns, fine guns, and historical guns have exerted a pull on men’s imaginations unlike any other collectible artifact. Some are drawn to their ingenuity and workmanship; others, the association with historic people and events; others, the rarity of the piece. Whatever the motivation, in harsh commercial terms, for the last hundred years, the buying and selling of collectors’ firearms has ridden an ever-upward arc the Dow can only envy.

Money has been made by gun collectors, as well as the professional buyers and sellers, dealers and auctioneers, going back to the early 19th century.

My whole life, I have read how prices for guns have gone out of sight, how they must have peaked, and how the time to buy was way back then. Ten or 20 or 30 years later, I come to read that the time to buy was 10 or 20 or 30 years earlier. It has always turned out that, even if you didn’t buy then, you can still buy now and have a reasonable expectation that you won’t lose money.

Although the term investment grade is tossed around lightly these days, applied to everything from Turkish-walnut stock blanks to Colt Peacemakers, the gathering at Rock Island is about more than just making money. Since its beginnings 25 years ago, Pat Hogan’s auction company (now run by his son Kevin) has single-handedly turned the Illinois town into a destination for gun lovers comparable to the Guggenheim in Bilbao. And no, that is not hyperbole. The premier auctions, of which there are two or three a year, are that big a draw.

The company’s main building includes the auction hall, with seating for several hundred people, as well as a bank of two dozen telephones and computers down one wall to accommodate phone and internet bidding from all over the world. Sealed bids are also accepted in advance and, we were told, numbered 10,000 for the September 2018 auction alone. The podium has three auctioneers working at any one time—one calling the auction while the other two spot bids from the floor. They spell each other every 20 or 30 items, because what they do is fast paced and exhausting. I measured one sale, from “here we go” to “sold,” at just 14 seconds!

It was not an insignificant item, either, going for several thousand dollars.

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The auction is carried out over three days, selling more than a thousand items a day. There is a spectacular 900-page catalog, in three volumes—one volume for each day, for convenience. Rock Island maintains a huge, warehouselike storage room that includes photography studios and a reference library covering an entire long wall. Here, detailed photos are taken of each item. The photos in the catalog are worthy of National Geographic (or a Gray’s photoessay), and each item is accompanied by a detailed explanation of its history, background, and condition.

The Rock Island Auction Company has a fulltime staff of almost a hundred people and conducts an average of one auction a month, all year long.

These include the two or three premier auctions as well as regional and internet-only auctions. The company employs teams of experts who travel the country in trucks, picking up collections destined for the auction floor.

Although the term investment grade is tossed around lightly these days, applied to everything from Turkish-walnut stock blanks to Colt Peacemakers, the gathering at Rock Island is about more than just making money.

A premier auction is a four-day event. The first day is devoted to viewing, with all the sale items on display in a huge, three-part showroom. Items for day one are in one section, for day two in another, and day three in a third. The day before the auction begins, all three rooms are open for browsing, complete with a staff of attendants and an endless supply of clean white cotton gloves.

The September auction had many attractions, including a Winchester Model 1886 billed as “the finest known . . . .,” a gold-inlaid Walther PPK that belonged to Hermann Göring, and the aforementioned M41A1 Walker Bulldog tank. There were dozens and dozens of Colts and Winchesters, but also English double rifles, classic American trap guns, Lugers of every grade and rarity, swords, daggers, duelling pistols, a half-dozen blunderbusses, 72 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

London “best” shotguns, flintlocks, and uniforms belonging to famous officers from various wars.

Lot #7 was the fabulous Winchester ’86, and it sold early on the first morning for an astonishing $1.18 million (approx.). This was the second-highest price ever for an ’86, and is exceeded only by one that sold two years earlier at Rock Island and had historical connections to Geronimo, the Apache chief.

Reichsmarschall Göring’s Walther PPK went for $230,000, as did the M41A1 Walker Bulldog tank.

Over three days and some 3,800 sales, the auction brought in more than $20 million—a record for any firearms auction, anywhere in the world.

Aside from the guns themselves, one thing you encounter at Rock Island are genuine experts. For example, I was looking at a Parker trap gun when a gentleman murmured quietly that, while they were very good, he personally preferred the classic Ithaca trap gun, and quietly explained why. Owning an Ithaca myself (a Flues, not a Knick), I was more than interested. We were joined by another man who had been collecting American trap and live-pigeon guns since the 1960s. The conversation swiftly moved beyond me, but it was educational.

This is why Rock Island has become more than just an auction: It’s now a gathering place for firearms afiçionados comparable to the old Beinfeld show in Las Vegas.

Rudyard Kipling’s description of the Lahore Museum, and its contents, and its curator, is among the finest passages in the novel. His respect for such places and for the men who study all the most arcane aspects of culture shows through vividly, and it’s no wonder: the novelist’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, was, from 1873 to 1884, the director of the Lahore Museum, and oversaw its move into the magnificent red building it still occupies today. These are links with history any gun lover will appreciate. n Wieland escaped from Rock Island, having purchased only a Webley revolver that was sold to the 12th Baron Stafford by James Woodward & Sons, a W.J. Jeffery side-by-side, and a Stevens target rifle—the Webley was deliberate, the Jeffery a humanitarian act (it was shamefully undervalued), and the Stevens a pure impulse buy.

Did he need these? Of course not. But then, need has nothing to do with it.

OTT JONES SCULPTURE

Morning Mayflies

Fly Fishing Bookends

Never Forgotten

Wave Runner

Nymphing Brown

Prairie Dancer

Mountain Brookie

Struttin’

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GSJ

ART

Rod Crossman

You can’t photograph a memory.

By Brooke Chilvers

He calls them golden moments, when dazzling shafts of light penetrate the autumn forest along the Pere Marquette River in Triptych Trout Story, or the mountain waters of the Tetons mirror the sun’s setting brilliance reflecting pruce tree a

traight and tall a

illage

spires in Fall Creek Evening.

Rod Crossman, born in 1952 in the tiny town of Webster, South Dakota, compares such ethereal interludes to revelations. If photographs helped the young artist to always “get it right,” then today, they serve more to stir up his mature mind’s eye and ring ac a full-color fla h of o ething li ed or once dreamed or imagined. Although Rod’s inspiration usually originates in an actual place, much of it is rooted elsewhere.

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FALL CREEK EVENING

“I paint what is in my mind and in my heart—and you can’t take a photo of that!” he says. Thus, his canvases are not mere representations of fishermen and rivers, but an inherent part of his quest to work out in paint such existential questions as, Why are we here? and, Where are we going? A devout believer in a being greater and more loving than ourselves, Crossman says, “Art can bring understanding and meaning to those things that there are no words for.”

Like the fisherman in Reflection, his awakened sportsmen experience nature’s manifestations with “awe and wonderment.” Almost merging with the landscape at that monochromatic, just-before-dark moment, he makes his final cast as the swiftly fading sun transforms the pond into a shiny silver dollar.

In Rhythm of the Rain, the fisherman working the

meandering Fox River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—immortalized by John D. Voelker, and by Hemingway in “Big Two-Hearted River”—partakes in the softening, lilac-colored summer twilight.

As access to wild places, such as the trout-running waters of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, become more restrictive, Crossman relies on a lifetime of outdoor recollections, dating back to his itinerant childhood. “My father started life as a schoolteacher. During World War II in the U.S. Army Air Force, he was captain of a B-17 crew and was awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star for gallantry in action.”

Marriage and three children converted him into a lineman, putting up the country’s electrical grid, living in trailer parks in New Mexico, Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, South Dakota, and New York.

March / April 2019 · 75

RHYTHM OF THE RAIN

“And everywhere, he fished. And I fished with him.”

When Rod was in fourth grade, his father took a sedentary job with the New York State Power Authority and moved his family’s 30-foot trailer to the shores of Otter Lake at the northern end of Cayuga Lake, one of the 11 Finger Lakes. Its deep, warm waters offered father and son walleyes, bass, and perch.

“As a kid, I roamed the woods and streams; summers I ran the boat livery owned by our landlord and sold night crawlers to visiting fishermen for twenty-five cents a dozen.”

He often took a rowboat out alone on the lake in all kinds of rough weather, and says, “When I think back to it, I’m fortunate to be alive!” Most important, to escape the boredom of sitting in church on Sundays, he started sketching everything around him—including his father, who recognized that the kid had talent.

When Rod was only 12, he lost his father to brain cancer but was 76 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

growing toward his adult height of six feet five inches. He says, “Basketball helped me cope with my loss, and being in nature made me feel whole.”

His mother, Victoria, went to work as a billing clerk for a local telephone company, and raised her boys to appreciate beauty, even if it was only a well-set table. Rod considers his mother his primary role model and inspiration in life.

After high school in Cato, New York, Rod attended Marion College, today called Indiana Wesleyan University, a Christian liberal arts college where he played basketball, majored in psychology, and dabbled in electives in art. There, educator Ardelia Williams recognized his talent. “She believed in my art and encouraged me. She changed my life forever in many wonderful ways.”

Rod’s definitive leap came in 1973, when artist Paul Sweany of the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis,invited Crossman to study art at the prestigious American Academy in Rome during his sophomore summer semester. “It was like stepping out of a closet and [being] let out into the world.” He felt an especial connection to Caravaggio (1571–1610) and his passionate treatment of subject through his use of strongly contrasting light, a technique called chiaroscuro.

The experience in Rome proved transformative.

Crossman dropped college sports and instead delved into the works of John Singer Sargent and Winslow

CANOE COUNTRY

TROUT TRIPTYCH

Homer, who would be his primary influences until the early 2000s. He did hands-on studies of Old Master glazes with the chemistry department, and turned to watercolors and acrylics when overexposure to volatile resins led to an allergy to oil paint.

In 1976, Rod earned a BSc in art education, then an MFA in interdisciplinary art from Goddard College in Vermont. Meanwhile, he worked teaching art to kids of all ages, always pursuing his painting on the side, until he turned full-time to commercial and sporting art in 1978.

He’d soon marry Mary and they would have two sons, Barry and Bryan. Although Rod was earning a good living, in 1981, he accepted an invitation from Indiana Wesleyan, his beloved alma mater, to return as Artist in Residence. Today, professor of art in a greatly expanded department, Crossman teaches critical theory, painting, and printing.

Crossman never stops looking down a fly rod for the answers in life, whether retracing Hemingway’s footsteps in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or exploring Deer Creek, which flows through Grant County, Indiana, near the early-1800s Quaker meetinghouse that he and Mary restored and lived in for more than three decades.

“That small stream has been an endless source of inspiration.” In fact, he says he’s spent so much time wading in it, washing in it, and drinking its waters that if asked, “Who are you, Rod Crossman?” he could honestly reply, “I am Deer Creek.”

The themes of sporting art lead Crossman to his light-infused vision of God’s creation—to an “ethereal but persistent memory,” that is part of the “shared human experience.” “I want my paintings to manifest those mysterious qualities of the outdoors—its apparitions, sounds, glimpses . . . a familiar silhouette, a loved one’s laughter heard in the sound of moving water over stones.”

“Color and contrast are tools in producing a meaningful experience for the viewer,” says Crossman, whose own vibrant palette consists of cobalt blue, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, alizarin crimson, phthalo blue, raw sienna, burnt sienna, and white, plus an occasional cool or warm black. Like Homer, Crossman studied 19thcentury French color optic theorist, Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889), whose Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Applications to the

Arts uses chromatic diagrams to demonstrate how the viewer’s perception of and emotional response to a color is influenced by its neighboring color. For example, visual harmony is achieved when complementary colors (those from opposite sides of the Continued on page 90 March / April 2019 · 77

GSJ

EATING

Fishing and Foraging in Early Spring A cure for cabin fever.

by Martin Mallet

T

he cliché of spring is one of hope and renewal. Of optimism. Birds singing, building their nests. Wildflowers blooming, bringing color to the world after a dull and monochromatic winter.

Open water and fish. Such images are reflected also in the foods we associate with the season. Bright, clean flavors and cheery greens such as asparagus and peas. But spring has a dark side, too. In fact, I’d argue early spring is perhaps the most torturous time of the year.

Knowing that fair weather is just around the corner whips up a fresh bout of cabin fever. Meanwhile, the outdoors are often not so cheerful as our cultural traditions would have us believe. Cold winds and flooding. Damp, blustery weather, muck everywhere. During those very first trips to the river, a long while before the first wildflowers bloom, it seems that the only things growing are weeds.

Spending a day casting a fly into frigid spring water can feel like equal parts hope and desperation. Far from signaling the end of comfort food, early spring might be the time it is needed most. Fortunately, there are rich, bold flavors that can be found at this time of the year to help accompany and prepare those very first fish.

Many of the earliest edibles to emerge are indeed weeds, which are especially satisfying to harvest: the more you pick, the better. I have only just recently begun harvesting wild greens, having previously 78 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

focused on more prestigious targets, and I am finding a tremendous amount of satisfaction from discovering plants that are at the same time widespread and underappreciated.

BEAN AND DANDELION SOUP Beans and chicory are a classic Italian pairing. Depending on the recipe, the combination can take different forms. For example, you can use puréed beans as a spread for crostini, topped with sautéed bitter greens. It’s a very flexible combination: the choice of bean or green can vary according to what is available to you. In this preparation, I use canned navy beans and dandelion greens to make a quick yet satisfying soup. Although dandelions are maligned, they are also incredibly versatile. In fact, the whole plant is edible: the leaves can be used as greens, and the flowers can be used either in salads or to make wine. Even the roots can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute. If your greens are very bitter, you can blanch them for 1 to 2 minutes in a pot of boiling water to leach out some of the bitterness before sautéing.

