Brown trout skin study, acrylic.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Monday, June 4, 2012
They made me do it!
Both of our daughters and their mates have gotten into camping – well, it’s sorta like camping. They each are proud owners of 30 plus foot
But back to the fishing. I have fished for trout in some pretty special places. I have hiked in, jeeped in and driven up to the banks of some fantastic waters, but I have yet to discover a more enjoyable way of casting a fly line than while dangling my legs in the cool waters of Cascade Lake on a hot spring or summer day in my float tube. Cascade Lake is formed from the clear waters of Little River, which flows from the DuPont State Forest in WNC. The upper end of the lake below Hooker Falls has a decent population of rainbows and I’ve seen photos of some pretty nice largemouth that have been caught down lake. Most of the angles are after these. I aint. No sir, Chad and I go there for the bluegills.
As we watch boat after boat heading out with their bass gear, Chad and I just chuckle as we land one ‘gill after another within shouting distance of the boat ramp. This year was no different. At midday on Friday I inflated the float tube, grabbed my 2 wt. and a selection of flies and headed for the water. That first immersion in the cool waters of the lake, no matter what the ambient temperature is, gets your attention. I eased into the craft and kicked my way to the far bank about 100 yards away. By the time I arrived, the mix of cold water and hot sun had reached the perfect comfort level.
I tied on a little yellow chenille bodied, rubber legged fly and by the 5th cast I had released three pretty fish back to the depths. The average size of these blue gills runs around seven inches, and occasionally we catch one of hand size – say around ten inches. Cast after cast, as I kicked my way down the shoreline the fish were very cooperative. Within two hours I had managed to catch around fifty of them. Great fun on a two weight.
Chad joined in on Saturday and the action continued, but at a little slower pace. Meanwhile back at camp, the kids were having a blast with the swimming and the science experiments that daughter Melanie had brought along. All four grandkids, donned in their chemistry lab smocks had great fun making fake snow, creating slime and who knows what else. It was to be a fun and educational weekend for all of them. By the end of the holiday I would come to regret the educational part of the deal.
On Sunday afternoon it was decided that our daughters, the grandkids and our non fishing son-in-law Jonathan, would rent canoes and paddle up to Hooker Falls for a picnic. As they paddled past Chad and I along the shoreline they had what they thought was a great idea. They figured their science projects should evolve into a little biology lesson, and that we should keep four fish for them to clean and cook up for dinner that evening. Well that turned out to be a curse of sorts. From that moment on the bite was off. Cast after cast and no fish. Chad had drifted away from where I was working the shoreline and he wasn’t having any luck either.
I had tried just about all of the traditional bluegill flies and in an experimental mood I tied on a size 12 Humpy. A couple of casts later I saw a flash of color dart through my sunken fly and I was hard onto a decent fish. I had seen more bass on this trip than ever before and I hoped that I would get lucky and catch one of them, but so far, they had rejected my offerings. If this was a bass though, it sure acted strange. Instead of thrashing around on the surface with a jump or two thrown in, this fish headed straight for the deepest water in the lake. My 2 wt. was double for a good 4 minutes until he finally came into view. It was a bluegill…and a larger one than I had ever seen, much less caught. As I measured the big guy’s length, I hollered at Chad to come my way with his camera.
As Chad’s eyes grew bigger looking at my fish he says, “We gotta keep that one!” to which I replied, “No, we don’t even have a stringer.” But of course, as the flotilla of grandkids passed Chad on their way to the falls, they managed to find a piece of wire on the bottom of the canoe and passed it over to him with instructions to keep some fish for the kids. So here I sat in my float tube, holding in my hand a 13 inch bluegill that I, by way of Chad, had been ordered by my family to keep. I tried to recall the last time that I had kept any fish, much less a bona-fide lunker. It had to have been at least 45 years. As the day was growing short and the fishing had been slow, I relented and slipped the wire through the fish’s lips.
The fish cleaning exhibition later that night went reasonably well and the fish did indeed taste very good, but still I was tormented by my decision to keep him. I did a little research on the average growth rate of bluegills when I got home and learned that the fish was at least 10 years old . . . and certainly near the end of his reproductive life span, which made me feel a little better. He went out like the lunker he was though. I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun from my end of a fly rod.
Over dinner there was serious talk about changing the rendezvous location for next year. Seems there is a great little island off the Carolina coast that has a lot to offer. Supposed to be great for crabbing. Wonder how deep a bend a crab will put into my 2 weight?
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Triumph of the Human Spirit
Our TU volunteers within the Veterans Service Program are very good at teaching disabled veterans the sport we love, but the activity I witnessed last Friday will never, ever, be replicated in our Veterans Service Program. I’m referring to a very special part of the groundbreaking ceremony I attended for the Boulder Crest Retreat in Bluemont, Virginia.
