alexkain Fish. Bugs. Pics. Blood. Lies.

I was supposed to wake up early today and fish the Au Sable.  My plan was to swing intruder-like streamers with the Scott switch rod I’ve been neglecting all winter.  I’ve got a 450-grain Wulff Ambush Taper line that casts nicely with my 10-weight, but I think it might find a more permanent home on the reel I use for the switch.  I’m sick, and its mostly sunny outside, so no fishing.

Before moving back to Michigan, the trophy water stretch of the Battenkill was my winter go-to.  I don’t miss the Battenkill at all, even though I have more years of experience fishing it than the Au Sable.  I missed the Au Sable like crazy when we were in New York.  

Anyway, I went back to a short essay I wrote after the final trip there and made a few changes.

June 16, 2011

As planned, I fished the Battenkill last night with Robin.  The water’s surface was Keith Stone smooth, and after a short boat ride we had no trouble finding risers- huge freaking risers.  Those slow, deliberate rises where you see an alligator head creep out of the water, followed by a dorsal fin and then an eternity later, a flat, but somewhat forked tail.  Just massive fish that had us pointing and chattering back and forth like 12-year-old girls at a sleepover.

“Should we fish here or keep going upstream?”  Robin asked.

“These fish aren’t going anywhere,”  I replied, “lets keep moving.  We can get em on the way back down.”

My first trip to the Battenkill was an eye opener of sorts.  Used to the lumber-infested water of northern Michigan, everything just kind of looked the same, and I really didn’t know how to fish it those first couple times.   The first fish I ever caught out of the Battenkill was on the third trip, a 16-inch’ish brown that took an articulated olive zoo cougar.  From then on, I’ve never really spent a lot of time doing the dry fly/nymph thing on the ‘kill, in my eyes, its a streamer river.

There was the time I got that nice brown pushing 20 on a hendrickson emerger, but other than that, I think every fish I’ve caught in that river has been on a streamer- and as last night was probably the last time I’ll ever fish the Battenkill, I didn’t see any point in changing things up.

Robin saw the first sulphur of the night as I was wading the boat up through a shallow riffle.  We made it up to our intended destination, anchored, and waited for signs of life.  Upstream, a family of mergansers made their way across the river.  I cut the 4-inch bunny matuka off the end of my leader and tied on a big streamer that I should try for pike when I get back to Michigan.

We sat, I put a wider lens on my camera, BS’ed some more, and then we realized that we had broken the cardinal rule of fishing– don’t leave fish to find fish– before heading back downstream.  Robin took the oars as I pounded the banks.

When we got back downstream, the fish were still rising in all of the usual places, denting the meniscus, and sometimes aggressive, splashily slurping through it.  Robin stood at the stern, and drifted a sulphur spinner over each fish.  The fish there aren’t particularly picky as far as fly pattern goes,  but they do prefer a near perfect presentation.  Robin offered them several with no takes.

The full moon hadn’t yet peeked over the tree line.  We were fishing in pitch black, and could hear the quiet rurr of passing cars on a nearby highway.  I was using the light on my video camera to scan the river’s surface for a clue as to what these fish were eating.

There was the occasional olive, one march brown spinner, a sulphur dun here and there, and something really, really small.  But mostly, there were small groups of spent sulphur spinners.  I turned my camera towards Robin and hit the record button.  Through the viewfinder, I could see him silhouetted against the sky.  His shadow made a couple false casts, then pointed his rod upstream as the leader straightened and his fly line fell to the water.  I heard a splash, then saw the white drips of water shoot up at the sky as the shadow in the camera set the hook.  His right arm was pointing almost 180-degrees from the fish, the shadow of the rod tip still aimed at the erupting water.

His left hand frantically stripped line from under the index finger on the underside of his rod, and then I could hear his reel collecting each coil of the line from the bottom of the canoe.  White boils appeared at the starboard side of the stern, and then off the port side of the bow.  There were a few clunking sounds as Robin picked up the wooden net, and then I could just barely make out the sound of its rubber webbing gliding into the water before the fish was thrashing back and forth inside of it.

We fished a while longer, then motored downstream towards the landing.

After loading all of our gear up, we talked for a bit, and then Robin looked down at the front of his car and said, “Man, its kind of weird that that was the last time we’re gonna fish together.”

“Ahhh, we’ll get out again.”  I said confidently, simultaneously questioning the statement in my head.

We talked a little bit about the future, then shook hands and said goodbye.

Robin drove away first, and my car followed behind until we came to a red light at an otherwise vacant intersection.  The light turned green and his car turned right just before mine turned left.  I looked up at my rearview mirror for a split second, watching his tail lights disappear over a small hill, confident our paths would cross again.

 

 

So a few days, or a week– hell, I don’t know– ago, I saw a bunch of chatter about Lefty Kreh calling Tenkara a fad.  If I made a decent portion of my income and reputation teaching people to fly cast, I’d probably be saying the same thing.  But lets say Lefty was being sincere.

Well, Lefty, in the grand scheme of things, a strong argument could be made that “long and fine” fly casting is probably the true fad.

As I’ve mentioned a couple times in my recent posts, I recently finished reading Paul Schullery’s, “The Rise.”  The final third or so of the book delves into the history of fly fishing, and as anyone who is familiar with Schullery can attest, the dude has done his homework– or if you don’t want to ask someone, just reference the five page bibliography at the end.

The earliest written record– and its very likely fly fishing had come about earlier– of someone catching fish on artificial flies was by a roman author who witnessed a dude fly fishing in a river in Macedonia during the second century A.D.. There is a gap in the fossil record until about 1200 A.D., and then fly fishing pops up in central Europe, and carries on until it is sort of popularized in “The Treatyse of Fysshynge Wyth an Angle,” by Dame Julianna Berners in the 15th century.

During this 1300-year time span, people fly fished with rods without reels, and a short length of line basically tied to the end of their rod.  It wasn’t until the last few centuries or so that we started casting at any type of distance, and much of that time was still spent dapping by the majority of anglers.

I’m not saying you should board the Tenkara bandwagon, Lefty, I’m just sayin’.

My opinion on Tenkara is pretty much what it was when I first heard about it.  What’s the point?  Let me clarify.

I have nothing against it, in fact, it would suit the places I prefer to fish well.  The thing is, I don’t need to buy a special tenkara rod to do tenkara.  I just need to reel in the bulk of my line and tighten the drag down wicked tight for the tenkara experience.  The added weight of the reel doesn’t bother me in the slightest.  And if I hook a sizeable fish, I can always loosen that drag knob, or strip a little line out, and play the fish proper.

But I will be the last person to call tenkara a fad, cause like it or not, it– or something pretty much just like it– has been, and will be, here for centuries.