Bahamas...Pre-Day 1

You plan.  Sometimes six months to a year out.  The week before you leave you write lists and then start assembling gear.  The fly boxes are full but you still add another two dozen more flies (which require yet another fly box) to get you through the last few days.  It's not the need for flies as much as it is therapy to calm your bouncing knee.

Your house is in order, the family is as prepared for your absence as much as they ever will be...which is to say that Mom is the one who gets everything done anyway so you will hardly be missed, at least on a functional level.

Hugs, kisses for the family and a two hour drive to Chicago to catch a flight the next morning to what you hope is still bonefish nirvana.    You roll in to the hotel, drop your bags and head to the front desk on the way to the bar/restaurant to arrange a cab for 3:30 AM.   The flight is at 6 but you want to shower, brush your teeth and arrive at the airport close to the 2 hour "recommended" window for international flights.

Off to the restaurant and bar for the pork sliders and a couple of tumblers of vodka on the rocks.

The trip is underway and things are going fine.

When the phone on your hotel bedstand indicates a text at 2:18 AM there is a fundamental sleep mechanism that allows you to override it.   Unless your fundamental curiosity mechanism overrides it.

It takes about 3 to 4 minutes for your mind to do the math.  The text just said that you were about to miss one of your six days of bonefishing.

Unacceptable.

Your bonefishing buddy suggest that you head to the airport to try and figure this all out.  Perhaps with a bit too much confidence you suggest that there is an "app for that" and start hammering the phone for a solution.   It turns out there is no "app for that."  Calls to the Delta Airlines customer service counter indicate that they don't have an "app for that" either..."Your hold time is approximately 3 hours."

With one of you showering while the other tries to pack and monitor the speaker phone hold music, and then the same charade in reverse order, you catch a cab at 3:30 for the airport.  Somewhere in there you get the sinking feeling that the stars are not aligned, that all of your planning and scheduling and kisses and hugs were in vain and that you will be returning home to wait out a new flight the next day.

Which subtracts one day of bonefishing from your total allotted lifetime days.

You pay the cabbie, and enter O'Hare, looking for answers but only finding a swelling line at the customer service counter of Delta Airlines.

You were not the only one to get the text.

Grabbing a spot in line you start looking for answers.  According to your phone, American Airlines has some flights (to what you hope is still bonefish nirvana) for $300 more than the already disturbing price you paid 6 months earlier with Delta.  But, a bird in hand, as they say...

Then, you find two good people.  Or, perhaps, they find you.  One is a Delta rep who jumps out from behind the safety of his counter into the angry, tired, frustration crazed throngs of your fellow travelers and offers info....asks questions and tries to listen to the answers.

He is talking with travelers 40  people behind in queue when you jump out of line, approach and ask for a refunded ticket.  He says, "No problem, but do you have another flight arranged?" So, you hit send on two new tickets with American Airlines and say, "yes."

At the American counter 1 terminal over, the nice lady we'll call Candace, processes your tickets and gives you and your buddy exit row seating at which point you step onto the baggage scale and hug her.

1 vodka screwdriver and 2 naps later with a short stop in Charlotte and you land in what you hope is still Bonefishing Nirvana.

It could have gone a lot different than this but it didn't.

The guide is there to toss your gear into his trunk as soon as you clear customs.

Within 30 minutes you are standing on the deck of the Carolina Skiff 198 heading to your island home for the week.  The sun twinkling off the golden flats promising that you have reached what you hope is still Bonefish Nirvana, but regardless, is certainly better than an airport terminal in Chicago.

When A Plan Comes Together

I was sitting next to Mr T, having a beer when he shot McSteel and me a text: "You guys open to fish Sat July 30?  [redacted] or [redacted] maybe?  Recon day."

A half a month of texts later and we all converged on Friday July 29th at a campground that had a little bar/restaurant and a spot for us to crash for the night.   I pulled in first with McSteel right behind me.  Stepping out of the truck, I commented on the sweet smell of the northern pine. 

We found our campsite and didn't even bother with the tents, instead, fishing out a beer and deposited ourselves on the (obligatorily) brown painted picnic table.

Mr T showed up next .  He pulled his rig, drift boat in tow, in front of the bar/restaurant and stepped out.  He made the same comment about the smell of the northern pine.  The same comment...like we had practiced a script in order to make a point and convince McSteel of something.  All it convinced me of was that Mr T and I needed to get north more often.

