A pretty stretch of Hazel Creek.

In At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman John Gierach says, “…the day you actually begin to wonder why you do this is the day you might as well sell your tackle and buy a bigger TV.” As I shivered under the fifth bridge on Hazel Creek sharing a small Nalgene bottle of rum with Jason Kelley while the 8th straight hour of rain, wind and lightening shelled the remote mountain valley, the thought finally bobbed to the surface. Why do I do this? For a moment I worried about myself. Was I too much of a wuss for this type of thing any more? Was I getting too old? Too soft? Should I go home, buy a bigger TV and become a middle-aged alcoholic and fan of reality shows?

Then I realized I wasn’t wondering in quite the way Mr. Gierach meant. Instead of “Why the heck do I put up with this stuff when it’d be a lot more fun watching NASCAR back at home?”, mine was more like “Why do I love this so much?” Since that’s a question Geirach has explored repeatedly, I decided he wouldn’t be too disappointed in me. But I can’t tell you the answer. I just know that I really do love it. And the rum was pretty good, too.

Hazel Creek is one of those iconic streams. You know the type. Usually overrun with people and the fishing not nearly as good as it was in all the old stories. Still you go because, well, maybe you don’t have to but it sure feels like it, and the fishing usually turns out, if not exactly spectacular, not that bad either.

Jason and I had taken the shuttle across Fontana Lake and hiked five miles to a campsite described by one popular Smokies guidebook as “arguably one of the finest campsites in the Smokies.” That may have been the case before the hemlock woolly adelgid began killing all the hemlocks, but not now. To protect backpackers, the park service cut down the huge rotting trees that once sheltered the site, leaving it with the aesthetics of a forlorn logging camp. To be fair, it only takes a bit of imagination to envision how pretty the site must once have been, and it isn’t without its merits for the fly fisher. Situated on a point between Hazel and a pretty little feeder stream, the site provides access to lots of fishy-looking water. Also, not a point to be taken lightly, the neatly cut sections of the fallen trees make fine seats and tables.

One of the better rainbows at right around 10 inches.

One of the small browns I landed.

We lost little time in setting up camp and managed to hit the water with about seven hours of daylight left for fishing. I came on a section of stream that plunged away from the trail and decided to follow it. After doing battle with the deep runs, waterfalls and rhododendron tangles I guessed that this section is lightly fished relative to other stretches of the creek. It proved to be one of the toughest stretches of wading I’ve experienced in the Smokies, and for my efforts I brought to hand a dozen or so fat rainbows and a single small brown. The roughly twice that many missed strikes suggests my hooksetting abilities suffered a setback during the winter.

The fish rose, I wouldn’t say freely, but fairly well to a variety of dries and soft hackle trailers. There were lots of bugs scattered around: a big tan caddis, a smaller caddis of undertermined color bouncing over the riffles, yellow sallies, giant black stoneflies, small black stoneflies, a March brown or two, a few tiny brownish mayflies, and hordes of bouncing midges. None were present in what you’d call a genuine major hatch. As you can tell, my bug ID skills are rather simple, but then again, so is my small stream fishing philosophy, and it all seems to work out often enough.

If the fish are eating brownish-yellow bugs of a certain size with a down wing, well then, I tie on something that looks close to that. But the truth is, most times I have no idea what the fish are eating. I usually look at the water for awhile, typically not finding any practical answers to the fish-catching problem, I see a few bugs around, mostly not being eaten by fish, and then I end up tying on an old standard. For the Smokies that means some form of parachute Adams, a parachute Wulff or a yellow palmer. I rarely start out with a nymph in anything resembling warm weather, but sometimes I will begin with a hare’s ear wet trailed behind the dry.

Tough stream for wading. Here I am fishing a particularly treacherous section. Photo by Jason Kelley.

My new foam flies failed to float as steadfastly as I’d hoped, but a false cast or two whipped them back into grand floating fashion in no time at all. In a moment of weakness, after an hour of unspectacular results, I resorted to trailing a beadhead nymph. I hate casting the things and was almost relieved when I broked it off on bottom. After that I stayed with a single dry the rest of the afternoon, and that’s what all the fish took. The fishing seemed to pick up later in the day.

Jason had found similarly tough wading but not as many fish nearer camp. I found him napping away the perfect pleasantly breezy evening behind the tent mesh where he was safe from the gnats and flies.

