Sunrise over Knoxville

Time’s Up—Watch Out!

2011-12-21T08:24:00.001-08:00

As an avid reader of The Economist, I like to glance through the advertisements. It’s interesting, though unsurprising, the degree to which the ads are targeted toward white dudes in the rich world—investment opportunities, MBA programs, expensive booze, luxury cars, and jewelry. Something that has stuck out to me lately is the abundance of ads for watches. Yeah, those things that tell you what time it is. Timex and Casio aren’t paying for the expensive ad space here. Rather, luxury watchmakers are buying the ads. In the most recent issue, both sides of the first page are devoted to watches—Rolex on page one, Louis Vuitton on page two.

I can’t help but wonder: who needs a watch these days? Haven’t these things fallen into obsolescence? Everyone with a cellular device, and certainly everyone who reads The Economist, is walking around with a time-keeping device in his/her pocket. The only somewhat unique functionality that still exists with the wristwatch is found on $10 Wal-Mart models, but not the ones that cost thousands of dollars (or euros). The stopwatch feature on el-cheapo digital models still serves a purpose. Sure, cellular devices have built-in stopwatches, but sometimes this might not be convenient to hold the phone and look at the stop watch. Without a digital screen, Rolex does not have this useful feature. So seriously, time’s up—watch out.

Corporate Control in America

2011-12-19T14:16:00.000-08:00

If you think that corporations have the interests of the public at heart, then:

a) you are fucking stupid

b)your voting rights should be revoked.

So I was at the grocery store the other day, and the level of corporate control in America was quite blaring as I looked at the selection of crackers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) exists to ensure our safety. In theory, the administration acts to prevent the dangers of capitalist expansion and corporate greed from negatively impacting us. But as corporate control has infiltrated the political system in recent decades, the influence of corporate America has rendered thoughts of an independent regulatory agency obsolete. As such, we get this:

Deceptive marketing practices! I want to note that I can’t stand to hear citizen-turned-dietician-and-epidemiologist drive me up the wall, but seriously? Transfats are pretty well documented to not be good for humans to consume. Among scientists working in this area (sans industry-sponsored researchers), the evidence seems to be quite clear. The FDA knows this, yet this shit is sanctioned. 0 grams transfat per serving does not mean there are no transfat molecules (or whatever the things are). Rather, by putting small serving sizes on the package, food-packaging corporations are allowed to round down and intentionally deceive consumers. But I guess this isn't much of a surprise...

Baseball and the new OBS stat

2011-07-31T11:28:00.000-07:00

My hatred for baseball is based mainly on the major league variety, so I’ve made several exceptions recently and attended several baseball games at a variety of levels. Not surprisingly, the entertainment value declines as the quality increases. The best was a Little League game (other than the “I trust in god… pledge at the beginning), followed by A, then AAA. Comparing the A to AAA games proved to be interesting. It’s amazing how the players become lazier and get more coddled as they work their way up the ranks. In the A game, when balls got past the catcher, the dude in the on-deck circle went and picked up the ball. When a similar situation arose in AAA, no way was the guy moving from the on-deck circle. Lots of ball boys for that. The umpire disparity was also interesting. I assumed that MLB sanctioned games had a standard number of umps, but not so. In A, there’s only one field umpire. In AAA there are two. Rumor has it there’s one for every base in the Big Leagues, but I’m not going to an MLB game this century.

So I meant to bitch about something I saw at a baseball game, so I best get to it. Remember a decade or two ago when batters just had a batting average—on the scoreboard, the dude’s picture came up, his performance throughout the night, and his cumulative batting average? My how things have changed… Next came ‘on-base percentage’—definitely unnecessary, but it serves a purpose that isn’t reflected in the batting average. I’ll let you off the hook for that one, MLB. But then things took a turn for the worse. Do you know what slugging percentage is? Exactly…no one does. Another three digit percentage to throw up on the scoreboard between 0 and 1. At the AAA game over the weekend, I couldn’t help but notice that the scoreboard has to flash between two pages of numbers. I didn’t know what the hell any of them were, but I remembered one of them when I got home and looked it up.

OBS. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or puke, so I just didn’t do anything when I found out what this fucking three letter acronym implies: it is a summation of one’s on-base- and slugging percentages. That’s right, to add a column on the scorecard, there is now a statistic that merely adds two unrelated (and already pretty unnecessary) stats together. Given the range of both on-base- and slugging percentages of 0-1, this stupid trivial addition doesn’t even stop at one. Someone’s OBS could be 1.62. Wow, I’m impressed. Honestly though, I’m quite interested to see how long it takes until I am in a location where ESPN is on and the commentators are comparing players’ OBS stats. Fucking idiots.

To demonstrate how dumb the idea of performing basic arithmetic operations to combine various independent statistics is, I’ve create a little three question quiz. You, dear reader, try to figure out what the numbers stand for.

1) 97

2) 2.82

3)2.853

Answers:

1). 97 is Sidney Crosby’s PIMP total. His penalty minutes (PIM) (31) plus points (P) (66) added together for no good reason.

2). 2.82 is Lebron James’s ratio of points per game to rebounds per game for the 2011 playoffs. Why divide these numbers? …then again, why not? Be on the lookout at a Cavs game next season on the scoreboard for the PPG/RPG stat. It’s destined to make it up there soon.

3). 2.853 OK, this is a tough one. I admit it. This is Roberto Clemente’s lifetime batting average (.317) multiplied by his position number (9 for right field), or CBAPN. Look for it in baseball archives sometime soon.

Etiquette

2011-06-30T12:16:00.001-07:00

Knowing and displaying proper etiquette in any situation would be an impossibility. For different events occasions, and situations, there are varying social norms to accompany them. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that any person would have an adequate understanding of how conduct him/herself appropriately in all situations. Burping and slurping, for instance, are commonly perceived as rude in most Western dining scenarios. A Westerner, then, would likely be offended, as well as not burp or slurp, in a burping-appropriate situation. That’s understandable. These misunderstandings are destined to occur.

On the other hand, in intra-cultural situations, our experiences can help us to understand what might be expected of us in a variety of situations. Or at least that is what I thought until two days ago. On back-to-back days, I found myself quite pissed off in two very different circumstances. A local park offers two things that I very much enjoy— fishing and Frisbee golf. In both instances, a lack of etiquette and common consideration by others pissed me off greatly. Perhaps the guilty parties were unaware of the “rules of the game.”

Day One: While standing on a gravel bar casting a popper at the edge of a rocky drop-off, some ungrateful fucking bastard not only got in the river way too close to me, but he then proceeded to wade directly through the area where I was casting.

Day Two: While playing a round of disc golf with my little brother, the course was quite crowded. By the fourth hole, we were stuck behind a foursome as we approached every tee box, and soon had people waiting behind us. Despite the bottleneck, every member of the foursome continued to throw multiple discs off the tee, as well as during all subsequent shot. Instead of only four discs flying off the tee, there were frequently 8-12 Frisbees in the air. Did I say something? No…why? Because I shouldn’t have to.

Even if the wading intruder and disc throwers were unfamiliar with the specific rules and social norms of their respective situations, the rude bastards in both instances could infer some expectations from other known scenarios…here are some examples of questions one might ask her/himself to determine acceptable behavior:

Since walking in between a deer and a hunter whose rifle is aimed at it isn’t a good idea, might this not apply to someone casting at a smallmouth bass?

If I miss a shot in the middle of a basketball game, does the opposing team allow me to walk to the bench, grab another ball, and attempt the shot again?

Would it be OK if I walked across the net on a tennis court in the middle of a rally, or might the players be bothered by this?

While driving my car, should I still proceed ahead if another car is approaching from the opposite direction in the same lane?

Is it OK to walk into a restaurant and eat the food from the plate of someone seated at another table?

If someone is pissing in a urinal, should I scoot in and pee in the same one, or should I go find some other place to urinate?

If a family lives in a house, should I back my moving van to the door and unload my stuff unannounced, or should I search for an unoccupied house?

See, it isn’t that hard! And these are only a few examples of questions one might ask, leading to the transfer of etiquette from known situations to others that are less familiar. If the scenarios mentioned above are unfamiliar to you, feel free to alter the structure of the questions and/or the scenarios mentioned to something more familiar to you. I strongly encourage you to give it a try, and stay outta my water and move along on the disc golf course, you inconsiderate pricks!

Maybe it will actually be humbling when I tell you that you’ve been using the word incorrectly

2011-06-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

I would like to first point out what a shame it is that ESPN has such a large influence on language and thought in wider society. Now that sports have become so enmeshed in popular culture and the everyday, terms and phrases used by athletes and coaches in widely broadcast interviews tend to first catch on within the athletic community, and subsequently diffuse outward to wider society. I first picked up on this a few years back when I found myself cringing after every Steelers postgame show. I’d estimate that 75% of interviews contained the phrase “It is what it is.” Coach Mike Tomlin’s percent usage neared 100%. Wow, thanks for pointing that out! This meaningless phrase rivals the classic, “Well that may or may not be the case…” Are there any other options? Something either is or it isn’t, and I suppose that everything “is what it is” (unless you are a Foucauldian poststructuralist).

The term that I’ve been picking up on recently (well actually my girlfriend pointed this out) is the misuse of the word humble and its variants. So we should first discuss what humble actually means…here are three definitions from Dictionary.com:

1. not proud or arrogant; modest: to be humble although successful.

2. having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.: In the presence of so many world-famous writers I felt very humble.

3. low in rank, importance, status, quality, etc.; lowly: of humble origin; a humble home.

So when some athlete, actor/actress, etc. wins an award, what does s/he say in their follow-up speech or interview? Something to the effect of, “It’s so humbling to be [insert scenario here].” When one has just been given the league MVP award, how could s/he be humbled? The person has just been told that s/he is the best in the business (at least for the year), making it rather unlikely that said person feels: 1) not proud; 2) insignificant or inferior; and 3) low in rank, importance, status, and quality. If the term was used appropriately, the stock statement would actually read, “It’s so unhumbling to be [insert scenario here].” So to all future MVPs, Oscar winners, pick up a dictionary before giving your acceptance speeches. I hope I’ve just actually humbled you.

Wedding Showers

2011-06-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

I spent a few hours this morning trying to think of an event dumber than a wedding shower, but I came up empty. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise; my attempt was a mere formality. I already knew that wedding showers were the dumbest event created by modern capitalism, even worse than Valentine’s Day and baby showers. Wedding showers serve no unique purpose—there is already the upcoming wedding that is to be celebrated. At least in the case of baby showers, there is no other formal, gift-giving event when the baby pops out. I believe that wedding showers are events solely for females, so the bachelorette party is not unique in this regard. If I am wrong and males can partake in wedding showers, I can guarantee three things:

1). I will not acknowledge receipt of the invitation

2). I will not go

3). I will not send a gift

What an unnecessary burden added to the huge list of things that a wedding party is already obligated to do. I want to close by offering the same piece of advice given to elementary school kids during health class lessons on drugs: If you are ever put up to the task of hosting a wedding shower, JUST SAY NO!

Cell Phones: Good for Most, But Not All

2011-02-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

It would be difficult to argue that cellular technology has not collectively made our lives better. The convenience and flexibility that cell phones provide makes it difficult to imagine our lives with landlines, which were common until almost a decade ago. Thinking back to those days when we had to be in a fixed location in order to make or receive a phone call makes me shiver. During my first year of grad school, I did not have a cell phone—mainly to prove a point as part of a long term bet with a friend—so checking my phone messages in the evening was preceded by a four mile bike ride from the university to my apartment. This accounted for a lot of frustration among my cell-enabled peers because I was almost impossible to contact.

Like most other technologies, at least initially the cell phone was a costly product, and thus was limited to a wealthy subset of the population. Over time, the cost of both handsets and service diminished as the technology was scaled and subsequently diffused down the income hierarchy; cell phones became increasingly common among people of all income brackets. Due to credit constraints, many potential cell phone customers were unable to obtain the standard month-to-month plans. Businesses such as TracPhone emerged primarily to serve the subset of the population who lacked creditworthiness, as well as people who wanted access to cellular technology only in the event of an emergency. This often translated into storing a phone with prepaid minutes in the glove box of a vehicle in case of car trouble.

This was the way that the cell phone evolved and diffused in much of the developed world. With existing landline infrastructure in place, making the collective leap to a wireless society proved to be a slow process. This is consistent with virtually all new technological adoption when an existing system is in place that accomplishes pretty much the same objective, more or less. Through diffusion and increased adoption, the existing system—the landline—started to fall into obsolescence.

This narrative, however, does not play out in the same ways when an existing infrastructure is not in place. A great example of this is the African continent, the poorest continent on earth, and thus the last place that we might expect to see a new technology take hold. Because in most countries in Africa landline coverage was poor at best and millions of people remained without access to a fixed line, there was not an existing infrastructural system that the cellular phone had to compete with. Further, providing wireless phone coverage proved to be far cheaper and easier to administer than following the same evolutionary path of the telephone that we experienced here in America. As a result, the percentage of African citizens with cellular phones is much higher than we would expect to see if we assumed the same evolutionary trajectory that most developed nations experienced (see Internet World Stats for more info).

However, as I argued that the adoption of cellular telephones has collectively made our lives better, here in the United States there is a specific subset of the population who is probably worse off because of this watershed shift in how we communicate. Dependent children of lower income single-parent families now have far less access to a telephone than their counterparts of only a decade ago. Why?

Cell phones have more or less become a necessity for adult Americans. In the case of those adults in the lowest income brackets, this has meant getting a cell phone and getting rid of the land line. The personal convenience of the cell phone is much more attractive than a fixed, in-home line, not to mention the often too high cost of having both a cellular and landline telephone. And because many such individuals lack the creditworthiness necessary to get a standard month-to-month calling plan, many lower-income individuals have to resort to the more expensive pay-as-you-go plans. Added to this is the fact that when one’s minutes expire, there can be an indefinite period of downtime for a user’s account. Consider also that single parents in the lowest echelons of the income hierarchy frequently work multiple jobs and nonstandard hours in order to make ends meet. The convenience of the cell phone—it’s small and fits in one’s pocket—means that, in all likelihood, the head of the household—the parent of dependent children in this case—is likely to have the phone with her/him while at work. During all working hours then (or at any other time when parent is not physically present with children), dependent children lack access to any form of voice communication. At the most basic level, this is highly problematic in the sense that if any emergency arises at home while parent is out of the house, a child in such a situation is now without a means to contact emergency services. With a landline, this problem simply did not exist. Furthermore, there are negative consequences related to socialization and communication with peers. If the phone is away from the home, a kid has no way to communicate with friends and make plans to hang out, etc., which creates a feedback loop that continues to further disadvantage a child.

So cell phones have made life better when we view the aggregate effects of the technology, but as often occurs when we look at averages, a more nuanced understanding of what is going on within this average is lost. In this case, the communicative capabilities of poor children, especially those residing in single-parent households, are lost in the technological transition that our society has undergone in the last decade.

Down Goes Brutus...Down Goes Brutus

2010-09-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

In case you haven’t heard, the Ohio University mascot, Rufus the bobcat, took down the OSU mascot, Brutus, in the pregame festivities this past weekend. It took a lot of effort for Rufus to take the inedible nut down, but his second effort in the end zone brought Brutus to the ground. The incident was, to say the least, hilarious. The person behind the Rufus mask, who is not even a student at Ohio University, spent an entire year in costume for the sole purpose of attacking the Buckeye mascot. Incredible dedication to carry out an awesome, pretty pointless takedown.

The only problem with the whole incident has been the response. It has been taken far, far too seriously. It was a joke, no one was injured, and it provided a light-hearted laugh for thousands of people (who spent the next 3.5 hours watching a boring, uncompetitive football game). An official apology issued by the OU administration about the incident? Unbelievable. If an official statement regarding the mascot tackle was given, it should have been something like this: “Dude, yeah, that was fuckin’ funny, wasn’t it?” End of story. If anything, the outcome of the comedic scene was positive in that it might have boosted the intensity of the friendly, lopsided rivalry (if you can even call it that) that exists between the two schools. Considering how boring football has become due to five minute TV timeouts before and after every kickoff, mascot fights should be encouraged to increase the excitement of an increasingly dull experience. As long as no one gets hurt—which, by the way, is highly unlikely with at least a foot of foam padding protecting mascots—let ‘em fight.

Bowling? I'll Pass...