Through charm, good looks and pure charisma, the three of us talked the two ladies out smoking on the front step, the bar-keep and the cook, into keeping the grill open and making us some burgers.  We also got them to concede to Mr T keeping his rig parked right where it was, through the overnight hours.

The burgers were fat and juicy and the beer was cold.  The menu was almost like a throwback to the 80's.  "Northwoods Prices," is what McSteel called them.  The whole thing would've been perfect if some jokester hadn't dropped a quarter in the jukebox and selected Arlo Guthrie's, "Alice's Restaurant" which provide the background noise for nearly half our stay at the place.

Back at the dirt patch and picnic table, we set up camp and would have turned in right then if somebody hadn't passed me my Yeti cup overflowing with tonic but mostly gin.

The next sentence in this narrative should, after all of the goodness above, include me drifting off to sleep and waking refreshed to bluebirds singing.  That might have been the case if Mr T and McSteel didn't have a snore-off with the intensity and volume of the Steve Vai and Ralph Machio guitar duel in Crossroads.

The geese honk at 5:20 AM.

At least here they did.

Up. 

Coffee, gas station breakfast, camp tear down, scout the takeout, run the shuttle, load the boat, shove off.

From here my recollection gets a little fuzzy....and I've had almost a week to think about it.

The sky was mostly sunny, the temp was hot but not melting, the wind wasn't a factor...at least with casting.  The bass started off a little pokey and we messed around with some topwater stuff and streamers.  (Between these two tactics we had two sizeable muskies follow.  Mr T, the muskiest guy of the three of us, picked up the 10 wt and tried to convert but the fish didn't reappear.)  Some decent fish were caught but we needed to work for them for the first couple of hours.  The scenery was seriously stunning.  No homes or other boats on the main float and the river rocks and healthy stands of trees make me rank this as one of my favorite smallmouth floats. 

As the we made our way down river the thing that makes fish eat, happened.  I don't know what that thing is....water temp, barometric pressure, time of day, all three, something else entirely?

But it happened.

Certainly there were a number of 12" bass caught but they came between 16" and 18" fish.  One fish grabbed the fly as we were braced for some white water and we had to find a back eddy to drop anchor so we could land it.  That fish was over 20".  Every pocket, softspot, rock and sweeper held an eating fish.  Casts, 99% of them were dead on.  It never rained and the beer stayed cold.  The mosquitoes must have all died and all that remained for pestilence were a few deer flies...and we killed most of them.

I'm pretty sure I'm not exaggerating.

With the river day behind us and the boat back on the trailer, we stopped for a celebratory beer.

To paraphrase, the conversation went something like this:

One of us: "That was $#&@ing unbelieveable..."
Another said: "It really was."
The last guy said: "Yep."

That is how you know when a plan comes together.

Making Good

Last January or February (although I think it was January) while the temps were hovering at -30, I sat at a bar with my "colleagues' and painted a rosy picture.  All of us on a stream, fishing, happy....

And then, spring is gone, and summer moves in and winter's fables lack the urgency and the definiteness of the cold weather version.  The imagination and the off season have a way of over-dosing us on the possibilities...no summer will ever hold the capacity that deep winter's daydreaming prescribes...

But tonight, I find myself astream with 3 of these guys.  All of them (and a few more) heard the January battle cry, but these 3...these 3,  followed through, cashed in, made good.
The January battle cry of night fishing on a June or July evening...they heard it, and they enlisted, no draft required.

We hit the gas station 3/4's of the way there, and the attempt to buy and eat something that resembles healthy, gave way to two brats and a bag of sour cream and onion chips.  We drove up and down a good portion of the river, taking mental notes before turning around and selecting the best of the available water.  Most of us packed a couple rods.  We were on a nocturnal EAT hunt and what happens at 6:00 PM on a midwest spring creek is a couple of line weights different from what happens after 10 PM.

The bridge pull off, once we unloaded and started to gear up, looked like a fly shop exploded or perhaps that the local Trout Unlimited Chapter was having a gear swap.  Heaps of waders and boots, and boxes and rod tubes.  It is likely that we alone kept the economy afloat these past few years. 

