Bring it in...

 

Brian's optimism was what I needed. I was shitting bricks over losing this fish. A fish of a lifetime - at least, the fish of my lifetime. What a fish. What an experience. 

Many things happened on my post Peace Corps trip to Guatemala, but man, here's the highlight. I called my visit there a "fit of professional petulance"; I was bloody furious about how hard the real world is. So naturally, I fled to my last refuge from the harsh realities of professional life in the US. Now, as a working stiff with too few opportunities to fish, it's fun to recollect a day when the fishing actually happened - no refrain of "you should have been here yesterday".  The rare, brilliant, and irreplaceable day of fishing.

It's a short clip, but I think it does the experience justice. I've never done anything so cool in all my life. The only way I can top this is by one day catching a monster bass on the fly, or hopefully, a beautiful pez vela, just like this one.

Know this bird???

Yes, I'm quite aware that this photo sucks. But the picture's quality is not as important as its content. I like birds, but I'm by no means a qualified bird-nerd. Bird-nerdiness aside, I'm quite sure that this feathered friend does not belong in central park. With two long, white feathers drape from the crown of his head down his back, a slate-grey body and dull blue wings with a white stripe. Basically, I've never seen anything like this in NYC, nor the rest of North America.

Anyone know what it is? I bet he's still around the Meer.

Really.

"Are there really fish in this pond?"

I was very busy with my surgeon's knot, and struggling with the 3x tippet and the dimming light, I decided to start over and answer the nice lady's question.

"Well yes ma'am. Indeed, there are fish in here."

She was all sorts of disheveled. Teeth all gappy and what not. Anyway, I took her query seriously; for some reason I felt proud of the little pond in my front yard. Yup, we have bass, and crappie, and some bluegill. Although I haven't caught bluegill in some time; and the last crappie that I saw was back in April, sunning itself in over the warming mud, mere steps from one of Central Park's most traveled Upper West paths. I told her the long and short of the place, including my secret, at least I thought it was a secret until Edwin at Urban Angler talked to me about the same lazy, unspookable largemouth that loom inches from the shore. I was feeling chatty, I guess, but somehow I wasn't worried about burning my little spot.

Incredulous, and without much else to say, Gappy bid good day and off she went. I returned to my surgeon's knot. I cut some more tippet, the other had been too short.

Overlap the leader and tippet. Good. Alright, now push the line together and create a loop. Nice, now try to grab both with your left hand, almost...

"Is that a fly rod?"

"Eh, um, uh. Sure is."

I sounded like a diesel turning over. I started and stalled. Then my knot fell apart. I was officially exasperated.

I looked up, and took a deep breath. I tied my best to curb my attitude, but nearing minute 10 in my knotty battle, my patience had long begun to wane.

"Right. That's right, this is a fly rod. A 4 weight fly rod."

"Oh, that's great. You know, there's excellent fly fishing where I'm from."

"Oh yeah?" She was a kind-looking lady, aging gracefully in spite of her Marlboros. She had a really pretty dog, and it was most excited to be pet.

"Where are you from?" I asked. Not expecting her to say.

"Jackson."

She knew, that I knew, that she was not talking about Jackson, Mississippi.

"Really." Not the kind of "really" that one might say as a question - the rising "rEALLY?"

No, I said it as a statement. She knew that I knew. And, we had a little moment over that.

"God's country," and we understood that to be our goodbye.

She moseyed west, and I returned to round three with my surgeon's knot. Thinking about Jackson, freestone streams, big sky and clear, crisp mountain air, I managed to nail my surgeon's knot.

Jari showed up. After 30 minutes of fishing I had tried my go-to bugs with nothing to show for it. On top of a rock, I had a shot at the Central Park equivalent of bone fishing. I saw a crusing bass. Big for this pond - 4 lbs, maybe, swimming lazily, but with direction across the top of the murky, blown-out pond. I scrambled, and with just enough line off the spool I shot a cast on top of her nose.

Damn. Not even a wooly bugger right in her grill. It was exciting, but I really wanted the take. Damn.

We spent an hour throwing all sorts of differnt bugs to no avail. A first! I've never been skunked here, but perhaps the pond, filled with silt from the recent heavy rains, wasn't too fishy.

