40 Rivers To Freedom

Spent BWO

“Gotcha, you little bastard!” I thought after fruitlessly snatching at the sky for 15 minutes trying to see what kind of mayflies were hatching. The skies over the river were for the most part, pretty clear. Despite their preference for cloudy days, there were descent numbers of BWO’s coming off the chocolate milk colored water.

This was our first day in the south. We drove down to the Atlanta, GA area from New York through the night. This would be our home base for the next week while we scouted out different towns throughout the south where we were considering moving to.

When we pulled up to my wife’s aunt and uncle’s house around 11am, her uncle Mike told us to go to bed and get some sleep while he took our kids grocery shopping. There was little argument.

We woke up around 3pm and made our way upstairs. We were sitting in the kitchen making small talk and I asked Mike how the fishing was around here.

“It should be pretty good right now”

“You wanna go?” he asked

My eyes dart toward my wife as I tell him yeah.

“Did you bring a rod down with you?”

“3″ I tell him

“Two 4’s and a 6wt”

Not even 5 minutes later we were on our way. As Mike called a hotline to see if their would be any water released from the dam, I realized that we left so fast we didn’t even say good-bye. We just left.

So this is why they call it the dirty south
It figures that a drought stricken area of the country gets rain right before I fish there. Fortunately all I brought was a box of streamers so I was prepared for the conditions. The BWO’s were coming off pretty much the whole time we were on the water. No signs of fish though.

The only excitement came when I pissed off a few nesting geese. They hissed at me as I snuck up to this heron for a closer picture.

It ended up being the only time I got a chance to fish on our trip. I did get to check out some other water in North and South Carolina. The lakes and reservoirs are still pretty low from last year’s drought. I’d guess they still need a good 10′ of water to get back to normal. They’re so low that you don’t realize at first that the big ring of red dirt all the way around the lake isn’t supposed to be there. Hopefully they’ll get some serious rain this spring, and a hurricane or two in the later in the year.

I liked the south. You always hear about southern hospitality. Some of the people we meet were so nice it didn’t seem real- but it was. While in the Greenville, SC area we saw a police car with jumper cables hooked up to a broken down chevy. If a cop sees your car broken down here, they’ll stick an orange sticker on it and call a tow truck. Oh yeah, I saw my first palm tree.

The Greenville area is actually where we’ll probably end up. It’s close to the mountains, and within day trip distance of the coast.

The job hunt begins.

cosmo was here^

Solitude

I admit it, I was gonna go away for a week with a crappy little post about going away for a week at the top of the page. I just couldn’t do that to you though. I’ve wrote a few things for this site ahead of time. But for the most part, I don’t know what I’m gonna write about, until I sit down to write it. Anyways…I’m standing outside in the rain this morning getting my nicotine fix. I was thinking about the upcoming NY trout opener and where I want to fish. Where, you ask? Well I’d tell you, but I don’t know yet. I’m pretty open to just about anywhere, as long as I’m alone.

Last year was my first NY trout opener. I took my son to the Battenkill and even in one of those “managed” areas, we managed to see more foxes and deer than other anglers- parking areas excluded. I was online a few days later and saw the stuff that goes down on some of those historic(or something like that) waters in the Catskills. Let me dig up a picture, words don’t do it justice.

This is Junction Pool where the Beaverkill and Willowemoc Rivers meet. Oh yeah, not solitude.

They toast wine glasses and all sorts of other voodoo rituals. If that’s your kinda thing, well, to each his own. If not, then come with me as we look at a few ways to avoid this type of crap.

1.) Check State Stocking Lists

Nothing draws people to a spot like the stocking truck. I thought it was bad in Michigan, but some of the people here in the northeast take it to a whole new level. Nothing wrong with catching stockers, but if you fish in NY, and you don’t wanna fish with guys from Jersey on April 1st, don’t go anywhere listed here.

2.) Put Some Effort In

I almost feel guilty adding this to the list since it’s been said so many times, but do some homework. Read maps, whatever. Believe it or not, fish live in streams without big names. Crazier yet, they also live in places that take more than 10 minutes to walk to.

3.) Be Patient

Also in the played out category, but something that many fisherman still don’t realize is that fish still exist after the opening weekend. I’ve never really figured out why so many people only fish around the opener and during the big drake hatches. They must be at least a little bit enthusiastic about fishing since they highly anticipate these events. Where that enthusiasm goes the rest of the year is beyond me. The easiest way to find solitude is to just wait a couple days.

4.) Keep Moving

If you stand in one spot all day, other people looking for solitude are gonna eventually make their way to you. Even though fishing is a lot like gambling, your odds don’t increase with more drifts through an area. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cover the whole water column, it just means that once you cover the water column in an area, move on to the next.

5.) Don’t Talk to Strangers

Our parents gave us some good advice when we were little. You don’t have to be rude or completely ignore someone when they come around a bend and ask, “How’s fishing”. But you don’t have to pretend that you care what they have to say, either.