The next day we both decided to search for less treacherous waters downstream. I found some, but I also found the crowds I’d always heard about, who descend on Hazel like locusts every spring. I guess that makes Jason and I a couple of those locusts, but as fishermen we justifiably never consider ourselves part of the “crowd.” The stretch I fished featured several nice little runs and pockets from which I managed to pluck a few more rainbows and small browns. The fish demanded a nymph. They didn’t actually tell me this. It was more of a feeling. So I gave them the standard hare’s ear (not a beadhead and easier to cast) trailed behind a tan neversink caddis. After running into a couple other fishermen, I decided to head back to camp and hit a few of the more spectacular trailside runs along the way. This proved fruitful as I hooked four nicer fish, but I failed to land all but one, a fiesty rainbow of 10 inches or so. These spots looked so good that I had assumed the fish would be too smart for me, a result of higher than normal fishing pressure, but sometimes it works out that the best looking spots really are the best. If I recall correctly, all of the fish came on the nymph.

Jason fishing a good run.

I ran into several more fishermen that afternoon as I neared camp. Things were beginning to feel downright congested, so Jason and I decided to pluck around on the little feeder stream for a couple hours. It’s a neat little stream to fish where the casting resembles cane-poling for crappies more than fly fishing for trout and fly selection is happily reduced to a Carolina Wulff or Parachute Adams. I had caught several spunky little rainbows eking out a living in the harsh conditions of the tumbling little stream when I hooked and landed a brookie. When I realized what it was I yelled for Jason and he crashed over to admire it like it was a rare jewel. I suppose it was. It was then that he informed me that I had done it; I had completed a single day Smoky Mountain Slam. Today I had caught a rainbow, a brown and a brookie. It didn’t occur to me until he mentioned it, but that’s the first time it’s ever happened for me.

That evening I caught a trout for supper from the pool near camp. My head tells me that most Smokies streams can stand to have a few fish eaten, but I still feel sadness any time I kill a wild fish. Then again, maybe that’s the way it should be. Despite the sadness, I was thankful and whispered a prayer in his honor. I always think of that scene near the beginning in the movie The Last of the Mohicans, the Daniel Day-Lewis version, just after they kill the elk. That seems a good attitude to me. So we baked the trout wrapped in heavy duty aluminum foil with black and red pepper, salt and dill. He was delicious, and afterward I wished I’d kept enough to cover our entire supper. Sure would’ve beaten the rice and couscous concoctions rounding things out.

Fishing a small feeder stream. This spot here actually provided some open casting room. Photo by Jason Kelley.

There was plenty of time for conversation. Most conversations began with Jason saying something about the fishing or the weather or good liquor and proceeded with me saying, “Huh?” or “What?” The tumbling and crashing of the creek became the only sound there was, drowning out nearly everything else. When Jason spoke I only heard the creek. When the wind blew, it was with the sound of current crashing over boulders. When the birds sang and the flies buzzed, all I heard was falling water. The sound of it filled my consciousness, and I heard it for a good day or two even after returning home. This is not a bad thing, but the constant roar did make for tough communication. Of course it could just be that I’m getting hard-of-hearing.

Saturday’s forecast called for storms and lots of them, but the morning dawned with beautiful clear skies. We decided to fish together, trading pools. We chose the same tough stretch I’d fished the first day since we reckoned no one had messed with it since then. The fish demanded a nymph once again, and I landed several before the skies darkened and the breezes strengthened and cooled. The storms came quickly and had the feeling of setting in for the evening. Before the creek swelled too high and muddy for comfort, the fish really turned on. My last cast brought a nice rainbow to hand that chased my drowned and dragging dry fly.

Cooking a freezer bag dinner under a bridge. It had only been raining for five or six hours at this point...photo by Jason Kelley

That evening found us under the bridge, the only place where we could effectively cook our supper out of the rain. A trio of fishermen from Maryville told us stronger storms were expected later. Only later did we discover that the Southeast was experiencing one of the worst outbreaks of tornadoes in years. All told it rained for nearly twenty hours straight, with the strongest storms charging through a couple hours before daylight. Neither of us slept well with the lightening bombarding the surrounding ridges, but we were happy just to make it through with a dry tent.

The hike back down to Proctor only took an hour and a half, so we explored a bit before the shuttle was due. I made the walk to the Proctor cemetery (no easy stroll, by the way) while Jason enjoyed the area around the Calhoun House. Before Fontana Lake was created the Hazel Creek watershed was heavily settled. The town of Proctor was the largest settlement on the creek and was home to over 1,000 people. They even had a movie theater. The whole area has been pretty much reclaimed by nature with only a few structures remaining. The history of Hazel Creek makes for interesting reading if that sort of thing interests you. Horace Kephart temporarily made his home in a cabin along one of Hazel’s tributaries.