Ken Falke, a 21 year combat veteran of the U.S. navy and retired Master Chief Petty Officer, has provided his beautiful 37 acre property to create a free, first class rural retreat for America’s seriously wounded warriors and their families to reconnect and recover from the injuries of war and we were honored to be invited to the ground breaking ceremony. Our opportunity to partner with Ken and his organization is what the VSP is all about.
After the obligatory speeches and expressions of gratitude we were invited outside to witness one of the more impressive sights that I have ever seen. There at 12,000 feet, circling this little piece of paradise in the Virginia Mountains was a small plane, and right on schedule a small dot appeared in the sky behind it. That small dot was Dana Bowman. You might remember a news story about Dana.
He is a retired Sergeant First Class with the U.S. Army where he was a Special Forces soldier and a member of the U.S. Army’s elite parachute team, the Golden Knights. Dana didn’t make the news for his combat exploits. Back in February of 1994 Dana and his partner were practicing a sky diving maneuver known as the Diamond Track. The maneuver calls for the jumpers to streak away from each other for about a mile and then turn 180 degrees and fly back toward each other crisscrossing in the sky. Dana and his partner had demonstrated the Diamond Track more than fifty times without a mistake, but this time was different. Dana and his partner collided at a combined speed of 300 mph, instantly killing his partner, who, when he passed by Dana severed both of Dana’s legs with his outstretched arm.
As told on his website, www.danabowman.com, nine months later he turned this tragedy into a triumph when he became the first double amputee to re-enlist in the United States Army. Bowman re-enlisted in the United States Army airborne style, skydiving with his commander into the ceremony. After Dana’s re-enlistment, he became the U.S. Parachute Team’s lead speaker and recruiting commander.
I and the 200 attendees at the Boulder Crest groundbreaking event were honored to be in his presence. While we will never replicate his sky diving performance with the veterans that we serve, we can all take from Dana’s life story . . . he is but one of many that have an incredible story of triumph of the human spirit.
Ken Falke, a 21 year combat veteran of the U.S. navy and retired Master Chief Petty Officer, has provided his beautiful 37 acre property to create a free, first class rural retreat for America’s seriously wounded warriors and their families to reconnect and recover from the injuries of war and we were honored to be invited to the ground breaking ceremony. Our opportunity to partner with Ken and his organization is what the VSP is all about.
After the obligatory speeches and expressions of gratitude we were invited outside to witness one of the more impressive sights that I have ever seen. There at 12,000 feet, circling this little piece of paradise in the Virginia Mountains was a small plane, and right on schedule a small dot appeared in the sky behind it. That small dot was Dana Bowman. You might remember a news story about Dana.
He is a retired Sergeant First Class with the U.S. Army where he was a Special Forces soldier and a member of the U.S. Army’s elite parachute team, the Golden Knights. Dana didn’t make the news for his combat exploits. Back in February of 1994 Dana and his partner were practicing a sky diving maneuver known as the Diamond Track. The maneuver calls for the jumpers to streak away from each other for about a mile and then turn 180 degrees and fly back toward each other crisscrossing in the sky. Dana and his partner had demonstrated the Diamond Track more than fifty times without a mistake, but this time was different. Dana and his partner collided at a combined speed of 300 mph, instantly killing his partner, who, when he passed by Dana severed both of Dana’s legs with his outstretched arm.
As told on his website, www.danabowman.com, nine months later he turned this tragedy into a triumph when he became the first double amputee to re-enlist in the United States Army. Bowman re-enlisted in the United States Army airborne style, skydiving with his commander into the ceremony. After Dana’s re-enlistment, he became the U.S. Parachute Team’s lead speaker and recruiting commander.
I and the 200 attendees at the Boulder Crest groundbreaking event were honored to be in his presence. While we will never replicate his sky diving performance with the veterans that we serve, we can all take from Dana’s life story . . . he is but one of many that have an incredible story of triumph of the human spirit.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Simple Pleasures
At the FFF Southeastern Rally last year the always thoughtful Shirley raised her hand repeatedly during their live auction to purchase a guided trip on the Soque River in north Georgia. Ever since moving to the southeast I have seen the pictures and read the stories of the monster trout that are found there, so I was naturally thrilled with her good sense and her persistence to win the thing. The package she won was donated to the auction by Charles Henderson of Southern Sweetwater Anglers, and it was a half day trip for two anglers on Charles' trophy section of the famed river.
It was a no-brainer that this trip was going to be son-in-law Chad's birthday present, and since his birthday back in September, we have anticipated heading into those beautiful north Georgia mountains to meet up with a toothy, hook-jawed rainbow or two. We had a year to redeem it and the year was ending on Memorial Day, so what better way to spend Mother's Day weekend than packing up our families - mothers included, of course - and heading for the river?
A few nights before leaving I spoke to Charles about the river conditions and to pick his brain a little on what we could expect. He said if we were lucky we might get some top-water action with hopper patterns and he recommended nothing smaller than 5 weights and 4x tippets. I'm likin' it already.