Serves 4 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to drizzle 1 onion, diced small 2 medium carrots, diced small

4 cans (about 15 ounces each) navy beans, rinsed and drained 1 quart chicken or vegetable stock 1 bay leaf 10 ounces dandelion greens (substitute endives or other bitter green) 2 cloves minced garlic salt and pepper, to taste ¼ cup grated pecorino Romano, to garnish In a large pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and add the onion and carrots. Cook until softened, 5 to 6 minutes. Add the beans and cover with the stock. Add the bay leaf and simmer gently, until the beans are falling apart and the vegetables are soft. Crush the beans with the back of a spoon to thicken the soup. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan and add the greens. Add the garlic, and sauté until the greens are tender. Roughly chop the greens, and add to the soup. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper to taste. Divide into bowls, and top each with grated pecorino and a drizzle of olive oil. Serve with a rustic, crusty bread.

TROUT WITH CREAMED NETTLES Stinging nettles are among the first greens to appear and the bane of trout fishermen everywhere. Partial to damp soils and shade, they are common along riverbanks, meaning that at some point or another, nearly all anglers have been surprised by a sudden burning sensation that comes with exposure to stinging nettle. If you have yet to be stung, count yourself fortunate, and keep an eye out. These arrivals of early spring are loaded with formic acid, which is also what gives wood ants their sting. Fortunately, nettles are fairly easy to identify: look for a single-stalked plant with heavily serrated opposite oval leaves, and of course, covered in stinging hairs. For people who have been on the receiving end of a nettle sting, it might be surprising to know that they are a highly sought-after edible green.

The sting is completely neutralized by cooking, revealing a surprisingly nutritious and tasty plant.

Until they are cooked, however, care must be used in picking and handling them: gloves and a paper 80 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

bag are standard issue in the field, and tongs are best to transfer them to the pot. The best time to pick them is in the early spring, when the leaves are still young and tender and the plant hasn’t yet flowered. The stems are tough and not particularly desirable for eating; in fact, they are so fibrous, they were actually used to make cordage by indigenous people. Nettles resemble spinach in that they are a rich, versatile vegetable that can be used in a wide variety of recipes. Think pasta stuffing, soups, pesto, and sauces. In this recipe, creamed nettles serve as a base for a simple seared trout fillet.

Serves 4 creamed nettles 1½ pounds nettle leaves 2 tablespoons butter ¼ cup finely diced shallots ¼ cup heavy cream ¼ cup mascarpone ¼ cup freshly grated parmesan a few gratings of nutmeg, to taste salt and pepper, to taste 1 tablespoon grapeseed oil 1 pound trout fillets (or substitute four pan-sized fish) In a large pot of boiling salted water, blanch the nettles for 3 to 4 minutes. Drain, and press out all the excess water from the nettles. Roughly chop the leaves and set them aside. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat; then add the shallots.

Cook until softened but not browned, 5 to 6 minutes. Add the nettles, cream, mascarpone, parmesan, and 1 or 2 gratings of nutmeg to the saucepan and cook, stirring, for 2 to 3 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Set aside and keep warm while you cook the trout.

Heat the grapeseed oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Pat the fillets dry, and season both sides with salt and pepper. Place the fillets in the pan, skin side down, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until the skin is golden brown. Flip the fillets and cook for about a minute to finish. When the fish is nearly done, divide the creamed nettles among four plates and lay a fillet on top of each.

Serve immediately.

JOIN TODAY. PROTECT TOMORROW.

BTT

is a membership-based organization, and our members are our lifeblood. Since our founding in 1998, we have grown to include concerned anglers from over 20 countries, researchers from throughout the world, and guides committed to working with BTT in order to educate anglers and gather data while on the water. The generous support of our members is critical to our mission: Conserve and restore bonefish, tarpon and permit fisheries and habitats through research, stewardship, education and advocacy.

We have celebrated many accomplishments, but there is still much more work to do.

Please help us in our mission by joining and urging your friends, guides, lodges, and fishing clubs to join. Please go to www.btt.org and click “Join BTT” to become a member today.

DONKEY RHUBARB CRISP Donkey rhubarb, better known as Japanese knotweed, is a viciously invasive plant, figuring prominently in lists of the worst offenders along with purple loosestrife and giant hogweed. Unlike those other two, Japanese knotweed is edible.

Tasty, even. The taste of young shoots is like a mild lemony rhubarb, with a somewhat vegetal flavor. If you find yourself with a patch of it on your land, harvesting the young shoots in the early spring, when they are less than 12 inches long, can be a part of your control strategy. Harvesting the stems won’t work as an exclusive control, unfortunately, as Godzilla weed, as it is known, gets its strength from its massive underground root system.

Cooked knotweed doesn’t maintain its texture quite so well as rhubarb, so it’s good to add a crisp element for contrast. This recipe, adapted from Diana Rattray, uses a double dose of crust for extra texture.

Serves 4 butter, to grease pan 1 cup brown sugar

FOND MEMORIES, BY GORDON ALLEN

82 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

1 cup all-purpose flour ¾ cup rolled oats (quick-cooking) ½ cup melted butter 1 teaspoon cinnamon 4 cups 1-inch segments of Japanese knotweed 1 cup granulated sugar 2 tablespoons cornstarch 1 cup water 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ice cream (optional) Generously butter an 8-inch square baking dish.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a mixing bowl, make the crumb mixture by combining the brown sugar, flour, oats, melted butter, and cinnamon. Press half the mixture into the prepared baking dish and top with the sliced donkey rhubarb. In a saucepan, combine the granulated sugar, cornstarch, 1 cup of water, and vanilla. Cook, stirring until the mixture is thickened and clear. Pour the thickened syrup over the rhubarb; then top with the remaining crumb mixture. Bake until the crust is brown and the filling is bubbling, 45 to 55 minutes. Serve warm, with a scoop of ice cream if desired. n Martin Mallet believes that hope springs eternal.

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Contact these artists and purveyors of fine products for more information on how you can add their works to your collection.

84 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

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Traditions Continued from page 62 the ribs of death,” made an anchorite dance in very ecstacy, and caused any true angler to believe that his heart was a kettle drum, every sinew a jews harp, and the whole framework of his excited nerves a full band of music.

And during all this time my canoe rendered efficient service in keeping even pace with the eccentric movements of the struggling fish. “Hold him head up, if possible,” was the counsel given me, and “make him work for every inch of line.” Whether, therefore, he took fifty yards or a foot, I tried to make him pull for it, and then to regain whatever was taken as soon as possible. The result was an incessant clicking of the reel, either in paying out or in taking in, with an occasional flurry and leap which could have been no more prevented than the onrushing of a locomotive. Any attempt to have suddenly checked him by making adequate resistance, would have made leader, line or rod a wreck in an instant.

”Quail and Beauty Berry”

All that it was proper or safe to do was to give to each just the amount of strain and pressure it could bear with safety— not an ounce more nor an ounce less; and I believe that I measured the pressure so exactly that the strain upon my rod did not vary half an ounce from the first to the last of the struggle.

Toward the close of the fight, when it was evident that the “jig was up” and I felt myself master of the situation, I took my stand upon a projecting point in the river, where the water was shallow and where the most favorable opportunity possible was afforded the gaffer to give the struggling fish the final deaththrust, and so end the battle. It was skillfully done. The first plunge of the gaff brought him to the green sward, and there lay out before me, in all his silver beauty and magnificent proportions, my first salmon. He weighed thirty pounds, plump, measured nearly four feet in length, was killed in fifty minutes and afforded me more pleasure than any event since—well, say since Lee surrendered. As he was thus spread

Oil

Charleston, SC

86 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

11” x 14”

out before me, I could only stand over him in speechless admiration and delight—panting with fatigue, trembling in very ecstasy, and exclaiming with good old Sir Izaak: “As Dr. Eoteler said of strawberries, ‘Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;’ and so, if I may judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.”

With other fish in full view, ready to give me a repetition of the grand sport I had already experienced, I made no other cast and retired perfectly contented. The beautiful fish was laid down lovingly in the bottom of the canoe and borne in triumph to camp, where fish and fisher were given such hearty welcome amid such hilarious enthusiasm as was befitting “the cause and the occasion.” n

Y

ou wouldn’t know it from the effusive praise of everyone and everything from guide to God, but George Dawson first made his mark in the bare-knuckled world of 19th-century American politics. From an illiterate and uneducated start, he exuded luck and pluck and, if anything, offered an early template of the classic Horatio Alger hero of the late century. Hardly the type of man, it might seem, to champion the “calm, quiet, innocent recreation [of ] angling” and write the first-ever American book devoted exclusively to fly fishing. But he in fact did just that.

Born in Scotland on March 14, 1813, Dawson immigrated with his family five years later, first to New York and then to Ontario, Canada, where his father, a gardener, found work. Young George apprenticed with a printer in Niagara, Ontario, at age 11. When the family moved back to the United States, George caught a break: he got a job as an assistant at a newspaper owned

by Thurlow Weed.

A powerful, behind-the-scenes leader of the Whig, and later Republican, Party, publisher and editor Weed was a force to be reckoned with in American politics. Dawson, meanwhile, held ambitions of his own.

The mid 19th century brought a meteoric rise of print journalism, and Dawson saw his chance—he was no Bartleby. Even without any education, he had developed

some serious skills. In an age when print was set manually, Dawson developed a reputation as the fastest typesetter in the entire industry. Weed liked him and took him to Albany to work first as a foreman, and later as associate editor (and eventually, upon Weed’s retirement in 1862, as editor and proprietor) for the Albany Evening Journal, then the most influential paper in the state outside of New York City. In the parlance of the day, Dawson was “a young man on the rise.” And, as these men were so inclined, Dawson found himself drawn to the sporting life and fishing in particular.

Like Weed, Dawson took a lead in the Whig and Republican Parties. That he rose through the turmoil of antebellum sectional politics says more than a little about his mettle. He was a fire-and-brimstone political journalist, his newspapers functioning as party organs, as the nation hurtled toward Civil War. But Dawson was also modern in the sense that he took his son afishing with him in the 1850s. One of his son’s friends, Fred Mather, accompanied them, and later wrote of that day in Men I Have Fished With. Dawson the elder emerges as a Ward Cleaver sort, with some cool fishhooks for the boys to use, as he shepherds them about on trains, warns them to take a break to eat lunch and catches the most brook trout without even appearing to try and do so.

Dawson and his wife, Nancy, were the parents of two boys, the elder of which (and the son noted above in Mather’s story) served in the Union Army and suffered what at first appeared to be a slight leg wound at the terrible battle of Cold Harbor. But the wound worsened, resulting in an amputation, and later death. For Dawson Senior, the loss must have been devastating. Pleasures of Angling (from which “The Capture of My First Salmon” is excerpted) does include a number of allusions to the Civil War and soldiering, perhaps paeans to his son. But aside from a mention of a “single summer (of sad memory)” none appear directly to reference his own personal anguish.

Most follow the note in this excerpt, for example, of how the capture of his first salmon “afforded me more pleasure than any event since—well, say since Lee surrendered.”

Dawson was a very religious man, deeply involved in Sunday school missions in the Baptist church, and that spiritualism

seemed to find a resonance with the beauty of the world around the salmon river. As Dawson wrote elsewhere in Pleasures of Angling, “They are greatly in error who suppose that all there is of fishing is to fish.

That is but the body of the art. Its soul and spirit is in what the angler sees and feels.”

One can’t help but wonder if fishing provided him with the sort of inner healing that it would others in aftermath of later conflicts, such as the Hemingway character Nick Adams in the wake of World War I, the wounded GIs taught fly tying by the great tier Bill Blades following World War II, and today’s veteran-anglers in projects such as Healing Waters.

Such philosophy infused his writing about angling. As much as he was an important figure, fishing with presidents and famous men, including them as characters in his sketches, he was also a thinker, his books “the fountain of his pleasure,” as The National Cyclopædia of American Biography put it. You sense that he was always scheming for a way to cut out and go a-fishing.

Much of Pleasures of Angling alter-

nates between narrative, minimal instruction, and compliments to fellow anglers, and eventually coalesces into a sort of daily angling philosophy. Fishing is important because “it is a medicine to the mind as well as to the body; and unlike too many of the pleasures of life, it scatters no seeds from which the nettle of remorse may grow to sting the conscience or drive sunshine from the heart.” You can almost hear Robert Traver in those words.

Reading Dawson gives the impression that there was some serious energy crackling along his personal wires, if only by the humor he manages at points requiring personal restraint. As he explains when seeing a companion lose a 50-pound salmon, “If any one was tempted to blaspheme, he evidently felt that ‘he had nothing in his vocabulary at all adequate to the occasion,’” and said nothing. As for those who might be critical of his dear pastime: “Anglers may be deemed a useless race by men who haven’t juice enough in their composition to perspire with the thermometer at 90, nor muscle enough in their right arm to cast an eight ounce fly rod . . .” A glimpse of the voice of

Evening Hatch A new acrylic, framed 26 x 39, image size 21 x 35 Visit chetreneson.com to view new paintings Prices and information on lithographs and commissioned watercolors on request. renesonpen@att.net • 860.434.2806 Chet Reneson 42 Tantumorantum Road, Lyme, CT 06371 March / April 2019 · 87

the political writer, I suppose—but it is directed outward only to enemies of angling.