2010-09-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

My take on bowling?...it sucks. I went last night for a friend’s birthday party, marking my first bowling outing in over a decade. I didn’t think that I liked it when I walked into the alley last night and looked (and smelled) the place. It didn’t take long to remember why I don’t like rolling a stupid fucking ball down a few planks of wood. For starters…the shoes. They stink, and made the blisters on my toes feel even worse. The thought of needing special shoes for a game that requires taking two or three steps, rolling a 10-15 pound ball down a lane, and then sitting back down in a chair is idiotic.

OK, so here’s the real problem. I remember from when I went bowling as a little kid that the cost was something like this: a buck for shoe rental, and $1.20 for each game. So I walked up to the counter and told the worker what I wanted: two pairs of shoes (one for me, one for my girlfriend), and two bowling games for each of us. From my past, dated mistakes of going bowling, I anticipated that the price was going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $7.00-$10.00. Wow, was I ever wrong. The young clerk told me that my total was $33.47. In hindsight, it seems like I should have put up a bit of a fight, or at least questioned the absurdity of paying over thirty bucks to wear those fuckin’ clown shoes and roll a ball. Here’s why I didn’t. Given my anticipation of the potential price, the $33+ was way beyond the “what the fuck” price. If she had said a price of $20, I would have responded with a “what the fuck.”
The thirty-three buckaroos, though, it was so insane that I just slowly handed my credit card over. The feeling was quite similar to when I touched the metal prong on a coffee maker plug that was still partially in the socket—I got electrocuted. The bowling alley counter experience gave me a similar sort of zap.

Next…the multiplier effect in scoring. This is dumb. Two straight birdies in golf doesn’t subtract ten extra strokes from one’s score, back-to-back homeruns in baseball doesn’t add ten runs to a team’s score, two straight three-pointers in basketball doesn’t involve any stupid point additions, but not so in bowling. It’s the only sport dumb enough where missing two or three pins doesn’t simply reduce one’s score by two or three points.

The cosmic experience? Awful. About midway through our second game, all of a sudden the lights dimmed, neon and black lights came on, and I think maybe a disco ball dropped from the ceiling. Worse yet, a video screen came down over my lane and horrible music videos started playing. To me, this is similar to putting a lime in a Corona beer, an attempt to enhance an experience by adding something pleasurable to an awful base. Corona sucks with or without the lime, as does bowling.

Fly Fishing...and the Skills that Develop Alongside the Sport

2010-08-29T18:58:00.001-07:00

Fly fishing is an extremely difficult sport, one that takes many, many years of persistence for one to become somewhat viable. Sure, it is possible for someone to go to Wal-Mart, get a cheap rod, whack the water a few times, and manage to catch fish in a specific location or situation. But a person who does this doesn’t get it. An accomplished fly fisher is one who has a huge (and always growing) knowledge base of everything from insects and currents to presentation and casting strokes, and is able to show up in pretty much any situation and figure things out, more or less. So I guess what I am trying to say is that this stuff is hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

I’m not a professional guide, nor do I aspire to ever become one. The main reason that I’ve never been interested is money. Yes, the money that a guide makes is respectable, but I just couldn’t stomach taking someone out for a day of fishing who paid more than $350 for it. It would be far too stressful for me. If the client didn’t have an epic day of fishing, I would feel guilty about it. I do, however, enjoy taking people fishing (people I like, that is). My clientele is composed primarily of friends and family, though I did randomly “guide” some guy for about a week who I met while working at a deli in West Yellowstone.

I’ve been fishing for more than fifteen years, and I still find it to be really tough, though I’m certainly in a better place than I was when I was thirteen. That said, the thought of taking someone who has no idea what in the hell she or he is doing is a bit scary, but it’s rewarding at the same time. How in the hell can someone who hardly knows which end of the rod going to catch any fish? The actual fly fishing aspect of taking someone fly fishing is hard enough, but while I was doing some mediocre fishing in shitty Ohio today, I got to thinking about the many things that going fly fishing requires, but aren’t technically part of the sport, that are just as hard. In addition to knowing about things like mending, entomology, currents, fish behavior, and the multitude of other things that come to mind when I think of fishing, there’s so much more that is required in order to be a good fly fisher. Things that don’t involve casting, and might not even involve the water where one is ultimately going to fish. It’s easy to overlook these non-fishing, yet fishing-related things when taking someone fishing who is new to the sport, though these things can be the source of as much frustration as when your father loses ten fuckin’ flies on ten casts to the some rhododendron bush.

Here are some of the things I’m talking about:

Wading. Once you’ve spent years in the water, casting while walking through a river, you get really good at wading. You don’t know this. It just becomes natural. After all, it’s nothing more than walking in the water. Give anyone a pair of wading boots and they can trudge along beside you through any creek or river, right? Hardly. Wading skills develop so subtly, yet are so important. Just as there are rivers that aren’t suitable for first-year fly fishers (like the Henry’s Fork, for example), so too are there rivers that are not really suitable for first-year waders. Remember this when you are thinking about where to take someone. I took my father to a fairly small stream in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (it doesn’t suck, so I won’t tell you what stream I’m talking about), and I figured we’d hike up it away from the road, and fish a mile or so of the pocket water. Two hours later, we were about twenty yards upstream from where we started, and we spent the majority of the time not fishing, but holding hands as I guided him through the creek. Something to think about…

But at least you and your guest will be on a level playing field when you are simply walking to wherever it is you are planning to fish…or maybe not. Just like wading, fly fishers unknowingly develop another pretty amazing skill: walking through the woods with a nine foot stick. Yeah, this is actually really difficult. The next time you get off of a trail and climb through brush, think about the amount of thought and dexterity it requires. It reminds me of that game at county fairs where you try to put the metal hoop all the way through that swirling wire (see below).

If you don’t believe me, try letting your client carry a rod as you bushwhack your way to a river. It ain’t going to be pretty. I promise.

Another thing: map reading. Let’s face it: most people are not good at reading maps. Fly fishers (or serious ones at least) develop the skill of reading a topographic map with the specific idea of fishing in mind. While driving along a river, a serious fly fisher will know how to interpret the landscape in the context of where that tributary supposedly flows into such and such river on the far side of the road, and will be able to do this while driving and reading a Delorme Atlas and Gazetteer at the same time.. Your non-fishing companion won’t be able to do this. Therefore, don’t take your client on a wild goose chase that might require him or her to pick up the map. You’ll be way too frustrated even before you start fishing.

So as it turns out, fly fishers, in their pursuit of catching fish on flies, become quite skilled at a variety of other things, too. Try to remember all of your abnormal skills so that you don’t mistakenly assume that your companion can find a tributary on a topo map, cross a fast riffle, or even manage to carry a rod to the river.

Short Guy Syndrome in Fly Shops

2010-08-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

Not all fly shops are located adjacent to world class waters. Sure, there are lots of shops in West Yellowstone, freshwater fly fishing’s unofficial mecca, nearby Bozeman, and along the Henry’s Fork, to cite but a few examples of shops in first rate fly fishing destinations. The vast majority of shops, however, are not in such privileged positions. Many fly fishing stores exist in locations where, to be frank, the fishing sucks. This is not a bad thing though; rather, I see it as a positive, reinforcing the fact that enthusiasm for the sport is widespread and can exist away from fly fishing greatness.

As a shop owner in a less desirable location, it would be easy to become insecure of a shop’s position in the fly fishing hierarchy. Just accept it. Don’t go gettin’ all defensive and trying to justify your shop as being able to compete in any respect. Failure to accept and embrace one’s second- or third-rate status as a shop is silly. It’s what I call short guy syndrome (SGS) in the fly fishing industry. What can really exacerbate this already problematic situation is if the shop manager has his own personal case of SGS. This is the shit I’ve been dealing with here for the better part of the year that I’ve been in Columbus, and more recently elsewhere as well.

So yeah, I live in Central Ohio. There are no mountains here, very few cold water streams that can support populations of trout. As far as warm water species, regardless of what fish you might be seeking, I can guarantee you that there is a better place to pursue whatever fish you are after than anywhere in Ohio. That’s just the way it is. I accepted this the second I moved here, and so should everyone else, especially fly shop owners and workers. Trying to distort this and put Ohio at the top of any fishing hierarchy is deceptive, outright wrong, and most importantly, a pretty poor strategy for marketing your business. All it serves to do is create a strong sense of disappointment to anglers receiving advice from such a misguided source. Among the many bullshit blanket statements I’ve heard from the manager of the local fly shop in my area, here are but a few:

“Ohio is one of the best trout fishing states in the country. We have more pounds of trout than any other state.” Bullshit. Compared to thousands of trout waters in many other states, Ohio appears to have precisely three waters with resident trout, only one of which occurs without human interaction: the Mad River, a spring creek. Apparently what the shop manager was referring to in the “pounds of trout” was the migratory steelhead run out of Lake Erie, when large rainbow trout come out of the lake to spawn. Even in the Great Lakes system, this is incorrect. Michigan, for example, has far more streams that receive these migratory runs than Ohio, not to mention the many more streams with resident trout. Furthermore, the Pacific Ocean drainage states that get the much larger ocean-run fish clearly blow Ohio out of the water. The most important point to be gleaned from this statement is this: anyone who uses odd wording/qualifiers like ‘pounds of trout’ is a douche…plain and simple.

“Our largemouth bass fishing operation at The Wilds is one of the top ten fly fishing destinations in the country.” First of all, just a ‘fuck you’ to that. What he was referring to is a series of lakes that are stocked with largemouth bass on an idiotic game preserve with exotic animals (such as elephants, rhinos, and zebras) in the eastern part of the state. Largemouth bass are a warm-water fish. Therefore, they grow to the largest sizes in places where it is warm…not Ohio. Better bass fishing opportunities can be had in any of the Sunbelt states. Furthermore, how are these top destinations determined? B y him? I am fairly confident that there are ten spring creeks in central Pennsylvania alone that are the destination of more anglers than the exotic animal park. After all, who would want to risk getting stampeded by rhinos or stepping in giraffe shit while casting deer hair poppers.

“We’re quickly becoming the best muskie state in the country.” No you aren’t…really. Certainly the muskellunge lives here, and it might be a decent place to fish for them, but other places are far better. The last time I checked, there are precisely zero fishing lodges in Ohio specializing in muskie fishing. Minnesota is a muskie fishing destination for a reason. The fishing is better there.

In addition to these incorrect, sweeping claims the shop owner likes to make, then comes the more everyday assertions of awesomeness.

Me: How’s the fishing been lately?

Shop Guy: Man, it’s been awesome. Yeah, it’s been so good. Everything is fishing really well around here.

I was quite surprised to hear this, given that I fish in the area a good bit, and it had not been anything to write home about, at least not for me. I decided to do some probing to figure out exactly what he was talking about. I asked how the Mad River was fishing, and he conceded that it was far too low, and almost unfishable. Olentangy? It had been muddy for weeks, he said. Hmmm…he then began to talk about hearing great reports about a nearby three acre reservoir that is dyed to appear a light blue, awfully fake color—typical shit for a park in the ‘burbs. Pristine. Next came the awesome prognosis of a group of ponds in the center of a large suburb. I had to ask if he personally had fished it lately. He hadn’t…in fact, he offered that he hadn’t been to the ponds in probably ten years. How in the hell can a worker at a fly shop be giving advice about great fishing based on ten-year-old information? The recently awesome fishing report was based on decade-old info about fishing behind McMansions? Odd. I decided to head to these ponds, only to discover that a lot had changed in the last decade. No longer were the ponds open to the public. It took me a long time of driving around curvilinear streets to actually locate them, but the most prominent feature around the ponds were “No Tresspassing: Violators Will Be Prosecuted.” It might be time for the shop to update its database of possible places to fish.

More recently, my girlfriend and I embarked on a pretty awesome three-week journey, mainly to Montana. We spent the first half of it fishing the awesome waters in and around Yellowstone National Park, and having a great time in the process. We planned to head north from there to visit Glacier National Park. We’d be warned by friends and employees of fly shops in West Yellowstone that the fishing in Glacier was minimal. “Fish in Yellowstone, sightsee in Glacier” was the line we frequently heard. Given that we are pretty serious fly fishers, we discounted their advice, confident that we would find fishing greatness in the area. En route to the park, we stopped in at an Orvis shop in the town of Whitefish (nicknamed Stumptown for some unknown reason). The Orvis affiliation was a good tipoff to what was in store for us. (In West Yellowstone, the unofficial capital of freshwater fly fishing, there are no official Orvis shops. Coincidence? I think not.)

And so we entered the shop and were greeted by the single employee there. Immediately, we were both a little put off by the shop worker’s bratty son playing with saws and power tools in the tying materials section…pretty weird. We immediately gave our introduction, letting him know that we knew nothing about the area, and were on our way up from the Yellowstone area. He kind of shuttered at this, almost laughing at us. The fishing in the Glacier area was far superior to the fishing in the greatest freshwater fly fishing destination in the world, he claimed. Hmmm… He then talked about the high degree of complexity involved in fishing the Whitefish/Glacier area. However, I then asked about what bugs might be good to use at that time of year, to which he responded, “Pretty much any attractor pattern will work.” Now that doesn’t exactly sound complex to me. It then became apparent that he knew next to nothing about fishing in Glacier Park. Odd. After some more downplaying and bashing of the fishing in the greater Yellowstone area, I had to interrupt him. I needed to know where we might go in order to take advantage of this twice-as-good-as-Yellowstone fishing. His advice: some wilderness area located 2.5 hours from Whitefish? What? The fishing was so good in the area that the best direction he could give us was to drive nearly three hours on dirt roads? That’d be similar to a shop in West Yellowstone telling a customer that in order to get into some good fishing, they better drive to the Missouri River below Houser Dam. Unbelievable.

The moral of the story. There are fly shops all over the place. This is a good thing. These shops, however, are not always located in areas of great (or even good) fishing. Not every place is Yellowstone. This needs to be accepted rather than twisting the story to incorrectly assert that some third-rate location is presented in a totally unrealistic manner. Suck it up and accept your lowly position in the fly fishing hierarchy.

Come On, Trebek!

2010-01-10T08:03:00.001-08:00

There's only one show I watch regularly on television: Jeopardy. It's the best thing that the tube has to offer, hands down. My girlfriend and I plan our days around it, and we rarely miss it. Competition is pretty fierce between us. No punches have ever been thrown, but physical altercations are common. Sadly, this quarter, we both have a class on Wednesday evenings, so we are down to four days a week. Bummer. There are two things, however, that have really been bothering me about the show.

Because it is a general trivia game, the categories could include pretty much anything in the world. Unfortunately, a whole lot of the world is left out, ignored by Jeopardy question writers. For what? Too much shit that rich, white, Christian people like. Given the nearly infinite number of potential topics, how is it that "high art", the Bible, opera, and classical music seem to appear multiple times each week? And why all the European royalty stuff? I propose the inclusion of things like gangster rap, Angolan history, finger painting, and an outright abandonment of the religious crap. There are millions of things outside the realm of rich, white, "God-fearing" people stuff to add to the mix.

I blame the question writers--not Trebek--for my above complaint, but for the next one, the blood is on your hands, Trebek!

There are only three things that can ruin my day: 1) when I get stuck in the grad student office with the annoying schmuck who sits behind me; 2) realizing that I don't have any more Quaker Oh's cereal to eat; and 3) when fuckin' Trebek spends too much time talking to the contestants and there are questions left on the board at the end of the round. Alex: no one cares about the contestants' "funny" stories or stupid hobbies. We want the questions: ALL of them. How I didn't have a stroke a few weeks ago when Trebek spent so much time asking a woman how best to weld a pipe joint that the entire 'National Parks' category was left on the board at the end of the first round...I'm just not sure.

Related to this time tragedy, there's been an increasing trend on Jeopardy of incorporating outside sponsors into the questions. These always include video clues which can take as much as twice as long to get through as it takes for normal questions, especially when the camera spends some extra time to capture the logo of the corporate sponsor (i.e. National Geographic). The result: more questions left on the board at the end of the round.

So listen up, Trebek: not everyone who watches your show is rich and white, nor are they Christian, and they certainly don't give a shit about opera. We don't care about the contestants or the corporate sponsorship; all we care about is screaming our answers at the television. Make sure every one of them is read from now on...no exceptions, not even if a woman knows how to solder and install pipes.

The Validity of the "Party School" Rankings

2010-01-08T12:45:00.000-08:00

NPR's This American Life did a recent segment on Penn State University, winner of Princeton Review's #1 Party School Award. In case you were unsure, allow me to be the first to tell you that this distinction is load of horse shit. Why? For many, many reasons.

