Losers, Loners, and Loaners

If you've read a few of these entries, you may have thought, 'this guy fishes alone a lot.' That's true. When I was a kid I played alone a lot. My small success in academics came from reading alone a lot. I backpacked from Tahoe to Mt. Whitney alone (sierra lakes are what started me on fly fishing) and in recent years I have paddled alone under thousands of commuters on the San Rafael bridge as well as (considerably more alone) among hundreds of bears and birds on the Alagnak and Gallegos rivers of Alaska and Argentina, respectively.

Why? Interesting question. Americans seem quite ambivalent about such things. On one hand there is a high-minded respect for the individualist, and on the other hand, there's a notion that if you're not surrounded by a bunch of noisy friends who cram your calendar full, you must be a loser. Let me go ahead and play my card by telling you that I consider most people to be losers. Deceived fools. There is NOT safety in numbers, there is not necessarily happiness, and there is, in many cases, considerably less enjoyment of life and its best experiences.

I was reminded of this today by Mike at Pacific River Supply, who is a great guy with tons of excellent equipment and many years of experience and river wisdom. I'll probably soon buy an Aire Lynx II from him because my Lynx I can't really carry all the stuff I'll need for 150 river miles and two weeks on the first leg of my Alaska trip this summer. Anyhow, when I was in there renting a Lynx II today he and I inevitably got to talking about paddling solo. To quote myself in an article about solo floating the Alagnak that appeared in Fish Alaska magazine,

Don't go boating alone. Any experienced paddler will tell you this, and it is true.



What's also true, though, is that I paddle alone all the time, and so does Mike. You should have seen him glow when he described one of his solo trips. This is a guy who does a lot of guiding and group trips, and you could tell that he really, really treasures the peace and freedom of solo trips. As his face got more beatific describing this, I could feel the smirk growing on my own face. I almost said, "that's what I do almost all the time, Mike," but thought better of it. No need to boast when you are a true loner and loser . . .

Tomorrow's trip to test the rented Lynx II and compare it to the Lynx is NOT a solo one. I'm taking a buddy who has boated with me also on the Middle American. He's an unpretentious dude who doesn't mind paddling 'duckies,' as the kayaking elite say with a sneer (they are, in most cases, real losers). Talking with him just now about the logistics, I noted the fact that tonight he is currently fighting with his fiancee, with yelling in the background making it all the more vivid. I know he's excited to go, but boy was he grumpy on the phone. He is in Sartre's non-loser Hell: not alone.

Thinking these things over, I'm getting the dirty old smirk again. Only a loser would spend his day cutting and waterproofing nautical charts while half-watching premier league (down with Bolton!) and dreaming about a solo fishing trip still eight weeks away, or now be sitting around on a Saturday night eating mackerel and then blogging while half watching Mexican soccer (up with Cruz Azul!). But I am delighted to be him!

In the Bathtub

My good friend and sometime guide from Santa Cruz has called the San Luis Reservoir a "big bathtub." When I talk about fishing there in my kayak, he always expresses a sort of gentle pity for my attempts to find fish in that giant bathtub of mostly empty, clear cold water. And mostly he's right: I'm now averaging .5 fish per five-six hour paddle. Compared to the fecundity of the delta and the bay, the rez begins to look fairly deserted fishwise.

My experiences on San Luis last week suggest otherwise. I went out there mostly to remind myself what the boat feels like full of gear and to do some self-rescue practice in a fully loaded kayak (more general preparation for summertime Alaska adventures, stay tuned). After paddling across a large area of the lake, I spent a couple of hours drenching myself in chilly water and baking myself dry in the windless dry desert air. Energy had gone low indeed by the time I paddled troll-lessly back to the launch. Trying to catch fish was a low, low priority compared to taking a little nap somewhere.

But lo, what is that little splashing sound out there? It's not my paddles, because I have stopped to put on sunscreen. It's not wind waves, because there is no wind. It certainly isn't a frog jumping in, because I am a mile from either shore over 250 feet of bathwater. Could it be . . . fish?

I tied on a shallow-running rapala and paddled off in the general direction of the splashing sounds, completely unprepared for what I was about to witness: suddenly, the water in front of me became 'nervous' and just below the surface, dozens of largish schoolies changed direction and dashed by really fast on either side of my boat. I paddled straight into a large school of fish!

This was quite a surpise out there in the middle of the tub in 250 feet of clear cold emptiness. But as I kept circling the area, I noticed nervous water in various areas of the windless expanse. In one spot I finally got a hit, which immediately got unhooked. Fine, I mark the spot on GPS (completely lacking any kind of measurable range or reference out there) and do big figure eights. A couple of times I drive right through schools, spooking them again, and then finally a fish mercifully takes the plug hard enough to stay hooked. A respectable two or three pounder, but not fleshy enough for brochettes. So he swims back to join what must be hundreds of his buddies.

That was the only fish of the day. Yes, I tried flinging the leadcore fly setup I had on deck, but it seemed to be going under the shallow-running schools of fish. I was just too tired to switch it out for a floating line (not easy in the yak) or to strip it at the warp-speed required to keep it shallow. I ended up being so tired and hot from doing four miles of figure-eights after nine miles of open water paddling that I could hardly function back at the launch. But I was very very glad to have had that lesson in bathtub fishing. It is a real treat to be in a boat that draws 2-4 inches of water over 250 foot depths and actually hook up on a lure that runs at about 4 feet. Playing in the tub is good fun.