Within the angling community, Dawson saw brothers. Dawson was a man of politics in a time of fierce partisanship. That he keeps those passions out of Pleasures of Angling, anticipates a sensibility of American fishing life then and now: Most trips go better if politics stay onshore.

Dawson’s generosity seems the singular element in his narration. As historian Paul Schullery has observed, Dawson seems uncomfortable telling his fellow salmon anglers what to do; he much prefers to say how well they already do it. His tone is courtly and his desire under some control. He is aware of the importance of protecting the resources, but if forced to choose between that and the goodness of fellow brothers of the angle, he would probably be inclined to side with the latter. With regard to a certain successful fisherman, for example, Dawson noted that “few were the rivers in which he had not killed his thousands.” He refers elsewhere to a hierarchy of fishes, beginning with panfish, extending through trolling (this was in pre–bait casting days) for bass and pike,

reaching eventually the “poetic possibilities” of fly fishing for trout and salmon. He was aware of the “inner consciousness,” in anticipation of Freud, which he would still see as religious, as would others of the day. In the end, Dawson remained a 19th-century man.

His idea of the fishing worth writing about was fly fishing for trout and salmon.

Pleasures of Fly Fishing, a compilation of sketches written for the Albany paper, was limited to Quebec salmon and Adirondack brook trout, but it nevertheless helped define fly fishing as an activity to be taken seriously. Dawson emphasized its social dimension and how sweet it was to be saluted by your companions, particularly when they held considerable standing. But judging the legacy of such writing is not simply a matter of Victorian ostentation and how many wealthy young men took trains and boats to Quebec for a few weeks of salmon fishing. The lasting legacy may be more about how his elegant Arthurian tales might just have given all young men (and women) the idea of going fishing in the stream down the road or maybe a few miles north of Albany in the

Adirondack foothills.

Dawson died suddenly from pneumonia in 1883. The New York Times obituary extolled his political writing and influence, and it appears that he was considered an honorable man even by those he had spent a lifetime pillorying. His love of fishing is mentioned—briefly, as a hobby for an important man with much on his mind.

Unbeknownst at the time, his thinking— and feeling, perhaps—also included how fly fishing is about healing, responsibility, camaraderie, and gratitude. He deferred from telling anglers what to do, and he gave the boys his best hooks. He got his team home safe at night, but not before showing them—and his readers—just how blessed this sport of fishing can be.

Will Ryan teaches expository writing at Hampshire College. He is still searching for the sort of salmon that might leave him overnight on a rock. His most recent book is Gray’s Sporting Journal’s Noble Birds and Wily Trout: Creating America’s Hunting and Fishing Traditions, published by Lyons Press.

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A Hundred Fish Continued from page 30 Smallmouths strike hard and fight well. You usually figure out quickly that it’s a small fish, but you wonder how something so small can pack such a wallop. I once fished with a guy who used a strike indicator, but I always thought they were unnecessary on the Red. I watch the end of my fly line and set the hook for any pause or twitch if I’m deaddrifting, but a lot of times I’m stripping line, and the strike is an all-out assault at the end of the swing. If you miss that, you don’t need an indicator, you need a doctor.

Catching smallmouths is a nice break from the delicate nuances of trout fishing—fine tippet, fussy fish, sparse hatches, teeny flies, and stealth. I like to fish a clear line, usually 8-pound test, but that’s about as stealthy as I get. These fish eat crawdads and love hellgrammites, so 95 percent of the time, I fish a Woolly Bugger. For the last decade or so, I’ve added lead eyes and rubber legs, but anything that looks like a crawdad or hellgrammite will work. Once in a while, they’ll take a hopper, damselfly, or bass popper. I once caught a 20-inch fish that struck a Dahlberg Diver on the surface.

Sometimes, if the bite is slow, I’ll add size BB split shot to help get the fly deep.

We cast again and again, and the fish kept coming. Most of our fish were small and we let them go. But at some point, I fished a piece of cord out of my pocket and strung one up. By the time Fran caught up to us, I already had three or four. Fran had a hot fly and started adding fish, including a nice chubby one, the best fish of the day.

We stood at a hole about 200 yards long, cast after cast, fish after fish. I hadn’t caught that many fish on the Red in years. It was a lot like the old days, standing in a river, water up to our thighs, the fish grabbing everything we threw.

They came in twos and threes, boiling up from boulder piles seen and unseen. A dozen. Two dozen. Fran said later he caught two while he was untangling his line, the fly just dangling out there in the water. I caught fish on the swing, on dead drifts, and while stripping, and daydreaming. I would lift my

rod to recast and a fish was on. Four dozen. More.

A hundred fish.

The truth is, I have no idea how many fish we caught and don’t care. We cast and we cast, not saying much because words and numbers fail on such days. Morning passed. By the time we got back to camp, it was past lunchtime.

We lolled around in the sun, packed our gear, and headed up the hill. Fran and I took turns lugging the stringer, which was wrapped around a smooth piece of driftwood that served as a handle. By the time we got to the truck, we had switched to a bigger handle and were carrying the fish up together, one person on each side of the pinewood. It would be about midnight before we got home and took up the fillet knife.

There was no going back. I was older, had moved on from that suburban daily gig to a metro daily gig I was about to lose. But the routine—work all week, roam the backcountry on weekends—had been established.

Not much had changed. The roads were a mess and the walk was a slog. I know now what I was only beginning to grasp then. Our lives are a blink on the planet, which is shaped by forces bigger than us, forces we try to explain with our gods, our geological ages, our poems and songs and stories, our cycles of life, our studies in chaos and complexity. We build empires, which fall. We have children, each generation an immortal force that unspools in a few decades and then collapses. It’s too much for the human mind to grasp, because every answer raises new questions, and so we simplify, lose ourselves in the here and now, the empirical, the tactile.

A lover’s touch. A walk up a mountain. A hike into a red canyon on a sunny day. At night the rods lean against a bush and the fly boxes are stuffed with Woolly Buggers. The moon is down, the bear bags are hung, the fish are out there, and tomorrow’s another day.

With the coals burning red and the stars above, all we hear is the river. n When he’s not working, Ron Dungan hunts, fishes, and backpacks in the Southwest. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Seasons Past Continued from page 48 Virgin Islands have a carbon footprint the size of a seven-league boot.

In the sedges, a reed warbler begins its slowed-down-record churring as I pass by on the way downstream. I used to hear a lot of cuckoos high in their perches, prospecting their foster nests; fewer call each year. Through some overgrown blackthorns I can slip into the river at the lower boundary and feel the pressure on my waders. Trout lie in the run that emerges from a bower of alders. They ambush the mayflies twirling by the green reeds; they make rings in the fast water close to my bank and down the middle where the turbulence forms mosaics.

There is a tall elder behind me and I have to watch the backcast. Two fish come quickly and I climb out and move upstream, above the slow water on the inside of the next bend where I once fluked a two-pounder as I messed with the line, above the bend where the water rips down the center. Big trout lie here, but I’ve seen only one. In the run just upstream, the current is powerful and I struggle to keep my footing even close to the bank. A fish rises; it looks a good one. I bring it up three times and miss each time. In the heavy water, fish are not put down by casting. I cover the trout again, and this time I have it. It races downstream and tries to burrow into the ranunculus and the line catches on the weed. The fight is close quarters, and I have to keep prizing the line free with the rod at a low angle. Eventually I get his head above the surface and I can bring him to hand. A two-pound trout, the finest in England.

Mid-March and the east winds blow yet, but today was sunny and a little warmer and the birds are singing loudly in the morning. Trout season is coming. n Nigel Ling fishes for tranquil moments and sometimes captures them. He lives in the South of England and earns his living as a university lecturer.

March / April 2019 · 89

Art Continued from page 77 wheel) are juxtaposed, such as (warm) red and (cool) green, and the (warm) yellow and (cool) violet in Crossman’s light-kissed Canoe Country. He also likes to play with how, to the human eye, cool colors recede and warm colors advance.

Crossman prefers old large flat brushes—“the biggest I can use for whatever I am painting”—on a cotton or linen canvas, or Masonite. For watercolors, he uses a cold-pressed paper by Twinrocker, America’s first (1971) producer of handmade paper, with headquarters only an hour from his home.

Common to all Crossman’s work is his fascination with edges and how they come together: curved lines meeting mechanical borders, man-made shapes bumping against industrial ones, dark colors against light ones. He discusses how, “in nature’s special light and atmosphere,” soft and hard edges contrast and define each other, creating what he calls, “the symmetry of opposition.” In Bow

to the Jump, the curved silhouette of the leaping tarpon is the hard edge against the loosely painted sun-bleached sea and heavens. In Mayfly Bluegill, the surface marks where the worlds of sky and water meet, each medium refracting the light according to its laws. The “cleaner” edges of the more realistically painted fish fuse with an abstract expression of shapes, moving particles, radiance, and reflection. “I am interested in how light reveals the hidden qualities of the subject.”

Although Crossman aims to “give the impression of detail,” he is not overly concerned with meticulous renditions, which can distract from the viewer’s experience, he says. “His or her imagination will fill in more detail than I ever could!”

If Crossman finds himself in a bind with a painting’s design, with its contrast or balance, he resorts to the principles of two-dimensional design, or dominance of majority, emphasis of minority. For example, the space, colors, and textures of the landscape might dominate a painting, yet the viewer’s at-

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tention is focused on a much smaller but more compelling component, such as the figures in the corner of Monet’s The Poppy Field. “You can’t make something new by always following the rules. But they sure are helpful when a painting falls apart and you are trying to save it.”

These days, with a new wife, Judy, and a new life since Mary passed away prematurely from cancer in 2013, Crossman is exploring expressing time— something else that can’t be photographed. By lyrically re-purposing found objects, such as the discarded Quaker water buckets on his old property, he converts them into “sacred spirals” that bridge their past, present, and future.

“They bring together people, utensils, and place. They carry time now instead of water.” n Brooke Chilvers thanks Rod Crossman for directing her to search the internet for Dutch artist Theo Jansen and his incredible “Dream Machines” called Strandbeest— a confusion of art and engineering. “Talk about ‘awe and wonder’!”

Proving Up Continued from page 42 possibilities I’ve barely dreamed about.

“Dave,” Gary says. “Take the oars.”

The Madison sweeps into a deeper channel now with fewer obstructions.

Gary steps around me into the bow seat.

I jump into the rower’s seat and grab the oars, dig them into the chop, grit my teeth. Stroke, jam, and breathe.

“I’ve never seen it this bad,” he says.

He slips off his hood. He looks worn out. Steam rises from his buzz-cut scalp, face wet with perspiration. “Beach it if you have to.”

He reaches under his seat into the dry box, pulls out a hot thermos, opens it, then pours the contents into a cup, more steam rising. He drinks it down, then raises the empty cup toward me.

“Soup?”

I shake my head. “Later.”

Sealing the thermos, he closes his eyes and breathes deeply, flexing his shoulders, lifts his legs into the seat and sits Buddha style, gloved hands wrapped

around the thermos in his lap. His chest rises and falls in measured breaths, his face, tunneled back into his hood again, is barely visible. He rotates his head back and forth, relaxing his neck, staying that way. I steal glances at him, at the river, monitoring both. I don’t want him barking at me, and it gets my mind off the cold.

In 10 minutes, he slides his legs off the seat and removes his hood. He smiles at me, that big gap-toothed grin.

“How we doing, dude?”

“How much farther to the takeout?”

“You had enough?”

“Depends. How am I doing?” I say.

He shrugs. “It’s not an easy river to learn on.”

“What time is it?” I say.

“The wind’s beginning to lie down,” he says.

Our progress picks up; the river carries us now.

“There,” he says. He points downriver. “Bring us in.”

I flip the stern around, point the bow downstream. The other guide’s

rigs sit parked on the hill above us. The current runs by an eddy next to the bank, so I slide the dory across the eddy line, dropping anchor. Sunset seeps through a thin cloud cover that’s breaking up, the sky indigo and pale orange. Gary hops out and beaches the dory. He strides up the bank to retrieve his truck and boat trailer. I take a few deep breaths, try to release some of the tension, the shadow of my near drowning years ago receding, for now.

The other boats in the school sit lined up along the bank, the guides and student guides milling around. A few saunter over, solicitous, offering me a beer, asking how I am. Shivering, I try to talk, wondering what I’ve gotten myself into, if there isn’t a lot more to this than I imagined. Maybe I won’t be able to do this thing well, or prove up. We’ll see.

We’ll be back on the river tomorrow. n The author, an artist and writer, makes his home in Virginia near the James River at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains where he grew up fishing and hunting.

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March / April 2019 · 91

The Adams Continued from page 12 my friend Ed Engle showed me how to tie off the thread under the hackle instead of behind the eye, an operation that, as far as I can see, takes three hands.

And people kept reinventing extended body flies. Every few seasons there was a new brainstorm about how to construct the abdomens on mayfly patterns, but they all shared the same failing of being time-consuming and labor-intensive to tie, while the trout never seemed to think they were anything special. For a while there was even a thing called the Flybody hook on the market with a steel post sticking off the back like the tail of a dog as an armature for the dubbed body.