First, when the host visits State College on a weekend night, she and her colleague "witness all kinds of alcohol-induced mayhem". Now that is unique. That doesn't happen at nearly every other college and university in the country. Penn State must be crazy. Sans MIT and Bob Jones "University," an observation of the street scene at 1:00 am around any college campus would yield similar sightings. I'm unimpressed. Visit my po-dunk, second-rate university on a Friday night, and you'll likely see worse. The lack of tact among the student population at my undergrad alma mater (or any other similar school) would make the PSU scene seem tame.

Tail gating and frat parties at Penn State. That place must be insane--probably the only school in the country with such craziness. And the real tip-off that this PSU is absolutely over-the-top, deserving of its top party school distinction: A Drinking School With A Football Problem! It must be like no other place in the country, no other school or city. But wait, this T-shirt slogan and "mantra" is not only present at every other Division I school in the country, but it's also found in cities across the country with professional sports franchises.

The "Number One Party School" is one of the dumbest distinctions I've ever encountered. Young people drink on the weekends, they drink shitty beer, and they do dumb things. Big fuckin' deal. If you are in Pennsylvania, go to Bucknell University, PSU, and a second-rate state school after 11:00 pm on a weekend and you'll see no difference in the amount of "partying". Stupid.

Forget Healthcare: Obama Should Have a Higher Priority

2009-12-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

Somehow, I managed to not hear about Obama going fly fishing when he was in Montana late this summer. This was probably because my girlfriend and I were fishing in Montana during that time, out of range of much news. We were actually catching fish. President Obama apparently hooked six fish, but didn't land any on the Gallatin River near Bozeman. CNN's Shawna Shepherd suggested that his introduction to the art could serve as a metaphor for his presidency, helping him to pitch his health care reform policy.

If President Obama learned what he could have from his first day on the water, he wouldn't be so worried about the health care reform package working its way through the senate. He would have put those worries on the back-burner and realized that he should focus on the higher-priority issue at hand: LEARNING HOW TO CAST!

Look at this slop. Poor grip on the rod, way more line in the air than any beginner could handle, and it looks like he was making a forward cast with the belly of the line still flying backward. Much work is needed here if you want to start sticking fish, Mr. Obama. It's little wonder that he didn't land any of the fish that ate his bugs. I'm sure there was way too much slack out to hook up properly.

Seriously though, great to see that he gave it a go. I would have suggested taking him to one of the tributaries of the Gallatin (maybe Taylor's Fork) where he would have actually caught some fish on dry flies. But unfortunately no one called me to ask where the president should go fishing.

Speaking of presidents fly fishing, did George Walker Bush ever give it a go? My guess is 'no'. If he went trout fishing, it would likely be for stocked fish in a pond, using cheese as bait with a Zebco push-button reel.

Statistical Drivel: The Deluge of Pointless Facts and Figures in Sports Commentary

2009-12-22T07:42:00.000-08:00

It seems that I’m developing a reputation for being critical of the increasing trend of sports commentary and analysis being plagued by otherwise irrelevant happenings by tying them to numbers that somehow make them unique. Gone are the days of sticking to standards such as "the Pittsburgh Steelers are the best franchise in NFL history, as evidenced by the storied franchise having too many Super Bowl ring to hold on a single hand". Replacing these are things like "And with this win here today, the San Diego Chargers have become the winningest team in October for the last four and a half years in games when they led by fourteen or more points at halftime." I don’t give a shit…seriously.

Back to my growing reputation as a critic of such things. I actually received a phone call earlier this evening with an update of a statistic quoted on tonight’s edition of Monday Night Football. History was made only a few hours ago as Todd Collins became only the third player in NFL history to go ten whole years between Monday Night Football appearances. Who knew, but more importantly, who in the fuck decided to look this up? Is there a website devoted to farming up pointless shit to feed to the commentators who don’t have anything worthwhile to say? If there is anything positive to glean from this, it’s that some drone working the night shift at the ESPN studios successfully sifted through a decade worth of MNF appearance data and discovered this earth-shattering happening.

In the future, it’d be nice if these inane facts were at least funny. For instance, things like "Todd Collins became only the third NFL player to score a TD (note: I’m not really sure who Mr. Collins is or what position he plays) after getting his scrotum stuck in his zipper while dressing for the game," (by the way, if you’ve never done that, it hurts) or "And with that takedown in the backfield, it marks only the second time that Casey Hampton has recorded a tackle for a loss in a game where he didn’t eat at least fourteen Bic Macs during pre-game warm-ups".

Probably the worst of the pointless drivel delivered by commentators is historical information that is used to build up the suspense in current games. Garbage like, "Well things don’t look good for the Colts right now. In the last two times they were down after three quarters in a playoff game, they ended up losing." Well guess what: those two times were several decades ago. None of the players are the same (some of them are probably dead), the coaching staff has changed hands seven times since then, and the franchise has been bought and sold half a dozen times. So what bearing do all of these suspenseful historical data have on the game at hand? None, of course. So, in the future, sports commentators, if you don’t have anything worthwhile to say, try saying nothing at all.

OK, I’m off to be the first person in my house to finish two beers during the week of Christmas when leading by at least one beer.

Debunking the Common Myth that Love is Immeasurable

2009-12-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

Don't waste your time providing me with these specifications. I don't give a shit.

Many people have claimed that love is indescribable, something that simply can’t be measured. This is utter nonsense. Love, in fact, can be put on a scale and calculated out to several decimal places. Love units are measured in a word we hear almost every day on television: carats. How much do you love your significant other? Put it on the jeweler’s scale and find out. A measly little speck of a diamond?—you’re probably fuckin’ the neighbor. Several love units (carats) worth of sparkling rock?—you’re really putting your heart on the line.

Every "holiday season"—the time of year when the purported son of some deity was born that has, throughout the course of a few thousand years, transformed into a period of senseless, excessive consumption by Americans—the largest jewelry corporations in America attempt to shame men into buying several love units for their significant others…all as a way of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. I’m confused. The pricing schemes of these diamond commercials are hilarious. In all of them, a woman is overcome with joy when she is presented with a large (high love unit content) diamond as a Christmas gift. After that, there’s a close-up shot of the dazzling diamonds with a message that prices start at $X dollars. But what man would be so unloving as to buy his love at only the minimum number of love units? How heartless.

In case it isn’t clear, I hate diamonds—what they stand for, their cost, the backs upon which they are mined, and the overall shallowness of the concept. Kay Jewelers is my most hated among diamond merchants. The slogan "Every kiss begins with Kay" is perhaps the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard. This either implies that a man shouldn’t start kissing his woman until he’s displayed the extent of his love through the number of love units he’s invested in. Or, the annoying one-line song that ends each commercial suggests that if you want to kiss your lovely lady, you should buy her a diamond each time prior to doing so. Either way, that’d be a pretty fucked up relationship.

Diamonds are forever? Nope, not true. The poor guys that bought those silly things for their lovers who went tubing on the Little River in East Tennessee found this out the hard way. Diamonds fall off of fingers. My girlfriend and I bumped into a group of guys with snorkeling masks on the river who spent their summer afternoons picking them up off of the bottom of the river. A more appropriate adage for the mineral might be "Diamonds are until she hits a big rapid and drops it into a B-grade trout stream".

I need diamonds like I need teeth in my asshole.

Yes Alanis, It is Ironic

2009-12-22T07:32:00.000-08:00

My car CD player—or actually, a ten-year old Sony discman connected to the car stereo via one of those tapes that goes into a car’s tape deck—started to get rather finicky on me. Believe it or not, it seems to only play CDs that are gold-colored. It doesn’t matter if it’s a burned disc or an actual store-bought CD, but if it ain’t gold, the discman ain’t gonna play it. While driving home from Syracuse the other day, I ran out of gold CDs to play, so I had to subject myself to listening to commercial radio. Before I get to where I’m going, I first want to say this: commercial radio sucks! The same general public that brought us eight years of Bush in the White House dictates what streams through the air waves, so this should come as no surprise.

Somewhere in the newly coined "Wilds" portion of Pennsylvania, I picked up a soft rock variety station. Alanis Morisette’s song Ironic came on the radio. While listening to the refrain, I couldn’t help but realize the irony of it. It is ironic that the refrain to a song centered on irony isn’t really ironic at all, at least not as per any of Merriam-Webster’s three definitions of the word. Since the first two definitions of ‘irony’ seem to yield no relevant information as to where Ms. Morisette was going with this, I’ll go with definition 3, which reads, "incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity". Specifically, I’ll refer to the line "It’s like rain on your wedding day". I just don’t see the irony in this. Certainly one would hope for the most pleasant weather on the wedding day, especially if the ceremony were to be held outside. However, to claim that pleasant weather is a normal or expected result is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps in some climates this might be true, but in many areas (i.e., anywhere in the Appalachians), this just isn’t the case. If the song were about opting to have an indoor ceremony in western PA due to the likely foul weather conditions, only to experience bright, sunny skies on the wedding day, then I’d see the irony in it. Get more geographically specific in your song writing, Alanis.

Hollywood On the Cheap

2009-11-17T10:11:00.000-08:00

Is California too far away? Don't worry: Hollywood is right here in Ohio, too.

This place is awesome!, an artifact of a bygone era in motel construction (and management). The price is right ($41.26 w/tax), and it was everything a motel along the shores of Lake Erie should be--outdated, without all of the amenities that we have come to expect from large national chains, quirky, yet functional. My girlfriend and I were a bit put off by the only review of the place on Google Maps, especially the mention of the rooms reaking of cigarette smoke. We requested to the owner that we get a genuinely smoke-free room, and we received a room that had not been smoked in. The Google Maps review of the place overstated several things (cleanliness, appearance, etc.), but the one thing that s/he did get right was the noise. The only drawback of this motel is that all of the wiring and piping do run through the ceiling, creating some rather odd noises during all hours of the day and night. For some, this might be a drawback, but for my girlfriend and I, this was all just part of the experience of staying at this EXTREMELY affordable motel of a previous era. If you are looking for a genuine Lake Erie experience, look no further--this is the ticket? You probably won't see Brad Pitt here, but this sure is Hollywood at its finest.

Note: The posted rate of the rooms is $60.00/night, but if you call in advance, you will be quoted the awesome price of $41.26, so be sure to get on the phone before you show up.

Portable Electronic Devices: Idiocy That Fits Conveniently in a Pocket

2009-10-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Portable electronic devices are stupid. Since that is essentially the argument that I’m here to make, I could have stopped at the first sentence, but I suppose I’ll keep going. These gadgets supposedly are here to make our lives better, but do they really? For one, most of these gadgets come with built-in GPS technology. On one hand, this makes navigation much easier and efficient, a real boon to our existence. The downside: people are no longer capable of reading maps, which, contrary to what some might say, is an important skill to have in life. (note: if you don’t believe me that people are incapable of reading maps, contact me after 3:48 tomorrow afternoon and I’ll elaborate. I’ll be teaching two labs that involve reading and interpreting maps to undergraduate students. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of anecdotes to support my assertion). There are times when the technology won’t be available (i.e., when the relatively short lifespan of most I-Phone-esque things’ batteries die), leaving GPS-dependent suckers in the dark. Seriously, maps still work quite well. My girlfriend and I just aimlessly cruised around the Mountain West for several weeks with nothing more than a road atlas.

Why else do these things suck. IPods and their now enormous storage capacities can nearly fit an entire record store onto a 2” x 4” unit. Having a huge music collection on one of these suckers could be nice. Where does the problem come in? When listening to it becomes your life. The amount of people who are now under the impression that their life is a soundtrack is sickening. While sitting in the OSU hot tub yesterday, the guy across from me frequently fiddled with his IPOD, making sure to capture the moment of sitting in a public hot tub with the perfect track. What a dipshit. Yes, it’s now the norm to walk across campus with the white headset stuck in the ears. I’m sure that drowning out all normal “noise” is good for one’s social development. Worse, people do this on bikes, too. How stupid is this? As if riding a bike in a sea of cars, all of which could easily kill a biker, isn’t dangerous enough, why not make it impossible to hear anything, including the horn of a car that is attempting to alert you that you are about to get run over. Last summer, on the way home from getting her new bike, Christine was struck by another biker on the Third Creek bike trail. Why? Because he was messing with his IPOD, trying to get the perfect song on for a nice ride along the creek. What a fuckin’ dipshit.

Video capabilities. This might take the cake for the dumbest component of portable electronic technology. Every time I hear or see an advertisement for the video capabilities of a particular unit, I am dumbfounded. How can this possibly be a selling point. Who in their right mind would be compelled to drop a few hundred bucks on an IPhone, IPod, Blackberry, etc. based on its video capabilities. If you haven’t noticed, the fucking screen is like 2” x 2”. Do people seriously sit down and watch movies (or videos of any sort, for that matter) on these things? Do they come with magnifying glasses? I can’t imagine how thrilling the famous scene from Apocalypse Now would be on a four square inch screen, the one where Martin Sheen walks into the jungle and encounters the tiger. “Oh shit, here comes the tiger. Oh wait, that’s just a flake of dust on my screen.” Seriously, what the hell?

The Department of Transportation, in their convention yesterday, came to the shocking realization of the roadway dangers associated with the usage of handheld technology. That’s right, they formally came to the conclusion that the shift from vehicle operators actually looking at the road to drivers now updating their facebook statuses while behind the wheel on nearly microscopic keyboards poses a very serious danger to motorists. What a profound discovery. It’s understandable that reaching this conclusion took years and much research to reach. I never would have guessed it. It’s amazing what behavioral research can uncover. Seriously though, the DOT could have called me and asked me this a few years ago, and I probably would have had the foresight to conclude that drivers not looking at the road are probably, on average, not as safe as drivers who are actually looking at the road. The Secretary of Transportation, in an interview with PBS, stressed the importance of enhancing legislation to outlaw text-messaging on a national scale.

It’s amazing how, without exception, only after a real problem has developed does legislation attempt to then prohibit the practice. In the case of driving, two very obvious examples come to mind: driving under the influence and driving without a seatbelt. It took decades and decades of this shit going on until the federal government stepped in and took proactive steps to reduce the number of injuries and deaths caused by drunk drivers and those who opted out of the safety belt. It’s only after a problem becomes out of control that authorities try to curtail it. With the strength of things like the alcohol lobby, it’s understandable how it was difficult to create legislation that dealt with alcoholic beverages. In the case of text-messaging, it’s more difficult for me to grasp what the hold-up is. It doesn’t seem to me that any special interest could be opposed to this. Insurance companies certainly wouldn’t object. They’re paying out millions for demolished cars and dead bodies, car companies have nothing to gain from people crashing their cars by text messaging, and further, potential customers who die while text messaging, are no longer potential customers. In the case of the handheld device manufacturers, it isn’t likely that they want their products to be associated with death. I just don’t understand it. To test my theory, I think I’m going to start driving with a blindfold on, just to see how long it takes until the practice is outlawed. Please increase the robustness of my sample by tying a blindfold over your eyes before you get behind the wheel tomorrow.

Frustration Through Suspended Sedimentation

2009-10-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

If you want to catch carp on a fly, you have to see them first. Blind casting to them would likely be as productive as wearing a blindfold in the woods, getting spun around like you were playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, randomly discharging your rifle, and hoping to take down a deer. In all likelihood, it would not happen. If the golden ghosts are not eating mulberries or cottonwood seeds on the surface, it's safe to say that their faces will be immersed in the muck, feeding on the bottom. Their takes are so subtle that, if you don't see them eat your bug, you'll find yourself sitting on the bank, kicking yourself for not setting up on the fish that you think probably ate your bug a few minutes ago. That's the nature of this game--it's a visual battle, and if you can't see, it probably isn't in the cards.

Throughout the last several months, I had the luxury of fishing for carp in waters that were clear enough to not have to cast at random. Nearly all of my casts were made when I could clearly see fish. With the exception of my lucking into encounters with carp when they were feeding on the surface, I found myself casting to fish rooting in the mud. I would consistently use flies with heavy lead eyes, necessary to quickly get down to the bottom and in front of their feeding mouths. Upon my arrival in Columbus, it became clear that I no longer had things so easy. Both of the rivers that flow through town, the Olentangy and the Scioto, consistently have a muddy tint to them. At their normal flows, neither of them have a look of chocolate milk, but there's enough sediment suspended in the water to make visibility a problem.

