Journey's End

I'll just pick up where I left off:

We drove south. Option #1 was too low. Option #2 was full of more didymo than a port-a-potty after Chili Fest, and looked none more appealing. Option #3 was too windy. This was our last option. 

It was tight little spring creek that was full of spunky browns who aren't afraid to use every piece of cover to their advantage when fighting. 

The following day we continued deeper into the rabbit's hole.

We soon ascribed it a new moniker, Improbable Creek.

This was one of the better fish we had seen, and I shouldn't have had two opportunities at it. But I did. And I certainly shouldn't have blown both of them. But I did. 

A fish came the middle of this bit, just off Lewis's right shoulder.

And he fought it underneath and through this bush.

This one came while blind-casting, literally, over 6ft tall tussock!

We then went back to the lake I'd mentioned previously. The surface was glass and the fish uninterested in anything in anything less than the most technical of presentations (think <18 on 6x). 

   

Thank you for your time.

We then packed up and headed back.

I had one more chance to fish before I was back stateside. I went at it alone and was rewarded with one fish on a random blind cast. Fish number fifty. The last fish I needed. 

And alas, the sun has set on another New Zealand summer.

The cool creep of fall had finally settled in on the South Island. Though it doesn't necessarily amount to much by the way of harsh winters most places, it is a long and arduous transition into spring some months from now. With most rivers having closed before I left, I began to feel the restlessness of stale potential setting in. It's time to move on, time to get going. A few nights in Auckland enjoying a couple concerts by my favorite band helped to quell the unrest in my legs for a day or two, but the 24+ hours of travel following finished me off.

So here I sit back in Colorado reflecting on another winter well-spent, but also weighing opportunities anew. Stepping on that plane always leaves me heavy-hearted, wondering when or even if I shall ever see this land again that means so much to me. That is always the question and always the regret in leaving. I know not if I shall return, I only know that with the end of one journey thus begins another, especially for someone returning somewhere homeless and jobless. Keep looking forward, keep pressing on. For lack of sufficient alternatives I believe I shall be moseying eastward for a change. It's been a long while since I spent a summer in Maine, and though I regret not having fisheries work to occupy me out west, I do look forward to revisiting some long forgotten waters back there. Anyone fancy a fish?

2012 White Marlin Open

The Hard Four, at right, in the Marina. 

At some point earlier this year my buddy John Libre (Bates '02) calls and says there is a free spot on his brother-in-law's boat for some fishing tournament and do I want to go fishing in Maryland in August. I tell him I'm interested, but not sure I can make it work schedule-wise, and let me get back to him about it. He calls me again at the end of July to remind me that I never got back to him. So, I check the calendar, figure out how to make it work with the wife, and start to figure out how to get to Ocean City, Maryland. I'm thinking "awesome, I'm going fishing, I'll get to meet some new fishing buddies, and we'll probably have a cocktail or two."

About 1-week later I'm on a shuttle bus from the Philadelphia Airport to what appears to be the back parking lot of the Philadelphia Airport, but is actually the home of the tiny-ass plane that is taking me to Ocean City. My carry-on bag was almost too big to be checked on this plane. I thought they were going to check to see if the weight of the passengers was evenly distributed on each side of the aisle. On the final descent into Ocean City the pilot didn't say "flight attendants prepare for landing," he just turned over his shoulder and yelled "Elaine, sit down!"

John picks me up at the airport and I find two coozied can beers at my feet, and on the 45min drive to Ocean City I begin to realize that this is going to be some more serious fishing than I anticipated. Turns out we're in the 2012 White Marlin Open, the largest Marlin tournament in the world...something that John failed to mention previously. At this point I begin to remember him saying there was a cash prize, which I had in my head as $250,000. Turns out I was off by a 0. It was a $2,500,000 purse. Oh.

So here is the cast of characters that I meet upon my arrival at our condo at the marina:

John Libre - He significantly undersold this trip when he invited me.

Frank Coulson - Brother-in-law of John Libre, owner and captain of the 36' Contender "Hard Four," and all around great dude. I would alternately call him "Boss" all week.

John "Zoo" Andrae - real name John, but was a child model and got this nickname from Zoolander as a result. Obviously. He's the fishing captain out of New Jersey and to put it simply, knows how to fucking fish. He would want to murder us 14 times during the course of 3 days.

Todd Saylor - Frank's buddy from way back and college, who now lives in Cancun where he owns a bar and sells oceanfront lots. And yes, he is exactly as fun as you're thinking he probably is.

Chet - the fucking new guy who thought he was just going fishing.