When we arrived at his lease - just a stones throw from the Batesville General Store - I was a little surprised at the size of the water. This so-called "river" would have barely qualified as an Ozarks "crick," but it was wild and beautiful, crystal clear and as fishy lookin' as any water, anywhere. Charles and Chad headed downstream and I headed up. I hadn't been in the water but a few minutes and I noticed a trout rising no more than a good double-haul upstream of where I entered the water. As the place was too canopied for a double-haul, and I can't do one on a spacious football field anyway, I went into my excuse of a stealth mode and headed up to his position.
My dry landed perfectly, drifted over his position - and nothing happened. After three more reasonable casts I reeled in to change patterns, and as if to mock me, the trout rose two more times while I was fumbling through my fly box. Over the next little while I tried a couple of more patterns to no avail and finally conceded defeat. I gave him a wide berth and headed upstream with the intention of fishing my way back down to him with a wet. Hugging the far bank, I moved about fifty yards up and sat down on a mid-stream rock to take in the beauty and allow the fish to settle back in.
As any painter would know, to make "green" you mix up a bit of blue and a bit of yellow. The shades of green that you can create are virtually endless, and thanks to an early spring and ample rains, they were all on display on this overcast late May morning. But for the patter of a light rain and the ocassional crow calling out to his brethern, I was surrounded by the beauty and the silence that we all cherish when on a trout stream. That is, until the dogs started howling. Distant at first, the ruckus was becoming louder, closer, and more frantic as the hounds chased what was surely a 300 pound black bear towards my little slice of peaceful paradise.
Of course it was a bear! What else could rile up every dog in the county? The more I thought about it, the surer I was, and the larger the bear became. I was imagining the headline . . . "Headless North Carolina angler found floating in north Georgia trout stream." Well, I wasn't going to sit on that rock and let him have me. No sir, if I'm going to be attacked by a bear I'm going to be fishing when it happens.
As the dogs and the bear changed course at the last minute and faded off into the distance from whence they came, I was back in position to make a presentable drift with the black Woolly to my real nemesis, and sure enough, on the first swing through his lair he was on! After a few moments I brought him alongside, slipped my forceps around the Bugger and released him back to the river. Though certainly not of local bragging size, the little 12 incher was beautiful. I continued on downstream and had a few more hits, but other than seeing the flash of one nice fish - one very nice fish - the lunkers of the Soque had eluded me. So be it. My back was hurting and I headed back to the truck about an hour earlier than planned.
Earlier that morning when we arrived at the parking spot, in a silly mood for sure, I asked Charles if there really were huge trout in the little pond that adjoined our parking area. With a raised eyebrow and a smirk he said, "Sure Alan. Go have a go at 'em. Chad and I are going over here," as he pointed towards the river.
Well, after stretching out on the picnic table for a while I couldn't resist the temptation of the pond. A few weeks ago at the Virginia Fly Fishing Festival I got to know one Mr. Steve Vorkapich, the creator of the Float Master strike indicators. I had met Steve a few years earlier, but other than exchanging pleasantries when our paths crossed at various fly fishing shows, we really didn't know each other. That was my loss. Steve is without doubt one of the nicest guys I know, and spending some time with him at The Speckled Trout B&B in Waynesboro was a highlight of our trip north. Before parting ways at the festival I convinced Steve that we needed to do some product swapping. (For the uninitiated, Sunday afternoons at most fly fishing shows see frantic activity among the vendors as they wheel and deal to carry home items that they've admired all through the weekend but were to cheap to buy.) I left with Steve's strike indicator selection and he left with a few of my prints.
So here I was on a premier southern trout stream, rigging up one of Steve's indicators with plans to try them out on the little pond's bream population. I selected a small yellow one and placed it about a foot above a brown Girdle Bug. Wham! The minute the rig hit the water it disappeared, and shortly thereafter I had in my hand a pretty little bluegill. I won't try to convince you that every cast had the same result, but I will tell you that over the next hour I landed at least three dozen of the little guy's neighbors, including the nice one shown here.
I found the Float Master easy to cast and wonderfully easy to re-position for different depths. And when I finally had enough and broke my gear down, I saw not a single kink in the line from its usage.
They say that fly fishing soothes the soul. They say that it's not just about catching fish - it's about the experience. They say that standing in a clearwater trout stream and soaking in Creation is good for you and your relationship to it's Creator. All true. Chad and I got to do all of that on Saturday. I got to do that before hiking back to the truck and the pond, but I sure am glad that I got to experience the simple pleasure of landing a mess of bluegills too.
It was a no-brainer that this trip was going to be son-in-law Chad's birthday present, and since his birthday back in September, we have anticipated heading into those beautiful north Georgia mountains to meet up with a toothy, hook-jawed rainbow or two. We had a year to redeem it and the year was ending on Memorial Day, so what better way to spend Mother's Day weekend than packing up our families - mothers included, of course - and heading for the river?
A few nights before leaving I spoke to Charles about the river conditions and to pick his brain a little on what we could expect. He said if we were lucky we might get some top-water action with hopper patterns and he recommended nothing smaller than 5 weights and 4x tippets. I'm likin' it already.
