Maine State Micropterizing

A few days ago I learned an excellent new word: Micropterus. It sounds lovely and looks cool in Verdana font, and it refers to a couple of my favorite feeshies, the largemouth (micropterus salmoides) and smallmouth (micropterus dolomieu) bass. Texas salmoides got some free publicity here back in April, and now I would like to say a few words about Maine state dolomieu and some related species. Without further adieu, here is a specimen of dolomieu:

Many of my trips back to my hometown in Maine have started off with a simple ritual where I show up at my parents' house, give them a hug during which I pickpocket their car keys, and then drive off to go bass fishing in one of my favorite old ponds. This time I was a little more polite than that, partly because I wanted to spend some quality time with the folks, and partly because a flight that arrives in Trenton at 3:30 really doesn't allow enough time to put together a kayak and get staged up for fishing. I did in fact fish every other night of the trip, three times yakking and twice in my old canoe with my buddy Stroutster, who has become the Custodian of the Canoe. This canoe:

That picture was taken just last night during a really fun trip to a little pond that the Custodian and I have been fishing for (jeezus!) over 30 years now. Miraculously, it still fishes well, despite certain observations made by a grumpy old feller who owns one of the few little cabins on the north shore . . . you see, he told us by way of a greeting, "there ain't any fish in this pond." Suggesting perhaps we might go elsewhere, sir? Good luck with that one. The truest fortune cookie I ever got at China Hill said, "You are a person who loves to do what people say can't be done."

So we made a point to hoot and holler as loud as could be when I had a bass jumping around on the line before the clock even struck five. A plan was mooted (and quickly tabled) to leave that old feller a nice big pickerel on his doorstep when we left. We are immature, yes, but not quite that bad anymore.

Stroutster is an old-school bait man and hardware-flinger, but it turns out that he had never taken a fish on a topwater lure before last night. After watching me catch a couple bass on poppers and hook pickerel (esox niger) right and left with the same fly (with the pickerel tracking it in their cool way with a little wake, and then slashing at it their unsubtle, adrenaline-splashing manner), Stroutser switched to a hula popper he had in the tackle box. Cast cast cast -- but that was not the popper destined to pop a man's topwater cherry. No strikes. When it became clear they didn't want to hula, we instead tied on a zara spook and verified an important fact: they love that weird shit. Witness:

I really wanted to get the strike on camera, but a few leaps will have to do:

The air was already getting decidedly autumn-like in Maine over the past week, making for lovely cool conditions and magical late dusks with lots of vapor rolling off the surface of the water as you paddle back to the launch under headlamp light. Fortunately, the water (which of course has higher thermal inertia than atmospheric air, as we all appreciate) was still warm enough that topwater was ON. I took a few greenish balsa poppers with weed guards, fished them 90% of the time, and brought them back today with literally no paint left on them. That's how Maine State Micropertizing should be, I figure.

Alagnak Skies

You know what's a good way to look at photos of the sky? Put them in a fancy Mac screensaver that changes the focus and pans around on them! It's the next best thing to sitting in a camp chair under big open skies and occasionally getting up to do astounded 36o's:

Since few people in their right minds are ever going to find themselves camping on a gravel bar in the lower Alagnak river in August, I'll go ahead and make a Picasaweb album of photos of such skies. Here are a few of my favorites from the last trip right here inline though:

That was my last morning on the river, and it started very beautifully at around 42 degrees.

This one I like because it reminds me of the train of storm clouds that Saruman conjured up to stop the Fellowship on Caradhras the Cruel . . . maybe the old coot was standing over Bristol Bay right then chanting, "Ahni, mani, padma, hah!" or whatever the cloud spell is:

For me, there's something magical about the sky over a big flat expanse of tundra:

And there's always something special about the last bit of sun break in a deepening sky:

And there's the moon:

in beginning corners dawn smirks

and there's the moon,thinner than a watchspring

(Poem XIV of ViVa by E. E. Cummings)

Two Halves

You know how your favorite cliche-wielding soccer commentators like to point out that it is "a game of two halves," as though that were the most profound observation they ever made? They seem to pull that one out when they are looking at a first-half result that goes against the run of play, or maybe one of those grim scoreless affairs, and they hope or expect that things will change in the second half.

My Alagnak float last month was kind of like that. Fat with cohos in the lower river, it was pretty darn quiet in the upper river. Conventional reason says that all the big rainbows probably followed the sockeye migration all the way to Moraine Creek. I was willing enough to go join the mayhem of guided parties and bear-gawkers up there, but was unable to land due to a complete white-out; and by the time we flew back to the Kukaklek outlet, it was too bumpy with three-foot waves for landing at the outlet proper. I got put down in an unideal spot, and found myself deeply baffled by travelling TWO WHOLE MILES downstream without a SINGLE STRIKE:




A little later the pressure started to ease up with the odd rainbow and good numbers of grayling. In fact, the little island where I camped on nights 1 & 2, had a handful of prime riffles on its four corners that predictably yielded a few grayling per hour, as long as I rested them properly between sessions. This was good, as I lacked the spirit to break camp and head downstream during a 28 HOUR stretch of UNCEASING RAIN, and instead just hunkered down with my pretty grayling friends:


















This was pretty far from the worst of outcomes, since a big part of what I was seeking from the upper river was solitude in the wilderness. Into my third day the weather cleared, and I found myself catching grayling and char and even whitefish, and just kind of basically joyfully playing around in a big old river and wide-open landscape that allowed me to imagine that I was the only human left alive.