Down at the lake we ran into a couple of fishermen up from Georgia. They were Texans, but like almost everyone else these days, they’d found themselves transplanted to new lands. The day was perfect, sunny and pleasantly breezy, and they shared a couple beers with us while we waited for the shuttle and talked about the fishing, our jobs and families. These fellows had done the standard Hazel Creek trip with lawn cart piled high with provisions: coolers, tarps, lawn chairs, frying pans, etc. Didn’t look like a bad way to go, but it did make me appreciate my simply-loaded 30 lb pack.

I don’t remember who started it, but on the boat ride back to Fontana Marina we got into a conversation about how tough it was to get around on the stream. The creek was high at spring levels, and it seemed every little stretch featured a treacherous channel of deep, swift water blocking upstream movement. One of the guys told how he’d carelessly stepped on a sloping rock that shot him into a chin-deep pool, ruining his iphone. I told how I’d narrowly avoided breaking my ankle when my right foot became wedged between two upwards-slanted rocks during a fall. We spoke of innocent-appearing stretches concealing deadly beds of rocks roughly the size and shape of bowling balls. Yes, it was a darn tough stream, we agreed. In some strange way, that pleased us all.

Take care,
Nathan

A few more pics:

Jason lays down some line in a beautiful pool.

Jason fishes a section of large plunge pools just as the rain began falling.

Jason at the Calhoun House.

Another typical Hazel Creek rainbow trout. Photo by Jason Kelley.

My little brook trout. Photo by Jason Kelley.

Over the last month or so I’ve been gearing up for what I hope to be a big spring of fishing. In late April we’re tackling a 3 night Smokies backpacking trip. In preparation for that, I’ve dusted off the backpacking gear. I bought some new equipment over the winter in the hopes of greatly reducing my pack weight. Earlier in March, Jason Kelley and I took a quick overnight trip down in the Sipsey Wilderness to test out the new gear and make sure we had our system down. We’d hoped to catch some fish as well, but heavy rains during the week had the streams blown out. The Sipsey is the most popular backpacking area in Alabama, and it showed. We figured we’d be mostly alone considering the less than ideal weather, but we were greeted by about 25 vehicles at the trailhead. The wilderness is roughly 25,000 acres of pretty canyons and streams just south of Moulton. It’s worth a visit if you ever get a chance. Requisite photos:

Jason at Ship Rock during a break on the hike in.

Our campsite at a sharp horseshoe bend in the river. That's my new TarpTent Double Rainbow.

Jason casting fruitlessly in a pretty pool near camp.

One of the many waterfalls you'll find in the Sipsey Wilderness.

Since moving to the Huntsville area, I’ve been unable to locate many areas with good wading access. There is a tons of water in the area, but with a few exceptions, it’s best explored by boat. So a lot of water has been out of my reach as a boatless angler. I took the first step to remedying that problem last week. I saved up and bought a Native Manta Ray 11 kayak. It’s plenty small enough for me to handle on my own (I can carry the thing like it’s an 11′ suitcase) but still large enough to handle big water (supposedly even the open ocean) and carry enough gear for a camping trip. I’m pretty excited about the possibilities. Several creeks in the area too deep and with bottoms too muddy for wading are now fair game. It’s even got me contemplating a trip down to the Keys or Everglades, especially after reading about David Knapp’s spring break trip.

I’ve really neglected my fly tying duties over the winter, but I have recently tied several flies in preparation for the April trip. Since one of my goals for the year is to simplify things, I experimented with tying some of my old favorites with a foam body. This accomplishes a couple things for me: if they work, I can leave the floatant at home and I can avoid the inevitable cursing that comes when the parachute adams begins refusing to float. Here are a few of my efforts:

A selection of my newly tied foam-bodied flies. Apologies for poor photo quality. From left: yellow palmer, yellow neversink caddis, olive neversink caddis, foam hare's ear parachute, generic gray mayfly parachute, foam quill gordon parachute.

Last weekend I went on a bass and crappie fishing trip with my dad and brother. It’d been a long time since we’d all been out together. The fly rod stayed at home since I would have killed one of them with it in the small boat. We used conventional gear with artificials for bass and bait for crappie. The fishing wasn’t very good (we caught about a dozen bass), but it was nice to get out. As a bonus we spotted four golden eagles in the North Sauty area. They’re a pretty rare sight in these parts, so we felt it a privilege.