You could tie beautiful mayfly duns on these things, but that rigid steel tail threw off the balance, so the flies didn’t float right, and also tended to push the fly out of the mouths of any trout that tried to bite it.

I don’t mean to sound superior here.

Everything I mentioned is something I once bought into, learned how to tie, and then tried out on real live fish. I told myself I was field testing patterns, but my results were never what you’d call definitive. All I really learned is that if you fish any fly long and hard enough you’ll catch a few trout on it. Maybe the real challenge would be to come up with a pattern that fish won’t bite.

And of course more often than not, trying out new and different patterns meant buying new hooks, materials, tools, and books, or, later, instructional video tapes, all of which kept the day when I’d start saving money by tying my own flies perpetually out in front of me like a carrot on a stick.

I feel that I’ve stayed more or less abreast of the newest fly patterns, not to mention the sometimes overwrought theories they’re based on, but then several times over the last decade or so younger fishermen have peered into my fly boxes and declared them to be “old school.” I was never sure what they meant by that, so I decided to take it as a compliment.

It’s true that I’ve developed a more or less standard repertoire of flies that I

depend on for most of my fishing, but at the same time I’ve always been fascinated by specialized regional patterns—he more obscure the better—and I worry enough about not having the right fly to be one of those gullible tourists fly shop owners love to see walking through the door. But then out on the water I usually pay more attention to my cast and drift than to what I’ve tied on. If I actually do catch more fish than I used to— and I’m not sure I do—that would be the main reason.

I now get nostalgic about the days when I could cram my entire fly selection into a single box not much bigger than a wallet, but at the time—as an ambitious tier and a budding matchthe-hatch fisherman—I wanted encyclopedic fly boxes that I’d seen pictured in books and magazine articles written by experts: row after row of devastatingly realistic flies that looked like the author had wrangled real insects into neat ranks organized by size. It never occurred to me that those photos were staged and that no real fisherman’s boxes were ever that neat.

My own fly boxes always were, and still are, a perpetual mess, with pigtails of leader still attached to the eyes of hooks; mashed and unraveling flies that should be thrown away, but may still be good enough to fish in a pinch; odds and ends that I picked up on trips and didn’t fish, but that still look promising; dry flies with droppers still attached; flies put away in the wrong boxes; experiments that didn’t pan out, or at least haven’t panned out yet; flies that were given to me by helpful friends and strangers but that I’ll never fish and somehow can’t discard; and so on. I’m often short of the flies I use and wellstocked on the ones I don’t. (And come to think of it, why am I carrying flies I don’t use?)

The Adams is one of those flies I don’t fish very often but that has special

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status as a pattern I wouldn’t be without under any circumstances. A size 14 Adams is still a fine search pattern on the small mountain and foothills creeks I like so much: freestone streams where, as a friend once said, “All that crap from the old fishing books still works.”

And there are those odd days when a persnickety tailwater rainbow that’s inspected and rejected my best quillbodied, trailing-shuck parachutes and trapped-wing floating emergers will woof a size 20 Adams without a moment’s hesitation. No telling why.

Maybe trout appreciate the Adams as metaphor. Or maybe I’m somehow able to telegraph my own sentimentality down line and leader and into the fly itself, making it irresistible. Whatever it is, while it was once nothing special to catch a trout on an Adams, it now feels delightfully unsophisticated, like giving up your dreams of stardom to go into the family business or marrying your high school sweetheart.

In order to tie an Adams the way I think it should look, I want my wings to be made of the rounded, finely marked feathers from barred Plymouth rock hen or pullet capes, but good ones can be hard to find— most feathers are too narrow and the barring on many of the fatter ones isn’t fine enough for small flies.

But luckily I’ve been squirreling away certain fly tying materials for years and have, among other things, a small stack of primo grizzly pullet capes stashed in a sweater box along with a handful of moth balls.

I started doing that on the advice of Mike Lawson, who once said that if you find a fly tying material you can’t live without, you should go ahead and buy yourself a lifetime supply, because sooner or later it’ll become unavailable.

That was an offhanded comment made decades ago, but it raised a question I’ve been pondering ever since: What can’t I live without? n John Gierach is the author of twentyone books, including Trout Bum; Sex, Death and Flyfishing; Standing in a River Waving a Stick; and A Fly Rod of your Own. He lives and works in Larimer County, Colorado.

Angling Continued from page 66 The exact number of fish we hooked in the first riffle escapes me, but it eclipsed the past week of morning catches combined. The streamlined density of those “bullet quills” worked.

The tungsten head provided weight, and the epoxied body left very little surface area to slow their descent. Those flies get deep fast, but they aren’t all that heavy. Even the size 12 grasshoppers that the trout prefer late season floated them easily.

As the week wore on, I found myself hoarding a rapidly dwindling stash. After a couple dozen excursions into fish faces, the epoxy started to wear and the quill unraveled a bit more with each eat.

When one client hooked a bankside log, I marshaled all my rowing strength to muscle the boat back upstream and save the fly. The effort paid off. After extricating the fly, I found a fleshy bloom of oyster mushrooms flowing from a fissure in the wood. They paired well with a venison steak and a glass of Malbec that night to replenish my strength for the following day.

I’m still not a convert to competition nymphing, but my resistance almost made me miss a significant contribution to fly design that, somewhat ironically, will allow me to fish dry flies more. With hotter summers the new norm, fishing deep and fast water will be necessary for catching trout. By shifting away from traditional nymph design to dense flies with minimal surface area, dry–dropper setups become much more effective and practical. I anticipate a great deal of tungsten and epoxy haloing my tying vise this winter. n Miles Nolte misses the salad days of steady “hoppertunity” in southwest Montana but also knows that the fishing probably wasn’t as good as he remembers it being.

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“Starting Out” Fishing the white sands waters 11” x 14” oil on panel Jan McAllaster Stommes www.janstommesart.com March / April 2019 · 93

Still Life Continued from page 24 the spotting had worsened. There was nothing there. She’s good at that. Both of us tend to be a little closed off around others, and have both been accused of coldness, of being too quiet.

It wasn’t until after dinner that she said the spotting hadn’t gone away. There wasn’t a whole lot to say. I asked her if she’d like to hike down off the mountain the next day, but I already knew the answer. Hiking down off the mountain was the last thing she’d want to do.

After dinner, we busied ourselves. The others made tea, took pictures; Jen read a book. I busied myself with more fishing.

A few casts went by without a fish; a few casts without resistance; a few casts without the pulling away of a small trout, the darting, frantic strike and dive. After several casts like this, I wanted to throw the rod in the water. I couldn’t fish like this. The dream-river roared at the back of my mind. I wondered where the fish had gone, worried that I’d been greedy, caught too many earlier in that one spot. I walked down the shoreline to a spot that allowed more of a backcast and the ability to land the fly farther out over the lake.

I cast again and again, as far as the little fiberglass 2-weight allowed. The fly landed on the water with a thwack each time. I didn’t let it sink. I stripped it in too quickly. Even if those long, frustrated casts were reaching fish, the fish showed no signs of noticing. At that point, I was no longer really fishing. I’m not sure what to call it. But it certainly wasn’t fishing.

T

he book provided colorful metaphors for understanding the beginning of the pregnancy—the fetus was a cashew, an olive. Illustrations showed a creature whose brain growth was outpacing its body, that was all head and would be until the torso and limbs caught up.

But what metaphor is there for the loss?

How to illustrate it? What words are there to describe a slowly accruing absence?

Jen and I spent the next day trying not to think about it. We decided to hike

around the lake and search for the outlet. She said she was feeling fine when I asked. Later, there would be crying and anger and confusion; but for that moment at least, we were in the mountains, and we didn’t know anything for sure. This pregnancy was likely ending, and we had no framework for knowing how to react. We were sad, to be sure.

But it was an unmoored sadness, a sadness with no grounding yet, no thing to which it might be anchored and fully seen in all its intricate detail.

And underneath it all, the question from the dream. I hadn’t told Jen about it. Through a day and a half of fishing for hungry brook trout that were just seeing the sky after a winter spent beneath ice; through a day spent wandering around the lake, looking for a place to forget; through a jolting hike around the side of a mountain: the question dogged me. Why is the river so loud at night? It roared and dug its way into my senses, amplified by the attenuated stillness of wilderness.

Jen and I wandered through the woods, following the outlet stream until the terrain steepened and we were forced to turn around. The sun was up in a cloudless sky and everywhere snow was melting. It trickled into the creek, into the lake, small rivulets leaving the hillsides to join other water, always flowing downhill and away.

In the afternoon, near the beginning of the outlet stream by the lake, we stopped at a wide pool in the creek.

A large, untouched patch of snow covered the inside bend of the creekside, punctuated only by a large flat rock. Jen dropped her pack beneath the trees and waded through the snow to the rock.

She placed a hand on it. The sun had warmed it over the course of the day.

She climbed up and lay back on it, and

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the heat radiated up from the rock and through her.

I followed her out and looked into the pool from the edge of the snow bank.

Dozens of brook trout finned lazily in the soft current, drifting about the pool in various states of repose and action. I imagined they must have been enjoying the sun as much as Jen: the new warmth in the water, the spring emergence of new insects, leeches, worms. Considering the shallow water and the afternoon heat, I wondered if they’d eat a dry fly. I had an Adams stuck in my hat. I added a hair’s length of the lightest tippet I had and tied on the fly, chose what looked to be one of the larger fish in the pool, and cast to let the fly alight a foot or so over its head. The trout tipped up through the water, sipped the fly down through the surface film, and dipped back toward bottom.

Several moments later than I should have, I lifted the rod.The trout was there. It struggled, twisting against this unexpected pull from without. Jen sat up behind me.

She’d watched the whole sequence: the fly selected, the cast, the take, the late hook set. When I looked back and smiled, she grinned in return. I saw resignation, but also stubborn determination.

The pool was so clear that we watched the fish struggle before I brought it in close. In my hand it calmed, just in the water. For a moment, the dark unaccounted-for thought entered my mind that this could be the ºlast fish. I looked at it, trying to burn it into my memory. Jen still watched.

She’d never been one for fishing, but she understood it.

When I lowered the trout completely back into the water, it glided from my hand and disappeared across the pool, lost to the glare and then the shadows of the trees and far bank. My hand in the water was empty then. It cradled nothing. This isn’t a loss, I told myself. This is simply a release.

The stream, quiet in the sunshine, kept flowing. n Jason Rolfe is the editor of The Flyfish Journal, as well as the creator and host of The Fly Tapes podcast and the Writers on the Fly reading series.

GSJ

The Gray’s Guide to Sporting Travel EXPEDITIONS ////

The unique history, geology, and etiquette of the North Umpqua make it a near mandatory destination for dedicated steelheaders.

by John Shewey

March / April 2019 · 95

JOHN SHEWEY

The River That Thunders

KEN MORRISH

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It can probably reasonably be argued that it is better to fish in such a way that we are bringing steelhead to our flies and not our flies to steelhead. —Lee Spencer

O

ctober had cast its vibrant spell on the North Umpqua, painting the riverbanks splendid warm shades made all the more striking for the contrasting conifers marching up the steep slopes. It was a good leaf year—the autumn color had reached its zenith before seasonal canyon winds could strip the trees of their brilliance. he nal wee of fair port arri ed with low water cooled y e ening chill that intimated the end of the river’s summer-run. Few anglers remained to cast the North Umpqua’s hallowed pools, so one could approach the late- cto er hing lei urely unconcerned a out nding open water o de erted wa the ri er and o unhurried the hing anglers felt compelled to stop along the road for a chat anytime they passed a fellow fly her

March / April 2019 · 97

My own sedate approach found me sitting on my tailgate on the pullout above the Williams Creek Run, sipping coffee at nine in the morning. The sun had barely kissed the river—the North Umpqua’s timbered canyon allows precious little space for the late-season sun to find access to the water. A pickup appeared on the highway bend and brake lights blinked after the driver passed me.

Then came reverse lights.

“Morning . . . how’s the fishing?” he inquired.

“Just getting started,” I replied, “how ’bout you fellows?”

A few pleasantries out of the way, they asked if I’d mind if they fished through the Log Pool, which lay downstream and around the corner from the run at Williams Creek and an angler fishing one can make no claim on the other. I appreciated their courtesy—the North Umpqua remains one of the last great American strongholds of traditional steelhead flyangling etiquette, especially since regulations were adopted that effectively encourage traditional swung-fly tactics on the river. But more on that later.

Proper steelhead fly fishing etiquette begets camaraderie, and the North Umpqua, especially at the margins of the seasons, attracts dedicated enthusiasts who cherish chance meetings with other like-minded individuals—kindred anglers drawn here by the river’s rich lore and the opportunity to cast elegant flies across the sport’s most famous pools.

The North Umpqua has 31 miles of designated fly-only water, all of it spectacularly beautiful, most of it challenging.

N

o one, save the uninitiated, visits the North Umpqua to catch a lot of fish. No one catches a lot of fish here. If you want numbers, head for the Deschutes or the Grande Ronde. A fish or two a day is a fabulous day on the North Umpqua, and most regulars agree that fishing the water well is the goal and hooking a fish or two is the reward for dedication.

