Days 36 & 37, June 25 & 26, San Diego, CA

You never know what's going to come down the chum line.  But there's a good chance it will be something mean and nasty, and you can be assured it's going to be hunting you.  Could be a mako shark, could be a blue shark, or it could be something even meaner and nastier.  When a big shark rolls by your boat and turns a dark eye on you, it feels like pure evil, man.  Cold.  If you study the bottom half of this picture carefully you may see what I'm talking about.

I'm not going to write a whole lot about my experience fly fishing for sharks off the coast of San Diego.  It was definitely an experience that is best expressed in pictures, and I strongly encourage you to check out this 3-minute video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em72KKHua08n.  I want to thank my good friend Mysterious L.A. Sharker for inviting me to go with him on this adventure, and also Conway Bowman who arranged for our guides, Captain Dave Trimble and Captain Lou Fodor.  Both of our guides are really dialed into the shark scene in Southern California, and did a fantastic job of laying down a chum line.  The sharks came and Mysterious and I both caught them.  It was amazing!  I've never before had 200 pounds of pure evil on the end of my fly line.  What a thrill!

So rather than give you the full narrative about the shark trip, I'm going to cover the social element of our San Diego stay instead.  I am fortunate to have some friends who live there - specifically Therese and Joe Fleming - whom I've known for almost 30 years.  I used to torture Therese in her first professional job after college when she had the misfortune of working under my "supervision."  She must have liked it, though, because we're still friends after all these years.  Therese and Joe were kind enough to put Mysterious and I up at their place when we arrived in town and found out that every hotel and motel south of Riverside, CA was booked for the weekend.  I know that sounds impossible and I thought it was impossible, but it's true.  The Flemings saved the day, and not only did we have a comfortable place to stay, but we had a fabulous time chatting with them and their friend Pamela into the wee hours.  Therese really surprised me - she's turned into a great cook!  And besides that, she's hot!  (Aren't you? Therese.)  Anyway, thanks to T & J - the company and food at their house were almost better than the shark fishing, which was spectacular.

If you're paying careful attention, you may have noticed that I've left a couple of trip days out of my blog.  As I mentioned in my last post, I've got too much material and I haven't had enough time to write it all down yet.  But I will try to revisit the lost days, eventually.  I promised to touch on the topic of religion and I will also get to that eventually.  Right now I'm visiting with another set of friends in L.A. and I'll write about that next time, and more fishing adventures, of course.  Tomorrow evening I'll reunite with my wife Trish.  I can't wait!

Days 32 & 33, June 21 & 22, San Juan River

Strategy.

When I was a practicing CPA in the fiercely competitive world of large international accounting and consulting firms, the leaders of my firm formulated strategies that took our firm from number 8 to number 1, as measured by annual global revenues, in the course of my career. Those were good strategies. For about two centuries, the leaders of the United States had strategies that took us from a loose set of backwater colonies to the world’s greatest superpower. Those were also good strategies. (What happened to those anyway?)

When you fish on one of the most popular and crowded rivers in the country for big trout, you have to have good strategies. I had two of them, and they both paid off.

Strategy One

Based on my experience on my first day fishing on the San Juan River (see prior blog post), I was in no hurry to get to the water day two because the fishing was much slower in the morning than in the afternoon. So I took my time scouting around late morning and I noticed that all the empty drift boat trailers were being shuttled to an area at the bottom of the “quality” water section called “Crusher Hole.” I figured correctly that Crusher Hole was where most of the drift boats would be arriving late in the afternoon, and I might have the area to myself until then. Elsewhere upstream, I was pretty sure, there would be both dozens of drift boats and most of the other wade fishermen. So I parked there and strolled down to the river. Good strategy! For the next several hours I made my way a short distance upstream from Crusher Hole, fishing at each of the pools and runs behind a series of rocks that had been placed in that area for the purpose of improving fish habitat. In each and every one I found at least a few fish, including some large ones. This time I had my GoPro video camera with me, so I have evidence of what I found. Here’s the link to a short video showing one of my catches above Crusher Hole:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXaq77McUY8



The very large rainbow trout in the video was impossible to hold without a net or I would have gotten a better picture at the end, but I think you can see enough to understand it was a solid trout. I caught that one on a tiny mayfly nymph just before the flotilla of drift boats arrived, each sporting a guide and two clients who were eager to crowd into my run. Fine. While the naval parade proceeded by, I quietly moved up into the riffle just beyond the row of rocks you could see in the video because I noticed there were a lot of splashes there, indicating that some kind of hatch was happening and the fish were rising to insects. I tied on a little comparadun (a small mayfly pattern with a fanned deer-hair wing) and started casting. As the boats continued to bob by, I caught trout after trout while the passengers gawked. Most of the trout were smaller ones but there were a couple of big browns in the bunch. It was the kind of dry fly fishing action you long for when you visit a place like the San Juan. Spectacular!