Eventually the task of preparing for an evening and a night of fishing were completed and MK and Brother Bill headed upstream while Mr. T and I headed down.  We walked the corn rows and discussed the merits of not rolling in wild parsnip.  We broke through the corn to greet a few pastured horses and then dropped into the creek.  In the shaded banks the mosquitoes converged on us but two steps into the cool spring creek water and air temps dropped enough to keep them at bay.  We exchanged shots at likely runs and Mr. T pointed to a spot where he'd seen a nose break up a meeting of fluttering caddis.  He offered me the shot and I blew it on the second drift when the trout tilted up to my terrestrial.  Luckily secured him on the dropper 7 or 8 casts later. And it went on like this until it was nearly 8:30 and I lingered at a run while he moved up to the next pool and promptly extracted a beautiful brown. 

At the bridge pool we met up with MK and Brother Bill and each took a few casts at rising fish before climbing up the bank to the vehicle to prepare for the after dark portion of the night's show.

A short drive from the evening fishing stretch we pulled over in the darkness and hopped out of the rig, throwing on packs and testing headlamps.  It was a regular obstacle course dodging barbed wire, cowpies and electric fencing as we crossed the fields to the stream.  It pays to keep headlamps off to retain night vision but in this case Mr T, lead the charge with his red lamp on to save us all from taking on excess voltage.

A creek crossing and a short hike later and we stood streamside, the four of us, lowering our cap brims in the inky night to block out the light glare from a distant farmhouse.  We spread out and stepped in, the swishing of lines in the air followed by the scratch of fly lines against guides as we all hoped to come tight to a leviathan. 

In the dark your are reduced to whatever senses you have that can give a sense of place or direction.  I could just make out the far bank with two eyes that are months away from requiring reading glasses.  With my vision compromised the wild mint on the bankside floaded my olfactory receptors to the point of overload...such a fine smell.  But my ears were on high alert.  I could tell whether my fly landed on the bank or in the water, whether the others were moving downstream, casting or even retrieving their flies.   So, with the stage set, vision impaired and hearing acute, I heard the explosive splashing downstream as if an anvil had been dropped in the very tub I was bathing in.  My pulse quickened and I started downstream, reeling in line and fumbling with my camera, to see which of my lucky comrades had connected with what was certainly a large trout.

Quuuuaaaaaack!...quaaack! quack! quack! quack! (splashing subsides).

"What was THAT?", someone asked knowing the answer but needing verification.
To which MK replied, "I think I dropped my fly on a duck."

And so he had.

It was generally decided that though catching big fish after dark is not easy, it is certainly easier than hitting a stealthy, camouflaged duck in the pitch blackness with a fly at distance of fifty feet.  It seemed that MK had raised the bar and I continued on fishing, hoping for a trout, or a duck, of my own.

It was after midnight when the moon broke through the clouds in a notch of the valley as we hiked back to the truck, secured our rods, shared a beer and decided to stop and fish another river before heading home.  

This plan, this trip,  discussed over beers months ago as the snow piled up on the bar's windows seemed like an eternity ago, but I was keenly aware that the summer doesn't last forever and that night fishing with 3 good guys on a cool summer night doesn't happen every day. When we stopped again beside the next river, grabbed our rods, our headlamps and our packs, I remember feeling wide awake and ready to go fishing.   The short days and snowy nights of next winter would be here before we knew it and 3 of us had still not hooked a duck.

BWO's

At 4:00 am my alarm screamed.  When I set it 3 hours earlier I considered what 3 hours of sleep feels like and gave myself the option to disregard the buzzer and go back to sleep.  With the switch set back to "more sleep",  I put my head on my pillow and thought about it for 2 minutes and then hit the shower.   By 5:00 I was parked by the stream and sliding on my waders, 16 ounces of gas-station coffee coursing through my veins and having the desired effect.

The low areas of the valley were shrouded in layers of fog that made for a surreal landscape to go trout fishing in.  The plan was to nymph up some brown trout in the morning and then paste some hoppers once the sun came up, burned off the haze and got the world buzzing.  That was the plan.

I botched the first fish after dredging with a zebra midge for 30 minutes.  The line paused and I pulled with the kind of effort that is required to pull a fly off of a rock or weed on the bottom.  I felt the tell-tale tug-tug of a fish and realized only after the line went slack that I had broken a cardinal nymphing rule.  The next fish came 20 minutes later, a smallish 8" fish that got the hook caught under it's belly.  I am not a fish counter, but even so, this fish didn't count. 

