No Quandries on Solitude

They were hooking fish at the Holmes hole this morning – at least the boatmen were and I probably could have worked the run up top and easily tripled my odds of hooking fish. They were probably all salmon anyhow, and I really wanted a chrome bright early running winter fish.  I went downstream to a decent piece of water that rarely gets fished, had it to myself and even connected with fish, though not of the species I was after. Later, I went down river to a piece of water I had always eyed through an opening along the road. It has always been one of those gotta-try-it-one of-these-days spots and I finally got around to doing it. Once again I had the water to myself and even landed a small steelhead.  Finally, I finished up the day by driving down around near Weymouth to see how all the redneck hardware chunkers had done for the morning. Sure enough, they had gotten a few and I couldn’t help but think that nobody probably fished the faster, steelhead water up top all day. I moved on towards home, content in finding a few pieces of water to myself rather than bellying up to the chew-spittin’ parking lots that mark a few of the more popular places along the river.

I had some stuff to work through in my head, which some alone time allowed me to do. But, as is so often the case, I didn’t find any resolution on my own, so maybe some time spent with the Copenhagen sages of Weymouth could have been an option. Still, though, there is nothing like being able to methodically work down through a piece of water without waiting for someone else to pull out or getting cut off, or just forced to stay put.  I haven’t done that in years and I suspect I’ll be doing even less in the years to come. I probably won’t be calling with stories of twenty fish days, and when it does happen, nobody will believe me because nobody will have been around to see it.

Quick river note:

Both of the inland rivers were coming up this morning – I saw it before I left but went anyways – little did I know that they hadn’t really started rising yet. By the time I arrived the rivers were full of leaves, algae and bankside detritus being entrained.  My plan to go upstream backfired, as it just got worse. A big slide somewhere up Supply Creek blew out the lower river completely. When I got home, I saw that both rivers rose about a foot while I was there and just now starting to crest late this evening. One incidental fish was landed.

Given the forecast for relatively rain-free days ahead, things should be ideal all of this week – I should probably go fishing…

Soft afternoon sneaks under morning’s hold

Faint breeze hoisting tiny bits of almost forgotten summer

Save for a little dry stick along the path

Snapping under foot, cracking into the damp green new grass

And carried along on the breeze.

Gentle, slumbering afternoon for remembering a thousand other places

Just like now.

When this breeze might ruffle the curtain of summer’s open window

Or spoil the warmth of spring’s first day

Or maybe whisper “Here I come” on the edge of winter.

And this afternoon falls into the long hold of night

Long after the breeze passes to those other times

Where the morning, the night, the day

All hang in one long breath

Looking down through East-West as the fog parts to a sunny fall day.

At 4:30 this morning I woke from a dream. I couldn’t remember it after waking, except that I was wide awake and a couple of attempts to get back sleeping didn’t work. Time to head out and be on the water at first light. I hadn’t planned on fishing today, but it seemed like an opportune time. Halfway over the hill I started feeling sleepy again and really wanted to be able to crawl back to bed. But I was here now, and on the back road to North-South run, I passed the suicide dogs – lying in wait for passing cars to pounce on. I swore I missed one of them by fractions and I cringed as I passed them driving a bit too fast to begin with. But they won their game, escaping unscathed.

I fished upper North-South and was into fish right away. I haven’t been fishing this piece of water much in the last few years, it hasn’t produced like it has for me many years ago when I first started fishing it. I’ve probably spent more time, over more years, at this piece of water – from my first casts some 23 years ago, getting chased out by a bear at dark with a full moon rising, my first large adult steelhead on a swung fly, an epic mid-November day with the water up to the base of the willows and fish after fish in the skinny edge water, and lots of time just sitting on the old half buried culvert along the bank watching the water go by while a friend does a pass through it.

Middle-North-South was quiet this morning. No grabs. I hurried through it to get down to the bucket at lower North-South. Oddly, no grabs there either. I fished it down through to the slow bottom water where a few salmon were rolling along the edge of the back water. I missed one, maybe two grabs. Someday, I am going to hook a large adult steelhead down here. I keep coming back to this slow water every time, year-after-year for that one fish. When I finally do get a good fish out of there, I will be able to proudly boast that the fish took me at least 23 years to land. I thought of all the places I fish regularly where I’ve yet to get a good fish out of, yet still keep trying. There aren’t many places, but I will continue to visit them. Persistence is the name of the game here even if it is measured in decades. I am not the least bit dissuaded. Instead, those places have become even more mysterious, haunting and infectious with the passing of time.

I decide to check out the wade across and down to the holy water of East-West. I turned back on Wednesday, but I push forward today. There is one single path across, down, across and down again pushing the top of waders much of the way. I thank my mother for passing along at least a few of the tall genes to me. An inch shorter and I probably couldn’t have made it at this flow. And, yes, there is the angst of getting back across: replicating the precise path up, across, up again and the last push across – all upstream – all deep.