When we arrived at his lease - just a stones throw from the Batesville General Store - I was a little surprised at the size of the water. This so-called "river" would have barely qualified as an Ozarks "crick," but it was wild and beautiful, crystal clear and as fishy lookin' as any water, anywhere. Charles and Chad headed downstream and I headed up. I hadn't been in the water but a few minutes and I noticed a trout rising no more than a good double-haul upstream of where I entered the water. As the place was too canopied for a double-haul, and I can't do one on a spacious football field anyway, I went into my excuse of a stealth mode and headed up to his position.
My dry landed perfectly, drifted over his position - and nothing happened. After three more reasonable casts I reeled in to change patterns, and as if to mock me, the trout rose two more times while I was fumbling through my fly box. Over the next little while I tried a couple of more patterns to no avail and finally conceded defeat. I gave him a wide berth and headed upstream with the intention of fishing my way back down to him with a wet. Hugging the far bank, I moved about fifty yards up and sat down on a mid-stream rock to take in the beauty and allow the fish to settle back in.
As any painter would know, to make "green" you mix up a bit of blue and a bit of yellow. The shades of green that you can create are virtually endless, and thanks to an early spring and ample rains, they were all on display on this overcast late May morning. But for the patter of a light rain and the ocassional crow calling out to his brethern, I was surrounded by the beauty and the silence that we all cherish when on a trout stream. That is, until the dogs started howling. Distant at first, the ruckus was becoming louder, closer, and more frantic as the hounds chased what was surely a 300 pound black bear towards my little slice of peaceful paradise.
Of course it was a bear! What else could rile up every dog in the county? The more I thought about it, the surer I was, and the larger the bear became. I was imagining the headline . . . "Headless North Carolina angler found floating in north Georgia trout stream." Well, I wasn't going to sit on that rock and let him have me. No sir, if I'm going to be attacked by a bear I'm going to be fishing when it happens.
As the dogs and the bear changed course at the last minute and faded off into the distance from whence they came, I was back in position to make a presentable drift with the black Woolly to my real nemesis, and sure enough, on the first swing through his lair he was on! After a few moments I brought him alongside, slipped my forceps around the Bugger and released him back to the river. Though certainly not of local bragging size, the little 12 incher was beautiful. I continued on downstream and had a few more hits, but other than seeing the flash of one nice fish - one very nice fish - the lunkers of the Soque had eluded me. So be it. My back was hurting and I headed back to the truck about an hour earlier than planned.
Earlier that morning when we arrived at the parking spot, in a silly mood for sure, I asked Charles if there really were huge trout in the little pond that adjoined our parking area. With a raised eyebrow and a smirk he said, "Sure Alan. Go have a go at 'em. Chad and I are going over here," as he pointed towards the river.
Well, after stretching out on the picnic table for a while I couldn't resist the temptation of the pond. A few weeks ago at the Virginia Fly Fishing Festival I got to know one Mr. Steve Vorkapich, the creator of the Float Master strike indicators. I had met Steve a few years earlier, but other than exchanging pleasantries when our paths crossed at various fly fishing shows, we really didn't know each other. That was my loss. Steve is without doubt one of the nicest guys I know, and spending some time with him at The Speckled Trout B&B in Waynesboro was a highlight of our trip north. Before parting ways at the festival I convinced Steve that we needed to do some product swapping. (For the uninitiated, Sunday afternoons at most fly fishing shows see frantic activity among the vendors as they wheel and deal to carry home items that they've admired all through the weekend but were to cheap to buy.) I left with Steve's strike indicator selection and he left with a few of my prints.
So here I was on a premier southern trout stream, rigging up one of Steve's indicators with plans to try them out on the little pond's bream population. I selected a small yellow one and placed it about a foot above a brown Girdle Bug. Wham! The minute the rig hit the water it disappeared, and shortly thereafter I had in my hand a pretty little bluegill. I won't try to convince you that every cast had the same result, but I will tell you that over the next hour I landed at least three dozen of the little guy's neighbors, including the nice one shown here.
I found the Float Master easy to cast and wonderfully easy to re-position for different depths. And when I finally had enough and broke my gear down, I saw not a single kink in the line from its usage.
They say that fly fishing soothes the soul. They say that it's not just about catching fish - it's about the experience. They say that standing in a clearwater trout stream and soaking in Creation is good for you and your relationship to it's Creator. All true. Chad and I got to do all of that on Saturday. I got to do that before hiking back to the truck and the pond, but I sure am glad that I got to experience the simple pleasure of landing a mess of bluegills too.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Drift
It could have been a trout - more likely, the fading light playing tricks through the leaves. Evenings like this mess with the mind.
I was awake before the alarm went off. A normal occurrence these days. Used to be that I would lie awake on the “nights before” imagining the fish I would catch. Half afraid that I’d miss the alarm and oversleep, I’d play fish after fish until nothingness overtook me, then with the alarm sounding I’d rise from bed in a manner unknown on days that promised nothing but work. Now, in my sixties, sleep still comes slowly. But for different and unexciting reasons. Yes, I’ll play a few trout before it comes, but only to pass the time until it does. I miss those nights of eight hours like I miss so many other things that age brings our way.
