When enunciated correctly, the word is both deeply erotic and profoundly disturbing. Say it with me.

Flesh

Feel the tingle?

When you get tired of catching fish after fish, drift after drift, grayling after goddam grayling (with the occasional lipsticked dolly tossed in to make it marginally worthwhile); when you get tired of fishing that piece of costume jewelry, that perfectly round trinket, that princess-pink bauble painted with just the right nail polish; when easy fishing degenerates from easy to boring (perhaps thirty minutes, if even that long), your buddy says the ‘f’ word and something dark inside of you moves.

You know what you’re giving up. The numbers, the clockwork tug, the comfort and ease of your trapped air technology. (No Charles, it’s not a fucking “bobber.” It’s a strike indicator! For God’s sake, have some dignity.) You give up that mind-numbing rhythm of mending and catching, mending and catching, mending and catching.

They say that you don’t leave fish to catch fish, but they’re wrong. All fish are not equal. All fishing is not sport.


So you ignore the outside bubble line and focus, instead, on the inside snags; the slow water and blow-downs where rotting corpses gather in underwater creep shows. Phantoms, waving in tatters like carrion sheets on Lucifer’s clothesline. You dead drift (acquiring a whole new perspective on the term) tan stingers that, for all the world, look like soiled shreds of toilet paper flushed down Seward’s folly, but promise their targets the carnage they crave. You dredge the putrid downstream abattoir where the meat eater lies. You pursue the beast that's following its basest of urges, not daintily sipping on priss caviar as it gently flows by. You stalk the savage. You want him at his baddest, his inner zombie full-blown, his depravity manifesting in glorious carnivorous splendor.

He deserves a hook in the face and you’re all about giving him one.

Sure, you’re probably foregoing twenty, thirty, to chase just that one. That cannibal. That monster. And maybe, just maybe, he’d think about taking a bead, but what fun is that?

He wants… you want…

... flesh.

The TVA did us a favor, sons of bitches, and released Holston Lake waters from first light to the witching hour each day. Had they not, we might have fished the tailrace all weekend. Instead, the gates were thrown open and, as happens too often, the brass floated high on their Clackas and Hydes while we fly fishing foot soldiers scrambled for shore.


So while the well-heeled slept in, awaiting their ten-o’clock launches, building their reserves so they might survive the long day sitting on their asses, high and dry, while staring at the fat Day-glo indicators drifting alongside their watercraft, we drove miles downstream under the cover of darkness and squeezed in a handful of hours searching for risers before the front edge of the too early flood tumbled upon us.


But the drifters didn't see the sun leak over the horizon; slanted rays arriving in luminous waves, breaching the east’s distant dam and washing silently into our hardscrabble riverbed through riffles of muted Fall colors. They didn’t feel the thick fog dampen their cheeks with moist, sloppy dog kisses or hear the quiet whispers of welcome from gentle runs hidden somewhere in the mists; didn’t rub sleep from their eyes with fleece-sheathed sleeves or shake the lingering effects of last night’s Kentucky with cool, deep breaths of this morning's Tennessee. They missed it all while they waited for their boats.


So thank you, TVA, for the impetus to be out there at that magical time. Thank you for putting us on the river before daybreak so we could appreciate those few golden hours that you left us. Thank you for the beauty, enhanced by the brevity. Thank you for the crumbs. They were delicious.

Sons of bitches.

After a week of imprudent and uninhibited British Columbian cutthroats, Mark's advice hit me like a punch in the gut. Technical and Presentation. Four letter words, however they're spelled.

Montana's Missouri River rainbows and browns have seen it all. And with the tricos coming off so thick that you kept your lips pinched tight lest you breakfast on bugs, there was no lack of natural fare. Hell, the floating mats of expired spinners could carpet my house. Anything the slightest bit off was ignored.

I throw a lot of off.

So when the frustration of refusal-upon-refusal by actively feeding fish got to be too much, it was good to fall back on the scenery. One of the meccas of our sport, and deservedly so. The Mighty Mo.

Enjoy the view.

“There’s a beast down in this pool. I thought it was a log, 'til it moved.”

Fishermen are an optimistic lot. They’re constantly willing fish – big fish - into existence by deduction, desire, and the delusive interpretation of capricious apparitions that are given life (and fins) by light’s passage through moving water. Rock and stick and shadow are no match for this power. I suppose it’s why I appreciate my fishin’ buddies so much; they’re hopelessly positive. Always anticipating the big bite. Always certain that the next cast will be the one. Always bottle half-full.