East-West is another place to reminisce on. It was a natural extension of my early efforts on upper North-South and the need to explore just a little bit further down around the next bend. It, too, holds more than a few memories – a foggy morning with fresh coho rolling in the riffle, hot, late-summer evenings with half pounders in abundance. All of these memories peppered with a few instances of bright, sassy adult steelhead hooked, released, broken off, unbuttoned, and just plain missed. East-West is arguably some of the best steelhead fly water in the valley. Though, I would never call it the best water, in a valley that has a succession of classic water to fit any mood from fast to slow and deep to wide. There are fish there this morning lying far down in the belly of the run in a little slick on the far side of the river, grabbing numerous swings that I can’t hold on to. It takes everything I got to just get a cast over there with enough slack to get a swing to hold for just long enough… They grab on the mend, they grab on the slack, but they don’t grab on the full swing halfway across the river. They just don’t seem to move very far. I do three passes through, finishing up with a chunk of pink and purple meat – just to see. Nothing to hand here, but a fully satisfying time is had as the morning fog parts, a breeze starts to kick up and the decision is made to head home.

Snapshot. Water drops off the edge of the roof, landing on the outer edge of the sidewalk. Cars crawl through the streets, head lights and red lights lighting up the drizzly, downtown evening. People huddle in doorways and under the overhanging eaves. Old faces and new faces move along. At the donut shop, a young lady plays guitar out front, hoping for a lucky dollar or two. Everywhere a steady choir of water wrapping up a cool November evening: car wheels whisking along the wet pavement, drops from the roof, the wet buzz of a northern California small town Friday night. The ice cream shop bustles with customers. Pumpkin perhaps, or honey vanilla lavendar maybe. Decisions are made across counters and over cafe menus. In dark doorways others huddle, maybe not so fortunate and wondering what decisions they might have left. A fellow staggers out of the bar under one of the dripping edges, oblivious for awhile until his cigarette is hit squarely and extinguished. Time for another drink, it’s still early.

We move about among the others, wondering if this is our place, or maybe our one chance. Down the crowded sidewalk, we’ll stop trying to figure it out. Not long after, the drizzle turns to rain and the gutters push it all somewhere. We hurry back to the car and leave this town behind.

Fished the valley section of a tributary river today. Overcast skies and about an hour of rain midday made for ideal conditions. I started out at lowermost North-South and was immediately into fish – half pounders. The final count was five fish to hand with many missed grabs. Flows were at 900cfs and it was just high enough to preclude the wade across and down to the holy water of East-West. All fish were taken on a 1/0 purple and pink (subtle pink yak hair wing). The slow water at the very bottom of North-South yielded several good grabs, including the one that could have been. But it was a day of many quick and light grabbing fish. Middle North-South gave up a couple of fish along the edge of the fast water – as is usual here. Didn’t fish upper – Charlie hit it pretty hard, coming through on a pontoon boat. Went up to Security East and missed a couple of grabs. Finished up at Supply Creek with one more fish and several grabs. I saw a halfway decent looking salmon porpoise in the fast water.

A good day for this time of year – though missing the big fish. This river has not done well for me this year and I think today probably ranked out as the best day this year.

Purple angora and pink yak hair was working today.

Whispering wild green secrets

Sliding smooth stones under your emerald belly

Gathered strength, exhale, returning

Winter’s quiet. We dream.

Counting your beats in raindrops

Measuring our time into strained waiting,

We paint colors, water, silver on canvas imagined.

Tying steelhead flies provides escape into the fantastically infinite world of intuition, dreams and pure, raw thought. Who invented calendars and watches and such that strive to pull us away from the real, into a place delineated by boundaries and frustration?

By my reckoning, we sit almost smack dab in the middle of Autumn, 2009. By the calendar’s telling, it began on September 21 and ends on December 21. Tonite, the moon wanes a week from full and pokes through showery clouds. The storm wet us down last night enough to raise the northern rivers a bit, but nothing of any appreciable runoff. Maybe in a utopian climate, fall would steadily evolve from summer’s drizzle into warm, light rains punctuated with the occasional heavier shower at night. These would be the Chinook rains where the rivers would raise slightly, allowing early fish to enter the coastal rivers. The rains would continue on and off, in a gentle, easy fashion, and we would say this is fall, regardless of the day or week or month; the time of passing rains. Chinook would find the lower rivers fresh and dependable generation after generation. Heavier rains would kick in around Thanksgiving and an early winter would set in. By Christmas, the rivers would all be swollen and open to the wanderings of steelhead and winter Chinook for several months. But it’s too easy to describe the ideal and, rather, fall seems to be a time of change with persistent bouts of summer hanging on and weather that remains uncommitted, or hesitant, maybe.