Hope you’re getting out there and catching some fish this spring. Take care,
Nathan

Okay, this trip had nothing to do with fishing, although I did take a rod in the futile hope that I’d find time for some fishing. Last weekend, several of us pooled our resources and rented a cabin near Gatlinburg. Yes, that Gatlinburg. That mother of all tourist traps. We even had to drive through Pigeon Forge to get there, a town I intensely dislike (no offense meant to the good citizens of that town) and that if anything is even more garish than Gatlinburg. I do hold some fondness for Gatlinburg despite its more grotesque aspects. I like that the town is easily walked rather than having to drive from place to place, and there are some nice joints to grab a bite to eat, enjoy a drink or sample excellent pipe tobaccos (the Gatlinburlier in the Mountain Mall is a great pipe and cigar shop). And the town did serve as the base for my first few fly fishing trips to the mountains. We took a look at a few trout streams, and they all looked pretty darn cold, especially up high where some streams were completely frozen over. Maybe they’ll warm up a bit before my first planned fly fishing trip in April. Here’s a quick photo essay:

I'm usually not much on cabins, being more of a camper and cheapskate, but this one had the goods - not to mention it was cheap in the off-season. Here's the game room where Dewayne completely destroyed me at foosball.

And here's the movie theater room, complete with nice chairs and an 11 ft. projection screen.

Most of the group at the Hofbrauhaus Restaurant, an excellent little sandwich shop in Gatlinburg. Get the Reuben or the Hoagie - both fantastic with a cold Beck's.

A stream along the Alum Cave Bluff Trail. We hiked to Arch Rock.

Another shot of the creek along the trail.

Here's Jacqulyn and her sister Gina near the beginning of the trail. We hiked in fairly deep but compacted snow all the way to Arch Rock.

Jacqulyn and yours truly at Arch Rock. The top steps were solid chunks of ice, so we turned back lacking any gear for handling that much slippiness as Bear Grylls would say.

Icicles near Newfound Gap.

Newfound Gap had lots of snow, and it was brutally cold with a strong wind. We didn't stay long.

I’m cleaning out my liquor cabinet at home. As cleaning goes, this isn’t the worst thing. I mean, I’m drinking liquor every evening, and I’m actually being “productive” in the process. That the liquor is of rather marginal quality, purchased during the less discriminating years of my youth, is of little consequence. Actually, given the nature of some of this stuff, I can probably lay claim to loftier goals than simple productivity. Ridding the world of such noxious and dangerous distillations as Goldschlager and Drambuie is surely worth a Nobel Prize of some sort. Either Peace or Chemistry should do. From what I hear they’re practically tossing the things out like candy at a small town Christmas parade these days.

I’ve found that I can drink almost anything if mixed with the appropriate amount of soda. The type of soda is relatively unimportant as long as it’s present in sufficient volume to tolerably dilute the liquor. Ginger ale, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper. They’re all okay although good old Coca-Cola Classic is the preferred diluting agent. As a matter of principle I refuse to ruin a good root beer on this stuff.

It’s amazing how much stuff one can accumulate when taking up a new interest. And it all seems so important at the time. You know how it is. You don’t really know anything about it. Actually learning about it will take too long. So you do the natural thing and buy a bunch of stuff. Somewhere down the line you realize you really only like good bourbon, single malt Scotch from Islay, bamboo fly rods and dry flies.

You know where this is leading. For those like myself, who tend to over-do things, a similar task must eventually be undertaken with one’s hobbies, or else you will soon find yourself buried under the rubble. This usually isn’t as much fun as cleaning out the liquor cabinet, but, luckily, cleaning out the liquor cabinet can ease the pain if performed in parallel. I first cleaned house with my fishing a good many years back. During my early college years I was into conventional bass fishing when suddenly I realized that the high-speed bass boat, couple dozen rods, and two ridiculously gigantic tackle boxes full of all manner of lures just no longer did “it” for me. The reason I wanted to go fishing in the first place was to get away from just this sort of thing. I had been reading a book on backpack fly fishing in the Rocky Mountains. This was “it.” This was what I wanted to do. I would take up fly fishing and get away from the competitiveness, crowds and expense. Don’t laugh about the expense part. I was naive and idealogical, and really I do still believe it possible to take up fly fishing without spending a fortune. It’s just not likely.