So there are 250 boats vying for this $2.5million purse, and as the 36' center-console we are definitely on the smaller side. In the marina we're surrounded by 50'+ fishing boats of various ports of origin, with various fishing and/or sexual innuendo names, and teams of matching-shirt and matching beer-gut men. We're hearing about how hot the White Marlin bite has been the past few weeks, and at this point everyone is expecting there to be a lot of competition for top prize. 

Tuesday morning we're up and out of the marina by 4am, and motoring out towards Baltimore Canyon for about 4 hours, with the triple 300s blaring. Zoo is driving, we're all sacked out in the waterproof beanbags on the deck of the boat. These things are awesome, especially if you've been over-served the night before. We haven't been, yet, so it's just a nice treat to get a few more hours of sleep in. 

Lines go in at 8:30am and within minutes we hear other boats calling in releases. Long morning of nothing, and then Frank hooks into one a little after 1pm and fights it into the boat. We deck-check it, and it is under-size, so it goes back in. We have a few more hits throughout the day, but don't land anything else. I recall the ride back in being somewhat somber, but I was also passed back out in the beanbags for most of it. As we head under the drawbridge we run a single white marlin flag (upside down to indicate it was a release) up the outrigger. After we pull into the marina we start to look around and see that there are a couple boats with multiple flags, but quite a few of the big fishing yachts are flag-less…so we're doing above average.

Wednesday morning are we're discovering that Tuesday evening was a bad time to create a new bloody mary recipe, and a worse time to drink said recipe out of 24oz commemorative Slim Jim mugs. The beanbags were pleasant yesterday, necessary today. 8:30am and our lines are out again, and we're starting to look like a team…or at least we're not tripping over ourselves as much and Zoo seems to not be audibly sighing as much from the tuna tower. A little after 9am and a left outrigger explodes. Frank grabs it, and there's a nice white marlin on. Then our right-flat rod blows up as well, and I grab it. As Libre and Saylor clear the rest of the lines Frank's fish drops the hook, but mine is on. 

After what seemed like a much longer fight than it was, I'm sweating Tito's vodka and Old Bay seasoning and we've got another white marlin on the deck that is too short. Later that afternoon Frank adds another released white marlin to our tally, and we miss 7 hook-ups. Zoo is not pleased, nor should he be. We come in flying two upside-down flags. Same deal as Tuesday, there are a lot of boats flying 1 or 0 flags on the way in. As we pull into the dock we see a boat 5 slips down has some unexpected company: 6 US Marshals and another half-dozen Ocean City cops. Not good news. Rumors are flying on the dock, and while we never found out the exact details, the working title for this blog post was originally  "Don't register your $2 million dollar boat in a very public fishing tournament when you're wanted by US Marshalls for tax evasion, or you will be lead away in handcuffs from the dock and have your boat impounded in front of everyone." But that felt a little wordy. 

So after all that commotion, and after the Coast Guard has come and helped impound the boat, we find out that after the weigh-in that night there is only 1 White Marlin on the board, everything else has been under-weight. And as it stands then, that White Marlin will win $900,000. Now we know why Zoo is distraught, we were 1 good fish away from a big win. Fuck. I'm due to fly out too early the next day to go out fishing. Double fuck. I change my flight at dinner, there's a Million-Dollar fish out in dem waters.

Thursday morning starts with some action, but not the kind we're looking for. We hit a few schools of Tuna and Mahi Mahi and are trying to get our lines in before they can take all our bait. It strikes me that I would have been content catching these fish on the flight down, in fact on another day these hook-ups would have been considered a good day of fishing, but not today.  The afternoon gets hot, bulas are pulled over every inch of flesh possible to avoid the sun, and we keep trolling SW in chase of the 82 degree water that they've been hitting in. We've got an iPod on shuffle playing tunes on the boat, and "Dancing on the Ceiling" comes on. "White Marlin love Lionel Ritchie" Zoo deadpans from the tower. We get another white marlin to the boat. Undersized again. Fuck. But damn white marlin are fun to catch.

Libre,  Coulson, and Saylor with a fish that looks big enough to me.

We're hearing one boat over the radio that has released over 5. The 3:30pm lines-out deadline creeps up on us. It is a different kind of end-of-day. Usually it is a sunset or a trip departure that calls it, this time it is a call over the radio saying lines-out. The somber mood while de-rigging fades quickly as the disappointment over not being in the money fades to the realization that we got into a good number of fish and had a hell of a time doing so. The music is turned up, man-hugs and high-fives are given, and coors lights downed in seconds.We get back to the dock and clean the boat. Not a lot of flags flying that day, but there's still one more day of the tournament (not for us, we'd already fished our 3 days). The lone White Marlin is still on the board, and worth a lot more money per pound than that fisherman first expected. 