So when Marc said those words I smiled, nodded, and turned back up stream, knowing that he’d be there a while. He’d drunk the Kool-aid. Moreover, he has the makeup to stand over a run for hours, focused on drift after drift; the world reduced to an endless loop; the repetitive movement of a tiny nymph under a yarn indicator along a liquid seam, time and time and time again.

I’d go insane.


You see, I’m an unapologetic streamer addict with happy feet. If a trout hasn’t come knockin' on my minnow/muddler/marabou/whatever after a handful of swings, I’m on the move, quartering my way downstream. I suspect (hell, I know) that I drive my companions crazy. One minute I’m at the tailout below. The next minute, I’m out of sight. Way out of sight. I'm hard to keep track of.

So when Marc hunkered down to drift the “beast” into hypnotic submission, I climbed back up to the roadway, intent on walking a half-mile upstream and working my way back down again. He’d still be there. I had plenty of time.

But I didn’t get far.


This waterway’s tucked tidily into the extreme western point of the state, flowing out of the Smokies to join with a myriad of watersheds to feed North Carolina's glittering jewel, Fontana. An hour-and-a-half out of Asheville, maybe two from Knoxville, it’s part of the Delayed Harvest program; a hatchery supported stream that’s strictly catch-and-release for the majority of the year but with windows of opportunity for the legal, controlled harvesting of trout.

North Carolina DH waters are often borderline habitats; streams that might possibly attain inhospitable temperatures in our scorching southern summers. The “delayed harvest” periods tend to coincide with the onset of seasonal heat, saving a few fish from Carolina’s slow boil. That is, if you consider getting caught and eaten as being saved. I suppose being fried is better than being poached.


“Mike! Come back! I’m gonna need HELP!”

So maybe there was a good fish down there. I knew that Marc’s small stream net bag wasn’t going to be enough to scoop a really good-sized trout. (And, to be sure, this fish would be big, based on the excitement in his voice.) My deep seventeen-inch Gallatin might come in handy. I headed back.

As I scrambled back down the rock face, I scanned for the fish, expecting to see all hell breaking loose, but there was only Marc’s strike indicator hovering a foot above the pool’s surface; gliding slowly and quietly upstream. No thrashing about. No zigzags. Just steady, forward motion. Like a freight train pulling out of the depot.

It took a moment, but ahead of the indicator, crawling the bottom of the pool, I picked out the fish - five, maybe six feet down - and was stunned. My Brodin was a joke. The foot-and-a-half, deep-bagged rubber net might as well have been an aquarium dipper.


What makes this particular DH stream unique is that it runs colder year round than most and, on occasion, the state releases broodstock into it. To keep the genetic lines of brook, brown, and rainbow trout robust, NC Wildlife often replaces its egg-machine hens, retiring the old ones and letting them finish their days in a natural setting rather than the dreary concrete hatchery chutes. A nice touch.


The day before, I had coaxed a nineteen-inch, football-shaped brook trout from a tiny plunge pool just upstream. It was a fish impossibly large to have matured on the thin hatches along this stretch and its scuffed nose further gave away its origins.

Stocked or not, it had been the fish of the weekend. Until…


Marc’s face wore a rugged mask of concentration, panic, determination and disbelief; all appropriate given he was tied to a departing submarine by a spiderweb strand of 6X. Ten, maybe fifteen, pounds of salmonid on three-pounds of floro. That’s bad math.

There was no panic in the fish. It moved steadily towards the top of the forty-yard pool as Marc gently palmed the reel, his 5wt Helios absorbing and buffering the strain in impressive manner. As the beast reached the riffles it held, glided left, then right, and paused, giving everyone a moment to catch their breath. To wonder what came next. Whatever it was, it was the fish’s decision, not ours. We waited.

There was no option to follow the trout. We clung to a small outcropping in a steep rock wall, the outside edge of a bend in the stream, spooned into a roadside curve. Behind us stood a fifteen-foot climb to the asphalt; before of us, a deep pool with no transitional space. We were stuck there for the duration.