We moved on.

Through the park we walked north and east, our fly rods in tact.

We passed a guy, seated on a park bench. It was after I passed him that I realized that he was rolling a joint. No matter, by my next step he called us.

"Hey, you going fishin heeya?"

Neither of us wanted to stop, so we slowed to a sort of sidestep, tacitly engaging in a brief discussion while not committing to a coversation. We crept and responded.

"Ha, yeah. Not today, but we'll see at the next spot."

"You eat dem?"

"Na, no, no. We don't eat them," Jari answered.

We began to turn and walk, and I reiterated.

"We don't eat them. We just like to torture them with these bugs."

We continued along the path, meandering past the baseball fields and alongside the speeding, bespandexed cyclists. Jari told me stroies about cycling in the park. I told him it looks scary. Then, as if on cue, a fit, older gentleman screached a halt beside us.

"You guys going to the Meer?" He asked as if he knew something. This stranger knew what we wer up to, and he had something to share. His helmet and glasses couldn't contain his excitement. You could tell that he loved the fact that we were fly fishing up here.

We said yes, and that we had been at the other pond with no luck, only that I blew my one shot at a big fish.

He didn't like our idea. We learned that the Meer wasn't our best bet, and that if we really want to catch some big fish, we have to fish the Boat pond. Woolybuggers and a short 6 weight are the weapons of choice, but you have to go really early to beat the crowds, especially in the summer.

He sped off, and we continued. A little discouraged about fishing the bastard child of Central Park's ponds. We arrived, and the fishing was plenty slow.

But as the sun sank, we could see fish feeing near the surface. With all the gunk on the water I really couldn't tell what they were feeding on. And again we resorted to chucking and changing. I exhausted most of my options for distance, angle, and presentation with each fly, cutting and tying often to see what would work.

Finally, near dark, Jari hooked up with a micro bass. A persistent man approached and asked Jari if he could have the fish. He's a heck of a guy, I doubt I would have been so patient. Jari calmy explained why he could not give him the fish - that it would be bad for him, bad for the pond, and bad for the fish. Bad for everyone. I'm not sure if he acquiesed, but the man finally went on his way after watching the wee bass make for freedom.

I had one hit, a tiny bass, but I wasn't paying attention. I lost it.

We packed up at dark, and wrote text messages, carefully worded to explain our whereabouts and ETA. We made tentative plans for the Boat pond, but agreed that the evening had been a good one in spite of a poor showing. It's a refrain. A theme, of sorts. Even Jari's microbass means that we're something right.

Salty Purists...

I didn't even think about bringing my spin gear on this trip. Armed with my fancy new St. Croix 8wt., I've reaffirmed my committment to catching bass and blues on the fly. With my Salty companeros I went back to the scene of my first solo bass success on the fly.

We arrived early at a park on the North Shore. On a swift outgoing tide we flogged the water for hours. Poppers, clousers, deceivers, you name it. We threw everything we had at them. No bass. No blues.

At the swiftest part of the tide we each varied our offerings and our retrieves. While stripping a 2" olive on white clouser low in the water column over the dropoff at the channel's edge, I hooked up with an 'ole family favorite. A fluke, how appropos. A short one at that, but my hands were fishy and that spells modest success on a slow day.

At the bottom of the outgoing a well-armed father-son fishing duo arrived with 9' Lamiglass rods with slick Van Staals, each tipped with a tin. Four casts into his stay the elder came tight with a 22" bass. Most of the boats in the area were looking exlusively for fluke, but most were pulling up sea robins. Our only evidence of present bass was the one fooled by the surf caster's tin.

What were we doing wrong? Were the bass in there all along? What were we doing wrong?

Later we fished some private beach at the back of the bay. It was a weird afternoon, comfortable, but threatening clouds began to build. Again, we beat the super fishy, structure-filled water into submission. Nothing, not even the hole I had previously had success in with a chartreuse on white deceiver. 

All in all it was a positive day. We  learned a lot about the holes, applying Ed Mitchell's wisdom on ingress and egress routes to and from fishy flats. We'll  be back - armed with our fly gear and the resolve to figure it out.

Make Your Bait Attractive...