One year, a trio of Wisconsinites contacted me about their planned pilgrimage to the North Umpqua. I agreed to show them around. Among them was the affable Dave Pinczkowski, these days

regaled for his expert fly dressing and Spey-casting skills. I led him down a steep trail through jumbled rock to the head of a long run, pointed out the lowermost holding water, and then climbed back up to the road to rejoin his two buddies. From our vantage point, we watched Dave deftly fish through the run but to no avail.

When he finally rejoined us at our perch overlooking the pellucid river, he marveled, “That was really cool. Lots of character to that water—lots of ledges and boulders.”

I confirmed that such varied steelhead water is a hallmark of the North Umpqua. Unlike a cobblestone river, I explained, the North Umpqua flows through a bedrock gorge and, because of that, changes little from year to year, decade to decade. “Those reefs and ledges and boulders form lots of holding water,” I said.

“That’s a lot like our home river back in Wisconsin,” Dave said. “We fish a lot of structure—old tires, shopping carts, washing machines, car bodies . . .”

Luckily the North Umpqua has not been so despoiled and has largely recovered from devastating timber-harvest practices of the 20th century, but there is inherent difficulty of fishing this river. In many ways the North Umpqua is graduate-level steelhead water. In the extinct indigenous language, the word umpqua means something akin to “thundering waters,” and the river’s physical characteristics and the difficulties they present limit angling success. Here you will skid down steep highway embankments, scamper over slopes laden with riprap, slip and slide on submerged bedrock.

On this rugged river, the top of a pair of chest waders is more a reference point than a barrier. So, on a warm summer morning, assemble your rod, hitch up your waders, lace up your cleated wading boots, choose a languid pool, wade in about waist deep, and then just sit down in the water. Get it over with. You might as well. A dunking at the hands of the North Umpqua is a matter of when, not if.

The North Umpqua also recalls a Rockwellian era when you could show up unannounced, knock on someone’s door, and be welcomed with a cup of

98 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

coffee and an offer for food. One September day I pulled into Joe Howell’s place. For years, his fly shop was attached to the house, but this was after hours.

I was soaked head to toe—the water had looked waist deep; it was hat deep.

In Joe’s driveway, I removed my waders and dumped out two gallons of the North Umpqua, and as I was changing my clothes, Joe opened his front door, laughed out loud, and, upon composing himself, counseled, “John, wading is for people who can’t cast.”

“No, Joe, casting is for people who can’t wade,” I retorted.

Overcoming the physical demands of the North Umpqua requires proficiency in the tools of the trade: casting, line control, wading, and reading water. Luck prevails often, but the North Umpqua leaves ample room for skill to triumph over a common flogging of the water.

M

y efforts at Williams Creek that October morning left me fishless but satisfied that I had covered the water well and fished the run gracefully. After swinging a Golden Demon through the last sure lie in the lower pool, I reeled in and made for the short trail leading steeply up through the riprap to the highway. I occupied the remainder of the midday hours fishing a couple pools downstream, then reversed course, and headed upstream to the famous Camp Water—the mile of beautiful steelhead pools that virtually define our sport.

Historic Mott Bridge crosses the upper end of the Camp Water. The high, narrow span takes its name from Maj. Jordan Lawrence Mott, who set up a tent-camp on the south bank in 1929 and catered to visiting anglers. His guide, Zeke Allen, ferried guests from the north bank via rowboat, and the broad pool there became known as the Boat Pool, which tails into the Kitchen Pool, so-named because it was overlooked by Mott’s kitchen tent.

The Kitchen dumps into the Fighting Hole—a strong fish that “goes over” in the Kitchen can be played out here provided the angler successfully follows the fish downstream while negotiating the brutal scramble over submerged bedrock reefs.

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Anglers on this river coined the aforementioned phrase go over or went over to describe those breathtaking moments when a hooked fish departs the confines of a pool and heads downriver. In many instances, owing to the river’s rugged nature, the angler is best served to let such fish go.

Giving chase often results in dunkings, swimmings, and bruisings.

My two largest steelhead came from the lustrous pools of the Camp Water, but an average-weight fish that I hooked in the upper end of the Station, jumped five times, sped out the bottom end of the pool, around the reefs on the far side of the river, and ended up down in Upper Boat.

All told, the Camp Water boasts two dozen named pools, all of them famous and most of them largely unchanged since the days of Mott and of Clarence Gordon, who in 1934 built the camp that would become the revered North Umpqua Lodge. Visitors arrived from all quarters, among them Ray Bergman, Claude Krieder, and Clark C. Van Fleet, all of whom wrote of their experiences.

The river’s most famous visiting author was Zane Grey, author of Riders of the Purple Sage, writer of purple prose.

He returned each season from 1932 until 1937, the year he suffered a stroke while on the river. The inspiringly itinerate Grey employed a camp staff that included not only his so-called secretaries, but also his personal chef, George Takahashi, whom Grey described as “The Great Takahashi—the inimitable, the irrepressible, the indefatigable.” The famous author and sportsman was also known to hire local ruffians as pool guards, stationed at Grey’s favorite runs to turn away, by intimidation, any angler who might desire to cast the water Grey planned to fish that morning or evening.

I’m hardly the only North Umpqua addict who has considered the viability of emulating Grey with regards to putting local ruffians to effective use when the river is crowded, but he gained no sympathy among the other anglers for such highhandedness. For then, as today, steelhead angling on these hallowed waters carried a code of conduct: Start in at the top of the run or pool, fish through it with reasonable expedience, never enter a pool downstream of another angler. Most fly swingers abide by the old etiquette; some do not, sometimes by lack of awareness,

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JOHN SHEWEY

Draped in moss and highlighted with lichen, this massive cliff is one of the North Umpqua’s most recognizable landmarks. The tailout below is often called the Elevation Pool or simply Elevation owing to the spot’s elevation’s having once been painted on the cliff face.

more often because they are miscreants.

Regardless, countless notable anglers tested their skills on the same pools we fish today. Essential reading includes Krieder’s Steelhead (1948), Van Fleet’s Steelhead to a Fly (1954), and the erudite Michael Baughman’s A River Seen Right (1995), which is illustrated with images captured by the North Umpqua’s most celebrated photographer, the late Dan Callaghan.

T

he North Umpqua’s fame derives from its summer-run steelhead.

These fish, both native and hatchery fish, begin arriving in June, with August through October being prime time.

Summer-run steelhead typically weigh 4 to 8 pounds, but among them are fish of 10 pounds or more and fish that can stretch the measuring tape into the high 30s. They are gorgeous and streamlined, full of spunk, especially the new arrivals.

Many of them ultimately head for the Steamboat Creek drainage, a watershed that supports the river’s most significant summer spawning grounds. Steamboat Creek spills into the North Umpqua

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This leviathan pounced on a classic-style pattern and gave the author all he could handle, including a dunking in downstream pursuit, before finally coming to hand, posing for a quick under-the-surface photo, and bolting back to the depths with a flick of the tail that soaked the camera.

when Callaghan added the fluorescent green accent. But the North Umpqua’s most famous pattern—the Umpqua Special or simply Umpqua if the jungle cock cheeks are omitted—is named for the river, though its genesis is murky.

A palpable nostalgia rewards the angler who swings an Umpqua Special on the fly’s home waters. More people should do so.

T

downstream from Mott Bridge, at the aptly named Confluence Pool.

In the old days, the most important pre-spawn steelhead staging pool in the Steamboat Creek drainage was routinely dynamited by locals bent on obtaining fresh fish the easy way. The end of the poaching began in 1999 and came in the person of one Lee Spencer, retained by the North Umpqua Foundation as the caretaker of these precious wild fish. Each year he guards—and studies—the steelhead in this one pool, and his meticulous notetaking is invaluable for those intrigued by steelhead behavior. In 2017, Patagonia released Spencer’s detailed observations in A Temporary Refuge: Fourteen Seasons with Wild Summer Steelhead.

Spencer’s observations, and his own fishing experiences, demonstrate that steelhead don’t give a wit for particular fly pattern characteristics—when a steelhead is ready to “approach” (to use Spencer’s word) a fly, any fly is as good as another. In that regard he and I must be kindred souls, for I long ago abandoned any notion that the fish care what I swing to them. And in that fact, I can fill my box with wonderful old patterns from

the earliest days of steelhead fly fishing and cast them in plenary confidence.

In those founding years, the 1880s and ’90s, when fly anglers discovered the “salmon-trout” of the Eel River and then the Klamath and Rogue, the Parmachenee Belle became a favorite steelhead fly and remained so into the 1930s. But then it quit working. Likely no steelhead ate a lovely Parmachenee Belle for nigh on 70 years. What happened? Are these fish so capricious that they developed a disdain for the Belle after several decades of being fooled by it? Of course not. It simply fell out of favor among anglers as the feather-wing flies were superseded by the bucktails. In 2014, fresh off the exhaustive historical research for Classic Steelhead Flies, I dedicated my summer season to the Parma Belle—an old wet fly first tied for native brookies in Maine—and found it as attractive to steelhead as anything else I’ve ever fished.

Like all great rivers, the North Umpqua has spawned its own patterns.

The ubiquitous Skunk derived from this river, invented by Mildred Krogel in the 1930s, as did the Green Butt Skunk

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he Camp Water tends to hold lots of fish, and the preponderance of ledgerock-bound runs led first to a new tactic for targeting the river’s fish and eventually, fortunately, to a newer law forbidding it. In the 1990s, a handful of nymph-and-indicator anglers demonstrated that essentially no steelhead was safe in the Camp Water. Whereas decades of anglers on the North Umpqua had relished their encounters with steelhead that were willing to leave the safety of the river bottom, ascend to the surface, and chase down a wet or dry fly, the new breed took the goods down to the fish in devastatingly effective fashion, using the heaviest of flies and increasingly large indicators.

Controversy ensued, especially during the hot days of late summer when the river runs warm enough to wet-wade and steelhead seek thermal refuge, only really willing to chase swung flies early and late in the day. North Umpqua traditionalists firmly held to the doctrine— and still do—that, when the water runs low and warm, angling should be limited to the bookends of the day; this is in deference to the fish. Their survival, to contribute their genes to the next generation, is more important than our sport.

But many of the new indicator anglers would not be dissuaded; they argued that their method was better because it was more effective. I argued that allowing ducks to fly into the decoys and shooting them after they land on the water is more effective than taking them on the wing but not sporting. Bobber fishing with nymphs also flew in the face of traditional etiquette—in addition to fishing during the heat of the day, the nymphers planted roots on the ledges. Nobody else could cycle through.

The grumbling grew louder, and

soon, the irrepressible singularity that is Frank Moore, the North Umpqua’s legendary guardian, took on the fight. He knew that these new methods violated the spirit of North Umpqua fly fishing; he also knew violating the spirit of the thing would hardly persuade indicator anglers to change their ways, so he spearheaded an effort to legislate the practice off the river. Nowadays, the regulations state that “No added weights or attachments (including strike indicators) to line, leader, or fly, and the fly cannot be weighted.” The new rules fostered, or rather forced, a return to normalcy, and today unweighted flies, unfettered with bobbers, reign. Moreover, the regulations created a unique fishery: the world’s only steelhead river where weighted flies and indicators are forbidden.

Those rules apply from July 1 until the end of September. The end of October would be better.

One October, Forrest Maxwell and I had the lovely Eagle Rock Campground all to ourselves. As I waded out to fish a tailout a half mile below camp, I thought

it wise to flip my Spawning Purple to the other side of a reef I was about to wade around in hip-deep water. With 10 feet of line out, I could clearly see the fly swing in toward the reef, and then I watched, enthralled, as a steelhead materialized, wraithlike, and turned on the fly. I subdued the spirited nine-pound fish. The missing adipose fin revealed its hatchery origins, so I waded ashore with it, keen on contributing to our camp larder. Only then did I see the car parked on the highway shoulder above, its driver seemingly eager for me to hurry up through the riprap.

He greeted me enthusiastically, saying, “Wow! That was so awesome! That’s the first steelhead I’ve ever seen caught!”

In the gloaming, he explained that he had loaded gear in his car and driven all the way across the country to fish the North Umpqua. Forrest ambled up the highway from downstream and we invited the young man back to camp for dinner: in preparation for the trip, Forrest had procured a bag of fresh Walla Walla sweet yellow onions and a large paper sack

full of chanterelles. I steaked the steelhead, Forrest chopped onions and mushrooms, our guest pined for a way to help, but having spent many years fishing and hunting together, Forrest and I had our system.

Into the massive cast-iron skillet went a brick of butter, piles of onions, salt and pepper, and a dash of garlic. I added golden chanterelles and bright-orange steelhead steaks, all inadvertently topped off with a few rotund October caddisflies, attracted by the lantern light. The resulting feast bordered on gluttony, apparently a deadly sin, but the most pious among us could hardly have resisted the temptation with the smell of grilling sweet onions mingling with the gentle, fir-scented breeze.

A few days later, the rains began, the seasonal rains that swell the river. Those autumn rains spell the end of the season on the North Umpqua. Sometimes they hold off until November, but by then it’s time to leave those summer-run fish to their own devices. In a few months, the river’s winter steelhead will arrive and with them higher, colder water and more challenging fishing.

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106 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

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That was the year William James Lindskov purchased his first quarter of land. Eighty-three years later, things are a little different—or at least the scope of them is. You see, Bill’s son, Les, had a vision: to share with the world the beauty and splendor of the immense Lindskov Family Ranch through a lodge called Firesteel Creek.