In time, the fish let the current push it back towards the heart of the pool, towards us, and Marc carefully applied pressure to direct it to our side. I clung to the rocks, prepared to reach out should it get close enough to grasp. Patiently, Marc eased it our way and, as it came close, it rose and we got our first clear look.

More steelhead than mountain trout, this rainbow was massive. My best guess is thirty-two inches. Marc suggests longer and I'd be hard pressed to argue. A hen, without kype, and a chunk taken from her upper tail, she was the biggest freshwater fish I’d ever seen; just out of reach and drifting back into the pool.

Twice more it approached and I tapped its tail, trying to wrangle it with the Brodin. Each time it sullenly declined and slipped back to the heart of the waterway.

A final time it came close, but slid further downstream, Marc's leader slipping under a submerged branch just within my reach. I stretched and tenderly rested my finger alongside the butt section and eased if from under the limb, holding my breath as if I were clipping the red wire (or should it be the blue?) from a ticking time bomb. No explosion. The tippet held.

But the hen drifted further along, adding the weight of the current to the already unbalanced equation, and Marc feared the leader had hung once again. I reached out and, just as I touched it, the 6X’s timer expired. There was a sickening ping and time stood still…

…‘til the beast slowly turned and continued downstream.


We sat by the roadside. Pulled two chairs from the back of the truck, and a bottle, and just sat. We hadn’t the heart to wet another line, despite the fact that a full afternoon lay ahead and the day was a peach. There was even a hatch in the offing.

We could have kept fishing, but to what end?

We were gutted.


After a while we left. Packed the chairs, threw the still quivering gear into the back, and drove home. Five hours of road time to think about what had transpired.

Was it my second kiss on the leader? Was it the added current? Was it the accumulated stress of a fifteen-minute fight on tender 6X? In truth, the manner by which Marc kept the fight alive for so long is more worthy of analysis than the break-off. But what actually tipped the scales, we’ll never know.

I have friends who consider a fish caught if it’s been touched, sparing them the loss if one’s been fumbled away at the end. So I suppose that Marc could say that we landed the hen once my net brushed its tail.

It doesn’t feel that way.

Perhaps we could have been more patient. Tired her further before nudging her close. Tailed her. Or I could have climbed to the road and gone thirty yards downstream to the riffles below and waited for a worn out fish to drift down. I fear we’d have killed her, though, providing an unjust end to a life of service to the fishermen of our state. We’ll be catching her offspring for years so she deserves better than that.

And besides, this way she’s still out there. Out there feeding the next fisherman’s optimism. Feeding ours. For when you can hook and fight a three-foot trout in the small tumbling waters of the Appalachians, anything’s possible. The bottle's always half-full.

Hey. Did that log just move?




Note: A belated thanks to Marc Payne, Gary, and E.L. for the kind invitation to join them on their annual weekend getaway. It was an honor to be included and a most memorable couple of days, as you can plainly see.

Partly cloudy and chilly in the morning with temperatures to rise from around the freezing point to the low 40s by early afternoon. Your mid-day will be moderately overcast, but relatively pleasant. It will be short-lived, however, as more complete cloud cover will move in as the day progresses bringing periods of precipitation which are likely to turn to sleet, then snow, as the temperatures drop during the late afternoon and early evening. Snow accumulation from 1-3 inches is possible, complicating your after-work commute.


For Tuesday, January the 21st, we will start generation at 5:00am, stop generation at 9:00am, restart generation at 4:00pm, and stop generation at 9:00pm. We would like to remind you that this is a tentative schedule and is subject to change without notice. Thank you for calling.

Note: For a fascinating academic perspective on our sport and its classic literature, check out Ken's blog, The Literary Fly Fisher. Good stuff.

The cramp hit about six in the morning, left hamstring seizing every time I bent my knee in the slightest, which was a real pisser as I’d only been in bed for a little more than an hour. Maybe that four-AM beer hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

As the leg began to loosen (or, it turned out, just teased me into thinking the agony was subsiding before cruelly cinching tight once again), I heard Jason in the other room, cursing softly as he tried to walk out a similar affliction. I regretted his pain, but deep down there simmered a guilty satisfaction that I wasn’t alone in my misery.


We squatted by the stream as the sun disappeared. Waiting. Waiting for nightfall. Waiting for the streamside shadows to lengthen and coalesce. Waiting for obscurity complete, when the big browns would slide out from under the deep cut banks, like trolls from a beneath a bridge, to begin their search for meat.