Strategy Two

On my third day I decided to take on the floaters mano e mano. I had only skirted the “quality” water on day two, and although I had caught about 40 fish the first day and at least 25 the second (in about 4 hours), I hoped to increase the average size of my catches in my final effort on the San Juan. So I stopped by one of the local fly shops and hired a guide with a drift boat. Good strategy! I got a little lucky because my guide, John Tavenner, was a twenty-year veteran San Juan guide, and a really nice guy, who knew the river better than the back of his hand. Crowds or no crowds, John seemed always to be able to find us a slot of water where big fish abounded. I knew the fish abounded because, most of the time, I could see them in the crystal clear water.

Things got off to a slow start, which may have been more frustrating to John than to me. As I mentioned earlier, fishing in the morning on day one was not very productive, and that proved to be even more true on day three. But we used the time wisely - John gave me some very useful advice on mending my line. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “mending” is the act of moving the fly line around on the water so that it isn’t pushed by the current in such a way that the fly drags unnaturally. Trout usually want to see bugs that are floating by helplessly in the current, and not ones that are flying through the water like little torpedoes.) In the next video, which has music and is generally superior to the first one above, there are a few seconds of footage where you can see me mending the line. I can’t guarantee that I was properly following John’s instructions, but I’m pretty sure that my mending did improve quite a lot before the day was over.

Again, I’ll let the video speak for itself. I have so much footage of large fish swimming around on the end of my line that I had to just pick out a couple of examples. As usual, I didn’t have the camera turned on when I caught the largest two or three trout of the day. One big rainbow jumped four times, ran upstream about 30 yards and did a complete circle around the boat before we finally netted him. In any case, the examples in the video aren’t bad specimens. Here‘s the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTWeu5j_RUs

As on the prior two days, I began to see fish rising to the surface late in the afternoon. John and I noticed a few caddis skittering around and decided we would conclude the float by tying on a Goddard caddis pattern to see if I could catch a few trout on dry flies. Good strategy! Unfortunately, I had put away the GoPro by the time we were in the last half hour of the float, so you’ll just have to take my word for it: I made some awesome casts to large visible rising fish. Our final two catches of the day, a big brown and an even bigger rainbow, were thrill rides. The trout literally flew out of the water to take the Goddard. What a way to end the New Mexico segment of the trip.

Next stop - California!

(P.S. Some of you like the fly-fishing stuff in my blog, and some of you prefer the “other” stuff. I’ve had so much material in my head the past week, and I’ve had such fantastic fishing experiences, that it’s been difficult for me to work in the non-fishing stuff. But if that’s what you like, get ready! In some of my blog posts I’ve touched on serious topics like the shame of slavery and the genocide of the Indians, the nature of being alone but not lonely, love of parents and spouses, and all kinds of literature and music. Next I’ll tackle religion! Oh my!)

Days 30 & 31, June 19 & 20, San Juan River, New Mexico

One month. That’s how long since I’ve been home. I’m ¼ of the way through my trip, and ¾ seems like a long way to go. But in another 10 days I’ll see my wife Trish, and that’s going to help a lot to refresh my enthusiasm. Not that my enthusiasm is waning too much. Every time it flags a little, something happens to renew it.

Yesterday I left my campsite in the Sangre de Cristo mountains bright and early, and stopped in Santa Fe so I could use the internet for a couple of hours to publish my last blog post and put together the video that’s in it. I had plenty of time to get to my next destination, so I decided to take an indirect route. Leaving Santa Fe, I could see the fire that I mentioned in my last post in my rearview mirror, which was a good place for it. I paused in Los Alamos, which is famous for its nuclear research laboratories, to buy groceries, then climbed the steep, curvy road that leads to Valle Caldera National Preserve. 