In 1999, the world was supposed to end, but Les, his wife, Marcia, and their four sons, Monte, Bryce, Mark, and Todd, had other plans.

While the world worried about Y2K, the Lindskov Family lodge rose on the banks of Firesteel Creek, in Isabel, South Dakota. A decade later, they added Timber Lake Lodge, with its herds of American bison, Rocky Mountain elk, and whitetail deer. A legacy was born.

Today, the birds fly wild and strong. Pheasants, sharptails and Huns bursting from cover. The deer and antelope really do look through the kitchen window, yet it never ceases to amaze how well they can hide when they want to.

As I gaze off into the vastness that is western South Dakota, I sometimes wonder what draws hunters to Firesteel Creek and Timber Lake from all over the world. Surely there are a host of destinations to choose from, yet we have been fortunate that so many have returned to our lodges time and again. Is it the scope of infinite acres spotted with grainfields or one of Dad’s famous cocktails—“a glass of pop with a stick in it”—personally delivered in the lounge?

‘Life is worth enjoying; come visit us.’

Perhaps it is our talented hunting guides and their canine companions—each tuned so flawlessly it’s like watching an orchestra play. To them it’s not a job as much as a passion—the ability to come home each evening and say “That was a great day.”

But the biggest reason people return must be Mom. Perhaps it’s her chicken-fried steak or fried chicken, or maybe it’s her buttermilk pheasant or famous roast beef. Then again, it could be her moon pies, chocolate cakes, or fantastic apple crisps—made from apples picked in her front yard. I may be biased, of course, but I think many would agree: Mom’s cooking is where it’s at. Mom is also a true role model— one who can fry three dozen eggs, make biscuit gravy, greet a stream of guests and not miss a chance to see what her grandchildren are up to that day.

So there may be many reasons sportsmen keep returning to our ranches. And we hope that one of them is because they love it here— just like we do. We love that there are no roads or people. We love that we can walk out on the porch and hear nothing apart from nature.

We love it this way, because life is simpler and moral out here. We hope you, too, can experience the way we are blessed to live every day.

Life is worth enjoying; come visit us. —Mark L. Like his brothers, Monte, Bryce and Todd, Mark Lindskov is a thirdgeneration guardian who manages the Lindskov Family’s Lodges.

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Modern two-handed rods and line systems have substantially tamed the North Umpqua, opening up a lot of water that was terribly difficult to fish effectively with single-hand rods. Indeed, old hands on the river, those who still remember the feel of cane and fiberglass—though they are fewer with each passing season as the years take their toll—sometimes express the sentiment that the effectiveness of contemporary tackle has taken some of the intrigue out of the North Umpqua by divesting the fishery of much of its inherent difficulty.

But single-hand rod aficionados needn’t despair. The river offers plenty of wading-friendly runs with ample backcasting room. Besides, among us still are the romantics. My 8½-foot bamboo steelhead rod, expertly crafted by Forrest, makes me less effective on the North Umpqua, but the joy I derive from fishing it—the velvety smooth action, the expediency with which it defeats a steelhead and brings it quickly to hand— more than atones for its shortcomings in distance and line control when compared

to the rods nearly twice its length so routinely wielded here and elsewhere on the steelhead coast.

As Harold F. Blaisdell wrote in The Philosophical Fisherman (1969), “How can one find adequate words to describe the sweet feel of a rod that makes casting an aesthetic delight, but which adds little to one’s ability to catch fish?�

A

s I pulled into a parking lot above the trail leading down to the Camp Water, afternoon sunlight was filtering cozily down through the towering conifers, brightening the yellow maple leaves waving gently in the softest kiss of a breeze. Only one other car occupied the lot, its driver sitting on the curb, fussing with leaders and tippets.

We exchanged greetings.

He hailed from Alabama. The North Umpqua attracts anglers from all over the country, all over world. For years, this river had occupied the top spot on his dream list of far-off waters he hoped to fish. So he bought the airline ticket, flew to the

West Coast, rented a car, and drove to the river, arriving by design during October.

The North Umpqua, he said, had thus far exceeded his expectations in most every sense. It was prettier than he imagined it would be—more wild and rugged—and more difficult to cast and wade and read. The physical demands of a day’s effort proved even greater than he had heard. Indeed, fishing here can prove a strenuous activity compared to most other steelhead streams. Van Fleet summarized the matter quite perfectly, explaining, “A mile of fishing along its bank is a very real test of endurance as you snake your way over the folds in the bedrock, scramble onto jagged reefs and cross huge piles of rubble.�

I admired this gent from Alabama.

He had simply packed his gear and headed out here without need of glowing reports and with no need or want of a guide. He just came to fish this famous river, to experience the North Umpqua on his and its own terms, to draw his own conclusions. “I’m doing something wrong or I’m

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108 ¡ Gray’s Sporting Journal ¡ www.grayssportingjournal.com

just not quite getting the hang of it yet,” he admitted, explaining that he’d been at it since sunup that morning.

“I’d sure welcome any advice,” he continued, “especially since these steelhead have had the upper hand so far. I’d sure not mind getting one on the beach.”

“This river is tough on all of us,” I told him, “but maybe I can give you a few pointers.”

He was thrilled, and we headed down the trail to the Camp Water. I coaxed him through the swift currents to a position atop the Station Pool. My Alabama fishing partner sent his first cast out over the Station. We made a few adjustments to his technique. Until this day, he had only read about the swung-fly technique for steelhead, but he was a good caster and he grasped the tactic’s basic tenets.

He proved a perfect student. The Station offered no takers, so we moved on down to fish the Kitchen. Having gained confidence in the footing, my partner waded out to the ledge where most anglers fish the lovely Kitchen Pool. He covered it well and executed the swing perfectly.

Still no players, so at my suggestion, we climbed the trail up to the parking lot and drove downstream.

Despite the persistent fame of the Camp Water, the North Umpqua offers many more miles of fly-only water.

Some pools and runs bear geographical names like Charcoal Point and Bogus Creek Run. Others commemorate anglers no longer with us, like Knouse, named after Stan Knouse, who devised the label “Steamboaters” for the watchdog angling club formed at Steamboat Inn in 1966, and Hayden, likewise named for a charter Steamboater and the club’s first president, Col. James L. Hayden. The stories and people behind all the names could—and should—fill a book. Joe Howell should write that book and illustrate it with his artwork.

Some pools derive their names from singular events, often humorous in the recounting, and of these, “Interference” is one of my favorites. Many years ago, Howell and his lifelong friend Dale Greenley were fishing an unnamed pool above Susan Creek. Joe hooked a fine

fish, and as the battle ensued, two anglers spied the action from the highway above. They pulled off the road, grabbed their spinning rods, and scrambled down the riprap, taking up positions on either side of Joe. Despite Joe’s struggles against the hard-fighting steelhead, the two spin fishers began casting into the pool, oblivious to their obvious interference to the on-goings therein.

Over the ensuing years, Dale and Joe, when talking of that pool, would explain the location as, “that pool where those spin casters interfered with us.”

Eventually the name shrank to Interference, and later still the boulder-strewn run immediately below came to be known as Lower Interference.

My newfound fishing companion fished through Lower Interference, groping his way through the myriad boulders. Well down in the deepening tail end, a fine fish boiled behind the fly and grabbed hold. A brief fight ensued before the steelhead came unpinned.

The gentleman reeled in and joined me ashore, exasperation furrowing his brow.

March / April 2019 · 109

“I’m still not getting it right,” he announced, “that’s the fourth one I’ve lost today!”

That was exactly four more fish than I’d hooked in the past two days, and he had no idea of his accomplishment in finding four biters in a single day, his first day ever on this river—his first day ever fishing for steelhead.

The North Umpqua plays by its own rules; its steelhead by their own indefinable code. Arrive here armed with open eyes, and let this remarkable river cast a spell over you. It is a river far kinder to those who understand that the fishing ultimately counts for more than the catching; those who love the fishing most, who immerse themselves in the North Umpqua’s beauty and legend, tend to do most of the catching.

That fellow from Alabama loved the fishing. The North Umpqua rewarded him. It might well punish him some other day, but he’d never see it that way. He’d just see it as another great day of fishing on the most famous steelhead water in the world. n

John Shewey, author of Classic Steelhead Flies and a host of other titles, is an Oregon-based writer, photographer, and magazine editor.

If You Go

Via Interstate 5, the North Umpqua is 3½ hours south of Portland International Airport and then State Route 138 eastbound from Roseburg. Lodging options on the river are limited and include Steamboat Inn (www.thesteamboatinn.com) located at the famous Camp Water; the inn offers cabins and cottages, along with excellent breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Twelve miles downstream from Steamboat Inn, the Dogwood Motel (www.dogwood motel.com) offers rustic, clean rooms. The BLM and Forest Service operate eight campgrounds on and near the river.

The summer steelhead fishing peaks from August through October; frequently August and early-September weather is oppressively hot, so mid-September through early October is a popular time on the river. Seasonal rains can arrive as

early as mid-October, sometimes swelling the flows. North Umpqua guides include Dean Finnerty (www.deanfinnerty.com), Tony Wratney (www.summerrun.net), Mark Stangeland (www.northumpquafly guide.com), Rich Zellman (www.steel headwater.com), and Dillon Renton (www.rentonriveradventures.com).

Seven- to 9-weight two-handed and single-handed rods rigged with floating lines are ideal. Have fun with the fly selection (unweighted flies only) and enjoy the opportunity to swing such classics as the Umpqua Special, Golden Demon, and Black Gordon, along with dry flies designed to skate on the surface. Wading boots with carbide cleats help immeasurably on the river’s notoriously slippery rocks. For autumn fishing, dress in layers and expect cold mornings and pleasant afternoons.

Roseburg, 23 miles west of the flyonly water, offers all services, and sits in the heart of Umpqua Valley appellation, where 30 wineries provide an excellent diversion from the fishing. Visit www. umpquavalleywineries.org and www. visitroseburg.com.

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110 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

KULIK_GRAYS_8TH_2019.pdf

People, Places, & Equipment

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Electric Ponoi (Page 14) Isaias Miciu Nicolaevici fished Russia’s Ponoi River in late August, during the fall migration, and fished with the Ponoi River Company (www.ponoiriver. com). Salmon run the river during all seasons, but the bigger run with bigger fish is in autumn. See more of Isaias’s fine work at isaiasmiciu.com.

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Options (Page 32) Bryan Gregson fished out of North Andros, just one of many islands comprising the archipelago that makes up Andros, which is considered one island politically and has more land mass than all other Bahamian islands combined. See more of Bryan’s work at bryangregson photography.com.

www.bristoladventures.com/grays

KULIK LODGE

Chalk Stream Experience (Page 50) Dušan Smetana fished the Oakely Beat of the River Test during the Duffer’s Fortnight, the two-week span of legend when the mayfly hatch is so heavy, even a beginner can catch fish. He arranged the trip through Mark Bolton of Sweetwater Travel Company in Bozeman, Montana (www. sweetwatertravel.com). and he fished a Ted Simroe bamboo fly rod and Joe Saracione Mark IV reel. See more of Dušan’s work at dusan.photoshelter.com Gordon Allen An artist from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Gordon has been contributing to Gray’s for years. His line art is scattered throughout this issue. You can see more of Gordon’s work at www.gordonallenart.com.

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Al a s k a Alaska Sportsman’s Lodge PO Box 231985, Anchorage, AK 99523 (888)826-7376 E-Mail: bkraft@alaskasportsmanslodge.com Strategically located on the Kvichak River in the heart of the Bristol Bay fishing paradise.

This river is the only connection between Lake Iliamna and the ocean. Each year, millions of salmon use the Kvichak to travel to their spawning grounds. This provides an enormous food source for the native rainbow trout, which grow in excess of 20 lbs. Because of our location, we don’t need to spend countless hours flying to the fishing spots. www.fishasl.com Alaska Wilderness Outfitting Company PO Box 1516, Soldotna, AK 99574 (907)424-5552 Experience incredible fishing, remote wilderness, and some of Alaska’s most spectacular beauty. Guided and self-guided trips to the pristine waters of Prince William Sound,

the wild lakes and rivers of the Wrangell Mountains and the untamed wilderness of the North Gulf Coast. All trips are remote fly-in destinations that include fully outfitted self-guided trips in our one-of-akind outpost cabins and floating cabins as well as a full-service lodge on the Tsiu River. We accommodate groups of any size and offer discounts for large groups. www.alaskawilderness.com

We offer two different fly fishing adventure trips located in remote areas of the Alaska Peninsula. On the Pacific side is a sophisticated camp that offers extreme isolation, a unique coastal fishery, breathtaking scenery, day hike options, and helicopter fly-outs.

