Stockholm Syndrome

As I approached the tailout I could feel my pulse start to quicken, my Steele sense tingled. A tension settled over me, my muscles taught with anticipation, nerves like a string of Black Cats with the wick sizzling expectantly. It looked soo good. It swung soo beautifully there's no way it wasn't going to happen there. My physiological reaction was merely the byproduct of this greater realization - there are times when you think a fish should be somewhere, and there are times when you know a fish is somewhere. I trusted my accelerated heart rate as the latter.  I made the motions deliberately, mended all the way to the fly, and let the current guide it down along the seam and into the trough. I hardly had to do anything else it fished so well. Next cast, same routine, the anticipation building. Another cast. Then another cast. And another. And another. I could clearly discern the shape and color of the rocks on the bottom, and if I could do so then there was no way any fish in the tailout would've missed all 462 casts I made after that out of desperation, unwilling to let that feeling go, unyielding to the passing moment.

It was a false-positive. An affirmation that you are doing everything correctly and so well that you just know that you're about to catch a fish. Only you don't. The moment builds just like every other one before it, ripe with promise and potential, then passes cold and tasteless. Is it me? Is it the fish? Is it my fly? Is it the weather? The flows? The cloud cover? The aspect of the Sun to Mercury in a Taurus house after a waning blood moon?? All I knew was that it was beyond me, that no matter how hard I tried I was still doing something flagrantly wrong to the fish. My humble and desperate pleas to the fish gods fell on deaf lateral lines. People around me hardly even caught fish, so I really started to wonder if I wasn't the jinx, if I was bad juju for the people I fished with. I still don't know.

I do know that I spent 33 days on the water between some local rivers and half a dozen excursions to the coast. I landed five fish in total, and lost only two. Of course the two I lost were the biggest, freshest fish I have encountered to date, but sometimes that just how it goes. I only saw three other fish hooked by people I was with, and two of those were landed. I spent some quality time getting to know new people, and I spent more than my fair share of time on the water for someone's whose understanding wife supports the household. I know that I love the woods and the waters that Steele haunts, and I love knowing that somewhere out there waits a fish for me next season, next trip, next cast.

Here's a brief synopsis of those excursions, accompanied by a few images from each.

Trip I - My job ran out, my buddy from Montana drove out, and we went fishing. Along the way we picked up a weathered soul, that dirtbag with dreadlocks from the Trout Bum Diaries, Ryan Davey. He's a good dude.

Trip II - I had plans to cruise out to Seattle and hook up with Ryan again, until someone pulled fifth wheel and tagged along for the adventure - Clyde. It was with Clyde that I landed my first fish on the swing, a hatchery kelt. A victory nonetheless! Later that same afternoon I swung up my first bull trout, too.

Trip III - Six straight days of floating with Capt. Davey. We each landed one fish, we each lost one fish.

Trip IV - Ariel and I tagged along with Jesse and a couple of his buddies from Santa Fe. We camped and fished and ate and drank and were merry all the while.

Trip V - Some very serious late-season swinging was done. Doug found a fish. The springers were also starting to show up, which can make it frustrating when you see three fish roll in the run but still proceed to touch nothing. I'm warming up to the cold shoulder now though. 

Trip VI - Mr. Robbins extended an invite to fish with him and another mutual acquaintance. I accepted. We drove out, went fishing, got rained on, got wet, built a fire, got drunk, fished some more, then went home. 

I'm not so sure how much more of this game my feeble mind can take, but at the same time, I can't tear myself away.

Spearfishing Firsts, 2.0

There is no saltwater record in the State of Maine for Tautog. They are so uncommon North of Massachusetts that there just isn't a category for them. So on Sunday, when I saw this filthy critter staring up at me from its boulder cave near Harpswell, I was pretty shocked. I was shocked because this fish was at least 70 miles further North than any Tog I'd seen while spearfishing, it was by far the biggest I have tangled with anywhere at 25.75 inches, and it bore a closer resemblance to Slimer from Ghostbusters than anything you'd expect to see swimming around here.

After digging around a bit, I found the next closest thing to a Maine Tautog record for reference, a current New Hampshire record of 21.25 inches and 9 lbs..... Just sayin'

Gladiator

Made a canyon trip with a couple real solid dudes from Maine on their brand new boat. Despite absolute shit reports, we eked out a fish or two...

The J.R.

 No, not Jesse Robbins. (Although he is the original J.R.) I speak of the Swift River in Belchertown MA. So how is it that the Swift River came to be called "The J.R."? Well the Swift River is technically the "S.R." But we all know that there can only be one "S.R.", and the mighty Salmon River will forever be known as the S.R., so that dog won't hunt for the Swift. But the Swift River could be the S.R. Jr., and for a while it was, that is until it became "The Junior", and then "The J.R". And that's what it is now.

Let me first say that the J.R. has trout. Many many trout. Sometimes The J.R has almost too many trout, and their shear presence is a frustration to the angler. When is too many trout a problem? It's a problem when none of them eat. When you've spent a long day casting at trout and none of them want anything to do with your flies then you'd just assume rather not look at them because they suck. Sometimes I hate The J.R for this reason. Sometimes every angler does.