By 7:30 I was back on the road trying to decide what was next.  I was thinking about smallmouth and how they crash baitfish and bonefish chasing down and inhaling shrimp flies.  I was thinking about how little trout fishing I do these days and how, at the moment, I was tired and feeling pretty uninspired.  Considering that I had a day to fish, a beautiful stream in front of me a car-load of rods and flies and a perfectly beautiful August day...I started to feel like a spoiled ass.

I pulled off on a side road that leads to a not so secret spot on this not secret trout stream.  Leaving my rod in the car I carried the last few sips of my cold gas station coffee to the bridge and stood staring into the current.  There I made up my mind to not be such an ass.

I fished the bridge pool with a nymph, deep and slow.  Paying attention and mending my line often.  I once hooked and landed an 18" brown here among the discarded worm containers and recall feeling pretty smug about it.  The same outcome would be welcome today, but despite my renewed enthusiasm, nothing happened.  I noticed a half dozen Blue Winged Olive mayflies circling in the eddy by my feet and when I waded back to shore I stopped to photograph a spider's web containing a few that had become ensnared.

The lush aquatic vegetation made the nymphing upstream tricky.  Short lanes of clear deep water ran between the mats of green and tried my best to drift my fly down these lanes in hopes that the trout would shoot out from under their summer cover and take a bite.  Even the deep corners, where the deep water ran easy against the bank and the drifts were long, left me blank. 

There was a moment when I thought, "I have become a perfectly shitty trout fisherman".

A rise form against the bank made me look up from tying on the foam terrestrial.  I finished the knot, aired out some line and dropped it 3 feet upstream from the commotion.  A trout smacked it but the hook failed to stick.  Finally...something.   I stayed with the terrestrial for the next few bends and hooked but failed to land a nice fish that had risen mid-stream.   In the run above that fish's lie, another fish rose and then another...

Either the hatch had just started or I had just started to pay attention.  In the run above me, the little Blue Winged Olives that I had seen downstream in the eddy and in the spider web were popping up , floating down and taking flight.  The foam fly found it's way back in it's box and 36" of 6x tippet was married, via bloodknot, to my leader.   To the business end I attached a size 18 parachute style BWO with a light gray turkey flat post and dun hackle.  This was to be the last fly I tied on today.

What happened next can be described as trout fishing nirvana.  A fish rose and after three drifts ate my dry fly.  The next fish ate as well but the hook popped as I set.  With the sun high, I could see the fish had gone back to finning in it's holding spot in front of a midstrem rock.  For thirty minutes I worked it, getting flat out refusals and inspection rises until finally everything fell into place and it tipped up and ate again.  This time the hook stuck. 

As one fish was landed and released, another fish, a few feet upstream from the last started rising.   It was 3 hours and 200 yards of the stream...fish after fish.  At 2:00 in the afternoon and I was nearing the end of things.  I had caught and released every rising fish that I saw.  From thoughts of being a shitty fisherman to this...all in the same day. 

The last fish rose under the branches of a bush and having batted 1000 I confidently made the 40' cast...as with all of the others, the trout tipped up and ate.   I set the hook and could see the trout's head turn toward me, the white of it's open mouth visible as the fly popped out. 

For what seemed like 5 minutes I stood there thinking about the success of the morning and the lesson this last fish taught me on the importance of humility and the concept of having enough.

And then the same fish rose again...so I cast my size 18 parachute BWO back in and I caught him too. 

  

Starting Early

I drove back up North to MN on the evening of July 3rd. 

The late arrival made for a late night of drinks and chatter.  When the last of the revelers finally hit the sack, I slid on my waders and headed to the shore of Lake Superior.

Another all-niter.

Independence Day:
The moon slid out of sight and the morning turned into a classic calm summer morning on the North Shore.
A fishless couple of hours soon became an agate picking/birdwatching event.

I crept up the beach to photograph a pair of bald eagles waiting for a local fisherman to toss them breakfast.  When they decided they didn't like me so close, they departed and left me walking the beach with my neck craned looking for Superior's native gem.  By 8:00 I was bleary eyed and drove back to my bed for a quick 2 hour nap before the day started again.