I am always intrigued by some of the reports from the early 1900s of fishable runs of Eel River fish showing in late August. Did the rains start earlier back then? Did the greater abundance of fish back then simply give way to earlier fish? In the 1930s, for example, Clark van Fleet wrote of fishing steelhead on the lower Eel in September following freshets that raise the river a bit – something almost unheard of these days. Newspaper reports hint at fishing for Chinook at the Van Duzen confluence in late August. Certainly, less aggraded rivers back then would likely have meant more surface water available in late summer, so maybe rainfall was not as essential for early fish as it is today. Still, though, the thought of rains routinely setting in during September on the coast is almost deliteful, if not disturbing to know those times have passed.

Now, here in early November, we can sit on the porch listening to the light shower dance down on the roof and dream of rivers and fish while the full moon lights a canvas of broken clouds. We can dream of those years when the rains come gentle and easy, guiding our way through a season like so many before. Instead we are left to guess and hope. Then again, maybe this is the essence of fall; a time of hope mixed with the turmoils of change. The frustrating part is that I could have told you September 21^st was just as much Autumnal as is today. Interesting to note that December 21 marks the date of some of the more significant storms to pummel the north coast since records began. But even then, on the shortest day of the year, Autumn is everywhere. Then again, I could find you a Chinook in that same river, September, October, November or December. And they know, despite their chances early or late, that they will get it right.  Now, relieve me of the bondage of this absurb notion of time so that I might better know the essence of this season.

Early morning fog giving way to sunrise on a tributary river. I stopped here to rig up and discern the mojo - I ended up moving on to bigger water.

It’s on just as soon as the fly hits the water at the top of boulder house run.  Unfortunately, it was a poor cast, so I took the chance to adjust a strap, clamping the rod down under my arm.  As the line came tight on the swing, the rod came alive under my arm.  I dropped the straps trying to get the rod back in hand as the fish cartwheeled to the inside – all air.  I recovered line and came tight on the fish again and another burst of aerial mania. The fish looked all of five pounds easy.  The fish kept angling toward the slack water on the inside just as the line pulled up empty – fish off – pure operator neglect – and a lesson learned for the hundreth time: the grabs always happen when fiddling with something or otherwise not paying attention.  The rest of the run was quiet save for a spunky half pounder pulled up at the very bottom of the run.

Moving up river, I scored one half pounder in the super secret tailout water – no other grabs to be had. At the Hotel run, a jumbo half pounder came to hand after working down through most it. No other grabs to be had.  Down to the garden, and one fish to hand, then nothing. Time to move down to slate creek for the later afternoon.

This place now doesn’t see the sun most of the day and the dew piles up on the stones, never drying. Come December and some cooler weather, the frost will accumulate day after day lending a snowy feeling to this place. The wade across is a wee bit trickier with a little more water. Not so much the depth (flow 2,070cfs) but the added velocity and snot slick cobbles – and there is some angst about getting back. One grab in the upper half and can’t get the fish to come back for more. On the lower half, a couple of deep pulls at the top of the far side fast water and I moan and curse that I can’t get a hook into them. These fish won’t come back for second helpings. It’s tough going – cast-swing-step-cast-swing-step – nothing. Those mystery pulls … dam… Counting down to my last cast I decide to practice my single spey cast a little towards the bottom of the run. On the first swing the line comes up tight and heavy. Backing rolls off the reel.  The fish goes airborne across and upriver while my line bows around and downstream. Coming back tight on the fish, it decides to head down and down – towards the lip of the riffle.  I do a clumsy gait downstream trying to catch the fish resting at the lip of the riffle. Then another burst of line and over the riffle it goes. The line stays tight on the fish as it eddies out down below. It swings back out into the fast water where I catch up on all my line and finally roll the fish into the shallows for a quick picture and release.

In summary: had to work much of the day for a few grabs – would have thought more activity at mid-day – but no. No fish showing. But with two adults hooked and a smattering of half pounders, a fruitful day at least. I ran into an acquaintance as I was leaving the Hotel run and they reported similar for upriver. The wade back across slate is uneventful – though I desperately need new soles on my boots. The first adult took the 3/0 purple swimming shrimp I tied up for tidewater – it seemed perfect, if not large, for probing the depths of the shadowy boulder run. The second adult took a black and orange rump fly – a more traditional offering. I dropped the purple shrimp in the water by accident – will have to experiment more with larger swimming shrimp….. full moon might have kept the bite at bay a bit…

Coming at the end of the day, this fish tore into the backing, went down the run, over the riffle and, count luck on my side, was released.