I know this place well and my father knew it well before me. He was raised within an hour of the place and he had the good sense never to move far from it. I wasn’t so lucky. Careers can be cruel like that. Tonight I’m back, and as I approach the pool I’m swept away with memories. Dad used to say that there was a big brown back under the trees at the far bank. He said he would never see him during the day, but in the twilight, occasionally, if the river was really still, he might see his nose appear from the rock, waiting for the darkness that big browns are fond of. He said if I can get the drift just right I might catch him one day.
It’s getting darker.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Greenback Cutthroat
A few posts back I mentioned that I am revisiting the paint brush, and since then I have been burnin' the midnight oil, as they say, to complete a few new pieces to show at the upcoming Virginia Fly Fishing Festival. Well, here's one of them. I haven't taken the time to title them, just as I haven't taken the time to plant all the flowers that Miss Shirley has been buying to spruce up the yard. Sorry dear.
My plate is rather full at the momment. This weekend I'll be presenting the details of the Veterans Service Program to the attendees of the Trout Unlimited Southeatern Conference, and immediately after the conference I'll be headed to Harman's Northfork Cottages up in West Virginia to shoot a video with Curtis Fleming from Fly Rod Chronicles, followed at the end of that week with the festival in Waynesboro. Then the week after that I'll be back to Virginia for the infamous Project Healing Waters 2Fly Tournament. It's a wonder that I get anything done!
I think that the Greenback Cutthroat, which this "skin" illustration represents, is just about the prettiest thing that our God has ever created (my apologies to Miss Shirley again), and it was done with acrylics on a 5 x 7 inch canvas. Hope you all like it....Prints are available!
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Ft. Jackson Warrior Transition Unit, After Action Report
My friend Bobby Sutton from the Saluda River TU chapter in Columbia, South Carolina has filed the following AAR. Way to go Bobby!
My name is Bobby Sutton and the Project Healing Waters stories I have heard from my father have always held a special place in my heart. The Founder of PHW, Ed Nicholson, has been a family friend for a long time and has included my father, Bob Sutton, in many PHW trips. Being a Columbia, South Carolina resident I began to ask myself why there was not a PHW Chapter in Columbia. Geographically it is perfect, with the Saluda River winding through Columbia and with Fort Jackson and the VA hospital just a few miles away. With help from our chapter president Shawn Kenney, Alan Folger (VSP National Coordinator), John Bass (PHW Regional Coordinator), and all of my great friends at Saluda River TU, Project Healing Waters Columbia is now a Chapter!
We have received great support for Fort Jackson and have had 2 events on the Fort so far. Our first event on March 1st was a 3 hour Adaptive Fly-Fishing Clinic and we had about 30 soldiers in attendance. We held tying demonstrations as well as basic casting, and showed videos as well. We had 15 or so soldiers from the Warrior Transition Unit sign up for our six lesson Fly Fishing 101 course that we began last week. The excitement and enthusiasm of these heroes is truly amazing and we look forward to great friendships as well as furthering our partnerships with the facilities as well! Thanks to all my TU and PHW Friends for helping us get this great new chapter going!
Bobby Sutton
Program Lead
Saluda River TU
Program Lead
Saluda River TU
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Rainbow
This is the first full-bodied trout I have painted, and I think I'm startin' to get the hang of it. Going back to my roots with a paint brush is challenging after spending the past few years trying to figure out pen & ink and colored pencils, but I'm starting to see the potential of it.
This rainbow was done with acrylics, and the image you see above is from a scanner. With a heavily textured base, getting a good scan is problematic. The scanner lights can do some pretty weird things with the bumps and ridges, but it came out pretty true to the original.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Gettin' Ready
This Rainbow "skin" was done with nothing but a palatte knife and a broad brush, using primary colors right out of the tube. It measures 18" x 24". And for those of you that might wonder "how can this guy who is so persnickety and detail oriented do something like this?" . . . well, I'm wondering that myself. I'm not wondering about the fun level though. This was a blast to do!
And my apologies for the picture quality - I had to shoot it with my phone. My $400 Pentax - the one that is shock and water proof - isn't "rub" proof. While at the TU Veterans Service Program dinner in DC last week (more on that to follow in a future posting) I had the phone in my pocket and something rubbed against it, crashing the thing. Pentax said "sorry." Will I be buying a new one? I think NOT!
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Back to the brushes...
I’ve been working with pen & ink and colored pencils for too long so I decided to break out the brushes and revisit my old friend…acrylic paint. This little study was done on a heavily gesso’d 5 inch square gallery wrapped canvas, and considering its been so long since I’ve done anything like this, it turned out OK.