Valle Caldera is an interesting place.  As its name implies, it’s a broad basin of grass that was a crater of an ancient volcano. It’s hard to imagine the scale of it unless you actually see it, but it was impressive. Elk herds grazing in its center were almost impossible to detect with the naked eye. I put together a nice panoramic shot of Valle Caldera that I planned to show you here.  Unfortunately, my internet connection is poor and I can't upload pictures for now.



From Valle Caldera I started the gradual descent into the high desert of western New Mexico and its chain of Indian reservations, pueblos and sites of long-abandoned cliff dwellings. I passed over a couple of rivers I fished about twenty years ago. I hoped to stop and cast a line on the Jemez River, but every bridge and turnout was a mob scene. Hikers, bikers, climbers, swimmers and fisherman clogged every entry point, and I drove on. Through Jemez Springs I drove, and on to Cuba, where I stopped for gas. I was going to buy a milk shake there, but the line at McDonald’s was depressingly long. I drove on. Somewhere along the way I crossed the Continental Divide. A sign announced that from that point west, the rivers drained into the Colorado River and the Pacific Ocean. That would be true if anything was left of the water in the Colorado when it reaches Baja California in Mexico, but the water has pretty much all been sucked up by Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and the farms and other communities in that area before it makes it that far. North through the Jicarella Apache Reservation I drove. It looked like a place out of a John Ford western movie such as the Comancheros. I half expected a new age Geronimo and his renegade band to appear on a ridge, but Apaches were never actually in evidence except at the casino I passed when I entered the reservation. I drove on, finally arriving at my destination early in the evening. Or so I thought.

I should learn not to depend so much on my GPS. When I first set eyes on Navajo Lake and the sign for the state park there, I thought I was in the right place. Suddenly I found myself perched high atop a long dam on a narrow road with no guardrails, peering down long, steep embankments on both sides and feeling, deep in my bones, every gust of a powerful crosswind that threatened to send Camelot plummeting into the deepest part of the reservoir. On one hand I was quite taken with the incredible view of the braided, shimmering San Juan River far below me on the left. On the other hand I was scared out of my mind. Ever so slowly I proceeded, pausing for breath when I reached the west side. There was no campground there. A motorist on the road that descended the river side of the dam informed that the campground I sought was several miles down the river. I could have driven directly to it and saved a lot of miles and fear sweat if I had known. I guess the little lady who lives inside my GPS and calmly gives directions thought she’d play a joke on me. Ha ha.

After a good night’s sleep at Cottonwood Campground, I took my time making coffee, pancakes and bacon and getting organized for the day’s fishing expedition. It was obvious from the look of all the folks at the campground and the nature of the nearby businesses I drove by the previous evening that fishing was the sole reason the campgrounds and little hotels in the area were all full. I wasn’t surprised by that – in fly-fishing circles, the San Juan River is one of the three or four most highly-regarded tailwaters in the country. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a “tailwater” isn’t something that happens when you eat bad Mexican food – it’s the name for a river that flows out of a dam that backs up a reservoir such as Navajo Lake. Because the water comes from the bottom of the reservoir, it is consistently cold year-round, and is therefore favorable to trout production.) The San Juan is a regular trout factory, and draws the crowds of fishermen one would expect from such a place.

I fished on the San Juan once before, many years ago, so I had reason to expect that I would have a good day, fishing-wise. The fierce winds howling up the canyon and the dozens of fishermen departing the campground to occupy the prime spots upstream dampened those expectations, but as it turned out, they shouldn’t have. I decided to do a little scouting, and hiked a barely-there trail through the sagebrush and cottonwoods down to the river to see what the conditions were. Much to my surprise, there was only one person within sight as I surveyed about a mile of river. Apparently all the fly fishermen had taken their positions upstream on the “quality” section, but my campground was about a mile or two downstream from that section.  The water was clear and low, flowing through braids and channels beneath spectacular cliffs of yellow sandstone, and it seemed impossible that trout weren’t there. (I later found out that the flow from the dam had been squeezed back from about 5,000 cfs [cubic feet per second] to about 900 cfs only a couple of days earlier, which for us fishermen was like being handed the keys to the kingdom.) So I hiked back to my campsite, assembled my Sage XP 9-foot 5-weight rod and Battenkill Large Arbor III reel, packed some jerky and corn nuts and water bottles, and headed back to the river as fast as my felt-soled wading boots would carry me.

