The Best Fly Fishing is Everywhere - 08.16.2024
Ramblings & Readings, Creativity & Conservation, Happenings & Hope
My Fishy Friends,
Do you know that feeling you get when you’ve been scheming on a specific place or kind of fish or type of fishing for a long while but for various reasons it just hasn’t happened yet and it keeps not happening for so long that you think it may not happen at all until unexpectedly the calendar opens up and a friend is also free and now it looks like it’s going to happen very soon and you know that it’s going to be awesome but could also just as likely be a bust? Yeah, I’ve got that feeling right now.
Cheers,
Jesse
“On Bridges”
As access ways to rivers, I am appreciative, but remain skeptical, for they are the obvious choice. I’d like to think that the quality of fishing is correlated with the difficulty of access or distance traveled to arrive, but this may not be true…
If It Ain’t Broke
As a kid growing up in Maine, each new school year brought with it the opportunity to show off your new L.L.Bean backpack. If you were lucky, your new pack also included your name or initials embroidered on it in some cool font or fancy design. Eventually I aged out of these packs but never strayed from the brand, transitioning to another one of their decades’ old designs, the L.L.Bean Rucksack. I have had this pack for more than twenty years now and just like my fly fishing vest (also made by L.L.Bean), there’s a place for everything and I make sure to keep everything in its place: a Nalgene or two, keys, pens, tin of Altoids, chargers, sunglasses, headphones, laptop, and whatever books and clothes I’m bringing with me. It’s not the lightest or most ‘technical’ of backpacks but I wear it hiking, biking, and when traveling. It ain’t broke, so I’m not fixing it.
Five H’s
We all know that it’s harder to say what you mean in fewer words. As the saying goes, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” So as a writer and communicator, I appreciate an easily-understood and efficient delivery of a complex topic: elevator pitches, mnemonic devices, infographics, etc. The Wild Steelhead Coalition has done just this with their summary of the threats to wild steelhead, which I believe applies to all anadromous fish: The Five H’s. If we think of these H’s as levers we can all pull, even in small ways as individuals, in some way or another (and some more easily than others), I think there’s a path to sustainable populations of the fish we love.
The Angler’s Sin of Sloth
I took the picture below over a decade ago while on a fishing trip to British Columbia with three people I hardly knew beforehand. Unsurprisingly, we became very fast friends. The moment this image captures was when one friend and I first reached an unbelievably good looking run upstream of our camp; it looked so good we just had to admire it. Thinking about that day reminds me of an essay that ran in The Drake Magazine years ago about the ‘seven sins of fly fishing,’ and specifically, the sin of Sloth. “Why do fishing and loafing go so well together?” poses the author. It’s worth considering but perhaps the more important question is, is this a sin at all?
Cervesas Especiales
I could eat Mexican food every single day and wouldn’t think twice. Tacos, burritos, tortas, quesadillas - these are the vessels through which to deliver mostly the same ingredients and I’ll choose one or the other based on the day and my mood. But what about a liquid form of Mexican food intake? Micheladas are the likely choice, and I’m no stranger, but I also suggest considering what California fly fishing guide Mario Guel has coined Special Beers. Give his tutorial a watch and I encourage you to experiment with garnishes as well. Pickled goodies are my favorites. Cheers!
On Horses & Mistakes
Ol’ Mahan crawled out from behind a couch and said,
’Jack… as far as I can see,
Mistakes are only horses in disguise.
Ain't no need to ride 'em over
'cause we could not ride them different if we tried.’
~ from “Ramblin’ Jack & Mahan” by Guy Clark
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