Beers start going down pretty fast, showers are taken, and we head to "Seacrets" which Zoo tells us is the must-go destination in Ocean City. Now, Ocean City looks like a lot of kinda-sad seasonal destinations on the east coast, with a lot of half-functional neon, ferris wheels with questionable structural integrity, and mini-golf courses across the street from mini-golf courses. And a fucking "Sunsations" on every-other block selling beach crap. So, admittedly my expectations for this Jamaican-themed establishment weren't sky-high on the way there. Turns out this place is 5 acres, all covered in sand, with at least 6 different "scenes" ranging from restaurant, to in-the-ocean beach bar, to nightclub. There's a Rastafarian band lead by a fat white guy, and they are far better than that description sounds. There's also a Jamaican bobsled in the courtyard that we'd partake in, obviously. 

The next morning my tiny-ass flight out of Maryland is delayed and I check the White Marlin Open standings on my phone. We're in 93rd place overall out of 250 boats. Not bad. Oh, and the prize of that single White Marlin had gone up…to $1.4million. Not a bad week of fishing for that guy.

Here's a video that I put together. The song you may not know is "Knock, Knock" by Mac Miller, a 20-year-old white rapper out of Pittsburgh who is better than that description sounds.

Password is flounder

2012 White Marlin Open - Hard Four from Chet Clem on Vimeo.

Waters Westward

Tomorrow morning, newly-inducted-honorary BFCa member, fellow Mainer and man of the road, Lucas Young will depart for the Southern Hemisphere and The Land of the Long White Cloud with a one-way ticket. Lucas and I spent a little over two months on the road down under last winter and he's going back for more.
Follow along as Lucas tells the stories of his travels and his fishing: Waters Westward.

Fishing in the Far East

Recently I had the privilege of finding out about this blog, via Mr. Robbins, and couldn't help but want to share my own fishing experiences in the Far East. Recently I took a trip to China where I witnessed two methods of fishing I had never seen before, and one I had never even heard about. Neither method involved fishing in the traditional sense, with lures or nets, but both were intriguing none the less. Both were witnessed in the river and bogs of a rural part of China known as Yangshuo, about an hour and a half bus ride outside Guilin. The first involved the use of tamed Cormorants tied to a pole held on the back on the fisherman. The cormorants, while fishing, have two lines tied on them. One around their foot, to prevent escape, and a second around their neck. The line around their neck serves to prevent large fish from being swallowed, while allowing smaller fish through. Thereby, the bird feeds itself and the fisherman gets his catch. The second method is less noble. I witnessed it while riding a rented bike through the rice paddies surrounding the village. Riding along and snapping pictures, I was motioned by a local to come over and look. Camera in tow, I followed his hand signals up to the top of an embankment that looked down into a brown pool of water. For a brief moment I had no idea what was going on. There was a guy with a bucket, just kind of mulling around, and the another with two poles submerged in the water one of which was making intermittent buzzing noise. After a few moments, he pulled up one of the poles to reveal a net at the end, with a fish in it. A fish that was not moving. I peered closer to realize that the other pole had a wire running up it to the box on his back, which apparently is a large battery. Upon activating a switch, he could electrify the water, killing any fish within the immediate vicinity. I'd never imaged anything like this, but I guess when dinner is on the line, Man's ingenuity is limitless. I'm curious what would happen if he tripped and fell into the water with the battery...

Truchas Austral

The hilly pampas region of Argentine Patagonia is roughly the size of the Western U.S with a mind-boggling network of rivers and streams crisscrossing down from the Andes. Not all waters in the area hold fish so picking a place to start can be daunting. On top of this, there isn’t much information about specific regions and the little information that is available is often only in Spanish. Fortunately, most people are about as chill as can be and eager to help. I ran into Mario (http://www.flyfishingpucon.com/), we chatted for a bit, and he was quick to clue me in on some waters to check out a few hours outside of the town of Junin. Mario, whose incredible fishing prowess is equally as solid as his throwback moustache, was a standup guy and we were lucky to meet him. So in keeping with South American fashion, we ended up winging it - because there wasn’t really any other way to do it - and in the end, Poseidon giveth.

Checklist:
-licenses (U.S. $25 per day)
-canned and fresh food (U.S. $15 for 2 people for 3 days)
-Immodium AD
-duct tape
-1/2 kilometer of t.p.
-Spanish dictionary
-tippet, buggers, and muddlers
-2.45 meter 4-weight
-rental car
-camping gear
-a lot of maps
-pisco and cola