6.) Shut Your Mouth

You know how people act all interested in what you have to say when you show them a picture of a big fish you caught? It isn’t because they care what you have to say, it’s because they want what you have. They will stroke your ego like a $2 whore to get every bit of info they can out of you. Even when you’re trying to keep an area secret, the more you talk, the more little details slip out. It’s a small world. And just because an area is sacred to you, doesn’t mean it is to someone else who will have no problem telling a 3rd party where you catch all those fish at. I have a friend who says it best when people ask where he caught certain fish.

“You see all those people behind me in the picture?”

His new best friend says, “There is no one else, just trees.”

“I’d like to keep it that way.”

Yesterday I was asked why I won’t read “Fly Fisherman” anymore, even when it’s free.

I used to read every issue of FF, along with every other Fly Fishing or Fly Tying related magazine I could get my hands on. Now, it’s almost frustrating to read most of them. I’ve only been at this stuff for about 3 years now, already, I’ve gotten sick of seeing the same old thing. But I think the biggest thing that has turned me away from them is the way they read.

Here’s an example from FF-

“Cuba is a place where you can fish more than 100 miles of flats without seeing another fisherman, a place where the flats fishing is so good that you can catch seven species of fish in one day, a place where you have a legitimate chance for a grand slam every day of the year, a place where big permit are as plentiful as they…”

“Redfish populations along Florida’s east and west costs have improved dramatically in recent years. Walt Jennings shows where to find the best fishing and how to prepare yourself for a successful trip…”

“The 100 miles of water from Pelton Dam to the Columbia is some of the finest steelhead water in the lower 48…”

“Strategies for avoiding crowds on Great Lakes steelhead streams..”

Or how about these from American Angler

“Achieve longer dead drifts in tighter pockets by holding your rod tip in the air and your line off the water.”

“When the ice goes out, the panfish are in, so cast one of these flies for early-season slabs.”

I still read Fly Tyer, but they’re just as guilty

“Learn what you need to know to make perfect dry-fly bodies.”

“These 10 new patterns catch trout in the Golden State, but they’ll work wherever you fish.”

“The pros pick their favorite patterns for fishing Florida’s backcountry.”

“Top 10 for the Everglades”

Thanks to the above publications for playing.

To be fair, there have been a few descent articles in FF and the others, but they’re few and far between. And quite frankly, I don’t feel like sifting through the BS to find them.It’s not just an editorial problem. It’s a writing problem. Now I can’t say how much influence the editors have on each writer’s article- but there must be some. Or, the people doing most of the writing have spent too much time reading what the other guy wrote and fell into the trap of sounding just like him.

And in all honesty it’s an easy trap to fall into. If I spent a week reading Gierach books before writing a short story of my own, there’s a good chance that purposefully or not, I’d sound a lot like Gierach.

But if we chase the problem deeper it takes us back to our school days, sitting in english class being taught the proper way to write a story by teachers who didn’t know a damn thing about writing, only the mechanics behind it. This isn’t an absolute, but I’m pretty confident saying that the higher the writer made it through english, the faster he’ll lose me as a reader. Why?

Cause real people don’t talk like that.

If there’s a rotating headline among outdoor publications, it’s that the number of sportsmen are declining. Well it turns out we’re not the only one losing numbers. That other elitist snob hobby is facing a decline as well, despite the remarkable play of it’s main superstar, Tiger Woods.

From all the media coverage, you’d think that the number of people golfing would be at an all time high. Not according to a recent article in the New York Times. Since 2000, the number of people who play has dropped by about 4 million people, or 14%. Even more troubling is that the number of people who play 25 times per year or more dropped 33%, and that the people who play 8 or more times per year has slowly fallen from 17.7 million to 15 million.

“The five men who met here at the Wind Watch Golf Club a couple of weeks ago, golf aficionados all, wondered out loud about the reasons. Was it the economy? Changing family dynamics? A glut of golf courses? A surfeit of etiquette rules — like not letting people use their cellphones for the four hours it typically takes to play a round of 18 holes?

Or was it just the four hours?”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But I’m not buying that it’s the 4 hours. The numbers in these activities aren’t slumping because people can’t afford it, or don’t have the time to do it because when someone truly likes something, they find a way to do it.

They saw it on TV, it appealed to them. It was exciting at first, but after their skill level plateaued and they realized they weren’t going to be the next Tiger Woods, they stop going out as much. They got into the game(it’s not a sport) because it was the “in thing” to do. The snobbery of the ol’ timers, the cost to play, and other negatives quickly outweigh the positives. Before you know it, their golf clubs are sitting in the garage with a hot pink price sticker on them to be sold at their yearly yard sale.

Right next to the fly rod they bought and lost interest in after seeing, “A River Runs Through It”.