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Mayflower
In retrospect Larry B. was a pretty good fishing buddy. Well, make that an adequate fishing buddy. In fact, if Larry B. hadn’t been adequate and hadn’t owned a car he wouldn’t have been a fishing buddy at all. But having a car made him, for awhile, my best fishing buddy of all time. I had heard that there was fishing to be had beyond our little neighborhood –fishing that required a bit of travel, so “Hey Larry B…wanna go fishing?”
We called his car the Mayflower. It was red and had those huge fins that cars of its vintage were known for, and best of all it had that modern, hi-tech push button deal on the dash that you used to change gears. Very cool. And if cars had been equipped with cup holders back then, the Mayflower’s would have held a can of ether. No, we weren’t abducting cheerleaders...it was to start the car with. A squirt down the carburetor and off we would go. The Mayflower usually got us where we were going, but not without a little chemical assistance. The transport known as the Mayflower was a 59 Plymouth and we would have probably done better using it to chase cheerleaders than fish.
As I said, the Mayflower usually got us to where we were going. It was getting home that was troublesome. Take that day after school when we headed for the strip pits. East of town there was an old mining area and long before the idea of reclamation came along these strip pits had turned themselves, all by themselves, into an exotic fishing paradise. Of course, just about anything would have been exotic if compared to our other nearby fishin’ holes.
There are abandoned lead, zinc and coal mines scattered about northeastern Oklahoma, and the ones we were interested in, if seen from a satellite, would look like a miniature version of New York’s Finger Lake region; one long skinny lake after another, each about a quarter mile in length and separated by equally long piles of tailings grown over with years of vegetation. The “pits,” as we called them, were an irresistible temptation to a couple of sixteen year olds, and if the pits had minds to wonder, they would have wondered just exactly what two teenagers were doing there during the daylight hours. We followed the well worn tracks made by the Saturday night crowds (avoiding the empty Coors cans as best we could) into the bowels of the place, and through no fault of its own – this time - with a lurching stop the Mayflower parked itself squarely on top of a rise. Business as usual, but we weren’t about to let a problem that could be solved later interrupt the present, so we hurriedly retrieved our rods from the back seat and got on with it.
The “pits” were inhabited by exotic, funny colored blue gills and bass the size of – well, the size of – we didn’t know. We’d heard that there were monster bass in those waters, but to date, except for the occasional large rise-form, we’d yet to see one. One of the guys that I worked with at the Phillips 66 station when pumping gas on weekends, Dillard the tire changer, had caught them there by the bucket load . . . or so he said. Of course he said that he’d caught a five pound trout there too.
The water in the “pits” was clear as a bell, but then it would have been since there was so little run-off to color it. Each of those skinny strips of water were totally supported by the rain that came straight down on them, and perhaps by the waters that bubbled up from some underground cavities left from the mining days. Thinking back, it might have been that bubbling up action that tinged the water a nice light blue and contributed to the coloration of the blue gills. Might have been just as well that we never caught anything of eating size out of the place.
I was armed with my fly rod, and Larry B. had the old steel bait caster with the free spooling Pflueger reel that his old man allowed him to use. Casting poppers along the bank I was having a blast with the bluegills when Larry B. let out a whoop, screaming something about a big bass. The whoop had an entirely different tonal quality than the one he used for backlashes so I half believed him and headed up the bank to see for sure.
Sure enough, he had a bass on, and just as he was dragging it onto the bank the sky busted loose with the kind of storm that would make an Oklahoma plains storm chaser drool. Well, it scarred the crap out of us and we high tailed it for the Mayflower. Soaking wet, we were grateful to get out of the storm, and storm it did for the next two hours.
You’ll remember that the Mayflower was high centered, so all we could do was sit and stare at the storm and plan our eventual exit from the place. It rained and rained, and rained some more, and we figured that if the tide kept rising we could float her off just like her namesake might have done to escape a sand bar grounding. But it wasn’t to be. When the rain finally quit we were ankle deep when we stepped out of the car. It would have taken Noah’s flood to free the Mayflower from her perch.
We tried everything we could think of to get her back on all fours. We tried the time tested teeter-totter trick and she wouldn’t budge. We pushed her we every which way but loose. We thought of sloshing underneath through the water and mud to dig away the mound that had her suspended but realized that our digging tools consisted of two fishing rods. We finally had to admit that we were beaten and headed up the dirt road to civilization and some help.
Some thirty minutes later we came upon a phone booth and as luck would have it, I had the right change to place a call – but only enough for one call. By now our dads would be home from work so we spent a few minutes arguing over which one we’d hit up for help. My dad had warned me about the “pits” a thousand times with some quaint stories about teen age couples disappearing down sink holes, so I wasn’t about to call him, and Larry B. just trembled when I casually suggested that, after all, since it was his car, his old man needed to rescue us. He finally stopped shaking when I started looking through the tattered yellow pages for a wrecker company.
Then it dawned on our teen aged brain trust, that between the two of us we had only two bucks to spend on the tow truck, so that was out. Then it occurred to my half of the trust that Dillard would be getting off work about then, and that of all people, he could find us and he would probably keep his mouth shut concerning our little fiasco. I found the number to the station and rang him up. Sure enough, he was still there and he agreed to meet us at the car.