I received a tip at the local fly shop to go to a Frisbee golf course on the Scioto River. He said there were some good flats there, along with plenty of carp. And so off I went. I rigged up my rod in the parking lot, and stood briefly on the high bank overlooking the river. The sun was still high enough in the late afternoon to project nicely into the water. It didn’t take long for me to pick out a very distinct mud cloud on the far side of the river. Actually, upon closer inspection, I could even occasionally see the wagging of the fish’s tail. “OK, great,” I thought, and I climbed down the bank and began to wade out in the direction of the fish. As soon as I got in the water, I thought to myself, “Hey, wait a minute. Where’s the mud?” As it turned out, the cloud of mud announced the carp’s location from afar was now entirely invisible. Without the high angle of visibility, locating carp with this much suspended sediment is virtually impossible from stream level.

For the rest of that afternoon as well as two more outings to that location on the Scioto River, I was filled with frustration. I’d see fish from the bank, get in, and have no idea where they went. I was not spooking the fish, and I confirmed this by: a). initially spotting the fish from the bank, b). getting in the water and having the fish “disappear”, and c). getting back on the bank and seeing the same fish in pretty much the same spot. Finally, my luck changed, but only a little bit. I spotted a fish, and due to favorable lighting conditions, I was still able to make out the location of the fish from water level. It was at this point that I realized the problem to be even more severe than I initially grasped. I put a good cast on the fish, but the heavily weighted brown wooly bugger vanished into the tinted water as soon as it descended beyond the surface. I have no idea if the fish actually ate my fly—I couldn’t see a thing. I know that I stripped the bug right in front of it, but did he eat it? I just don’t know.

Setting up in anticipation of a take is a bad idea for two reasons. First, if you are wrong, the fish will bolt and your chance will be blown. Or, secondly, if you are wrong, you might end up hooking the fish in somewhere other than the mouth. This second outcome is incredibly sleazy, and I’m not comfortable with putting myself in a situation where I might snag a carp. That shit is way below me. The only other spot I’d located that was carpable in the city was on the Olentangy below the Lane Avenue bridge. I arrived to find plenty of carp, but the plethora of bikers, runners, and walkers on the adjacent trail made it more likely that I’d catch a human than a carp. Luckily, I decided to go fishing on an afternoon where the threat of a rainstorm kept the multitude of exercisers and commuters off of the trail. Initially, the result was more of the same. I’d see carp, but my bug would disappear, and I’d stand on the bank wondering if the fish actually ate my fly. And that’s when it hit me. The dark-colored, heavy flies were not going to cut it. I switched my bug to a chartreuse wooly bugger with much less weight—just enough to break the surface tension and lazily fall to the bottom. This allowed me to visually follow the bug and at least have a good idea of where the end of my leader was. On my next cast, I was into a 5+ lb. carp. I finally got the skunk off the boat. The morals of the story: 1). If you are fishing in muddy water, be prepared to be frustrated, and 2). Switch to a brighter fly that isn’t quite as heavy as what you would normally use.

Westward Adventure

2009-09-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

A few trip stats to get started:

1).Critter List (not listed in order of appearance):

Antelope, Yellow-bellied Marmot, Prairie Dog, Vinter Ground Squirrel, Toad, Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout, Mule Deer, Beaver, Rabbit, Grizzly Bear, Turkey, Mouse, Ringneck Pheasant, Gray Jay, Redtail Hawk, Bald Eagle,Golden Eagle, Sandhill Crane, Osprey, Mountain Whitefish, Llama, Sea gull, Camel, Muskrat, Ducks, Brown Trout, Geese, Jack Rabbit, Steer, Porcupine, Horses, Gray Fox, Cattle, Blue Grouse, Elk, Chukawala, Chipmunk, Garter Snake, Rainbow Trout, Turkey Vulture, Brook Trout, Robin, Pica, Bluebird, Bison, American White Pelican, Coyote, Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrel, Raven, Red Fox, Snake River Cutthroat, Greenback Cutthroat

2). Beers Consumed:
Red Lodge Glacier Ale
Big Sky Trout Slayer
Big Sky Moose Drool
Grand Teton Bitch Creek ESB
Bozone Plum Street Porter
Old Style
Ranier
Pabst Blue Ribbon
Harvest Moon Pig's Ass Porter
Kokanee Pale Ale
Mighty Bison Brown Ale
Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale
Wasatch Polygamy Porter
Wasatch Evolution Amber Ale
Squatter Captain Bastard's Oatmeal Stout
Boulder Pass Time Pale Ale
Boulder Single Track Copper Ale
Oscar Blues Leroy Brown
Breckenridge Agave Wheat
Boulder Beer Planet Porter
Crabtree Ginger Bee
Breckenridge Vanilla Porter
Odell Cutthroat Porter

Our trip was destined for greatness from the beginning. We planned to depart Columbus on our westward adventure at 7:00 am, and, when we pulled away from West 2nd Avenue at 6:58, we were clearly off to a good start. Actually, prior to our departure, we did something to aid the future success of our trip. The night before leaving, Christine and I both made a vow to adhere to some fairly strict car organization standards. This came as a result of my thinking about past "living out of the car" trips where things were continually thrown in random locations throughout the vehicle, frequently leading to wholesale car unloadings in order to search for some required item. For me, that approach is definitely a thing of the past; our impeccable system of order made everything run so much more smoothly, allowing us to maintain an extremely high morale throughout the duration...even as the unfortunate events of the trip's end unfolded.

And so we headed westward out of Columbus on a Tuesday morning with me at the wheel. Realizing that there really isn't a whole lot of exciting stuff to see along the interstates in Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois, my initial goal was to pound some serious pavement. Other than bathroom, food, or gas, our first real stop was in the dinky town of Knoxville, Illinois where we scouted out some Old Style Beer, a gift to be presented to our friend Mike in West Yellowstone. Driving on into the night with a few hour nap at a rest stop in South Dakota, we found ourselves in a great position to get to Badlands National Park in West Central South Dakota the following morning. Following our shelling out of eighty bucks to buy an annual all-access national parks pass, we found ourselves nearly alone in the early morning hours in the beautiful, uniquely eroded landscape. Bandlands National Park is a very interesting place to visit--on any cross-country trip along Interstate 90, I highly recommend a visit. However, there is not really a whole lot to do during a visit. The eroded landscape is very similar throughout, and activities such as hiking do not abound here. Perhaps due to the fragile nature of the landscape, not many trails are present. Therefore, I would discourage a multi-day visit to the area. Taking the loop drive to Wall, South Dakota and spending a half-day would suffice for a Badlands Visit.

Badlands National Park, South Dakota. This image is very typical of views from throughout the park.

Speaking of Wall, South Dakota, we just had to pay a visit to that extremely odd town nestled snuggly in the middle of nowhere. The town's claim to fame is a store-turned-tourist trap called Wall Drug. Many years ago, the original owner of the then tiny drug store decided to entice cross-country travelers by putting up signs that offered free ice water to passersby during hot summer days. Things really blossomed, and the whole compound now comprises at least one city block, full of souvenir shops, random displays of everything from guns and artwork to sculptures and funhouse-like displays. Christine and I, after I consumed the as-shitty-as-expected buffet and she ate an excellent old fashioned doughnut, had our picture taken atop the world's largest jackalope, a poorly made giant figurine reminiscent of the random dinosaur park along Lake Erie's shore near Sandusky, Ohio. That was enough of Wall for us for at least the next decade, so we hopped back in the Malibu and continued our trek. Considering that we had only left Columbus the previous morning, we were making good time on our voyage to Yellowstone.

Despite its size, the world's largest jackalope was actually quite tame. He allowed us to rest on his back without bucking us off. This was part of a relatively large statue garden. Also present were some dinosaurs, bison, and a variety of other unrelated animals.

The topography started to change as we first encountered the Black Hills, and then even more so as we started to climb up onto the Rocky Mountain Plateau. Seeing the Big Horn Range off in the distance as we sped through Wyoming started to make it feel like we were really getting into the mountains. Having spent several years in the Rocky Mountains, followed by a three-year hiatus, the sight of snow-capped peaks gave me a sort of bittersweet feeling. I love the landscape so much, and being within it once again seemed like a temporary homecoming of sorts. We studied the map, formulating a plan of where we might camp for the night. I hadn't envisioned that we'd reach Billings by early evening on Thursday, but it seemed reasonable. It only took me about seven seconds of being in Montana's largest city to be reminded of how much I hate the place. It's a wretched place, lacking any bright spots whatsoever. For being so close to so much beautiful wilderness, it seems like Billings should be a better place. We had to stop at Wal-Mart and pick up a few things, and simply being in the city quickly put me in a terrible mood. It's tough to be content while baking in the intense summer heat, surrounded by loan sharks, pawn shops, and video casinos. The only reason that Billings could be a useful place would be if you were in need of alcohol, drug, spousal abuse, or gambling counseling, because, based on the signage, there seems to be a plethora of such services.

The exit for US 212 off of Interstate 90 is only about twenty miles west of Billings. Immediately after taking the exit, I began to feel much, much better as we approached the awesome mountain town of Red Lodge, Montana and Beartooth Pass. The stress of Billings put us in the mood for some quality beer, so we stopped in at Red Lodge Ales and purchased a growler and filled it up with their Glacier Ale. We then found a private campground with hot showers for only twenty bucks right outside of Red Lodge, a good price considering that most NFS camping facilities are $10-$15 with nothing more than a pit toilet. Our spot was right along Rock Creek, the raging mountain stream that drains the east side of the Beartooths. I barely made it the five minutes that I did without making a few casts into the creek. The water was brutally cold, there was barely any light, but I managed to catch a nice brook trout before enjoying the comfort of a nice hot shower. It's amazing how simply sitting in a car can make one feel so filthy, but it sure does, so the shower felt incredible.

As a general rule, craft breweries at least claim to become part of the local culture. Our brief visit to this successful craft brewery revealed that Red Lodge Ales is a cornerstone of the mountain community. It seemed like an extended family gathering. People were stopping by for a brew on their way home from work, and one vehicle in the lot even had a strung-up Sage rod. Hopefully that guy was still able to see straight to fish the evening rise.

By morning, Christine was itching to get her first shot at fishing some beautiful pocket water in the Mountain West. Since we were planning on covering a lot of ground, heading up over the pass and on into Yellowstone National Park, we only planned to go at it for about an hour. Wet-wading in the alpine glacier-fed creek made the prospect of standing within it for even an hour rather difficult. We started off in a four foot eddy behind a boulder. On her first cast where she actually got the stimulator into the slack water, a nice rainbow woofed the bug down--a nice fish of about ten inches. We only fished a few more runs, but managed to pick up several more fish--at least one fish in each somewhat likely spot. Because her fishing had been limited to fishing for stunted trout in the Smokies that usually end up behind you at the hook set, she seemed to be quite pleased with the experience of fishing for real fish. Our feet were numb, so we decided to pack it up and hit the road.

The beginning of a love affair. It didn’t take much more than our first outing on Rock Creek for Christine to fall in love with pocket water fishing on smaller streams in the Mountain West. This was her first fish of the trip, an 8” rainbow.

Charles Kuralt called the Beartooth Pass the most scenic drive in America, and I think it would be difficult to argue with him. I've traveled on much of CA 101, and yes, it's beautiful, but the varied landscape, glacial lakes, switchbacking road up above the treeline, and incredible views of US-212 along the Montana-Wyoming border are on a whole different level of the spectacular scale. The drive is so breathtaking that it is quite difficult to not spend the entirety of the experience gazing through the view finder of a camera. We saw pikas and yellow-bellied marmots, and game trails on slopes so steep that only sheep or goats would dare to walk on them.

Don’t question Chuck. The beauty of the Beartooths shown here does an adequate job of corroborating Kuralt’s bold assertion.

Beginning in 2000 when my brother came to visit me in YNP, he had his picture taken on this very rock. My father took his turn six years later, so I figured I had better do the same. Hopefully my mother can some day pose in this same spot, too.

Coming down the west side of the pass on our descent into Cooke City, we were both craving the burgers of the Grizzly Pad, which I had been talking up for months. Sadly, we rolled into the town of 167 permanent residents to find that the restaurant no longer exists. I suppose this came as little surprise; on nearly every one of my dozens of visits throughout the past decade, I can recall hearing the owners complaints about the tourist business being down. Such is life in the volatile world of tourism. Instead, we had a great lunch of burgers in the Miner's Saloon. Considering how rural this place is and the town's siding with the ultra-republican snow mobile lobby, it was interesting to see how left-leaning Cooke City's largest establishment was through the displays of anti-Bush, liberal paraphanelia. Following our affordable, filling lunch we ventured through the northeast gate into Yellowstone National Park.

Thankfully, my friend Mike had warned me a few days before we left of the road closure between Madison and Norris and its monumental effects of travel throughout the park. Since we were planning to eventually go to West Yellowstone, the closing of this segment of road made travel from West into the northern part of the Park out of the question for a day trip. It was decided, therefore, that we should camp for a few days around the Roosevelt area to take advantage of the fishing and other activities in the area. Tower Camprground seemed like the most ideal spot, but we found out that the campground was full. Evidently, we weren't the only ones who realized the extent of the problem created by the closed section of roadway. Instead, we had to settle for spending the night at Mammoth Hot Springs. It was my first time at this campground. It is surrounded by the main road and situated in a desert-like flat with little relief from the brutal heat. Since Mammoth seems to be the hottest area in the park, I've always taken note of the lack of shade, and therefore always avoided camping there. But alas, we had no other option, so we decided to get a spot there.

Minerva Terrace at Mammoth Hot Springs. The uniqueness of this calcite formation is easy to see, but what makes it even more spectacular is the day-to-day variation. Sometimes, water oozes over the rock formation, while other days it is almost completely dry.

Getting our licenses at the Yellowstone General Store, we were ready to fish our first evening of many days on the water in the Park. With relatively few options of places to fish in the immediate area, I decided that the Gardiner River below the High Bridge would be a good place to start. At some point prior to our trip, I contemplated the possibility that being away from the area for so long might have glorified it too much, creating unrealistic expectations of the fishing that simply couldn't be met. We climbed down the steep bank way down to the river, and it didn't take long to realize that the opposite seemed to be true. Or, perhaps the fishing has just gotten better. Christine started out fishing while I stood on the bank and provided advice of likely places to cast. In the first half hour, she had takes in just about every likely spot she put her fly. In many runs, there were many more fish than I expected. Granted, she was a bit slow on the takes, successfully missing at least a dozen nice rainbows. I attribute it to the speed of the current--she was just getting used to getting drifts in a river that drained some huge, steep mountains. Eventually things were under control and she caught a few fish, all nice, 10-12" rainbows. We climbed out as darkness really started to fall. All in all, it was a great first night of fishing in the park.

Climbing down from the top of the bridge over the Gardiner, but the exertion required to get back to the top is rough. Christine missed several fish in this particular run, more in the next likely spot downstream, but eventually she managed to connect with a nice rainbow. Compared to the many previous years that I’d fished this section of the river, the fish were, on average, substantially larger than years past.

The campground hosts at Mammoth advised us that if we wanted to get a spot at the Tower Campground, we had better get there early the next morning. We woke up early, packed up the car (in an orderly fashion), and retraced our steps back east to Tower. It seems that the average campground stay in the park is probably only a day. We arrived to find lots of vacant spots, with even more people still packing their cars and hitting the road. It was quite apparent that none of the federal stimulus money had been used to repair the looping dirt road that circles the 25 sites at the Tower Campground; some of the potholes dwarfed the state of Rhode Island. Thanks to my careful driving, we found ourselves a spot without ripping off the muffler or oil pan in the process. Since there was water nearby, it only took a few minutes after setting up the tent until we were down along Tower Creek, scoping out the water.

Tower Creek above the falls had much more water than I remembered. Its fishing potential was quickly realized--lots of pocket water with a few deeper pools interspersed here and there. Immediately, we ran back up the trail to the Malibu, grabbed the rods, put our wading boots on, and we were back at it. Since I rigged up Christine before I readied myself, she had already missed a few fish in her first run before I was ready to go. Thankfully, the misses did not continue for her. She started to stick fish left and right, as did I while we alternated runs, working upstream. The fish were all rainbows and brook trout. Throughout our two hours of fishing this spot, we caught tons and tons of fish.

The first of many fish caught by Christine on our first Tower Creek adventure, right below the campground.