So anyway, I cleaned house. I didn’t exactly get rid of all my bass fishing gear, but I cut out its practice almost completely. At first my fly fishing was fairly simple and cheap. I had a rather inexpensive fly rod, cheap reel, level fly line from Walmart and a handful of flies. Slowly I improved my system until I had some nice gear that was actually fun to fish with. I was going for trout in East Tennessee several times a year and loving it. Toss in the regular local trips for bass and bluegill and things were positively rosy.

Then things took a turn for the worse. First came tying my own flies, then rod-building, bamboo rods, silk lines, photography, and running a blog about it all. Late last year, after we got back from Glacier, I crashed. The evidence is the utter lack of new content over the past few months. Everything just got to be a bit too much. I went fishing less last year than any other year in my life. What recreation I did take part in had begun to feel like a second job. For example, at one time I was working on three graphite rods, restoring an 8wt bamboo rod, repairing a bass rod for a friend of my father’s, tying flies for the whole group in preparation for the Glacier trip, reading three books sent to me for review, and sorting and editing hundreds of photos. The evenings and weekends just weren’t time enough to finish it all, and certainly not if I actually wanted to go fishing in there somewhere. A change had to be made. The house had gotten pretty dusty.

Much of this is a byproduct of growing up and getting older, I suppose. As long as I have a house, a full-time job, a family and all the attendant responsibilities I simply won’t be able to play all the games I want to play all the time. I mean, I love all those different aspects of the sport, but if I’m to retain my sanity, some of them must be tossed out with that empty bottle of Southern Comfort.

I guess all of this is getting around to my saying that you can expect some changes on the site this year. I plan to do more fishing for the fun of it and less of the stuff that began to feel like work. Most of this boils down to a simple change in attitude rather than a drastic change in the actual activities. For awhile there I felt like I needed to post new content on the site every couple days just to keep the site viable. What “viable” meant is anyone’s guess. All I know is it began to feel like work. So now I’m just going to post something when I feel like posting something. I mean, no one out there is paying me for this stuff, so why should I feel like I have to please some intangible boss? I write because I enjoy it, at least I plan to from now on and that’s how this started anyway. Also, any ideas I had about building rods on the side for some spare change are getting tossed out with the Jack. I still plan to dabble in building rods, but it will be for my own pleasure. Maybe some day I might sell some rods on the side but only after I extract myself from the rat race. One job is enough, thank you. And I’m going to make a conscious effort to simplify my actual fishing. The first steps have already been taken. I’ve cut my Smokies fly boxes down to two tiny tobacco tins, one for nymphs and streamers and another for dries and wets. The vest will be left at home for anything other than a full-scale expedition to tough and unfamiliar water. I’m not buying any new rods until there’s a real need for it. New emphasis will be placed on backpack fly fishing, which is my favorite anyway and one of the reasons I took up fly fishing to start with. Certainly, I still plan to take photos when I go fishing, but once again the attitude will be different. I will engage in photography because I like to, not because I feel like I need to for the site or to improve my skills or for any other reason than the shear joy of it.

Looking back at all I just wrote, here is what I see: a poor and exceedingly verbose attempt to tie cleaning out the liquor cabinet with simplifying my fishing. But you know what? I don’t care because I had fun doing it, and that’s really the point, right? Why has fishing (and really recreation in general) become so blamed serious? I guess that can of worms is topic enough for another essay. Anyway I’m back, I’m not planning to let the site die (in fact I just paid another year’s hosting bill last week), I’m determined to have a lot more fun with fly fishing (and fishing in general) in the coming year, I hope to share some of that with you, and I really do think the site will be improved because of it. But if it’s not, then who cares? Take care,

Nathan

No, this has nothing to do with fishing. But it’s something I needed to write. My Dad, Ronald Walker, was born January 28, 1947 and passed away two years ago this February. My brother placed this memorial on his gravesite not long after the game. God bless you, Dad. Roll Tide.

Ronald Walker's tombstone.

Memories – especially those clouded by years and circumstances past – eventually fade, leaving more of a feeling in their place than the specifics of the event. But there are a few, a precious few, that stick with you as if they happened yesterday.

One of my earliest, and clearest, memories is of flying through the air…

It was 1970-something, and Alabama was in the middle of one of the greatest decade-long displays of brilliance ever displayed on the college field. It was a time when all fans just knew Bama was going to win every game – the only question was by how much.