Dillard was a bit unusual. One day when the station’s hydraulic lift was broken down and he was helping with my wipe the windows, check the tires, check the oil, a dollar gas routine, he told me he dropped out of school on the day he figured out “cipherin’. He had no intention on that momentous day of his eighth grade year to use this skill to decode the Ruskies’ secret cold war communications – nope, Dillard was a bigger thinker than that. He figured that he could figure out, or cipher, just about everything, and such a skill was sure to propel him to riches - which he proved by landing the tire changer job at the Phillips station.
Dillard beat us back to the Mayflower and as we sloshed up to the car he was going on with a treatise on “how to remove a car from a pyramid of muck.” Dillard explained that the fulcrum created by the “pyramid of muck” was nothing but a device intended to spoil our weekend plans and protect the girls from our nefarious intentions, and that if we were to give him just five minutes he could cipher us out of the mess we were in. As he rambled on about levers and such, detailing his intricate car removal plan by scratching about in the mud with the butt section of my fly rod, Larry B. and I seriously considered borrowing a dime from Dillard, going back to the pay phone and calling our dads. As a tire changer he was superb, but as a practitioner of bovine excreta, Dillard had no equal. So, a half hour later, as he began cipherin’ on “Plan #7,” we decided that our best bet was just to have him drive us home.
“How was school son?” was the usual greeting I heard from mom when entering the house, but that was usually well before dinner, and certainly well before dark. On this particular evening dad met me at the door. With a raised eyebrow and a look down at my mud covered Levi’s, he just shook his head and said, “Your dinner’s on the table. Where’s your fly rod?”
“Oh, Larry B.’s got it. I left it in his car. I’ll get it tomorrow…if I can.
We called his car the Mayflower. It was red and had those huge fins that cars of its vintage were known for, and best of all it had that modern, hi-tech push button deal on the dash that you used to change gears. Very cool. And if cars had been equipped with cup holders back then, the Mayflower’s would have held a can of ether. No, we weren’t abducting cheerleaders...it was to start the car with. A squirt down the carburetor and off we would go. The Mayflower usually got us where we were going, but not without a little chemical assistance. The transport known as the Mayflower was a 59 Plymouth and we would have probably done better using it to chase cheerleaders than fish.
As I said, the Mayflower usually got us to where we were going. It was getting home that was troublesome. Take that day after school when we headed for the strip pits. East of town there was an old mining area and long before the idea of reclamation came along these strip pits had turned themselves, all by themselves, into an exotic fishing paradise. Of course, just about anything would have been exotic if compared to our other nearby fishin’ holes.
There are abandoned lead, zinc and coal mines scattered about northeastern Oklahoma, and the ones we were interested in, if seen from a satellite, would look like a miniature version of New York’s Finger Lake region; one long skinny lake after another, each about a quarter mile in length and separated by equally long piles of tailings grown over with years of vegetation. The “pits,” as we called them, were an irresistible temptation to a couple of sixteen year olds, and if the pits had minds to wonder, they would have wondered just exactly what two teenagers were doing there during the daylight hours. We followed the well worn tracks made by the Saturday night crowds (avoiding the empty Coors cans as best we could) into the bowels of the place, and through no fault of its own – this time - with a lurching stop the Mayflower parked itself squarely on top of a rise. Business as usual, but we weren’t about to let a problem that could be solved later interrupt the present, so we hurriedly retrieved our rods from the back seat and got on with it.
The “pits” were inhabited by exotic, funny colored blue gills and bass the size of – well, the size of – we didn’t know. We’d heard that there were monster bass in those waters, but to date, except for the occasional large rise-form, we’d yet to see one. One of the guys that I worked with at the Phillips 66 station when pumping gas on weekends, Dillard the tire changer, had caught them there by the bucket load . . . or so he said. Of course he said that he’d caught a five pound trout there too.
The water in the “pits” was clear as a bell, but then it would have been since there was so little run-off to color it. Each of those skinny strips of water were totally supported by the rain that came straight down on them, and perhaps by the waters that bubbled up from some underground cavities left from the mining days. Thinking back, it might have been that bubbling up action that tinged the water a nice light blue and contributed to the coloration of the blue gills. Might have been just as well that we never caught anything of eating size out of the place.
I was armed with my fly rod, and Larry B. had the old steel bait caster with the free spooling Pflueger reel that his old man allowed him to use. Casting poppers along the bank I was having a blast with the bluegills when Larry B. let out a whoop, screaming something about a big bass. The whoop had an entirely different tonal quality than the one he used for backlashes so I half believed him and headed up the bank to see for sure.
Sure enough, he had a bass on, and just as he was dragging it onto the bank the sky busted loose with the kind of storm that would make an Oklahoma plains storm chaser drool. Well, it scarred the crap out of us and we high tailed it for the Mayflower. Soaking wet, we were grateful to get out of the storm, and storm it did for the next two hours.