A typical pod of rainbow trout hold under a fallen log in the JR. The trout in The JR like to hold near fallen timber so that the angler snags his flies on the timber and breaks his leaders

 But there are times when The J.R. is the only game in town and a man has to play every once in a while. I played the J.R. on Sunday. As always the river made me work for them. My first solid hookup was a beautiful brook trout that rose off the bottom to inspect my fuzzy wuzzy caterpillar looking fly three times before deciding to commit. I lost that fish while fumbling to pull the net out of my fishing bag. 0 for 1 is a bad way to start on the J.R. Often you only get one bite. Sometimes none at all. That native brookie sure was pretty too, in all his spawning colors.

I then spent a good hour casting over a nice pile of trout. Finally came a handsome rainbow on the same fuzzy wuzzy fly.  A good looking fish. He put up a spirited battle for a small beast. But men don't really go to The J.R. to battle. They go to there to fool educated fish, thus proving that they are educated anglers.


The author fooled this trout by repeatedly casting at a school of trout hundreds and hundreds of times until a dumb one finally bit.

The fish then seemed to turn on. I hooked another fish on my fuzzy wuzzy fly and pulled the hook. Missed a couple surface strikes as well. I'm actually pretty sure I pulled the fly out of the trout's mouth a couple times. Sight fishing the J.R. will cause a man to miss a bite every now and then, I think because he has so much time to watch them coming. But sometimes the trout would just strike short; slowly ascending from the bottom to nuzzle my fuzzy wuzzy and then slinking back down to the 18 inch depths. Another trout would come to net about an hour later. This one took a copper john fished underneath my fuzzy wuzzy fly. Two fish and three hookups within an hour! I had the hot hand on The J.R. on this fine fall day. Another angler from up river keyed in on my hot action and asked what I was using. I told him most of my action was on a fuzzy looking caterpillar type dry fly. He said that he didn't think he had any. I told him I would give him one but I only had one left. (I lied to him. I actually had three left. But I wanted to keep all three for myself.)

This trout took a copper john that was 3 sizes too big for trout in this river. This shows that trout are unpredictable.

I then spent a good amount of time fishing over one particularly handsome looking rainbow. He ignored all of my offering as I diligently switch up flies. An old man was fishing about 40 yards above me and was dislodging some algae and other debris that were starting to muddy my trout's waters. I watched the big old rainbow inhale a 2 inch wad of green algae and the spit it out a second later. After ignoring my best presentations for the better part of a half hour the fish litterally took J.R. bottom scum. That was a little depressing. The J.R. will do that to you sometimes.

The old man angler then wandered down the river from the far bank. He asked me if I wanted him to walk behind me or if it was ok to proceed downstream in front of me. The old man looked to be relatively feeble so rather than ask him to cross the J.R. and walk behind, I told him to go whichever way he pleased. The old man then walked through my school of trout and scattered them. Oh well, there are plenty more fish in the J.R and at least one of those trout was a vegetarian anyways.

I got up on the bank and scouted the J.R. for more trout. I spotted this healthy school of mixed rainbows and brookies. Unfortunately there was another angler already attempting to angle them.

J.R. trout. Note the smaller brookies mixed in with the rainbows.

 I spotted several nice pods of trout holding near fallen timber. Some nice rainbows were in the mix. I elected to play photographer for a little while as I scouted around for a good pod of trout to fish. Some trout hold in spots that aren't worth casting at.

More trout holding in the J.R. Trout in The J.R. don't usually like artificial flies.

  I finally came upon a nice school of trout in a castable location. These trout were very picky as well. I hooked one on my fuzzy wuzzy fly but he came unbottoned. A big trout he was, pushing 18 inches. In the end I had to settle for his much smaller friend, who took a size 24 red midge larva dropper.

The trout looks at the author and smiles for the camera

I let that trout go and said goodbye to the J.R. Now that I've played with the stream bound rainbows, it's time for the ones that live most of their lives in the lake.

 



Halloween in Pulaski

Over the Halloween weekend I made my second-ever trip to Pulaski in pursuit of the mighty Steelhead with Keith, Clark, Wilkie, Robbins, Lucas and Boone. This is a very overdue video from the weekend.

How was the fishing?

And when I walked into that bar at a quarter past midnight to meet a collection of friends who had been at it since brunch, the tones of their conversations revealing their drunkenness, they asked me, "How was the fishing?"

How do you explain an eight hour drive straight into the eye of a lake-effect storm to stand knee deep in winter water for ten hours a day while the temperature never reaches 20 degrees and the constant snow makes sure that as long as you're cold, you might as well be wet too, and you watch that indicator and that fly line float across the river all day, never going upstream or downstream or across following a fish, and you curse the weather, curse the fiftieth and fifty-first time you break the ice out of your guides and you don't talk to your best friends for hours at a time and you watch a man with one arm hook five fish in front of you and your waders are leaking but you guess it doesn't matter much because both of your feet are numb anyway and you're sure that this drift is the one and you're staring at that indicator, sending all of your power to make it stop floating downstream and tick once or twice or go under water or do something besides float and the best part of your day was when you woke up in the middle of the night and you knew you didn't have to get up yet and the only word you can think of to describe the situation is 'beatdown' and you wonder how it is that you thought you were a pretty good angler and the only time you crack a smile is when you laugh at yourself or when you watch your buddy curse after unsuccessfully un-hanging another rig and have to break it off only knowing that it'll take fifteen minutes of using his tired, frozen fingers to tie three knots and pinch on some split shot and you curse the river and the snow and when you get back to that cabin and it takes an hour for your feet to finally feel normal again you laugh and hand your friends another beer and then on the last leg of your eight hour drive home you smile because you know you'd do it all over again?

How was the fishing? How was the fishing? I'm not even sure that I know myself.