The details of that particular game on that particular Saturday afternoon have long faded. I have no idea who we were playing, nor what the score eventually was. I do know it was post Johnny ‘Italian Stallion’ Musso and before the Goal Line Stand against Penn State in 1979, but a lot of the rest of it is gone.

What’s crystal clear to me, though, is my dad.

We were watching the game in the small living room of our 3 bedroom home in Theodore, Alabama – tacky 70’s wood paneling covering half the wall, and carpet that looked like an epileptic nightmare of tan, brown and black. Something big had happened and my Uncle Sonny – who may as well have been a second father to me, as much time as our two families spent with each other – picked me up in his exuberance, kissed me square on the face, and launched me across the room.

I remember that celebratory feeling that something really good had just happened. I remember us all erupting in joy…how loud my Uncle Sonny’s ROLL TIDE yell was…the whoops and hollers I could hear from the kitchen…how happy I was, surrounded by everyone there.

But the clearest vision I have, the one that stands out as if it were happening right now, this very instant, is my Dad catching me.

Two arms that seemed, to me, as big as tree trunks, snatching me out of the air with hands strong and hard as steel. Before I ever felt even the tug of gravity pulling me back to Earth, he lifted me up toward the ceiling, hands just under my arms, and looked up. Right at me.

He had on a Bama T-shirt – white, with a crimson A on it… an elephant coming through the opening – and his mustached face had just a little grizzle on it from not shaving that morning. His face shined with happiness. His smile big as I’d ever seen it. And his eyes practically GLOWED.

My Dad’s eyes sparkled all the time. I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone that, but they did.

It couldn’t have happened for more than a moment, a brief couple of seconds in the middle of mayhem all around me, but it seemed like forever. There was nothing else. For this moment, anyway, it was just me and him.

I don’t remember being put down from that embrace, probably because I don’t ever want to. I’ll always remember my father just like that. Strong… good lord, he was strong. Steady. 10 feet tall and bulletproof. And smiling, with those sparkling eyes shining on me.

On January 7th of this year, Alabama laid claim to its 13th National Championship. I watched the game with my own family, and celebrated long after the clock read zeroes and the scoreboard told the tale. I called friends and relatives, and jabbered back and forth with people at work. I put the stickers on the truck and stayed up long past the end of the game, taping every Sportscenter and news outlet I could find on the season.

Then, late that evening, I found a quiet place and remembered a game a long time ago. One where I wasn’t alone with the hero of my life, but one where we shared a moment together. And I thought, even though it’s not high on the priority list up there, this one is for you, Dad.

I love you, Dad. I miss you. Roll Tide….

PS Maybe it’s corny to you – dedicating a silly football game to someone past. But for our family, Bama football has always been a big part of life. Dad was the biggest Bama fan I’ve ever known, and we spent almost every fall Saturday together, watching and listening to Bama play. He loved it, and I loved being a part of it with him.

Matt

I guess winter is setting in. It’s cold, windy and rainy here in North Alabama. For all intents and purposes, fishing season is over. Sure, there’s no closed fishing season here, and you can still fish if you want to, but as John Gierach says, “You don’t have to.” Even if you did fish in this kind of weather, you probably wouldn’t catch much unless you’re into watching a bobber with a minnow under it or crawling bass lures over deep ledges. A few trips to Tennessee tailwaters are planned over the winter, but there isn’t much urgency right now. At least not until after the Bama-Florida game this coming weekend.

It’s hitting me hard this time, the whole winter and not fishing thing. I fished less this year than any other year in my life, well, at least the years that count. And it’s eating at me. I’m already restless before December. Destination guides are piling up beside the bed and toilet. By the end of February things could be downright desperate. In the meantime, I’ve apparently decided to amuse myself with photos of leaves. You’ll find a couple from the weekend below.

In other news, Reed Curry’s book on Trout, UV Vision and fly tying is finally out! He sent me a copy to review, and I’ll post my thoughts as soon as I can plow through it. In the meantime you shouldn’t wait on my review to buy the book. Reed’s as fine a writer as you’ll come across, and you can bet his book is entertaining, quirky, informative and highly useful. Check it out on his site!

I think all these leaves are from a pear tree.

I arranged them a couple ways, aiming for something sort of random but not quite.

Take care,
Nathan

In A River Runs Through It (whether the movie or the novella I don’t remember – I sometimes confuse scenes from the two), Norman Maclean tells of how his father valued brevity in writing. Reading through my post about online fishing magazines, I realize this is something sorely missing from my own writing style.