On the Bristol Bay side is a no-frills camp offering an affordable option for die-hard fishermen after BIG fish in a small stream. www.epicaaa.com

Angler’s Paradise Lodge 4125 Aircraft Drive, Anchorage, AK 99502 (907)243-5448 E-mail: pete@katmailand.com Since 1950, we have offered the world’s finest freshwater sport fishing. All lodges have superb fishing within walking distance and are in close proximity to the finest salmon, rainbow, char, and grayling rivers in Alaska. www.katmailand.com

Great Alaska Adventure Lodge Kenai Peninsula, HC01 Box 218 Sterling, AK 99672 (800)544-2261 E-mail: greatalaska@greatalaska.com Visit our world-class resort, featuring record-size Chinook, halibut, and rainbow trout. Deluxe lodge, fly outs, wilderness bear viewing, and fly fishing camps. We also offer fly fishing for IGFA record salmon (specifications upon request). Contact Laurence or Kent John. www.greatalaska.com

EPIC Angling & Adventure (512)656-2736

112 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

Stoney River Lodge PO Box 62, Sleetmute, AK 99668 (907)526-5211 E-mail: Stoneyriverlodge22@gmail.com Owned and operated by Curly and Betty Warren, Alaska Master Guide License #111. Built in 1984 as a prime base of operation for guided top quality hunting adventures. Grizzly, moose, sheep, caribou and black bear, as well as daily fly-out sport fishing adventures. Lodge offers custom designed trips. We cater to people that wish to enjoy rugged Alaska outdoor activities incorporated with a well-appointed full service lodge operated by 30 year plus Master Guide and experienced staff. www.stoneyriverlodge.com Tikchik Narrows Lodge (907)243-8450 E-mail: info@tikchik.com World-class fly-in/fly-out sport fishing lodge hidden amid spectacular 1.5 millionacre wilderness park in pristine western Bristol Bay. Daily fly-out fishing for salmon, trout, char, grayling, and pike. Extraordinary service, accommodations, gourmet meals, and experienced guides. Owned and operated for nearly 30 years by Bud Hodson. www.tikchiklodge.com

Unalakleet River Lodge (800)995-1978 E-mail: appel@unalakleet.com Unalakleet River Lodge is a remote luxury fishing destination in the northwestern bush of Alaska. We have been sharing the natural beauty of the Unalakleet River and the surrounding Nulato Hills with our guests since 1998. We offer our clients Salmon fishing in the wilderness of Alaska with all the amenities and comforts of a full resort.The Unalakleet is recognized as a National Wild and Scenic River and is home to large runs of King Salmon, Chum Salmon, Pink Salmon, Silver or Coho Salmon, Dolly Varden, Arctic Char, and a native population of Arctic Grayling. The Unalakleet River offers 140 miles of prime Salmon fishing isolated from the pressures of road systems and fly out operations. www.unalakleet.com

A rge ntina Argentina’s Best Hunting (225)754-4368 E-mail: contact@argentinasbesthunting.com The perfect blend between hunting, fishing, gourmet dining, and luxury accommodations. Look no further if your goal is to experience the best that Argentina has to offer, as we have a wide variety of species, lodges, and

regions at our fingertips. To learn more, visit www.argentinasbesthunting.com South Parana Outfitters (804)693-3774 E-mail: wingsargentina@gmail.com World class wingshooting in a classic Argentine setting! Argentina, in comparison to other countries, has the advantage of having no restrictions when it comes to the hunting of doves, due to the threat that they represent to agriculture. However, Entre Rios is known for its prolific fauna, its great care for the environment, and its deep respect for the law.

We can proudly say that conservation is at the foundation of our company. All of our guides are bilingual and it is their job to accompany you during the hunt and they will take into account your personalized tastes and interests.

Duck hunting season goes from May through August. Dove is available for hunting all year long. Combination shoots and customized package shoots are available. www.southparanaoutfitters.com

Be lize Belize River Lodge (888)275-4843 E-mail: info@belizeriverlodge.com Belize River Lodge rests quietly on the lush,

ARGENTINA GRAND SLAM WINGSHOOTING

WWW.SOUTHPARANAOUTFITTERS.COM

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green banks of the Belize Olde River, only 3.5 miles from the mouth of the river—the entrance into the Caribbean Sea and classic Flats fishing, where anglers will pursue bonefish, tarpon, permit, and snook. This beautiful historic mahogany lodge is situated amidst an abundant tropical setting.

Balmy breezes rich with the sound of bird song drift among the private cottages creating a naturalist’s paradise. Relax and delight in our Belizean hospitality and our delicious combination of fine Belizean-Creole cuisine. www.belizeriverlodge.com

B r i t i sh Co l u m b i a Legacy Lodge (877)347-4534 E-mail: info@legacylodge.com Wonderfully remote yet easily accessible, Legacy Lodge offers a premier sport fishing experience found nowhere else in the world.

In harmony with the natural environment and in a world all its own, here on the protected waters of Rivers Inlet, surrounded by the panoramic beauty of British Columbia, all the elements converge for epic battles with world class salmon and halibut. For couples and families, parties of friends to corporate groups, Legacy Lodge was made for those who yearn for the perfect fishing vacation. www.legacylodge.com

C alifornia Wing & Barrel Ranch (707)721-8845 E-mail: info@wingandbarrelranch.com.

Escape to Sonoma, CA and enjoy a private hunting club just minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge. Wing & Barrel Ranch brings together the best of the shooting, food, wine, and wine country lifestyle in an elegant setting. Here, legendary memories are made with menus inspired by the surrounding countryside, world-class wines, exceptional shooting opportunities, and incomparable hospitality. www.wingandbarrelranch.com.

C olorado GR Bar Ranch (800)523-6832 E-mail: info@grbarranch.com Nestled along the Grand Mesas, just nine miles outside the town of Paonia, CO, this working cattle ranch has thousands of backcountry acres, trout lakes, miles of trails, and endless fishing and hunting opportunities on our private paradise. A vacation at our ranch is the trip of a lifetime. www.grbarranch.com Kessler Canyon 4410 CR 209, De Beque, CO 81630

(970)283-1145 Combine 23,000 acres of pristine wilderness located on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies with one of the most magnificent hunting lodges in the country. Team that with the most elite hunting guides and dogs in the state pushing up pheasants, chukars, and Gambel’s quail in perfectly maintained bird cover—you could only find yourself at Kessler Canyon. Arguably the finest sportsman’s lodge and resort in Colorado, Kessler Canyon awaits the discerning sportsman who wants to experience the best of the best. www.kesslercanyon.com

Ge orgia Pine Hill Plantation 2537 Spring Creek Road Donalsonville, GA 39845 (229)758-2464 E-mail: dougcoe@pinehillplantation.com An Orvis-endorsed wingshooting lodge, we provide private plantation amenities and hunt quality to discriminating upland bird hunters who appreciate finer traditions of plantation-style quail hunting. Experience the best Georgia has to offer from horseback and mule-drawn wagon. Pine Hill’s lodges are arguably as nice as any private quail hunting plantation…you can trust Orvis on that! www.pinehillplantation.com

COLORADO ROCKIES

TROPHY ELK-DEER-BEAR Archery, Rifle, Muzzleloader Hunt thousands of acres from secluded cabins on our private hi-country ranch, directly bordering the Grand Mesa National Forest. Summer vacation: explore ranch & wilderness by horse and 4 wheel. Fish 7 trout-stocked lakes. Breathtaking scenery.

GR BAR RANCH, Paonia, CO www.grbarranch.com 800-523-6832

Gray’s Sporting Journal

Gray’s Sporting Properties Advertise your sporting property, ranch or farm in Gray’s Sporting Journal

Please contact Mike Floyd mike.floyd@morris.com 114 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

MONTANA

Wilderness Fishing Adventures Experience the best kept fly fishing secret in the lower 48 states – the wild & scenic rivers in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Remarkable dry fly fishing on remote rivers with wild native trout populations.

Join us this summer for a unique and extraordinary fishing adventure!

406-946-4167 www.alazyh.com

Spring Bank Plantation at Barnsley Resort 597 Barnsley Gardens Road, Adairsville, GA 30103 (770)773-7480 Spring Bank Plantation keeps alive a long Southern tradition of managing and preserving our game and lands. We offer upland game hunting and one of the Southeast’s most extensive shooting clays facilities— over water, in open field and in the woods.

Shooting guides ensure that all hunters— beginners and experts—fully enjoy their outing. Ladies and teens are particularly invited to experience our Southern shoot tradition at our luxury North Georgia quail hunting plantation, just an hour north of Atlanta. www.springbankplantation.com Wynfield Plantation 5030 Leary Road, Albany, GA, 31721 (229)889-0193 E-Mail: Annick@wynfieldplantation.com Orvis Wing Shooting Lodge of the Year in 2005 and has also been named among Garden & Gun magazine’s “Top Fifty People, Places, and Things in the South.”

With private cabins, southern cuisine, and a sporting clays course, Wynfield’s accommodations have a unique charm. Located in the heart of quail country, Wynfield represents bobwhite hunting at its finest.

Few things in life are more exciting than your dog locked down on a covey that flushes high and fast when the time is right!

Book your quail hunting experience of a lifetime at Wynfield Plantation. www.wynfieldplantation.com.

Idaho Flying B Ranch 2900 Lawyer Creek Road, Kamiah, ID 83536 (800)472-1945 E-mail: info@flyingbranch.com Located in beautiful north-central Idaho, we are an Orvis-endorsed wing shooting and fly fishing destination with a complete big-game program. Flying B Ranch offers adventures that bring back guests again and again. Open year-round with a full-time staff, the Flying B Ranch delivers consistent quality. Enjoy no-limit wingshooting from our spacious western log lodge, pack into the backcountry for a big-game hunt, or fish for everything from wild westslope cutthroat trout to giant B-run steelhead. It’s all here for you, your family, and friends. www.flyingbranch.com

Kans as Ravenwood Lodge (800)656-2454

E-mail: ravenhpsc@aol.com Contact Kenneth Corbet for reservations.

Ravenwood is a place where hunters can have it all. Located on the eastern edge of Kansas Flint Hills, Ravenwood offers great hunting grounds and a spectacular mix of hard-flying European driven pheasants, private guided field hunts, or plantation hunts for wily bobwhites, big cock roosters, prairie chicken, turkey, deer, or sporting clays. Open year-round, reservations required, established 1985. www.ravenwoodlodge.com

M aine Libby Camps PO Box 810, Ashland, ME 04732 (207)435-8274 E-mail: matt@libbycamps.com Orvis-endorsed wing shooting and fishing lodge. Lakeside log cabins, home cooked meals, master guides, and sea planes to access the four million acre private timberlands of the North Maine Woods. Daily fly-outs for trophy native brook trout and land-locked salmon (May-Sept) and for wingshooting in October. Hunting for grouse, woodcock, moose, deer, and bear in the “big woods.”

Fifth-generation owners, since 1890. Orvis Fishing Lodge of the Year 2006-07. www.libbycamps.com

A and inspiring adventure awaits youyou A luxurious and inspiring adventure awaits you A luxurious luxurious and inspiring adventure awaits Discover the pinnacle of sport

• Largest salmon run in the world

salmon run inrun theinworld • Largest salmon the world Discover the pinnacle of sport Discover the pinnacle of sport • Largest • Alaska’s designated trophy fishing in the heart of Alaska’s • Alaska’s designated trophy • Alaska’s designated trophy fishing in theinheart of Alaska’s fishing the heart of Alaska’s Rainbow Trout area world-renowned Bristol Bay area, Trout Trout area area Rainbow world-renowned Bristol Bay area, world-renowned Bristol Bay area, Rainbow • Fly outs throughout the pristine with unparalleled remote lodge • Fly outs throughout the pristine • Fly outs throughout the pristine wilderness withcomfort, unparalleled remote lodgelodge with unparalleled remote a dedicated wilderness wilderness • Katmai National Park comfort, a dedicated comfort, a dedicated professional staff, and a • Katmai National Parkbath • Katmai Park • Cabins withNational private professional staff, and a professional staff, and a commitment to providing • Cabins with private bath bath • Cabins with private • A staff dedicated towards commitment toAlaska providing commitment to providing spectacular experiences perfection • A staff towards • Adedicated staff dedicated towards spectacular Alaska experiences spectacular Alaska experiences each day. You will fish clear perfection perfection eachstreams day. day.

You will clear each Youfish will fish clear teeming with large rainbow Trout and massive streams teeming with largelarge streams teeming with salmon runs measured in rainbow Trout and massive rainbow Trout and massive visit www.fishasl.com the millions. salmon runs measured in in salmon runs measured or call us toll free at 888.826.7376 visit www.fishasl.com visit www.fishasl.com the millions. the millions. or callorus tollusfree 888.826.7376 call tollat free at 888.826.7376 March / April 2019 · 115

Mo n t a n a Al Gadoury’s 6X Outfitters Bozeman and Lewiston, MT (406)600-1835 E-Mail: al@6xoutfitters.com Since 1979, guided walk trips on private spring creeks, Yellowstone River floats, and private lakes. Upland bird hunts are based in Lewiston. All wild birds—sage and sharptail grouse, Hungarian partridge, pheasant, and turkey. www.6xoutfitters.com Gallatin River Lodge 9105 Thorpe Rd, Bozeman, MT 59718 (406)388-0148 Our resort is located on a quiet ranch on the Gallatin River west of Bozeman. We offer fly fishing guide service on the Madison, Yellowstone, and Missouri Rivers, plus many famous spring creeks nearby. Superb accommodations, exceptional dining, and conference facilities are available year-round. www.grlodge.com

New M e x i c o Land of Enchantment Guides (505)629-5688 or (505)927-5356 E-mail: trout@loeflyfishing.com Offering single-day guided fly fishing trips and all inclusive, multi-day packages on

the best rivers, streams, lakes, and private ranches in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Excellent year-round fishing.