Because I've been fly fishing for so long and Christine is new to the sport, it would be safe to say that I'm the teacher, she the student. That being said, it's so amazing to me that from helping her get better, I learn a whole lot in the process. In particular, because she lacks knowledge in the art of reading the water (or so I thought), something that I've been learning for nearly 1.5 decades, she was casting in spots that I would have passed up, opting for the more obvious trout lies--deep runs, eddies, edges of slicks, etc. Casting in shallow riffles, she was finding fish in so many places that I would have walked right past. Learning from my student, I, too, started fishing similar water, getting similar results. I caught a lot more fish than I would have caught had she not been there to demonstrate how to really fish pocket water. Through our catching of so many fish in Tower Creek, it was interesting to note the very clear patterns of which fish species were more likely to be found in specific types of water. We caught mainly brook trout in the slower water, and took almost entirely rainbows in the faster runs and riffles. We worked our way up to the remnants of a small dam from the early 20th century, and we decided that we'd caught enough fish to take a break, drink a Trout Slayer from Missoula's Big Sky Brewing Company, and have lunch.

Throughout the course of my study of the craft brewing industry, I, at times, was a bit critical of brewers being too cliché in their marketing techniques. I could say the same here, but after literally slaying trout all afternoon, we both felt as if we needed a Trout Slayer Ale, one of many awesome beers from Missoula’s Big Sky Brewing Company.

We had not yet run into any cutthroats, and it just so happened that I knew just the place for our first go-round with the Yellowstone Cutts. Tower Creek again, but this time below its dramatic waterfall below the campground. We took the trail down to the Yellowstone River in the canyon near where Tower Creek empties into the river. The trail down to the big river used to lead to another trail that followed Tower Creek back up to the falls. The heavy runoff of about five years ago washed out the trail, making it difficult to get back to the falls. The good news, though, is that it's still possible to get in the creek and wade back up in that direction. The complexion of the water down there is much different than is the creek above the falls. The waterfall cuts through the sulfur canyon of the Yellowstone, and, in the process, the mineral is dissolved, giving the water a whitish, bluish tint. It's amazing to think that the look of the creek changes so much in such a short distance. We started to fish back up, and somehow Christine got back into her missing mode. Yellowstone Cutts ate her big attractor fly, and it wasn't until after several fish ate her bug that she finally got one. There were several big fish in the creek. It seems as if fish move out of the river into the smaller creek to spawn in the spring and then hang around for the rest of the summer. Moving further up, it wasn't long until navigation became rather hairy. The washed out banks make it necessary to climb over thousands of sharp rocks. I'm frequently accused of lacking common sense in such situations, but reason got the better of me and I decided that we had better not risk serious injury to catch a few more cutts. Had there been no other reasonable fishing spots in the area, believe me, I would not have dreamed of turning around. But, with the fish-filled mighty Yellowstone literally right behind us, turning around seemed reasonable to me. We spent an hour casting up the open bank of the Yellowstone, catching a healthy number of large Yellowstone River fish. Honestly, it wasn't a bad day at all.

Christine with her first Yellowstone Cutthroat on Tower Creek below the falls.

The steepness of the canyon below Tower Falls makes it easy to see how heavy runoff could have ripped the banks apart, uprooting countless trees and displacing many a boulder. The yellow appearance of the canyon is due to the presence of a large sulfur deposit, which, when dissolved, gives the water a slightly milky tint.

Around Tower on the Yellowstone River, there are many massive eddies on the big river. With such a huge population of fish, all one has to do is get a big attractor dry to swirl, and eventually, a fish will succumb.

Following a dinner at the campsite, the sky revealed that there was still a lot of light left. The Lamar River was only about fifteen minutes away, and my Yellowstone-crazed fishing addiction was back in full swing. We spent the evening at the top of the canyon, arriving atop the steep bank to watch a beaver harvesting willow branches and relaxing in an eddy to veg out on the twigs. Knowing that we still had a day or two left in the area, I wasn't totally sure that I'd fish, but at least scout things out. Heads started to roll on the surface, I was holding a Winston, so, seriously, what was I supposed to do? Due to the bend in the river, all of the risers were in a line on the far bank. I didn't even have wading boots on, plus the water in the middle of the river was too deep to wade anyway. That left me standing on a rock, making fifty foot casts across the river--yes, the casts I bitch about as being idiotic: "You can't get a drift, let alone hook a fish if you get a take. People pull that crap because that's what they see in magazines." That's the kind of shit I like to say, but that's exactly what I was doing. And, for the reasons I always cite, catching fish was a real chore. I couldn't get a drift, and, when I did, there was way too much line on the water to hook the fish. Eventually, luck was on my side and I hooked a few. As the sun quickly went down, we sat on the bank and listened to an owl hooting as he pumped himself up to wreak havoc on the ground squirrel population in the Lamar Valley.

The results of making idiotically long casts on the Lamar River. Following my missing of at least ten fish, I somehow managed to get it right and hook this fish. This is just about the average for the river, with many Yellowstone Cutts much larger.

I always forget this, but, seriously, it's true: there's stuff to see and do in the Yellowstone area that doesn't involve fishing. As a first time visitor to YNP, there was much for Christine to see. We woke up the following day and headed down to Canyon Village to see the Grand Canyon. On our way there, we went for a nice little hike up toward the top of Mount Washburn. In the early hours of a September morning, it's still mighty cold way up there. We didn't climb the three miles to the top of the mountain, but did get quite chilly by the half-way point. The remainder of the morning was spent visiting every available viewing point of the Grand Canyon. Over the years, I've been to the canyon a lot of times, but I don't see how gazing into the chasm could ever get old. It's simply dizzying to look in the thing--the brilliant, contrasting colors and its steepness create a real sensory overload. Unfortunately, it's one of the most visited spots in the park, and one can only stand to be around Tourons for so long. We had a shitty lunch at the Canyon cafeteria and planned to get back to our campsite at Tower.

Pictures can never do the beauty of nature justice, but this isn’t too far off. The vastness of the gorge, coupled with the contrasting colors, never ceases to quite literally make my head spin. This particular morning was rather cloudy; on sunny days, the colors of the canyon are far different.

Just as we pulled out of the parking lot, I started to feel the early onset of a terrible migraine headache. I've had very few in my life, but the symptoms are always the same. My vision starts to get blurry, the backs of my eyes start to hurt, my fingers go numb, ... What a horrible feeling. I've always wondered what the connection between my few life encounters with these awful things might be. I think this time I figured it out. Dehydration. I barely drank any water, and we had climbed up a mountain, and then climbed up and down the walls of the Grand Canyon for several hours. What an inopportune time for this. I really didn't want it to ruin my day. Upon coming to the conclusion of dehydration, I proceeded to chug nearly a gallon of water. By the time we got back to the camp, I was still in pretty bad shape. We were planning to fish a different section of Tower Creek near the campground, but I certainly didn't feel up to it. After the awesome experience on the water the day before, Christine was on her way for a solo adventure as I tried to nap off my horrible feelings.

When we pulled back into our campsite, the mule deer buck was happily feeding a mere twenty feet from our tent.

About ten seconds after she started her trek down to the creek, I realized that sleeping would be impossible while thinking about all of the fish she'd be slaying down over the hill. Thankfully, the worst of the feeling started to go away. I got up, pissed (yes, drinking a gallon of water makes you do that), and set off to find her. I found her amid the huge boulders just about the main road catching fish on her own. It was amazing to me how quickly she was getting better and better. I was still dizzy at first, my casting sucked, but wet-wading in the icy water seemed to calm me down. It wasn't too long before I managed to catch a fish, perhaps making me feel even better. We fished the whole way back up to where we'd started the previous day, doing at least as well as the day before. As we were preparing to have dinner before going up to fish the Lamar in the meadow, the rains came.

The Yellowstone area has a semi-arid climate. That’s right, it’s pretty darn close to being a bona fide desert. In fact, cacti can be found in several places within the park. This fact comes as a big surprise to most, myself included. It’s difficult to imagine that a place with so much flowing water could actually be so dry. Visitors’ perceptions of the moisture content of the area are greatly distorted. The most natural place to construct roads is along river valleys, making it appear to be a lush, relatively wet area. Away from the waters that are fed by the snowmelt from the high mountains, things are quite dry. That’s why I was so shocked to hear from my friend Mike that it had still been raining frequently in West Yellowstone at the start of September. The end of the tiny rainy season usually comes by mid-June. On several occasions throughout our trip, the clouds at least threatened us with rain. On this particular night, there appeared to be no end in sight. Even though I knew that a consistent downpour would likely ruin any prospect of decent fishing on the Lamar, I couldn’t bear to think of leaving this part of the park without giving the beautiful meadow section a go.

I felt rather idiotic suiting up along the side of the road in such a heavy rain. All of the other fisherman had long since given up—the valley was vacant. A slight break in the precipitation gave me a glimmer of hope, but it soon picked back up. Christine declared that she wasn’t interested in standing out in the open meadow in the rain. I didn’t blame her. I went for it anyway. The thing that amazes me most about the Lamar has nothing to do with the fishing, but rather simply walking to it. From the road that parallels it, the river is always right there in plain view. It looks like it’ll only take a hop, skip, and a jump to get between the road and the river. Walking in the river’s direction, however, allows reality to quickly set in. The landscape is so open that the distance appears to be no more than a three minute walk, but after twenty minutes, I still wasn’t quite there…incredible. Shortly after I got in at a nice, long, flat stretch, the rain eased up just enough for a few fish to start rising on the far bank. Probably due to the immense pressure that part of the park sees nowadays, these fish aren’t the pushovers that they once were. Good drifts and the right bug are necessary when casting to risers. I can remember throwing a Chernobyl Ant at fish rising to #20 Baetis and having fish fight over it. Not anymore. Well the rain stopped for precisely long enough for me to get one good drift, and one fish was caught. The rain picked up, and the fish were down.

A dreary, rainy evening on the Lamar River in the meadow.

Considering how adamant Christine was about not wanting to be down on the river, I was shocked to see her blue rain jacket as I frantically trudged up and down both banks, looking for a nose, but seeing none. The rain did break again just before it was too dark to see. I made my way back to the only place I had seen risers, didn’t see any, but somehow stuck a few fish on the far bank, but didn’t hook any of them. It was a race against darkness through the sage meadow to get back to the car. Shortly after we started heading that way, I noticed a large brown spot about 300 yards to the east of us. At first I assumed that it was nothing more than one of the thousands of bison in the meadow. I stopped, looked harder, and realized that it wasn’t a bison. It was a grizzly. I considered not breaking the news to my girlfriend, but I figured it’d be better if she knew. From past experiences with one of the fiercest critters in North America, I knew that there was nothing to worry about. The only real danger from being around a bear is if a person surprises it and it feels threatened. I’m sure the bear saw us from a safe distance. He (or she) was content to go about its business and scope out dinner along the river. Perhaps we still opted to walk the rest of the way at a bit of a more brisk pace than we had before we realized we were hanging out near a grizzly.

The next morning, we packed it up and headed for my former “hometown”, West Yellowstone. En route to the west entrance, we made some nice stops, including the Lake Hotel, West Thumb Geyser Basin, and the Firehole Canyon. Lake Hotel is definitely the sleekest of structures in the park. Hanging out in the lobby and gazing out the huge windows into the largest alpine lake in the United States is really cool. Literally, though, it’s always so cool there. I imagine this is because of water’s strong ability to keep its temperature constant (something physicists refer to as specific heat capacity, for those of you keeping score at home).

American bison grazing in the Hayden Valley along the Yellowstone River. These beasts migrate here in the summer via a climb over Mary Mountain from the Firehole River valley.

Dragon’s Breath. This thermal feature is appropriately named, for it seems as if an angry dragon is huffing and puffing inside its cave.

Our next stop was West Thumb Geyser Basin. Until this point, I hadn’t genuinely been pissed off by any tourists. Sure, I had to yell at a kid for throwing rocks at Minerva Terrace, stop a family from having a skipping contest with sulfur minerals in the Yellowstone River, and cross my fingers in hopes of a pack of Tourons getting gored by one of the bison that they were way too close to. As Christine and I walked along the West Thumb boardwalk, scoping out the beautiful thermal pools, geysers, and themophile bacteria, two kids of about twelve, part of a large group of Asian tourists, were leaning over the boardwalk, putting their fingers into flowing water that supports the fragile life of thermophiles, the bright orange-looking stuff that always comes up in photos of Yellowstone. I’m not sure if it was a tap, a flick, a shake, or a slap, but I got their attention, making mighty stern gestures that the behavior was in no way acceptable. The father attempted to explain that it was OK to touch it, the water wasn’t hot enough to burn. I wish it had been, though. I attempted to explain to the selfish, disrespectful, self-serving fucks that I didn’t care if they got burned, but was only concerned that the oil from their hands would kill the ultra-fragile bacteria that exist in so few places in the world. I certainly wouldn’t walk into their house and shit on their floor (maybe I would now), and it would be nice if people could adopt the same mentality and show the park some more care and respect…fuckin’ fucks!

Thermophiles, the little orange bacteria that flourish in the hot water created by the park’s many thermal features, create a beautiful orange color. While this may appear to be the result of acid mine drainage (AMD), this is quite natural.

We left, I quite pissed off, and planned to stop next on the Firehole for a quick swim. I can seldom pass Muleshoe Bend on the river, the most beautiful spot on the river, and maybe in the entire park. I had heard reports about how cool it had been throughout the summer, and the abundance of rain probably helped to cool the river down some more. The river usually gets far too warm in the summer to be fishable, but I reasoned that perhaps that wouldn’t be so this summer. As we overlooked the river from Muleshoe in the middle of the day, we saw rises. From the rise forms, it was easy to tell that these were not small fish. Perhaps the Firehole didn’t have its usual off-season this year. Dry fly fishing on the Firehole, to me, is the best thing that life has to offer, so I figured we might just have to check it out in the coming days.

Mule Shoe Bend on the Firehole River. To me, standing on the bluff overlooking this bend and looking down toward Midway Geyser Basin is one of the most impressive things to see in the park. I may be partial to the fact that there are usually rising trout in the river.

The only official swimming area in the park is in the canyon on the lower part of the Firehole River. I love to swim there, but while I’m there, I can never come to grips with the fact that swimming is encouraged here. The current is so strong, there are so many rocks, just so much potential danger. It seems like something that would have long since gone the way of diving boards and most other fun stuff in America. Swimming here reminds me of doing cool things in other countries, where there’s the unspoken rule of “Do at your own risk”. Christine’s sandals were really heavy as she floated down through the canyon and she was quite concerned that she might sink like a lead balloon. Especially considering that runoff was long gone, the current seemed much faster and scarier than I remembered. Maybe that’s just a sign that I’m getting older and more cautious. It’s rumored that that tends to happen throughout the course of one’s life. Anyway, once through the canyon walls was enough, and we made our way toward West.

We hadn’t yet found any whitefish, and the Barnes Holes on the Madison, only a mile from West Yellowstone, are probably the best spot that I know of to nymph for the “Montana Bonefish”. The effects of the road closure sure were evident here. For those staying in West and wanting to use a park license, there aren’t a whole lot of options in that part of the park. Normally, at this time of year, the Barnes Holes are pretty much vacant. We rolled in to see a packed parking lot. Weird. Somehow we timed it perfectly so that we got the good water. This was Christine’s first true nymphing experience, and things weren’t picked up quickly. Casting a two-nymph rig with an indicator is quite a different experience when one is only used to casting dries. She had some difficulties, I made a demonstration cast to show that this really could be done (by sticking a whitey, of course), and eventually she managed to do the same. Hers was quite big. We wanted to get a picture, but I had forgotten how difficult those things are to deal with, so we spared the fish’s life and didn’t take a picture.

As one of relatively few people who not only doesn’t mind catching Mountain Whitefish but actually seeks them out, this is my number one spot: the Barnes Holes on the Madison River just inside the national park boundary. In addition to consistently good fishing for the “great white trout”, this is also an excellent place to see waterfowl. Both ospreys and bald eagles frequent the area.

Oh West Yellowstone. Rolling into town for the first time in three years was exciting for me. It’s the fly fishing capital of America, but I don’t know why anyone who doesn’t fish would want to spend time there. Businesses can’t stay in business, workers don’t stay (who would want to live 90 miles away from a normal-sized grocery store), restaurant quality varies so much that a place that was good the night before might not serve edible food the following day, and the list goes on. It’s a quirky place to say the least. I spent three years (or parts of them, in some cases) working at the most opportune business for meeting the locals. Ernie’s Deli is the center of the West Yellowstone universe, or at least it was until Dawn sold the place and the new owners turned it into a shit house. In the months leading up to our trip, I gave random anecdotes of town characters to Christine, and she later remarked that actually meeting them was like meeting comic book characters. That’s the kind of place it is. That being said, some of the world’s greatest fly fishers live there, as do a lot of my friends. Being able to spend time there, meet up with old pals, and introduce my splendid girlfriend to them was a really great thing for me. I suppose it sort of made things come full circle, bringing reality to all of my mythical stories about my past life as a professional trout bum. I left the life voluntarily, miss it greatly in some ways, but am much happier with where I am in life now.