Aunt Eileen had the same joke on every trip on the Capt. Gillen from Captree.

"Make yaw bait attractive," she'd say in the most unattractive voice she could muster. She'd chuckle and then shove the business end of a Eagle Claw through the poor, limp spearing's eye and into a clam belly.

Indeed, Aunt Eileen. Truer words were never spoken. Make your bait attractive. That's what we set out to do, however me and my purist brother have since eschewed bait fishing (except if you're jigging live shrimp with Capt. Sid in Islamorada, that doesn't count, that's classy and fun). 

Make your bait attractive. My brother, the scientist, one of America's brightest, insists on attractive bait. The man can walk a Rebel Minnow and wreak havoc with a Smack It Jr. And on a day when the bass are sparse and spread outspread out, on the prowl for sand eels, shrimp, crabs, whatever. The spring tide was up and the estuary had filled with clean water from the Gulf of Maine. The fish were in, but something was weird. There were few signs of feeding bass, and even fewer encounters with large schools of bait.

The tide was in our favor, but the weather was not. We paddled out early in the incoming tide. Straight into it really. There was a stiff breeze from the northeast; we did our best to paddle near the bank to abut the wind's persistent shove off the bow. We made slow progress to our first hole, but it wasn't too far. My brother chucked and plugged a Stillwater Smack It Jr. I threw a small deceiver, a herring pattern with big ole googly eyes. The incoming was starting pick up, creating strong rips around and between a spartina grass island.

Terry chucked his Smack It upstream into the current. It chugged along per the manufacturer's instructions. My brother does everything with mechanical precision - his MIT mind creates mini experiments. He's constantly calculating, and somehow he's able to log and recall what works in each hole on certain tides. It's my second time on this stretch of water, and I insist on making life difficult with my 8 wt. New water with unproven fly tactics - not a recipe for a spectacular day of fly casting. With puritan flyrodder blinders I flogged the water, stripping across the current, covering the middle and lower parts of the water column. Slow long stips, fast short strips. Upstream, downstream. I wasn't too effective. Meanwhile, the surface exploded twice behind my brother's efficient plug. Each fish slammed the plug, but we didn't manage a hook up. We moved on, convinced that the fish were still feeding closer to the river inlet.

We pushed on into the tide. The sun ducked in and out of the overcast sky. It was a stormy day, stiff winds and threatening clouds lingered all day. Our second spot was far more promising than our fist. We made our way behind a series of islets, pulling up to a ripping channel. Fishy fishy water. Something out of an Ed Mitchell diagram - a rip of cool, bait-filled water from the Gulf.

This was the only time we saw bait and fish in the same place all day. While drifting the rip we pitched towards the grass, (yes, i inssited on complicating things by casting a fly from the drifiting canoe, and no, it was not stable nor safe) as if we were fishing for largemouth in the Ozarks. Three chugs into a 40 ft. cast, Terry's Smack It was murdered by a ninja bass - never saw it coming. Terry's rod bent, but this time he had the drag dialed in. Our first of the day, and she's a pretty one; dark brown along her dorsal, a well-fed, non-resident fish stopping over on her trip north.

I put my fly rod down. My traditionalist ego hurt, I switch to a spinner. I missed my first fish shortly after. I finally managed my first, a nice 25" fish caught from the canoe. In all the excitement I suppose I really forgot about my fly rod, because I smashed the tip of my 8 wt. Redington in two. It took some time to suppress the sinking, searing disappointment turned embarrassment. I demolished my first saltwater 8 wt. - my brother would later assuage my conscious and remind me that I really needed a new one anyway - that I had outgrown it. 

What a good brother.

We found fish on the backside of the tide. We fished the outgoing and the incoming tides. The fishing wasn't stellar, but the fish were around. The struck most heavily on or around the last hour of the tide.

More than anything I learned the importance of paying close attention to what you do and how you do it. My brother's attention to detail no doubt yields more fish, and in that spirit I've started a new fishing log to record my exploits for posterity. 

These here posting are accounts of fishing trips past, present and future. I get my time on the water when I can. I'd fish every day if I could, but being a city dweller on Central Park North, I have to cram as much fishing as possible into weekend marathons.