Nine-o’clock. My old eyes strained for details.

“It’s not dark enough yet,” said Jason.


As the sun turned its back and looked to the west, intent then on lighting the Orient and leaving us behind to founder in the dark, the Milky Way crept out, bolder each moment as its nemesis dropped from sight. While the cat’s away the mice will play, and it was on the mice that we counted.

With the arrival of starshine, an eerie netherworld unfolded, neither dark nor light. A monochromatic shadow box of blacks and grays. A rough fragment of grade school art, cut from ragged-edged drab construction paper and pasted in layers – stream, bank, tall weeds, tree line, horizon - with a dark, doleful palate, perhaps a red flag to the observant educator, but of cool cinereal comfort to the nocturnal predator; man and fish alike.

In time, we got started, pitching #2 rodents across the flowing slate ribbon to where we thought the far bank should be, threading backcasts through gaps in coal paper trees, as much by memory as by sight.


Jason said I’d hear the strike before I’d see it. The brain takes a moment to sort out the grays, but the ears don’t care how dark. I’d hear the splash as my skittering foam mouse swung across the surface of the unlit waters, then feel the weight. That lag would be just about right for setting the hook. I’d counted on that.

So when my drift was quietly interrupted in mid-strip, came tight in silence, I hesitated, puzzled. Then a subtle tug found its way up the line and I instinctively stripped, hard, in response. It stayed tight, but didn’t move, and I knew that I’d found that branch lying near the opposite bank; the one that I’d seen earlier in the brief reconnoitering sweep of my red-lensed headlamp.

“I’m snagged, “ I whisper-shouted, giving Jason the option of finishing the run before I spooked it completely. “I’m close,” he replied. “I’ll get it.” He slipped into the ink and waded towards the other side.

After a moment, I heard him chuckle. “It’s hung alright, but on a branch on the bottom. Something took you down. You’ve been mugged.”

“But I didn’t hear the take.”

“Yeah. Sometimes they’ll just sip it and it screws you up...”

“… but only the big ones do that.”

I suppose that was meant to make me feel better.


The ghosts approached. Wispy, ethereal illuminations bouncing quietly along the stream. Soft rustling in the deep weeds. Whispers - whether incorporeal voices or wind, unclear – drifted our way. On which side of the stream, also uncertain, as it, and the lights, wound serpentine through the overgrowth.

Directionless.

“Is that you Zach?” Jason queried in a low voice. We’d seen his FJ parked at the turnout.

“Yeah. Me and Trent. Had any luck?”

“We’ve moved a few fish. Mike got mugged by a good one.”

Thanks for reminding me.

For a while we held seance with the shades, invisible in the weeds and the darkness of the far bank, a mere thirty feet away. A minute, an hour, time didn’t matter even if we could get a fix on it. A wee-hour ouija with phantoms, shadows within shadows, with no visual context. Just voices, soft and quiet, muffled by murk, held to low tones out of respect for the night.


Around two came the moon, bright as day after the cold light of stars. Sight reconstituted, in a holistic sense, but details remained obscure and the trip back downstream was no easier for it. Even with our headlamps set bright, deep weeds hid beaver holes, tiny rutted tributaries, and fallen limbs. False steps plunged two feet and you listened, as you fell, for the snap of tibia or femur. I wondered if Jason would be able to carry me out if I broke.

Then, I wondered if I could carry him.


Trips back always seem shorter than the outbounds, especially when you’ve fished it hard, yet the hourglass flowed just a grain at a time as we stumbled towards the turnout. The knowledge that sunrise would arrive shortly lent a lost-in-time quality to the trek, while the pre-dawn darkness and headlamp's tight focus made the remaining haul bearable, showing us only the next step rather than the entirety of the final climb. A blessing of ignorance.

We arrived at the car, and the cooler, as the earlybirds were just waking for another workday. Soaked to the skin, legs beyond weary, ready for a shower and bed, though we'd have to pull the blinds tight by the time we got back to Jason’s place to hold in the darkness.

And while we’d pay for it later, the four-AM Oberon tasted mighty darn good.

Forgive me, Dani. I knew he was trouble.

I should have known better, that he'd steal you away, spend your money, leave you breathless. But I introduced you to him anyway. What was I thinking? How did I not see that you’d fall for him? Hard.