Not only did we get our own place to stay throughout our visit, but we got our own dog, too. Mike was so nice that he not only let us stay in his cabin, but vacated the place in the evenings, giving us his bed and his dog. Domino, a German Shorthair, is an amazing canine. Of course he’s a bird dog—most people in West fly fish, and most fly fishers have bird dogs. But anyway, this dog is off the hook crazy. I’ve been around a whole lot of playful puppies. This dog puts all of them to shame. I’ve played fetch with all kinds of puppies, but they get tired of it after a while. Not Domino. And the most amazing part is that he isn’t a puppy. Not even close. The crazy guy is seven years old. Luckily Mike has one of those tools designed to throw balls for dogs—otherwise Christine’s right arm and my left would still be sitting in a pile outside of Mike’s cabin. He’d go at it for hours, and he would become so sad when we told him that we had other things to do in our lives. What a guy. In typical dog fashion, he’d climb into bed to sleep with us, at first playing it cool. Soon, though, he’d crawl between us, continually stretching out more and more, attempting to simultaneously push out of opposite sides of the bed. Mike claims he’s a bad bird hunter, but I replied by saying, “Who gives a shit, he’s an awesome guy.”

I now think that the “puppy at heart” saying is an exaggeration unless Domino is the subject of it. This dog doesn’t understand that he’s seven-years-old—he thinks he’s seven months old. Considering that lying in mud puddles is routine behavior for this dog, it isn’t difficult to understand why the interior of Mike’s cabin looks the way it does.

We spent the next day fishing the Gallatin up in the northwest corner of the park. Not much was going on, it was windy, and the fishing was tough. We fished several different stretches, I caught a few odd fish while Christine successfully missed every take, and things just weren’t going well. I had hoped that my fishing addiction wouldn’t become a problem throughout the trip, and after our unsuccessful afternoon excursion on the Gallatin, this seemed to be happening. It became clear though, that it wasn’t that Christine was actually annoyed with the fishing, but she was upset because the fishing hadn’t been better. After our conversation about this subject occurred (the “all you want to do is fish” thing), we both got out of the car and fished another section of the river. Understanding the real root of the problem, I was super-generous when I found a nice deep run with tons of rising fish. I unselfishly cast at the lowest fish in the pool, landed a beautiful, fat rainbow, and quit fishing the run, saving it for her. I found her upstream (where she’d finally actually hooked a fish) and we went back to the good water. A storm was approaching, but she started casting at the approximately five rising fish in the run. Soon the foul weather influenced a fairly thick baetis emergence, and five quickly turned into more like ten or fifteen rising fish. Somehow we left in frustration after nearly every fish ate her bug and she came up empty on every hookset. Alas.

To give more credence to my bashing on business in West Yellowstone, I’ll bring up details about our dinner outing. We first tried Geyser Grill, but not only were they closing for the night, but the employee told Christine that they were closing for the season. It was like September 1st. Weird. Our next stop was the craft brewery, Wolf Pack Brewing Company. Having checked the sign the night before, we knew that they were open until ten. Why, then, was the door being locked at 9:03 when we showed up? Because no one in town knows how to run a business. Following a brief discussion among the employees, it was decided that we could have dinner there. More than dinner, we wanted to try their beer. Funny we should order some Wolf Pack beer at the Wolf Pack Brewery, because they didn’t have any. It took forever to get our overpriced pizza, but I must say that it was quite good. We were in a hurry to meet friends at another bar to play foosball, one of West Yellowstone’s pastimes among fishermen. Christine waited at the brewery to pay for the pizza so I could make a belated appearance.

A game or two later, Christine showed up. Thirty seconds later, the stench in the place was so severe that my friend Hammer had the front door open, waving his cowboy hat to rid the place of one of the most intense farts I’ve ever smelled. I assumed it was Mike; he farts a lot and usually isn’t afraid to admit it. I certainly didn’t do it, but was wishing I could claim that level of greatness. A minute or two later, Christine and I were standing at the bar to order beers. She whispered to me that she was the culprit. Throughout our two years of knowing each other, she has impressed me in so many ways. Now another means of impressing can be added to the list.

Mike and Alice had suggested that a good place for Christine and I to fish to make up for our rough time on the Gallatin would be Nez Perce Creek, quiet meadow water with a lot of fish eager to eat hoppers. Since this was not just a fishing trip, non-fishing activities needed to be interspersed with the fishing. We decided on a day around the Old Faithful area, observing the thermal features, Old Faithful Inn, and maybe going for a hike. But of course we were going to fish as well. Our first stop was the Inn, the world’s largest log cabin that recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. Thankfully, seeing the awful built environment around the famed geyser itself was enough to persuade Christine not to see the stupid thing. Luckily, we showed up just in time to see the even more impressive Beehive Geyser erupt, and that was enough for both of us in the way of looking at boiling water.

The Old Faithful Inn, the world’s largest log structure, is kept very much in its original form. The rooms still do not have television or telephones, and most don’t even have their own bathrooms.

Beehive Geyser erupts at an average rate of once every 10-12 hours. We arrived at the perfect time to see an eruption, which meant that we didn’t even have to stick around to witness the atrocious gathering around Old Faithful. In a recent article on the best of our national parks, Ken Burns stated that seeing Old Filthy go off was something that should not be missed. So much for his advice.

Another great look at the thermophiles right outside of the Old Faithful Inn.

Our next stop was a hike to Mystic Falls, a cool cascade on the Little Firehole River. Both of us started scoping out the fishing possibilities on the smaller body of water, and instead of going to Nez Perce Creek, we hiked straight back to the car, got geared up, and fished the top of the meadow up into the pocket water. This certainly made up for the previous day. The fishing was excellent, first in the meadow and on up into the faster runs. We caught mainly browns, and we found them everywhere we could have expected. Since it was only afternoon and we were in the area, checking out the bigger river only seemed natural (to me, at least).

Mystic Falls on the Little Firehole River. Hiking along the stream for more than a mile made us really want to fish it, so that’s what we did.

We stopped at Midway Geyser Basin. Christine wasn’t feeling well, so she rested in the car as I walked down below all the thermal features. Sure enough, the ocetis caddis were on the water, and tons of fish were rising. It was like a dream come true. With all of the summer vegetation in the river, getting good drifts was a monumental task. Most days I’ve spent on the Firehole have yielded better fishing, but the unexpected treat of actually being able to fish the river at that time of year was more than I ever could have asked for. I caught lots of fish, but at the same time was reminded just how out of practice I am. Casting to at least fifty rising fish, the end result of most of them was that my drifts just weren’t good enough. Ah, the tradeoffs in life.

The wading boot cemetery. Outside of Mike’s cabin, he simply throws his old, worn out wading boots into a pile. Because he isn’t exactly a clean freak, these things add up over the years.

Our park licenses were just about expired, plus we didn’t want to be too much of a burden on Mike, so we decided that it was time to move on. We purchased licenses for Montana and spent the next two days down on the lower Madison. Reports indicated that the river had been tough, and that report held true for the most part. With the exception of a brief evening rise down around Ruby Creek, we didn’t see much action. We had the Ruby Creek Campground pretty much to ourselves, and I think that was more than enough to keep us both quite happy. It was even more beautiful than I remembered down there. We camped between Hebgen and Quake Lakes our second night. As soon as we set up our tents before going down to Raynold’s Pass for the evening, we received a visit from the campground host. He just wanted to give us a friendly heads-up that a mother grizzly and her one year old cub were frequenting the campground to eat the berries on the hillsides. “Don’t worry, though,” he said, “As long as you leave them alone, there won’t be any problems.” It wasn’t difficult to see that his advice of not worrying wasn’t going to be easily absorbed by Christine. Following our rather difficult night of not figuring out what the fish were eating at Raynold’s (yes, we caught a few, but it could have been better), Christine realized that cooking dinner at our site might attract the bears. Instead of a home-cooked meal, it was dinner at Happy Hour Bar on Hebgen Lake. The burgers are amazing, and the atmosphere is…ummm…beyond amazing. The walls are covered with Polaroid pictures, mainly of female customers’ photographs of their boobs and/or asses. It’s an hilarious site, and the owner of the place, Tahni, definitely has the perfect personality for such an establishment. If you are ever in the area, be sure to plan on a stop there.

Quake Lake. In 1959, a massive earthquake just north of YNP literally caused a mountain to break off and fall into the river. At that time, there was a campground along the then-river, and all campers were instantly killed. The lake has somewhat of an eerie feel to it, especially because of the creepy black birds that congregate in the trees that have been standing for the last fifty years.

Having the Ruby Creek Campground along the lower Madison almost entirely to ourselves was a real treat. The sunset was epic on the night we stayed there.

Madison River with Three Dollar Bridge upstream. Sometimes “Three Dollar’ll make you holla,” but fishing was quite slow on the afternoon we were there.

Campfire Lodge serves breakfast, and pancakes are a popular item on the menu. I had been there several times before and knew that they were large, but I had either forgotten just how big they were, or they grew substantially in the last few years.

Known by locals as Monster Alley, the short stretch of the Madison River between Quake and Hebgen Lakes produces some massive trout, usually browns that have migrated upstream from Quake Lake. In an attempt to walk off the pancakes, we took a post-breakfast stroll along the river. We were treated to a more impressive air show than any air field has to offer; I don’t know if the dozen or so ospreys that we saw just felt like showing off, but their midair performance was nothing short of epic.

I hadn’t contacted my friends in Jackson, Pete and Ryan, brothers from my hometown, to inform them of our visit to the area. I wasn’t sure if we would make it down that way, but Christine and I decided that south would be a good direction to venture next. I randomly called Ryan and told him we’d be down the next day. Both he and Pete are such awesome people, and I knew they wouldn’t be annoyed at the short notice. Not only were they not bothered by it, they were excited to have visitors. Our drive south toward Grand Teton National Park certainly meant a quick stop at Moose Falls on Crawfish Creek. This is a real gem of a swimming hole. It’s technically not illegal to jump off of the waterfall (but, believe me, not being illegal doesn’t mean that it isn’t extremely stupid), but the tamer option is simply swimming below it. There’s a geyser basin upstream from the falls, making the water in the creek much warmer than it would be otherwise. Swimming into the waterfall itself and then crawling behind it is really cool. And it’s relatively safe.

Moose Falls on Crawfish Creek. Even though it’s only about 100 feet from the road, this is still a relatively well-kept secret in the park. My friend Eddy Snake once did a back flip off of the rock above the falls on the far side of the creek. He overextended and hit his foot on a rock. When the doctor x-rayed his foot, it was discovered that he’d been walking around for more than two decades with a needle in his foot.

Continuing southward, the contrast between the two adjacent national parks is stark. Yellowstone really feels like a sacred place. There’s no doubt that Grand Teton is a beautiful, special place, but the management of it makes it feel far less so. Much of the land in and around it is private, capitalism seems to play more of a role, and, mainly for these reasons, it isn’t quite as great as Yellowstone. That being said, the 14,000 foot granite peaks leaping upward from the Snake River plain are certainly breathtaking. The comparison between Jackson Lake Lodge and the Old Faithful Inn, both the most famous landmarks in their respective parks, is symbolic of the larger difference between the two parks. Jackson Lake Lodge seems to be much more of a profit-seeking structure, while the Old Faithful Inn still doesn’t even have phones in the rooms for its guests.

The contrast between the Snake River Plain along Jackson Lake and the Grand Tetons is most impressive.

A shot of The Grand Teton, the highest peak in the range, from the road.

This visit to Jackson was a real game changer in terms of my opinion of the place. Most of my previous visits had been in the dead of summer when it was too hot, too overrun with tourists, and wreaking of overpriced, upscale tourist traps—the target market of this town is much different than West Yellowstone. The former is marketing to Harrison Ford and the latter is geared more toward lowlifes like me. Perhaps because we were there to visit friends this time, or maybe it was because the peak tourist season had passed, but I just liked the whole place so much more this time around.

Every year, local boy scouts collect the shed elk antlers from the National Elk Refuge, located just north of town. Jackson’s town park is adorned with these massive antler arches at all four corners of it.

There are exceptions to every rule. Most tourists in Jackson are high-brow consumers. I doubt this guy footed the bill for a $400/night room at the Wort Hotel.

Not long after we found our way to Pete and Ryan’s beautiful cabin, we piled into their jeep to fish the evening on the Hoback River, a tributary of the Snake that flows in just south of Jackson. Unfortunately the wind and crappy weather prevented much from happening, and we didn’t get to experience the greatness that Ryan had told us he’d been running into on many evenings throughout the previous week. At least there was PBR back at the place, but that didn’t stop us from making a stop off at the beer store to pick up another suitcase of 1893’s best beer. Half a dozen brews later, we all had the beer munchies. Pete and Ryan recommended an interesting pizza joint. It turned out to be a slice shop like no other for a few reasons. First, the pricing of the pizza and beer & slice combos were hilarious. Ostensibly there was a standard price scheme: something like five bucks for a slice of cheese and a beer. Rumor has it that the owner of the joint doesn’t have a liquor license and subverts the law by throwing in a free house beer with the purchase of a slice. Our pizza seemed to cost different amounts for the same slice, and evidently they didn’t feel like tossing in the free beer, because we got none. The other hilarious component of the pizza shop is the presence of a DJ. Not just any DJ, but a hardcore techno man making all kinds of crazy music. We put on our best raver moves, and I think Ryan was doing the robot at the counter when he politely requested, “One slice of cheese, please.” By the time we went to bed, I realized that I probably hadn’t consumed that much beer in about five years. Pete, Christine, and I had made plans to go for a hike and a swim the following morning, but I was nervous that my hangover might prevent that.

Ryan, Pete, Christine, and I enjoying our massive slices after busting out our most wicked techno moves.

To play it safe, I drank enough water to warrant five or six pisses in the middle of the night, and it paid off. I was shocked to wake up feeling fine the next day. Phelps Lake was our destination the next day, an alpine lake on a large piece of property recently given back to the National Park Service by the Rockefeller family. Because it is a new addition to the park—only a year or two old—lots of visitors want to check it out. Somehow we managed to get up early enough to beat the worst of the crowds. The hike in was only about 1.5 miles. The lake itself would have been beautiful on any day of the year, but we lucked into a morning with absolutely no wind. The Grand Tetons were perfectly mirrored in the water as we walked along it. It couldn’t have been more perfect. Our specific destination at the lake was a massive boulder, where we’d jump off. I somehow agreed to be the first person to leap from the thing. Pete said it was about thirty feet high, but from gauging my height compared to the boulder in photos, I’d guess that it was much higher than that. Because the water was so clear, we could see the rocks on the bottom. It looked so shallow that we would land right on the rocks, but Pete assured us we wouldn’t. Scared out of my mind, I jumped and touched nothing. We all jumped, and Christine and I both had our pictures taken, and they turned out to be some of the coolest pictures I’ve ever seen. Perhaps you’ll see them on the front cover of an outdoor adventure magazine someday. It was an amazing morning, especially considering that I initially feared that I wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed.

It’s little wonder why a family like the Rockefellers would have liked this lake so much that they decided to buy it nearly a century ago. Hats off to that family for granting the general public the privilege of enjoying this magnificent place.

Christine jumping off the big rock into Phelps Lake. The way the picture captured her directly between the two mountains in the background was pure luck on my part.

My turn at taking the lake plunge—what an amazing picture. Don’t be surprised if you see either of these two pictures on the cover of some outdoor magazine in the future.

After Ryan got off of work, the three of us ventured to a small meadow stream where he and Pete had been having amazing days of catching dozens of Snake River Cutthroats. It was extremely windy and a storm threatened to send us running throughout the entire evening. We only felt a few drops of rain, and quickly learned to adjust our casting into the wind. We all caught a fair number of fish and had a blast. Meadow fishing was a nice change of pace after fishing so much fast water throughout the previous week. At one point, Christine fished a nice bend for a while, hooked a fish or two, and gave up on it. Confident that there were a lot more fish there, I decided to put on a show and landed five fish on five casts. That’s right.