Solitude is very cool, but so are certain encounters with humans. Imagine spending a very quiet couple of hours on a gravel bar in a remote river, cooking up some ramen and coffee and drying some of your stuff off, and then, just as you are getting ready to leave and even talking to yourself a little, you hear a voice calling out, "is that ERIC???" Whoah -- "is this a hallucination?" is the first thing that flashes through my mind. Not for the last time I reflect that maybe eating those special ones with the little whales printed on them back in high school wasn't such a good idea. But no-- lo and behold, it is Dan Cole, originally of Maine and now of LA, and his high school music teacher Darrell, also from Maine (and with a real accent), moving downstream in a CANOE!!!


One of Dan's many distinctions is that he is the sole witness to my legendary Brooks River Mousing session, the night I caught double digits of big bows on a Moorish mouse but had no living camera handy to prove it. And here's the dude showing up out of nowhere on the Kukaklek branch of the Alagnak! Small world indeed.

Though actually, I should have known or at least suspected. Knowing that Dan is also a portable boat guy who has no problem dealing with Alaskan conditions, I actually hit him up earlier this winter as a possible partner on a Meshik River float. But he told me he already had a trip planned with a pal from back East, and I filed it away as a no-op, as they say in software.

Long story short, I had some really great company for about twenty hours. We went through the rapids together, and if you thought maybe a sleek, longish canoe might have some trouble making the hard left out of the big eddy, then you'd be right:


While my temporary float partners bailed, I put the 6wt back together and started officially fishing the lower upper Kukaklek. It was almost entirely more ten-inch juveniles until I hit this one and gave the boys some good entertainment in the form of a demonstration of the desperate art of paddling yourself to shore with one arm while holding a fly rod high in the air with the other while a strong fish jumps and runs circles around your blow-up boat. (Note the clown suit, which doubles as backup waders and which seem better for going through rapids where you might end up swimming.)


As soon as we got to the confluence camp where the Kukaklek and Nonvianuk branches come together, the skies opened up with a real drencher. No matter -- we set up one of my tarps and had an awesome scotch tasting: my precious 18 year Macallan and two types of Ardbeg single malt from Dan, including the incomparable Uigeadail. Holy shit that is a drink -- peaty like Laphroig but with lots of the same sweet, syrupy flavors as the Macallan, and a burning finish that lets you know you are alive! It immediately got promoted to my top 3 and a bottle now resides in my cabinet, thank you very much Dan. In exchange for this, I guess it was worth watching you and Darrell drink half my ten day's supply of Macallen in twenty minutes' time . . .

Oh also, I should compliment Dan on some excellent work starting a fire with the completely soaked fuel available that evening. Darrell contributed some soaked Cohglan's firesticks, I contributed about 75 pages of Edith Wharton, and then some guys we have never seen before and would never recognize, ever, because they were definitely (for the record) not ourselves, stopped by to throw a funny sign in the fire:


Does that funny sign say "No Trespassing?" Huh. That would be weird. It would almost be like somebody thought they could put up a sign in the middle of Katmai and expect people not to camp in the area. Good luck with that one.

After parting with the boys, who had a much faster boat and only two days left before their pickup vs. my five full days, my float resumed its calm pace. I started seeing a few bears, and I am sad to report that one of them was no longer alive. This poor gal (a sow) was washed up in the shallows with a bad case of rigor mortis, bleeding from her nose. I now share a distinction with Timothy Treadwell -- I have touched a bear with my bare hands -- but for all my poking around I could not find a bullet hole or any sign of foul play. It took all my scant good sense to not pull out my river knife and take a claw for a necklace:


I said a little non-verbal Bear Prayer for her and moved on. The good news is that there was no shortage of living cohorts around:

• A mom and cub on the bank just downstream from this funeral scene (quite possibly they ended up eating some of her).
• A big-tracked fellow that visited my tent one night, sniffing very loudly and taking off with a loud growl when I said, "not too close boss!" while clutching my mace can in the sleeping bag, heart REALLY racing.
  
• A shyer guy who, perhaps somewhat indignantly, recovered a rotting chum salmon carcass from the shallows where I had thrown it and restored it to its place on the bank about 50 feet from my camp -- perhaps having a nice cheesey nibble or two as well.
  

Oddly enough, I recovered my lost 2010 Brooks Camp bear pin in the tundra at that camp, and stuck it up on a tree where it could help my bear friends scratch their many itches:


At the camp where I got so aggressively sniffed in the dark wee hours, I confess I was being a Bad Boy. Almost always, I follow proper bear-safe protocol to the letter. Being a solo guy who inevitable ends up with some fish odor on self and boat, this is pretty important. But on this particular occasion, I just absitively posolultely could not tear myself away from a little creek swirling with cohos -- the first place where I caught a nice fresh silver one -- and so ended up camping on a tiny, muddy strip which was too close to the riverbank, too close to my food cache, and too close also to a wolf highway. After the bear woke me and almost caused me to pee in my tent, I lay awake and listened to the wolves howl; first one haunting, descending voice; then another one or two join it; then more . . . and I am here to tell you that that is one HEAVY chord to sit and listen to alone in the wild.