Today, I officially fished successfully in the worst conditions under which I ever have cast a fly. I say "successfully" not because I need to brag (since I am blogging, you already know that) but because I'm sure I have, at various times, cast flies in equivalent or slightly worse conditions without catching anything. But today, with a whitecap wind whipping north over the delta and a heavy current flowing south down the Old River and cold December rain stinging my face, I settled into an effective -- if rather laborious -- rhythm of casting, repositioning, and catching stripers.
A few minutes into this episode, a motorboat sped around the bend and came waking right over to hover 50 feet away from me. I was getting ready to be pissed off at these guys until I saw the sheriff's insignia on the side of the boat. Did you know that the sheriff of Contra Costa county had a boat?
"Just wanted to check and see if you were O. K." They looked more amused than concerned, I thought.
"So far so good!" I yelled back at them over the wind.
Before I was done fishing that spot, two other parties stopped to check on me. That was what the conditions were like.
As fly casters might imagine, it was a comedy. I started by getting up real close to the tules, because I knew that I would be blown back to casting distance by the time I picked up the rod. After stripping in a short cast, I did the old one-hand paddle-crank against the solar plexus (the other hand still holds the rod, of course) to try and edge the boat back up against the wind, and tossed out another cast. All the while, the kayak was rocking in the sort of two-foot rollers that happen when wind and current are running so contrarily. Pints of cold water were washing occasionally into the cockpit. The unleashed paddle either tried to blow away, or dug into the sides of the small waves and tried to knock me over.
The fish were so aggressive that it only took a few of these 100-calorie casts to hook up, and then the real comedy began. Have you ever noticed how high you have to hold the rod to hand-strip in a fish? I sure did today, because the wind took over way before gravity could settle the line back down in the cockpit where I generally try to keep it, and my spare line went flying all over the place. After one fish, I had line looped around my spare paddle, my radio's antennae, the handle of my river knife, the loop on my jacket hood, and of course my left arm and wrist, all at once. This took some time to unravel. If I tried to strip down into the water while fighting a fish, the result wasn't much better -- all the line then went cruising under the boat in the current, from whence I had to haul it back up under the hull in manner that seemed most unprofessional.
So, naturally, I was cursing out loud and thrashing about and having a terrifically great time. Not exactly the same kind of good time people mean when they wish me to "have fun with the fishies" (a direct quote from a friend). I mean, that's not the usual idea of fun with fishies, is it? You're supposed to sit there on a summertime cotton-is-high afternoon and be ever so patient and sip beers if you want to have fun with fishies -- not paddle 20 miles around a swamp island for six hours in the rain and wind, all to enjoy about a half hour of actual fish-catching in ridiculously difficult conditions. Right?
Another friend recently said of Yours Truly that "all he does is catch them fishies" -- more scorn, and just to make sure you get the point, there again is that diminutive "-ies." But no my dear fellow, it ain't all I do. You oughta try getting together all the gear, and carrying it down the levee, and attaching it all to the boat without dropping expensive trinkets in the drink, and you'll see that there is more. You oughta plan a rational circuit based on tide predictions and directions through the channels, and find your route through fog and rain with map and intermittent GPS, and you'll see there's more. For that matter, you should set up tents in storms and dodge bears and portage boats through foot-thick mud and do all the other fun fishie-fish stuff which is all I ever do.
To state the obvious some more, it is the things surrounding fishing that keep me interested in it: mainly, being outdoors in the elements, and meeting certain challenges to the planning brain and the paddling body. I'm glad conditions were so intense on the delta. A bit of a challenge just makes things that much sweeter. That's why I'm planning a couple of expeditionary deals into my upcoming Baja trip -- camping on an offshore island in the Cortez, and then camping a few days up and down some Pacific lagoons -- and I know for sure that it will add a whole lot to the trip. In an important sense, it IS the trip. Yes, I'd be pretty disappointed if there were no fishies. But there will be :).