The latest issue of Fish Can’t Read was just published. It’s full of good material. I like it. I also like Catch magazine. Between the two, you’ll find just about the best fly fishing content on the web. I’m just not sure the periodically-published flipbook style will persist. I think more regularly published high quality content will eventually prove more successful. There – that’s really all I wanted to say with that bloated post from a couple weeks back.

Jason fishing a small North Alabama stream in early morning light.

Brevity is also of use in reporting on the fishing trip Jason Kelley and I took over the weekend. The plan was to scout lots of potential smallmouth streams in our area, and catch some good fish to end up the season. We did scout several streams, some of which looked very good. We didn’t catch many fish. No smallmouth. We tried everything we could think of to no avail. The weather was great. We sampled several good beers. Dinner at Logans Roadhouse was good, and both Alabama (for me – Roll Tide!) and Arkansas (for Jason – Go Razorbacks!) won big in their games on Saturday night. We decided that we didn’t face enough adversity to deserve to catch any fish. With that in mind we plan to take our next trip during severe storms, only drink Natty Light, eat turkey dogs charred over a campfire and be Vanderbilt fans for the night. To the left is a shot of Jason fishing the first creek of the morning. I’m still editing photos, and I’ll post a few more as I finish them. I imagined how I wanted this shot to look when I snapped the photo and came pretty close to getting it there in the post-processing.

Take care,
Nathan

One day this week, I’ll post a report on a smallmouth trip Jason Kelley and I took over the weekend, but don’t expect many fish photos. We knew going in that this would be a scouting trip, and for the most part we struck out. Okay, that’s an understatement. We were completely whipped and embarrassed by not just the smallmouth but by all warmwater species present in our streams. At least the scenery was nice. Here’s Jason fishing one of the small creeks we explored:

Jason fishing a small stream in North Alabama.

I wrote this essay about the one good day of fishing we had in Glacier National Park last summer.

I was hiking to fish a high cutthroat lake inside Glacier National Park with my father and my wife. Not the most orthodox of fly fishing parties, but then again I’m not the most orthodox of fishermen and fly fishing’s not the most orthodox of subcultures, so it all seemed natural enough.

When we finally scrambled off the steep hillside and down to the lakeshore, we brushed the limbs to the side for our first close-up look. At least half a dozen cutthroat trout were scattered around lazily sipping something from the surface. Unfortunately for us, a gentleman was already there casting to them. He appeared to be the only other fisherman on the lake, so we worked our way around the west shore, the eastern side being a shear slope of loose talus that we didn’t feel like tackling. Besides, the west side appeared to hold most of the shallow water when we took our first look from high above.

I found it tough to contain the jitters. Every fisherman must know something like this when there are big fish right there, and you don’t know if you can catch them. And I was far from certain. I don’t know why I have so much trouble catching trout from a lake. I mean, my whole life I’ve been catching bass and bluegills from ponds and lakes, and from streams so sluggish they might as well have been lakes. What’s so different about trout?

I suppose a lot of it boils down to me still being a swamp water bass fisherman in fact if not at heart. I just can’t get it out of my head that catching a fish from water that still, shallow and clear is impossible or at least highly unlikely. Most friends would call me an experienced fisherman, but the majority of that experience has taken place on the aforementioned ponds, lakes and muddy streams, and with conventional bass tackle instead of a fly rod. Trout are still a beautiful, exotic species. A handful of trips for trout every year just doesn’t saturate you with the confidence that comes from living and breathing fishing like I did for bass back during my early college years.

And it’s not just the lakes that continue to bother me. What is it about the bugs? I mean, with bass, you just toss something big, gaudy and meaty out there and wind it back any way you want. Eventually you’ll find a bass hungry and mean enough to eat just about anything. I’m beginning to think all that crap about the confident fly fisherman calmly identifying the correct insect, tying on an imitation and catching trout is just that. Crap. Here’s how it happens this time, which is fairly typical of my experience:

I climb out on a rock and look over the lake. There are several fish rising. What are they eating? I don’t see a thing on the water. If I didn’t know better, I’d say these fish had gone mad from hunger and were sipping at nothing, convinced they were dining on fat green drakes. Nothing’s flying in the air either. I try an old trick, that did actually work one magical day on the Lamar River, and brush the grass trying to stir any clinging insects to flight. Nothing other than a few scrawny grasshoppers, and I’m certain the fish aren’t feeding on those. I take my hat and use it like an aquarium net to seine the surface of the water. Nothing shows up in there either. So, I tie on an Adams. Read the rest of this entry »

I really don’t think there is that much wrong with the online fly fishing magazines, at least not the ones I like (namely Catch and Fish Can’t Read). If you haven’t checked them out, you should. Catch is chock full of great photography and sweet videos. It’s unique in that it focuses solely on the photography and videography of the sport. Fish Can’t Read is broader, sporting well-written feature articles in addition to nice photography. Both magazines are published on roughly the same timeline as a print magazine might be, and both use a digital flipbook format. As I said, I like them both, but I’m not sure either will ever be a roaring success, at least not financially.