Christine with one of the nicest Snake River Cutts caught on Ryan’s little meadow stream. I won’t give the name of the creek, because, as I told him, “If it’s less than twenty feet wide, don’t go tellin’ people about it.”

Another Snake River Cutt. This was one of the five fish I caught on five consecutive casts.

Ryan and Christine taking a break after fighting the wind in the meadow.

We were planning on a Thai restaurant back in Jackson for dinner (see what I mean about different target markets?), but we got off of the river a bit too late. I guess our stop of at the liquor store to replenish the PBR supply and fill up a growler with some real beer, Bison Brown Ale from Victor, Idaho, probably set us back even more. The Thai restaurant was BYOB so we loaded ourselves down quite nicely with cans of PBR. Our second choice was a burger joint that was connected to a bar. After confirming that the bar served PBR, we were able to throw back our own beers throughout our dinner. It was funny. As soon as Pete finished his evening shift, he called to meet us, and Ryan promised to “buy him a beer”. Of course, that turned out to be an under-the-table opening of a PBR can.

A toast to an awesome day. After experiencing the thrill of jumping off the rock into beautiful Phelps Lake and then an awesome evening of dry fly fishing in meadow water, it seemed like high time to down a half gallon of quality brown ale from a local brewery.

Christine and I decided that it was probably about time to hit the road and continue our exploration of the Mountain West. We hadn’t really talked much about a set plan, but it became accepted between us that Rocky Mountain National Park was a probable destination. At some point during our stay in Jackson, we mentioned this to Pete. He suggested venturing down through Utah along US-191, and then east to Dinosaur National Monument, and then on into Colorado. I don’t care about dinosaurs, didn’t really know where the place was, don’t like Utah, but somehow Pete’s mere suggestion became our first real destination. In hindsight, I think it was a combination of knowing that Christine really likes dinosaurs (how it’s possible to like dinosaurs…I’m not really sure) and we knew that the monument was managed by the National Park Service. NPS-run facilities provided us with an opportunity to put our eighty dollar annual pass to use, further justifying the expense.

Pete and Ryan’s awesome house was complete with a washer and dryer, and they were nice enough to let us wash our clothes, towels, etc. which had long since become dirty and smelly. Having clean belongings lifted our spirits even higher as we drove south through the entire state of Wyoming. I would say that the state is empty, but it isn’t quite—Wyoming is filled with antelope. Tens of thousands of the suckers hang out in the tens of millions of sage shrugs lining every roadway in the state. Their bright white butts are easy to spot, and once one of them is sighted, there’s usually ten or twenty more alongside it. We stopped off in Rock Springs, the only sizable population in southwestern Wyoming. The town is at the intersection of US-191 and I-80, and what we did there was what probably just about everyone else who ever goes to Rock Springs does—passes through. Lots of truck stops and other auto-oriented goodness. The restaurant at Flying J Travel Plaza now offers a chocolate layer cake for dessert!—I remember reading that on one of the signs.

Because there is really nothing at all for at least fifty miles in either direction of I-80, it becomes a pretty much mandatory stop. I hadn’t realized how competitive the trucking industry was, but a quick flare up between the cash register and the shelf that sold giant testicles to be hung from trailer hitches gave me some insight. The Flying J Plaza actually employs a security guard. In addition to watching for things like shop lifters, he is also looking at corporate trucking affiliations. An unsuspecting trucker walked into the mega-convenience store, sporting the badge of one of the industry giants (Schneider, maybe), and the security guard quickly told him that he was not welcome. Seriously though, is that shit even legal?

Proceeding south on 191, we soon crossed into the zone of redness, somewhere around the Utah border when the dull browns become pastel reds. A quick pull over to get a better look at the scenery allowed us the chance to watch a massive golden eagle soaring high above, looking for some desert rodents to consume. We were nearing Flaming Gorge, the massive reservoir created by a large dam on the Green River. Prior to leaving Jackson, we stopped at the grocery store to get some dinner that would be consumable on the road, deciding on some baked potato salad from Albertson’s deli. We ate it at a boat ramp on the lake. We both had the foresight to refrain from talking about how horrible the stuff was until after it was gone. That way, it was a horrible dinner instead of no dinner.

Our horrible potato salad adventure on the banks of Flaming Gorge Reservoir was ameliorated when we had an up-close encounter with a herd of pronghorn. What strange looking critters they are.

The day before, Ryan had asked me about fishing the Green River. I told him I’d fished Flaming Gorge in Utah, that the fish were big and weird, as was the entire experience, and that’d I’d never go fish there again. What I meant by this was that I would never go out of my way to fish there. Since we were there and there were rods in the car, this was different. Christine called me a hypocrite, and she was right. Whatever. The fishing was as dumb as I remembered. Before I got in the water, we saw a few dolts attempting to row their boats as well as fly cast from them. What a terrible idea. Not much was going on. There were a few random rises, but hardly enough to cast to them. The fish in this stretch of river are so strange. Knowing this, I put on a huge stonefly, stripped it in front of a few fish that were sporadically rising to midges, and had a take immediately. As expected, although the fish was a big fat rainbow, I stripped it in like a wet sock. For whatever reason, those fish are lazy.

The Green River in Flaming Gorge. The river is beautiful, but the fishing leaves a lot to be desired.

Most National Forest Service campgrounds are perfect—poorly maintained, provide only the basics—no-flush toilets and a few water pumps—and therefore are quite cheap. Near Dutch John, we found a great example of competition between public and private entities. At the Deer Run Campground, it seemed as if the NFS was competing with KOA for business. The whole place was paved with a fresh layer of black top, and hot showers were available. The result of this, of course, was a steep price tag: twenty bucks to sleep on the dirt. With no other options in the area, we had no choice but to go for it. We both took long, hot showers to help justify the twenty bucks we’d spent. Life could have been worse, but this certainly wasn’t a place we wanted to stick around.

In the morning, we hit the ground running, making our way to Dinosaur National Monument. We stopped in the only town along the way, Vernal, Utah, which reminded me of why I don’t like Utah. The place just seemed fake and stupid. In the middle of the high country desert, the streets were lined with flower pots of brightly colored petunias. To top it off, the country court house had an old, Vietnam-era attack helicopter mounted in the lawn. What county seat doesn’t want a helicopter in front of its judicial building? Our main goal in stopping here was to score some beer, but I was quite nervous that the backward alcohol legislation that plagues Utah would prevent us from achieving success. Thankfully, we found a bar that sold six packs, and we drove off with some Polygamy Porter from the Wasatch Brewing Company under an extremely hazy sky. We weren’t sure what the cause of it might be, but it made an otherwise beautiful landscape look quite ugly.

It’s only natural to mount an old helicopter outside of the county courthouse…or something.

A short distance down the road, we found the turnoff for Dinosaur NM. We pulled into the visitor center, walked around for a few minutes, and realized that there really is not anything to do at the monument. We left as quickly as we’d come, proceeding east on US-40, entering Colorado through the appropriately named town of Dinosaur. Sure, it might have only been ten or eleven in the morning, but it must have been spiteful feelings toward Utah that got Christine thinking about beer, so we plowed through a few beers as we continued eastward. Although the haze dissipated as we ventured further into Colorado, the westernmost portion of the state isn’t beautiful, at least not in the mountainous, Rocky Mountain sense. It wasn’t until approaching Steamboat Springs that either of us really felt like this was Colorado, alpine skiing capital of the United States.

Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah. Notice the Diplodocus t-shirt sported by Christine.

In town, we stopped at one of the many fly shops to get non-resident licenses and some information about where a good place to start our CO fly fishing adventure might be. The shop worker suggested a place to the south in Routt National Forest. There, the Bear River drains the mountains, and several small dams create three or four artificial lakes. We stopped to fish the river, but discovered after only a few minutes that it was too shallow for there to be much acceptable trout habit. The road followed the river for about fifteen miles, and we pulled over to glance in one of the lakes to see if any fish were rising. It only took a minute or two to start to see rising fish, so this seemed like a good spot to fish the evening. I strung up a rod for Christine first, and she ventured down to the lake as I rebuilt the leader on the other dry fly rod. Before I had finished, she ran back to the car with no fly on the end of her leader. She stuck the first rising fish she cast to, and the fish was large—large enough to break some strong fluorocarbon tippet. We walked back down together, and I quickly hooked the first rising fish within my range, a nice rainbow. For the remainder of the evening, we hooked fish after fish, and they were all pretty large. The lake’s water level was down, so landing them required standing in thick, black muck at the water’s edge. By the time darkness had fallen, we walked back to the car, black from the knees down. And we were cold. The lake was probably at around 9,000’, and even in the summer months, it gets cold up there.

Steamboat ski resort behind the downtown.

The first lake we came to on the NFS road that paralleled the Bear River. Our decision to stop and fish the evening rise on this little reservoir proved to be an excellent one.

Christine with one of many nice trout caught that evening. It’s difficult to see in the picture, but the area right at the lake’s edge was a black, soupy mud. By the time we walked back to the car at dark, our legs were much blacker than the sky got all night.

I volunteered to sleep in Christine’s extremely thin sleeping bag, but it got cold enough that sleeping in the tent didn’t seem possible. I ventured back into the car and reclined the driver’s side seat. Even inside, it was too cold to get much sleep. I’d nod off, only to wake up shivering a short time later. As soon as the light started to appear, I gave up on sleeping and went for a long walk, hoping to warm myself up. Packing up our stuff a short time later, we were clued in on how cold it had gotten—our wading boots were frozen solid. We hurriedly packed up the car to ensure that we didn’t get busted for skipping the camping bill the night before. The Malibu led us to the end of the road, many miles further and closer to the mountain peaks. We tried to fishing the Bear River again in a meadow section, but the water was too shallow to be very productive. Christine caught a fish there, but I didn’t. Our approximate goal for the day was to end up in Rocky Mountain National Park by night, so we started moving back out of the national forest. On the way, however, we had to pass the lake where we did so well the night before.

The next reservoir up on the Bear River. We saw many rising fish in the morning, but they all appeared to be quite small, and the thought of crawling down on the unstable rocky edges didn’t seem like it would be worth it. If the fish had been large, it would have been a different story.

Rocky Mountains in Routt National Forest.

The conditions on the lake did not look nearly as enticing as they had the previous day. The chop on the water made it seem unlikely that fish would have been able to see bugs on the surface, assuming any were there. Surprisingly, a few rise forms were discernable from the road, so the thought of possibly railing on these fish like we had the night before was irresistible. By the time we walked down to the lake, we could see a lot more rising fish, and they might have even been dumber than the night before. Christine fished a #14 X-Caddis, but I decided to experiment with a big stimulator. The fish didn’t seem to care what was what, but hooking the slowly rising lake fish on the bigger bug proved to be quite challenging. The result: Christine caught a lot more fish than me. She got her fill more quickly than me, but I was eventually able to be reluctantly pulled away from the lake.

The unsuccessful sleeping experience the night before made us realize that camping high in the Rockies with the thin sleeping bag just wasn’t going to be doable. We vowed to be equipped with a much warmer bag for tonight. Doing so required a trip back into Steamboat Springs, where we took advantage of Wal-Mart’s free rental program. Things can be returned without question in thirty days or less, so we bought a warmer bag, only to later return it to another Wal-Mart store at the end of our trip. We were then prepared to ramble on to the east, eager to put our national parks pass to use again. Colorado is arguably the nation’s beer capital, so we reasoned that we’d have little trouble finding some great beer to pick up in the town adjacent to the park’s western entrance, Grand Lake. There was a craft brewery there, but they were operating under a temporary “no growler filling” policy. We found the few stores in town with quite limited selections of beer. The second little market had two options from the Boulder Brewery, so we were ready to venture into the park.

Our feelings toward the park were initially rather negative. A mile or two after passing the “Welcome to RMNP” sign, it started to seem like there might not be an entrance fee. Please, not another Great Smoky Mountains…our fears were silenced when we rounded a bend and saw the gate. The standard twenty dollar camping charge for all park campgrounds left us a little bummed; many camping facilities in YNP are a mere twelve bucks, but I guess in the bigger scheme of things, twenty dollars isn’t a terrible price to pay for such beautiful scenery. The first campground we came to looked like it had just been leveled by a tornado. All of the trees had been cut and were sitting in piles by each campsite. We definitely didn’t want to stay there.

There’s only one road that goes east-west through the park. Christine and I had hoped to stay on the west side and leave the majority of the scenic drive for the following day, but avoiding the tornadic campground meant going further. The park’s main road twists and turns its way up to the tops of several mountains, climbing to elevations higher than the highest peaks in Yellowstone. Observing life above the tree line was really neat. It was a huge surprise to see both bull and cow elk hanging out that high up. We descended and made our way to the next closest campground.

One of our main goals of our brief visit to the park was to catch the Greenback Cutthroat, the rarest species in the cutthroat family. The fish’s native range is limited to the central Rockies, almost entirely in the state of Colorado. In their infinite wisdom, wildlife management agencies (NPS, FWP, etc.) introduced non-native species of fish into the Greenbacks’ home waters, similar to what has happened in just about every other native trout habitat in America. Rainbows have displaced the native brook trout in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Lake Trout have been successfully decimating the Yellowstone Cutthroat population in Yellowstone Lake, and the list goes on and on. Making it even worse for the greenbacks is their exceptionally pathetic inability to hold their ground when competitors come a’swimmin’. Therefore, the greenbacks are in trouble. They were on the Endangered Species list, but thanks to several successful reintroduction efforts, the severity of their threat of total disappearance has been mitigated. They have been upgraded to the Threatened Species list, making it legal to fish for them.

Unsure of where to look for these fish, we first consulted the campground host at our neighboring campground who was rumored to be a fly caster. He was an old man of somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy years. I introduced myself as a fly fisher, and he proceeded to ask me some funny questions. “What size tippet do you use?”, “What kind of flies do you have?”, “What weight rod do you have?”, and probably a few others. I suppose it was his way of politely asking, “Are you a dumbass, or do you actually fish?” His responses of where to locate the greenbacks seemed slightly vague—I was left to wonder if he was a real fly fisher—so we rolled on down to the neighborhood visitor center. The people manning the counter didn’t know shit, but luckily they had some worthwhile literature sitting under the counter. The young NPS worker produced a list of waters in the park, where the rivers and lakes containing greenbacks were marked with an asterisk. Of all the greenback waters in RMNP (according to the map, at least), only one was flowing water. The rest were alpine lakes. It seemed like a bit of a gamble to go after the cutts in the river, seeing as how they clearly prefer still water environs. Christine, however, is such a huge fan of fishing pocket water that her mind was instantly made up. We’d be hiking into the Big Thompson River and fishing it in the canyon above “The Pool”.

The hike, less than two miles, were easier than expected. Given the rugged terrain of the entire park, we expected a brutal climb, but were treated to a pleasant, relatively flat walk along this beautiful little river. The run called “The Pool” was clearly identifiable—it was where the trail crossed the river, and the literature told us that greenbacks lived in the river above the pool. Getting down into the canyon to access the river wasn’t the easiest of tasks, but we found a relatively safe spot to begin our work. As we were putting on our boots and rigging up, Christine saw a big head break the surface literally right beside where we were sitting. Once one rod was rigged, Christine, without even standing up, expertly put her #16 X-Caddis at the head of the run, the bug drifted down, and the fish slurped it without hesitation. From the rise form, it was clear that this did not look like the head of the famed greenback. And it wasn’t. It was a brown trout.

Christine and I on the bridge over The Pool on the Big Thompson River before we started fishing.

The result of Christine’s very first cast in the Big Thompson: a fat brown trout.

Of all trout species, that would have been the last one that I would have expected to see this far up the frigid river. Seeing that there were browns there, it didn’t bode well for the prospect of seeing the cutts. The next pool up, Christine then proceeded to land both a rainbow and a brook trout, further decreasing our expectations of getting the green guys. Throughout this time, I had been fishing as well, but somehow I couldn’t get it done. I hooked a small fish for a second, but actually got refusal rises from two brook trout. I wouldn’t have expected this picky behavior in such a remote location.

Christine continued her success. We stopped to fish the biggest pool we’d come to. She again hooked some fish, brookies and a brown. I was standing there, watching, but decided to cast my bug into the pathetically shallow tailout riffle from the big pool. A body appeared, and, by the slow, methodical nature of the rise, it wasn’t difficult to realize that this was a cutt—they are so much slower risers than other trout species. In fact, they are so slow that it’s painfully difficult to be patient enough to wait until they’ve actually eaten your bug. I hooked him, and it sure was a greenback. How exciting!

