West and East, Fly fishing and Spin, Dry and Nymph, Bass and Trout, Shad and Stripers, Sea Kayaks and River Kayaks, Road Bikes and Mountain Bikes, Wine and Beer -- every thing that anyone ever turned into a pernicious dichotomy of This Good, That Bad -- to them I say, Both And!
Truly, I am up to my nostrils with the negative attitude that people too often bring to things when they want to play one-up, other down. Why disdain spin fishing to feel good about fly fishing, if you already feel good about it? Why complain and sneer at indicator nymphing and pretend you only ever cast dries in order to feel like a worthwhile individual, when you already ARE one, who does BOTH! AND!
I for one do not want to waste my time listening to the BS and hot air issuing from the Either-Or'ers, either. Maybe in that one respect I am a little bit of a snob.
Alright, with that rant now completed, I will go ahead and admit that the motto Both And is also a wonderful way to avoid making decisions. If you can't decide whether to go whitewater kayaking or shad fishing -- well, then go Both And! That's what I did last weekend, heading out to Cache Creek for a morning run on the Mother and then moseying over to Verona for a few more hours, considerably more stationary hours, fishing from my inflatable kayak (hardshells vs. duckies? Forget it -- Both And!). In another way, Both And is what I did with my fishin sabbatical plan. So far, it looks like I can both work a job, and get in a pretty good amount of fishing, too. Just about four weeks to Alaska from today . . . .
Right now I'm out in Maine, busily both/anding bass and trout and kayaking and canoeing and friends and family. Last night was a hoot, out on my favorite old eutrophic Cambrian shield pond with an old buddy catching pickerel on bass poppers. This morning, sea kayaking with the dolphins in Frenchman's Bay. I am a bit tired from the schedule, and I'm sure it shows in my writing. Need more both and sleeping and awake. But later on there will be plenty of sleeping, underground. I made a point of arranging to fly back this Friday night so that Saturday can be devoted to the shad; bass and shad, East and West! Hooray for Both And!
Monday, May 28, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Trifecta Two-fer
There are a few things wrong about Berkeley, but its distance from good trout water is the worst of all. I do what I can to deal with the freeway time: buy books on tape, keep a lunchbox of gourmet goodies in the cab, and make sure my air con is in good working order. I laugh to think of my last trout bum truck, which came completely without air conditioning. Driving up and down the 5 or across to the sierras I kept the windows wide open, and arrived wherever I was going with highly unmoist skin and hair like overused steel wool.
One extra motivation for facing those five-hour hauls to Pit 5 is the old two-fer. Doing a Pit River Trifecta is itself kind of a three-fer, but what if you add on a stop in Verona or Willows to wade or float for shad? You got two fer one! Or really, if you are into mathematics, it really adds up to five distinct fishing sojourns:
1) Friday afternoon shad
2) Saturday morning Pit 5 bliss
3) Saturday evening hatch sweetness on Pit 4 plus a dose of canyon wildness
4) Pit 3 closing ceremonies in Sunday morning sun
5) One more new evening of shadding before retiring
Thinking of this scheme ahead of me fairly gets me breaking out the door and roaring down the road . . . though sometimes things don't work out as planned. There are a few shad to be picked out in Willows right now, but I'd say with fair confidence -- after getting skunked there Friday -- that the fish are not quite in yet. In some years, they'd be swarming up there by Mother's Day. Not this year. OK, I accept that, and so on Sunday I make the special effort to leave Pit 3 early enough to get all the way to Verona by the meat of the afternoon. Verona has more fish, but even there they are not really, really IN the way they are when the run is ON, you know? I got several plucks and boated one fish anchored on the seam there, and as such was the second happiest boat in a five-boat lineup, but the first happiest boat was quite a bit happier, like maybe a dozen fish happier. It's like that when the fish are not really in: they stick to only the very best holding water and don't spread out.
That happier boat left the water around 7:45 last night, and no sooner were they hauling up anchor than I reeled up and started working on my own anchor with ideas to plunk it back down right in their happy spot. And there began the latest fishing comedy: that 35 pound, four-pronged monstrosity was STUCK in the sand and mud. I've done this drill a dozen times before, and I've got fairly good at paddling up against current, dropping the paddle, and hauling frantically at the anchor line so as to bring upward pressure on it before floating back over. But it's different when the thing is really, truly stuck. I wanted that boat's happy spot bad, readers, so I pushed the envelope and hauled hard many times, bringing the upstream tube of my IK fearfully low under the current and really testing the capsize horizon. After fifteen minutes, sweating and very other than happy, I said "%^#*& it!" and paddled for shore. I had put a float on the very end of my anchor rope, so maybe someone else with a real boat could help me get it back . . .
The first few guys I asked were still busy fishing -- as I surely would have been -- and didn't have much time for my story. I couldn't blame them, but it deepened my sense of %^#*& it to have to ask for help and be refused. Back on the beach where I landed, there was one last power boat to check with, one manned by a guy who I'm afraid I immediately noticed was both figurative and literally quite red in the neck area. He was poking around somewhat abstractly in an open livewell full of small and large catfish while I explained my problem to him.
"One a them four-pronged ones? Shit, you'll never git that out."
"Yeah, you're right. Hell with it." (I start unloading my boat, ready to leave).
"Git in, let's go git it."
He didn't have to ask twice! I was suddenly full of solicitude again.
"No, I don't need no push, just get on there. Step on my sunglasses? Don't worry on them, worry on that rod! Nearly cost 80 bucks."