My reasoning is that they’ll never be able to generate the ad revenue needed to keep going in their current format. I probably spend a couple hours with each issue, so if you have an ad in there, you get my attention for maybe a couple minutes every two months. That’s just not much. For their sake I hope I’m not the average reader. With a print magazine, I might look at it every couple days for a month or so, assuming I leave it in the magazine rack by the toilet or lying by the bed. I just don’t believe these new magazines are taking full advantage of the internet. I mean, one of the things I dislike about print magazines is that I have to wait a couple months before I get a new one. Well, if you’re running an online magazine, there’s no reason to limit your audience in this way. Why not publish new content at least a couple times every week? Why wait until you have a whole magazine’s worth of content before publishing any of it? My suggestion to those looking to craft an online magazine would be to use the blog format, but not make it a blog, if that makes sense. Simply use blogging software (Wordpress would work just fine) to publish your content as it’s ready for publication instead of using the flipbook format. Just because it’s Wordpress doesn’t mean you have to call it a “blog.” Wordpress would simply function as your content management and publication system. You could even maintain an editorial “blog” as a separate section on the site.

No one out there’s doing this, and I really don’t understand why. Midcurrent is probably the closest, but it doesn’t really do what I’m talking about here. Not yet anyway. What I’d like to see is an online magazine that publishes very high quality features at least twice every week. Maybe Monday I can go in to work and read a feature essay about someone’s backcountry trip. On Thursday I have a video about tarpon fishing from float tubes in some croc-infested swamp. For the weekend I get a full-length article related to fly tying, and the next week I am treated to a photo essay on Alaska’s monster rainbows. These wouldn’t be your typical blog entries. They would be full-fledged articles and features just like those being published in the magazines, but instead I’d be fed material more regularly. On top of that, I’d be visiting the site daily looking for new goodies, and therefore I’d see the ads every day instead of just once a month. You’d need to figure out how best to get the ads seen without causing too much irritation. That’s one good thing about the flipbook style – you see the ads as you flip pages, but it doesn’t feel overly intrusive. Personally I would publish large, attractive, image-based ads (similar in look to the ads in the flipbooks) as the feature post on days when no new content was ready. That’s in addition to sidebar and a few in-line ads. Please, no pop-ups or pop-unders!! Also, you could have a section listing guides, shops and lodges for specific locations, much like the print magazines have in back. I would actually find that feature useful.

Something like this just might pull in enough ad revenue to make the whole thing click. Of course, you’d need really high quality material. The writers, photographers and video-makers would need to be paid for their contributions. In addition to the features, you could include a breaking news section, a weekly editorial opinion section (which would be like a normal blog entry), and a forum. You’d need to maintain a presence on all the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, but the truth is, something like this wouldn’t be that tough to do, and I’m a little puzzled as to why the digital flipbook has become the format of choice?

I think you’d have to keep the whole thing free and make it work on ad money alone (and maybe a few other things like calendars, DVDs, fine art prints, etc). I know I just wouldn’t pay for something like this. There’s too much good material out there in blogs, forums, etc. for me to pay for online content. There are still print magazines good enough that I’ll pay to receive them, but I haven’t come across any website that I’d pay for a subscription to. Midcurrent is probably best positioned to make a run at something like this, but I’m not sure it’s what they’d want to do. You may ask why I’m not trying it myself. Well, I think whoever does it needs to be positioned as an “insider.” Someone who has the clout and respect to pull in the requisite talent quickly, and maybe convince that talent to work for free for the first couple months. I’m about as far from that description as you can get. Heck, I don’t reckon I even fish any more. Doesn’t feel like it anyway. I just post and read about it, and I like pretty fishing pictures. So, what do you think? I want to see these folks succeed. I like the content, and I like the people. Plus I want a good product, and I want it more often. Tell me what you think.

Take care,
Nathan