You’ll remember that the Mayflower was high centered, so all we could do was sit and stare at the storm and plan our eventual exit from the place. It rained and rained, and rained some more, and we figured that if the tide kept rising we could float her off just like her namesake might have done to escape a sand bar grounding. But it wasn’t to be. When the rain finally quit we were ankle deep when we stepped out of the car. It would have taken Noah’s flood to free the Mayflower from her perch.
We tried everything we could think of to get her back on all fours. We tried the time tested teeter-totter trick and she wouldn’t budge. We pushed her we every which way but loose. We thought of sloshing underneath through the water and mud to dig away the mound that had her suspended but realized that our digging tools consisted of two fishing rods. We finally had to admit that we were beaten and headed up the dirt road to civilization and some help.
Some thirty minutes later we came upon a phone booth and as luck would have it, I had the right change to place a call – but only enough for one call. By now our dads would be home from work so we spent a few minutes arguing over which one we’d hit up for help. My dad had warned me about the “pits” a thousand times with some quaint stories about teen age couples disappearing down sink holes, so I wasn’t about to call him, and Larry B. just trembled when I casually suggested that, after all, since it was his car, his old man needed to rescue us. He finally stopped shaking when I started looking through the tattered yellow pages for a wrecker company.
Then it dawned on our teen aged brain trust, that between the two of us we had only two bucks to spend on the tow truck, so that was out. Then it occurred to my half of the trust that Dillard would be getting off work about then, and that of all people, he could find us and he would probably keep his mouth shut concerning our little fiasco. I found the number to the station and rang him up. Sure enough, he was still there and he agreed to meet us at the car.
Dillard was a bit unusual. One day when the station’s hydraulic lift was broken down and he was helping with my wipe the windows, check the tires, check the oil, a dollar gas routine, he told me he dropped out of school on the day he figured out “cipherin’. He had no intention on that momentous day of his eighth grade year to use this skill to decode the Ruskies’ secret cold war communications – nope, Dillard was a bigger thinker than that. He figured that he could figure out, or cipher, just about everything, and such a skill was sure to propel him to riches - which he proved by landing the tire changer job at the Phillips station.
Dillard beat us back to the Mayflower and as we sloshed up to the car he was going on with a treatise on “how to remove a car from a pyramid of muck.” Dillard explained that the fulcrum created by the “pyramid of muck” was nothing but a device intended to spoil our weekend plans and protect the girls from our nefarious intentions, and that if we were to give him just five minutes he could cipher us out of the mess we were in. As he rambled on about levers and such, detailing his intricate car removal plan by scratching about in the mud with the butt section of my fly rod, Larry B. and I seriously considered borrowing a dime from Dillard, going back to the pay phone and calling our dads. As a tire changer he was superb, but as a practitioner of bovine excreta, Dillard had no equal. So, a half hour later, as he began cipherin’ on “Plan #7,” we decided that our best bet was just to have him drive us home.
“How was school son?” was the usual greeting I heard from mom when entering the house, but that was usually well before dinner, and certainly well before dark. On this particular evening dad met me at the door. With a raised eyebrow and a look down at my mud covered Levi’s, he just shook his head and said, “Your dinner’s on the table. Where’s your fly rod?”
“Oh, Larry B.’s got it. I left it in his car. I’ll get it tomorrow…if I can.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Honored
I received word over the weekend that I've been selected as this year's Festival Artist for the 12th Annual Virginia Fly Fishing Festival, and I am indeed one lucky fellow. They'll be using my brookie illustration on their promotional material - posters, t-shirts, etc. and the original piece will be auctioned at their Foundation Dinner which will be held on April 21 at the Waynesboro Country Club.
Beau Beasley, noted author, festival director, and my friend, puts on a great show every year at the festival grounds in Waynesboro, Virginia, so mark your calendars for April 21st and 22nd. Even if it means cancelling that long planned adventure to your favorite trout stream to attend...well, you'll just have to do it. You won’t be disappointed.
http://www.vaflyfishingfestival.org/Information/festivalartist.html
Beau Beasley, noted author, festival director, and my friend, puts on a great show every year at the festival grounds in Waynesboro, Virginia, so mark your calendars for April 21st and 22nd. Even if it means cancelling that long planned adventure to your favorite trout stream to attend...well, you'll just have to do it. You won’t be disappointed.
http://www.vaflyfishingfestival.org/Information/festivalartist.html
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
My Brookie
This morning I finished up my entry in this years Virginia Fly Fishing Festival competition and I'm pretty pleased with the result - hope you all like it.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
On the menu...
During the Christmas Holiday, between fishing the Saluda, go cart racing, going to the movies, busting my arse on a demonic kid's toy, and consuming thousands upon thousands of very tasty calories, I managed to get a few more illustrations done for Trout Diet section of the Adaptive Fly Fishing 101 book. I figure that I'll need the equivilant of at least two more Christmas Holidays to finish them up.
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