Experienced guides welcome beginners and experts alike. Orvis-endorsed. www.loeflyfishing.com

Ne w Z e aland High Peak (643)318-6575 E-Mail: Simon@highpeak.co.nz Where great hunting stories begin. Exclusive New Zealand hunting experiences for discerning clientele seeking that rare combination of fine trophy, authentic stalk, and a personal approach. Set among the central South Island’s Southern Alps, the Guild family takes pride in hosting their clients individually on their private station in pursuit of famous Red Stag, Thar, Chamois, and Fallow Buck. www.highpeak.co.nz

North Dakota Dakota Hills Hunting Lodge HC56, Box 90, Oral, SD 57766 (605)424-2500 or (800)622-3603 E-mail: dakhills@gwtc.net Contact Tom Lauing. We offer some of the finest world-class wingshooting available, with an abundance of pheasant, Hungar-

ian partridge, chukar partridge, sharptail grouse, snipe, dove, and bobwhite quail. Allinclusive package includes first-class lodging along the Cheyenne River, all beverages, three Western-cuisine meals per day, open bar, ammunition, clays, license, 21-bird limit, processing, and airport pickup. www.dakhills.gwtc.net

S pain Hunt Trip Spain 011-34-931162001 E-mail: contact@hunttripspain.com A professional hunting company established

by Francisco Rosich in 1986. Its exclusive purpose is hunting game trophies throughout Spain. Hunt Trip Spain has hunting concessions all over the country for the broad range of magnificent game animals available in Spain: 4 subspecies of Spanish Ibex (Beceite, Gredos, Southeastern & Ronda), Spanish Red Stag, Mouflon Sheep, Fallow Deer, Pyrenean and Cantabrian Chamois, Feral Goat, Wild Boar, Roe Deer and Barbary Sheep. Outstanding hunts for Red-Legged Partridges, driven or upland hunts are also available. HUNT TRIP SPAIN has served International hunters for more than 20 years.

Come, let us transform your visit to Spain into an unforgettable adventure. www.hunttripspain.com

Al Gadoury’s 6X Outfitters 406-600-1835

www.6Xoutfitters.com

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Ut a h Falcon’s Ledge (435)454-3737 E-mail: info@falconsledge.com One of the great western fly-fishing and wingshooting lodges. Cast to trophy trout on clear tail-waters, mountain freestone streams, private stillwaters, and enjoy a day floating the famous Green or Provo Rivers.

Secure, pristine, and unpressured. Non-fishing spouses stay free! Honored as the 2012 Orvis Endorsed Fly Fishing Lodge of the Year! www.falconsledge.com

Vi r g in i a Chincoteague Hunting & Fishing Center (888)231-4868 Virginia’s Eastern Shore has one of the largest, most diverse populations of waterfowl in North America. Hunt puddlers, divers, sea ducks, mergansers, Atlantic brant, Canada, and snow geese all in the same day with over a 30-bird limit. We also offer rail hunting in September and October. www.duckguide.com Murray’s Fly Shop PO Box 156, 121 Main Streeet Edinburg, VA 22824

(540)984-4212 E-mail: info@murrayflyship.com Located in the Shenandoah Valley, 90 miles west of Washington, DC. Over 300 rods by Scott, Winston, Orvis, and St. Croix. More than 50,000 flies in stock. Harry Murray conducts 20 fly fishing schools for trout and bass. Complete guide services. Free mailorder catalog. www.murraysflyshop.com Primland 2000 Busted Rock Road Meadows of Dan, VA 24120 (866)960-7746 Join us for a rare opportunity to visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains and experience driven pheasant shoots comparable to the best in the U.K. From pegs in a deep valley you’ll aim your double gun at the wild flurry of game birds as they appear from the towering ridges above. Upland birds is also a signature activity with spacious grounds and hard-flushing birds. Primland is the ultimate retreat for world-class golf, refined dining and outdoor activities in an environment of rare natural beauty. www.primland.com

Y ukon T e rritory Tincup Wilderness Lodge (604)484- 4418 or +41 43 455 0101 E-Mail: info@tincup-lodge.com

Situated on the shores of Tincup Lake close to the Kluane National Park in Canada’s Yukon Territory, surrounded by mile up upon mile of unspoiled natural landscape, Tincup Wilderness Lodge enjoys a truly unique location. The surrounding Ruby Range provides views of breathtaking beauty from dawn to dusk. The Lodge can be reached only by floatplane. In order to ensure our undisturbed privacy in a family environment, we limit bookings to a maximum of 8-10 guests per week. This level of occupancy also enables us to welcome groups, giving all members plenty of scope to pursue their various interests and activities. www.tincup-lodge.com

NOTICE The outfitters, guides, lodges and plantations listed here are advertisers in Gray’s. The copy is provided by the advertiser, and Gray’s makes no claim as to the value of the services provided by any advertiser. When hiring an outfitter or guide, shop with care, and check references before making a financial commitment.

“Your Gateway to the North Maine Woods”

www.libbycamps.com / 207-435-8274 matt@libbycamps.com

Harry Murray’s Fly Fishing Schools

1 - the Daystream Smallmouth Schools from June “On schools”Bass for smallmouth bass on the to August ($196 per person).

1/2 - Day Fly Fishing Shenandoah River (2 days-$295) Lessons from June to September ($98 per person).

Mountain Trout Schools in the Shenandoah National Park Mountain(2Trout Schools in the days-$295) Shenandoah National Park (1 day @ $196).

All tackle provided free • Twenty separate schools All tackle provided free. Twenty separate schools.

Free catalog for schools and fly shop

More information at www.murraysflyshop.com.

P.O. Box 156 • 121 Main St. P.O. Box 156 • 121 Main St. Edinburg, VA 22824 Edinburg, VA 22824 Phone: phone:540-984-4212 540-984-4212 • e-mail: info@murraysflyshop.com e-mail: info@murraysflyshop.com www.murraysflyshop.com www.murraysflyshop.com

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BOOKS

Artistry

by Christopher Camuto

F

or decades now, Dave Whitlock has been educating anglers about fish and fishing in the pages of Trout, where he writes and illustrates a column that may well be the first pages many Trout Unlimited members turn to. His Dave Whitlock’s Guide to Aquatic Trout Foods remains that rarest of things, a useful classic. Published in 1982 by Nick Lyons, early in Lyons’s career when he was still at Winchester Press, Whitlock’s first book helped raise angler awareness about how the behavior and life cycles of stream insects influenced the feeding behavior of trout. He did that by means of clear, unadorned prose and crisp illustration that was both technically precise and lifelike. The author-artist took full advantage of the rapidly growing scientific knowledge of trout stream ecology of that period.

To me a wild trout has a look of perfection. . . .

Dave Whitlock, “Trout, Char and Salmon” Over the past four decades, Whitlock has continued to develop as a naturalist, angler, fly tier, and artist. For nearly half a century, he has been a critical link between the aspiring angler and the nature of trout and their world. The best of his Trout column, “The Artful Angler,” was gathered in the 2010 Trout and Their Food: A Compact Guide for Fly Fishers (Skyhorse), and now we have his most recent work gathered in Artful Profiles of Trout, Char, and Salmon and the Classic Flies that Catch Them (Skyhorse Press, hardbound, 165 pages, $24.99). This latest work 118 · Gray’s Sporting Journal · www.grayssportingjournal.com

brings to hand the author-artist’s wide-ranging knowledge of coldwater fish species, their habitats, and ecology. It is rich with color illustrations that show the evolution of Whitlock’s art from instructive to interpretive.

In his prose, paintings, and drawings, Whitlock pays unassuming homage to the instincts of fish and the web of stream ecology that their lives and our angling depend upon. In his species accounts, you will find not only masterly essays, rich with a lifetime of observation and thought, but also the painterly appreciation of a mature artist’s understanding of the subject to which he has devoted his life. His brown trout sulk, his brook trout rise easily, his rainbows turn on a dime. And he attends to each species as if it is equally important; whitefish and chum salmon are painted with the same care as kings and steelhead. The third of the book focused on trout flies and angling tips is also illustrated with the vivid precision for Whitlock is known. All such illustration, workmanlike and artful, makes us want to observe nature more closely, tie better flies, and fish with more precise intentions.

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rgentinean biologist Javier Urbanski and Uruguayan photographer Isaías Miciu Nicolaevici have joined their talents in Wild Trout (Urbanski/Miciu, hardbound, $100), a unique contribution to a familiar genre, a double helix of words and images simultaneously celebrating the biology and aesthetics of wild trout. Miciu, who has photographed wildlife all over the world, provides a portrait of wild trout and their environs that is both intimate and panoramic, a book-length photographic essay intent on capturing the lives of undisturbed wild fish, the currents they hold in, the prey they

seek. Miciu works behind the lens as a living observer and inhabitant of the spare landscapes of northern Patagonia, hovering over riverbends like a hawk, stalking through canyons at eye level, searching for the essence of his rivers from within those rivers, approaching fish as if he were a fish. In his underwater photography, he goes to great lengths to create images of wild trout living on their own terms, sculpted to the fluidity of rivers, vivacious in spawning colors, tuned to the food web of stream life around them. Except for your own shadow on its pages, you won’t find so much as the shadow of an angler in this book. Javier Urbanski’s excellent running commentary, in Spanish and English, on the biology of trout and the ecology of rivers is tipped between the pages of Miciu’s images, providing an additional bilingual pleasure for a book that admirably reminds us of the international regard for wild trout.

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ll good fishing is local, all soulful anglers lovers of rivers as much as of fish, all thoughtful anglers lovers of watersheds as much as of rivers. Two fine books give us a close look at complete anglers.

Stephen Sautner’s A Cast in the Woods (Lyons Press, hardbound, 192 pages, $24.95) takes us into the heart of his angling life in New York’s Catskill Mountains and gives us access to his admirable attachment to fish, rivers, and watersheds.

Sautner found himself a way to root his angling life near one of the venues where American trout fishing began: “a simple cabin on 14 acres of wildlife-filled woods and a quarter-mile of native trout stream. A half-dozen other great trout rivers a short drive away. Family and friends who stay there with me. Neighbors whom I have gotten to know well over the years.” In well-crafted essays, Sautner accounts for both his angling and the range of interests and responsibilities, joys and disappointments, that derive from trying to own a trout stream that, of course, comes to own him. There are fascinating accounts of the effects of major floods on his stream and the paradoxes of stream restoration. And there is the dark trouble of dealing with the threat of natural gas fracking—the drilling, the infrastructure, the pipelines—which came to the Catskills as he was settling into his idyll. Amid a steady flow of problems, he still manages to enjoy the simple

pleasures of homesteading—or cabin-steading. His prose will take you into hours and days spent and lost tending to his property and friends and, of course, in fishing—supposedly the point of it all. His wellrendered angling is scaled to the opportunities at hand—to the hungry, diminutive trout in his stream as well as to the challenges of tougher trout in the Delaware and selective beauties in the Beaverkill and Willewemoc. There is more than enough rewarding fishing to keep Sautner and the reader going. He has earned the humble, instructive vantage from which he can fish and bird, loaf and hike, as well as deal with natural changes and unnatural disasters that lean on his engagement with nature.

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lthough Frederick Prince, like Zane Grey, cut his angling teeth on the Lackawaxen River in eastern Pennsylvania, his angling idylls are set in the backcountry of New Hampshire, on beaver ponds and granite-enlivened streams where small wild trout still thrive, as they thrive in the nooks and crannies of Sautner’s Catskills. He gives us a fine account of his angling life in Backwoods Brook Trout: Stories of Time and Place (Beech River Books, softbound, 130 pages, $14). The flow of Prince’s consciousness has been decanted by those waters to a fine vintage of understated prose that will allow you to savor a lifetime of a thoughtful angler’s anglings. As his subtitle suggests, he moves in these essays through time and place—intently fishing when he fishes, remarkably attentive to nature as he goes to a backcountry full of the subtle history of rural New England. He loves and deftly portrays the rhythms and details of camp life, the way time moves or stays still in the woods. He also angles about in his memory, as many of us do in the backcountry, and in places weaves an unobtrusive memoir in his sharply drawn tales. In the end, his purpose is clear and unforced: “This is a small glimpse into the connectivity of it all, and in a primal way, comforting.” n Chris Camuto’s Fly Fisherman’s Blue Ridge, an homage to wild trout in remote places, originally published

by Henry Holt in 1990, will be published in a 30thanniversary edition in 2020 along with a compilation of his 20-plus years of Watersheds columns in Trout.

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POEM

Church

by Michael Hill

Sunday morning and I’m headed up the canyon road, a stained glass sky spilling sunlight onto the high rock walls, their jagged spires thrust heavenward.

Below, beneath vaulted boughs of cottonwood and pine, the river’s rush of voices collides in song and a fisherman opens his fly box like a hymnal.

Michael Hill’s poems have been published by Midwestern Gothic, The Flyfish Journal, The Sea Letter, Verse Wisconsin, Third Wednesday, and Concho River Review. He lives, writes, and fishes in Northern Colorado.

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Brookie in Hand, an original oil on canvas, 17 x 22 inches, by Derek DeYoung.

Back Cover: Freedom, an original oil on canvas, 9 x 12 inches, by Georg Miciu Nicolaevici.