I hope I don't sound judging or insulting -- I'm just trying to reproduce this friendly fisher's rural dialect. He was a man of few words and was a strong, stoic help to me in getting that anchor back. We zipped out past the boats of the guys who wouldn't help me doing about 75 I think, found the float, laboriously hauled the anchor up calling it a %^#*& (or at least I did) and then zipped back doing 75 to where his girlfriend was watching my stuff, stuff including a Sage XP with a Ross Canyon reel which cost a tad more than 80 bucks. I said something about gas money and slipped a 20 under his pack of Pall Malls, which he stoically did nor said not a thing to acknowledge. Nonetheless, I felt I had made a friend and experienced some unexpected, amusing things, which is a big part of why I like to go around the world and Colusa county fishing in the first place.
The bigger part of why is actually catching fish. Since you've read this far in my blog I'll go ahead and tell you what I am quite cagey about advertising online: the Pit River fished utterly beautifully this weekend, on all three reaches. You couldn't keep the hordes of 14-16 inchers off of a tan bird's nest, and the multi-bug evening hatch was a glorious act of god: PMDs, drakes, caddis, stonefly adults . . . if I'd stuck a few of the real 20" pigs I'd have called it my best Trifecta ever, but those fellas kept hid for now. They are still waiting.
And so am I! For the shad, who are still coming. Some will swim past my new, sliding-catch anchor, but some will not. More on that later.
One extra motivation for facing those five-hour hauls to Pit 5 is the old two-fer. Doing a Pit River Trifecta is itself kind of a three-fer, but what if you add on a stop in Verona or Willows to wade or float for shad? You got two fer one! Or really, if you are into mathematics, it really adds up to five distinct fishing sojourns:
1) Friday afternoon shad
2) Saturday morning Pit 5 bliss
3) Saturday evening hatch sweetness on Pit 4 plus a dose of canyon wildness
4) Pit 3 closing ceremonies in Sunday morning sun
5) One more new evening of shadding before retiring
Thinking of this scheme ahead of me fairly gets me breaking out the door and roaring down the road . . . though sometimes things don't work out as planned. There are a few shad to be picked out in Willows right now, but I'd say with fair confidence -- after getting skunked there Friday -- that the fish are not quite in yet. In some years, they'd be swarming up there by Mother's Day. Not this year. OK, I accept that, and so on Sunday I make the special effort to leave Pit 3 early enough to get all the way to Verona by the meat of the afternoon. Verona has more fish, but even there they are not really, really IN the way they are when the run is ON, you know? I got several plucks and boated one fish anchored on the seam there, and as such was the second happiest boat in a five-boat lineup, but the first happiest boat was quite a bit happier, like maybe a dozen fish happier. It's like that when the fish are not really in: they stick to only the very best holding water and don't spread out.
That happier boat left the water around 7:45 last night, and no sooner were they hauling up anchor than I reeled up and started working on my own anchor with ideas to plunk it back down right in their happy spot. And there began the latest fishing comedy: that 35 pound, four-pronged monstrosity was STUCK in the sand and mud. I've done this drill a dozen times before, and I've got fairly good at paddling up against current, dropping the paddle, and hauling frantically at the anchor line so as to bring upward pressure on it before floating back over. But it's different when the thing is really, truly stuck. I wanted that boat's happy spot bad, readers, so I pushed the envelope and hauled hard many times, bringing the upstream tube of my IK fearfully low under the current and really testing the capsize horizon. After fifteen minutes, sweating and very other than happy, I said "%^#*& it!" and paddled for shore. I had put a float on the very end of my anchor rope, so maybe someone else with a real boat could help me get it back . . .
The first few guys I asked were still busy fishing -- as I surely would have been -- and didn't have much time for my story. I couldn't blame them, but it deepened my sense of %^#*& it to have to ask for help and be refused. Back on the beach where I landed, there was one last power boat to check with, one manned by a guy who I'm afraid I immediately noticed was both figurative and literally quite red in the neck area. He was poking around somewhat abstractly in an open livewell full of small and large catfish while I explained my problem to him.
"One a them four-pronged ones? Shit, you'll never git that out."
"Yeah, you're right. Hell with it." (I start unloading my boat, ready to leave).
"Git in, let's go git it."
He didn't have to ask twice! I was suddenly full of solicitude again.
"No, I don't need no push, just get on there. Step on my sunglasses? Don't worry on them, worry on that rod! Nearly cost 80 bucks."
I hope I don't sound judging or insulting -- I'm just trying to reproduce this friendly fisher's rural dialect. He was a man of few words and was a strong, stoic help to me in getting that anchor back. We zipped out past the boats of the guys who wouldn't help me doing about 75 I think, found the float, laboriously hauled the anchor up calling it a %^#*& (or at least I did) and then zipped back doing 75 to where his girlfriend was watching my stuff, stuff including a Sage XP with a Ross Canyon reel which cost a tad more than 80 bucks. I said something about gas money and slipped a 20 under his pack of Pall Malls, which he stoically did nor said not a thing to acknowledge. Nonetheless, I felt I had made a friend and experienced some unexpected, amusing things, which is a big part of why I like to go around the world and Colusa county fishing in the first place.
The bigger part of why is actually catching fish. Since you've read this far in my blog I'll go ahead and tell you what I am quite cagey about advertising online: the Pit River fished utterly beautifully this weekend, on all three reaches. You couldn't keep the hordes of 14-16 inchers off of a tan bird's nest, and the multi-bug evening hatch was a glorious act of god: PMDs, drakes, caddis, stonefly adults . . . if I'd stuck a few of the real 20" pigs I'd have called it my best Trifecta ever, but those fellas kept hid for now. They are still waiting.
And so am I! For the shad, who are still coming. Some will swim past my new, sliding-catch anchor, but some will not. More on that later.
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