After much initial difficulty, I finally got it together and managed to hook a fish. As it turned out, it was the first of many Greenback Cutts we encountered throughout the afternoon.

A close-up of the first Greenback.

Christine kept fishing the run. A few casts later, she had a big take, and landed a whopper of a greenback that was still in its full spawning colors. Undoubtedly, it was one of the most beautiful fish I’ve ever seen.

The water was frigid, and getting around was extremely difficult. The current was swift, and there were many boulders on the bottom of the canyon that required climbing over or around. But it was worth it. We fished on for another hour or two, catching tons more greenbacks, as well as many more browns and brook trout. Christine managed to catch a grand slam—every species of trout. I’ve never accomplished such a feat, so I must say that I’m a little jealous. Eventually, our feet were cold enough that we couldn’t feel them at all. We caught enough fish that we were both more than satisfied. It seemed like we had fished our way miles upstream, but we were surprised when it only took about ten minutes to retrace our steps back to where we started. That always happens when covering lots of water. It feels like you’ve gone on forever, but you’ve really only moved a few bends and a few hundred yards upstream.

One of many nice browns that we caught in the canyon stretch of river.

Perhaps the trophy of the afternoon, this Greenback Cutt was still in its spawning colors. This was among the most beautiful salmonids I’ve ever caught.

We hiked the two miles back to the car, glowing with excitement from our amazingly successful adventure. We couldn’t have asked for things to be more perfect. We found the fish we were looking for, and we didn’t have to resort to the boredom of fishing for the greenbacks in a lake. Considering we had such a brief time to spend in Rocky Mountain National Park, we sure made the most of it. From there, we were planning to move in the direction of Boulder, but we first stopped in Estes Park, Colorado, the tourist trap on the park’s eastern border. I’d heard so much awful stuff about the place, but it ended up being better than anticipated. Sure, it was littered with stores offering all kinds of tourist crap, but the town itself was at least designed as an actual town. Compared to Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg near GSMNP, this place isn’t too bad. We ate pizza there and headed for Lyons.

Somewhere along the way, Lyons became a required stop for us for two reasons. First, it’s the hometown of John Gierach, the fly fishing author who I grew up reading and, more recently, Christine has been reading, too. His home water, the St. Vrain River, flows down into town, and I really wanted to see the water that I’ve been reading about for 1.5 decades. Additionally, Lyons is the home of the brewery that makes Dale’s Pale Ale, one of the first craft beers to be canned (instead of bottled). On our descent into town, we followed the Middle Fork of the St. Vrain. We only planned on getting out to look at the river, but I subconsciously grabbed a rod…really, I didn’t even realize that I was doing it. I only fished a run or two, but got a few takes, landing a dinky little rainbow, but a genuine St. Vrain fish nonetheless. We got our beer in town, and made our way eastward toward a state park where camping was available. A few miles down the road, we realized that we’d suddenly fallen out of the mountains. We weren’t ready for this. So, in a panic, we reversed our direction and climbed back into the hills.

Seriously, when I got out of the car, I merely intended to walk down to the St. Vrain and have a look. It wasn’t until after I’d pulled the Winston 4-wt from the tube that I realized what I was doing. I only fished for a few minutes, but was able to catch a small rainbow. I’d fish anyone’s St. Vrain, any day of the week.

On site at the makers of Dale’s Pale Ale, Christine posing with a growler of their excellent brown ale.

We found a campsite along the same branch of the St. Vrain 20-30 minutes away. Being able to sleep in the mountains for at least one more night made us feel better. We were right on the river, so we were forced to fish again in the morning. Gierach, in all of his writing about the river, makes it seem like it is hardly worth fishing. To us, that seemed like an understatement. In a mere hour, we hooked at least ten browns in the 8-12” range, not bad for so early in the morning. Packing up our stuff and taking the Malibu up over a mountain into the next watershed, we descended into the bohemian boomtown of Boulder along Boulder Creek in the canyon. It was beautiful. I’d only been through the city once before on a bus headed for Denver. It was about what I expected. A really cool town that I probably would never want to live in. I won’t go into the why of it, but something about towns like that just lack an authentic feel. I’d rather live in Lyons.

Unsure of where to eat in downtown Boulder, the mere sight of Myron Cope’s official Terrible Towel sealed the deal for us.

Boulder’s art deco theater has to near the top of the list of the most impressive downtown theaters.

One really awesome thing about the town is that there are wild trout living right in the city. We watched a few rainbows sip mayfly duns under the library that juts out over the creek. Sometime around then, we saw a little kid jumping off a rock into a pool in the creek. His friends and their mothers watched from the bridge above. Since it was hot and I still act like a ten year old, I acted as if the kid was talking to me when he offered his friend a red Skittle to join him and jump in. I did it twice, and collected my Skittles afterwards. Yeah, if I was going to grow up, I think it already would have started to happen.

One of my jumps into Boulder Creek. The water was cold and it felt great, although I admit that I felt a little bad about spooking the trout that we saw rising at the tail of the run.

We then walked to the large beer store in downtown and filled up two six-packs with a mix-and-match combination of twelve beers from Colorado. Then, it seemed like that was about it. It was so suddenly time to leave and start heading home. It didn’t really feel like there had been any closure, so we realized simply jumping on the interstate would have been just plain wrong. There was plenty of public access on the Boulder Creek in the canyon just outside of town, and that seemed like a much better way to end our trip, so up the canyon we went. It was incredibly windy, but since it was blowing in gusts, we were able to make a few short casts between the rushes of air. I caught a bunch of eight inch browns, but Christine couldn’t catch any. She was getting takes but missing every one of them. She seemed to have outgrown her missing of fish at least a week before. Her problem was quickly diagnosed: a broken hook. With a new fly on, she was set to go, quickly hooking the last fish of our trip.

The last stop on our two-plus week of excellent fishing. Boulder Creek wasn’t exceptional, but considering that it was a mere five minutes from the heart of a metropolitan area, I won’t complain. It was a great way to end the trip, catching a few 8” browns on dry flies.

Since the real excitement of our trip ended with our final dry fly fishing adventure in the Boulder Canyon, I’ll just stop here. Sure, we ended up breaking down in Terre Haute, Indiana, but that unfortunate part of the story would do far too much to undermine the awesome adventure we had in the Mountain West.

Being holed up in a hotel room in Terre Haute for four days when the car broke down left us with no other options…(above and below)

The Harley Lifestyle

2009-08-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

Brands used to merely signify a product, but have since melded into much more than just that. All-too-often, products are now associated with being indicative of an entire lifestyle. Because, for better or worse, I have been entrenched in the fly fishing culture for more than a decade, the best example of this that I have experienced has been with the R.L. Winston Rod Company. These rods are, on average, slower than any other high-end fly rod companyís offerings, and I happen to favor this type of casting and fishing. I have several of them, but I donít think that this says much about who I am as a person. I prefer rods that take longer to load... so what? In practice, this shouldn't make my character any different than a person that prefers rods that load at lightning speed. In reality, it certainly doesn't. But, from the way they are marketed and the associated implications, this can be difficult to realize. People who fish with Winston rods are immediately assumed to be rich, snotty assholes who wouldn't think of fishing anything but dry flies. I certainly don't fit this description, and, even more so, I don't aspire to one day live up to this stereotype. I get paid a pathetic graduate student salary, am kind and considerate to pretty much everyone I meet, and am as happy fishing bugs under the surface as I am when fishing dries to selective fish. Hell, I've many times fished streamers to spring creek browns feeding on midges. I believe in product lifecycles, but I'm quite confident that product lifestyles are a bunch of bullshit.

Outside of the microscopic world of fly fishing, there are countless examples of the product lifestyle. The marketing of brand imagery plagues the pages of catalogs and newspapers. Thinking of this, the manufacturer that comes to the forefront is Harley Davidson, the maker of those obnoxious motorcycles that are sure to wake you up when they come cruising down your street in the middle of the night. I absolutely hate these motorcycles, but, even more than the bikes themselves, I despise the fictitious lifestyle that they purportedly represent. I know only a handful of people who own these machines, but, even within this tiny sample, left and right leaning people, gun-toting folks, and environmentalists are among the people who make up this list. This microcosm of Harley owners is enough to prove that the "Harley lifestyle" (or mentality, persona, etc.) is nothing more than a bunch of corporate America-created nonsense.
Why, then, do so many Americans feel obligated to stop in at the neighborhood Harley shop and pick up a T-shirt in order to show the world that they have been to such-and-such Harley shop? Because they have been duped into thinking that they are identifying with a culture that does not exist. Contrary to what the ads suggest, smoking Marlboro cigarettes isn't going to get you hooked up with the hottest member of the opposite sex, and wearing a Harley T-shirt will not lead the rest of us to anything conclusive as to who you are as a person. Take the stupid Sturgis shirts off, you dolts.

The Letter and Number Fairy

2009-08-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

SLT, IM6, WT, BL5, BIIX--there's been a drastic shift in the way products are named. Historically, products were named based on their uses, often the result of references to animals that represented them. The Jaguar car, for instance, was likely so-named for its smooth, stealthy purr. Now, however, products are named simply by reaching a hand into the Letter and Number Fairy's grab bag. Fly fishing products, in particular, seem to be in the vanguard of reaching into this magical bag. I am in possession of so much fishing tackle that has been so-named by a grab into the fairy's bag that I have no idea what any of the (usually) three letter abbreviations actually stand for.

Take, for instance, my Sage SLT 9', 6 weight rod. It's called an SLT... I like the rod, but I don't have even the slightest idea what the abbreviation actually means. I'll take a stab at it. In relation to most of Sage's other rods that are way too stiff and fast, this one is pretty slow and soft. I'll go with soft for the S. It doesn't feel overly heavy, so perhaps the L means light. For the T, I'm just not sure, but I do know that technology seems to be a big buzzword. Maybe my SLT rod means soft, light technology.

Hmm... how about my Winston BIIX 8-weight. I know that boron is used in the composite material along with graphite, so it seems that I have the B covered. The Roman numeral II, on the other hand, is a bit of a mystery. I know that Winston used to make a rod with boron called the BL5, so perhaps the Roman numeral II is an indication that this is the company's second go-round with the element. X, however, is much more difficult to identify. So few words begin with the letter X, after all. If I had to conjecture, I'd guess that there are a disproportionately large number of X's in the letter and number fairy's grab bag. When in doubt, just tack an X on--everyone else seems to be doing it.

My point here? So many products are merely given three letter and/or number abbreviations that I can't help but wonder what came first, the chicken or the egg. Are products first given names that are then condensed into three letter/number symbols, or does the inventor of a product first randomly select an abbreviation, then come up with the product, only to finally figure out what the abbreviation actually stands for in relation to the product's actual performance? I greatly dislike Orvis products, but I must say that I am a fan of how their fly fishing products used to be named. Their Battenkill reel was ideal for fishing the Battenkill, as was their Madison. Similarly, their Spring Creek rod line was ideal for fishing spring creeks--delicate rods for soft presentations for selective fish, but I don't know how Sage or Winston could say that about their naming of the RPLXI or IM6-WT.

Ohio Loves America

2009-08-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

The license plate says it all. The standard Ohio tag is red, white, and blue, and not without good reason. Ohio loves America. Everywhere I look, the colors of our great nation are staring me in the face. American flags, red-white-and-blue banners, kitschy stars painted with the stars and stripes, and myriad other creations symbolic of our great nation. From living in the South, it's all-too-apparent that many Southern states aspire to this degree of patriotism but are confined by their remembrance of The War of Northern Aggression. Sure, a state such as Tennessee can side with the Conservative Right and their push for "traditional American values", but, at the same time, remains constrained from advocating national unity by the region-wide dislike of Northerners. In an area where "I don't care how they do it up North" bumper stickers are socially acceptable, an unflinching love of America just isn't possible.

Sure, the largest Confederate flag I've ever seen is painted on a barn roof in Ohio, but this seems to be more a representation of Redneck ideals than it is a hatred for the North. Ohio, after all, is a Northern state. Seeing a "got freedom?" t-shirt in the Got Milk? design came as little surprise to my girlfriend and I when we stopped in at a famous chili dog restaurant on Ohio's northern coast earlier today. Even seeing the red, white, and blue dominate in our new, extremely left-leaning neighborhood was initially a shock, but our surprise was soon silenced by a larger understanding of just how much Ohio is a fan of the United States of America. From now on, when you think of America, just think of Ohio.

Sundown Over Knoxville, Sunrise Over Columbus

2009-08-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

The sun has officially gone down for me over Knoxville. My partner and I have moved on to another city, Columbus, Ohio, which, by the way, is the 17th largest city in America. Somehow, the city of Columbus has managed to fly below the radar of most Americans' urban knowledge. Who knew that Ohio's capital was larger than Washington D.C., Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh? It is... really. So many of my past brown lining adventures were so successful in Knoxville that I was nervous that things in Columbus would be a disappointment. I hadn't totally written off possible fishing opportunities in the city, though. I checked out fishing possibilities at the local fly shop when my partner and I visited Columbus as prospective students a few months ago. The shop workers had many positive things to say about the area, including excellent carping opportunities... so good that one of the guides actually customized a john boat to be an official carp fly fishing vessel.

Mad River Outfitters, the only Columbus-based fly shop that I am aware of, does an excellent job of exploiting the fishing opportunities that are available in the area, and not pretending to be something they are not. So many fly shops in less-than-ideal areas attempt to market themselves as "Western" fly shops despite not actually being located near any quality trout waters. I witnessed the demise of a fly shop in Knoxville for this reason. The Columbus shop is down for whatever: brown linin', bluegill fishing, gar fishing, and bass fishing in old strip mine ponds. I think a lot of shops could learn a thing or two from this approach. After all, who says that fly fishing has to be using standard dries to catch rising trout in pristine waters, especially when the majority of shops are not located within the vicinity of blue ribbon trout streams? I don't buy the "blue ribbon trout stream" approach when it so often is not a reality.

The staffer that helped my partner and I was excellent. After we explained that we were new to town and knew nothing about fishing in the area and certainly were not particular about what kind of fish we were looking for, we were given lots of advice and encouragement. Best of all, Brian (I think that's his name) did not act as if he was stooping to a lower level by discussing fishing opportunities that didn't necessarily include beautiful waters nor any species of trout. That did eventually come up, but he was equally enthusiastic about other things. I was not expecting to hear any positive news about the cleanliness of the rivers in the city, so I was quite surprised to hear that the Olentangy River boasts an impressive population of stoneflies, an insect family that requires quality water.

We were informed of the good smallmouth bass and carp fishing in the city, so, on my first night after we finished unpacking, I had to give it a try. Brian suggested the area on the Olentangy around the Rose Garden Park in Clintonville. Knowing no other candidate locations, I headed up to see what might be going on in the evening. The clarity of the water was a bit lacking, at least based on my few times checking it out when we visited the university and then to look for an apartment. I could see through to the bottom of the shallow riffles, but the slower waters in between seemed to be deep mudpits. It took a bit of bravery to attempt wading into the seeming abysses of mud, but I was pleasantly surprised to feel the hard bottom of rock.

It didn't take many casts to realize that Brian was not exaggerating by claiming that the Olentangy was a quality smallmouth river. Seeing a school of baitfish getting busted a few feet from where I was wading, I cast into the boils several times, catching fish on each cast. After an hour or so of this, I realized that this wasn't only good brown linin', but this was good warm water fly fishing regardless of my surroundings. As I ventured more and more through the slow water, I began to see mudlines. The lighting was not good enough to actually pick out carp--it was late enough in the evening that, by the time I saw a carp, it had already seen me and was making its way for deeper water. This was enough, however, to convince me that carping in this water is going to be a lot of fun. I'm excited.

Update: Since I have been home in Pennsylvania visiting my family, I have not yet had a chance to get into the carping. My partner and I did fish the evening at the Rose Garden Park in Clintonville. This was her first experience of fishing in Ohio, and it was equally exciting. She found bait-busting smallies and caught multiple fish on her first few casts. A short time later, while casting in deeper water, I looked up when I heard her mutter something about a fish breaking her off. I then saw one of the largest smallies I've ever seen porpoise after she'd broken it off. I hadn't imagined any fish busting off a fly on 2X Rio FluoroFlex Plus, but I suppose that's a good sign. We'll have to go back and get 'em after we're done fishing the flats on Lake Erie for even bigger smallies.