Sure, you asked about him first, but that's no excuse for my actions. What I missed was that he’d already caught your eye out there on your forays into the southeastern woodlands, restoring those pretty little brookie streams, learning to love the surroundings. But, when you asked, I should have talked you out of it. I should never have helped with the whippy little 'glass starter setup. You said it was just for an alternate sampling method, but I should have known better. It was about spending time with him.

It happened so fast. Seems like just yesterday you called me from Virginia, excited about catching your first small stream rainbow. Next thing I know, you're with him, sending grip-and-grins from Colorado’s South Platte; Eleven Mile Canyon, Dream Stream. You’re even posting about the big one that jumped and spit the hook, telling the one that got away stories like a veteran. He put you up to that, I'm certain. He’s sweeping you off your feet like a swift, tumbling current on worn vibram soles.

So before this infatuation goes any farther, there are a few things you need to know about him.

He’s moody. He’ll stand you up two, three times in a row. Skunk you bad. And just when you’re ready to toss him out he gives you a day that makes your head spin. He keeps stringin’ you along so you never know where you stand.

He’ll dress you up in ways you could never have imagined. Kinky. Belts and rubber and big boots kinky. To show you off to his friends.

He’ll get under your skin and you’ll find yourself thinking of him constantly. Every waterway you pass, no matter how big or how small, will bring him to mind. You’ll drift away at work, at play, in your dreams. It’s scary sometimes.

And just so you know, he treats his men friends just as badly. I'd rather not talk about it.

I implore you. Dump the bum. He’s no good. He’ll consume you. He’ll take you to far away places and then rain on you. He'll make you buy him stuff. Lots of stuff. That 5wt's not enough. He’s a monster.

If it’s not already too late, turn and run. Please, please, please listen!

Fly fishing is a bad boyfriend.

Bad.

But, then again, sometimes bad can be very, very good...



Notes: My thanks go out to my good friend and neighbor Dani for allowing me this bit of fun. Despite my warnings, I am thrilled to have her as a fellow fly fisher and wish her the best of luck in all of her angling endeavors. I sincerely hope that they bring her as much joy as they have brought me.

And be sure to visit Dani’s blog, Chasing Spring: Each Day a New Beginning. It’s a warm and honest look at the challenges of raising a family with a special needs child. The lessons are universal, lovingly told and beautifully depicted.

A nod and a thank you, as well, to Mike Taylor of the Peak Guide Shop, located in Colorado Springs and Woodland Park, for the image of Dani and her first western rainbow. Well captured, sir. The smile is priceless.

Finally, a reminder to all you women anglers out there that your first year of TU membership is currently free. Take advantage of this great offer to get started with this fine organization.

Photo Credit: Bill Gregory

I've been downsized.

After weeks of slingin' aggressive saltwater tapers with broomstick-fast eights, twitching my whippy little 4wt once again is, shall we say, interesting. But, like riding a bike, it comes back quickly, though the off hand feels left out with no hauling to do. Sorry, friend, your job is no longer required.

Surprisingly, the hardest thing is remembering to clear the backcast. There's no sycamores, no rhodos, on the flats. No tight quarters. I am reminded, occasionally, and get personal with the flora.

My fishing world shrinks from the horizon to a mere thirty feet.

Downsized, in a good way.

Thanks, here, to my buddy Darrin for an afternoon on his chilly home waters, for his photo of an old man chasing trout, and for the conversations that inspired this bit of verse.

If you look closely, you will see that for much of the year I am a subtle shade of green. It is an affliction that I refer to as Montloradaho Envy and it's onset is caused by all my western "friends" who fill my browser with stories and pictures of their Rocky Mountain trout streams and high plains fisheries. Cuts, bows, browns, ad nauseam. BAH! It's tough to deal with, here in the eastern flatlands, and most of the time I have to pick my wardrobe carefully so as not to make my odd complexion quite so obvious.

But in January my rosy hue returns when those "friends" begin to whine about what to do for the next couple of months as they huddle shivering in their homes or, when they do get out, whimper about dealing with -14 degree days and wind chills that are, frankly, obscene. And when they bitch and moan while I put together a few North Carolina days like this, I am positively flush.






















So, take that, you Montloradahoians. For the time being I'm good, and a positively delicious shade of pink, right here in the Old North State. Mountains to coast, it's damn hard to beat.

And I'm itchin' to get out the 8wt.