What a day this was about to become! The wind was brisk, but the cornflower blue sky and cotton-puff clouds were as inviting as could be. I waded about twenty yards out into the river to a promising V-shaped, ripply pool between two currents, and started throwing a rig with a split-shot, an indicator and two tiny mayfly nymphs. On the fifth cast I was tight to a 19-inch, deeply-colored rainbow trout who was quickly departing for a deep hole. Fortunately, I managed to stop him, and after several minutes of tug-of-war, I removed the fly and released the rainbow, feeling a surge of optimism. 

I’m sorry to say I have no pictures or videos to document the prime fly fishing that ensued, but I hope to take some over the next couple of days here. To summarize, I caught about 40 fish. The first one was the biggest but about half of the rest were very nearly as big – mostly thick, hardy brown trout and about a half-dozen rainbows. By 4 o’clock I caught so many fish that I started to get a bit bored and was planning to leave the river. Then I happened to notice that there were a few caddis flies skipping around on the water and trying to take flight. I hadn’t seen many rising fish all day, but suddenly there were small fish coming to the surface here and there to eat the caddis flies, and the goal of catching a fish on a dry fly began to preoccupy me. I tied on the smallest elk hair caddis (a dry fly with wings made from, you guessed it, elk hair) in my fly box and went to work.

At first this exercise was frustrating. For a half hour I couldn’t get a taker on the elk hair, and thought of giving up. Then a couple of fish came up and tapped the fly, refueling my desire. Then I got a few eats but the trout quickly unbuttoned themselves. Then I got two firm takers – big fish! – but got too excited and snapped the fly off in their mouths when they began their runs. By then it was about 6 o’clock and I was getting tired and hungry and discouraged. Perhaps it just wasn’t a day for catching fish on dry flies. I noticed that a spin fisherman with a couple of fish on a stringer was standing across the river just downstream from me. I got the feeling he was having a good laugh at my expense. Now I was obsessed, and with obsession came focus and determination.

I saw a trout rise for a skittering caddis about 20 feet in front of me and threw my fly four feet in front of where I’d seen him. I carefully mended the line to get a natural drift. Boom! My second-largest catch of the day, a fat brownie, was on the end of my line putting on an aerial performance worthy of a tarpon. I soon brought him to hand, found another target, and boom! Another large trout, then another one, and another and another! I looked across the river. The spin fisherman, who was quite nattily dressed for a sportsman of his sort, had stopped casting and was just standing and watching me. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking but his posture wasn't a happy-looking one. Maybe he didn’t like it that I was releasing the fish he longed to consume. Or maybe he was thinking he should learn to fly fish. I don’t know, but I was damned happy to show him up. I looked over my shoulder and there was a kid in a red ball cap standing on the bank with his eye on me. I caught another big fish and held it up so he could get a good look and he smiled. The spin fisherman was still staring, just standing there with his free hand on his hip. I waved at him. He pulled up his stringer and started up the far bank to his car.

Today was a grand day. On the way back to camp I managed to get a cell phone connection and called Trish. We talked for a long time. I can’t tell you how many men I’ve met on this trip so far who’ve expressed wonderment that my wife is letting me do what I’m doing. Obviously their wives are less tolerant. Guys, I just want to say this: it’s karma. I never forget to love her, and I give her all the room and respect that she gives me.

Days 27-29, June 16-18, Jack Creek New Mexico

“Don't be afraid to be alone.”

That’s the advice my camping neighbor Mike received from a football coach a few decades ago, and I thought it was good counsel.  Mike’s the President of a private equity firm based in Austin, TX.  When I was a practicing CPA, many of my clients were private equity firms, so I could relate to Mike's work easily, and we struck up a nice conversation. He told me about being a football player at Texas A&M.  Mike didn’t have a father figure in his life, so he often cast about for life lessons from male authorities he met, including the aforementioned coach.  The advice about being alone surprised him, but he never forgot it, and it's wisdom I've long held to.

On Day 27 of my long journey I awakened in the morning twilight and looked out of one of Camelot’s windows to see a full yellow moon just above the horizon. I took that as a good omen and soon launched off for New Mexico, about six hours to the west. Passing through west Oklahoma, then the panhandle of Texas, and finally into eastern New Mexico, Excalibur bucked a fierce crosswind as the landscape transitioned from the red dirt hills to high desert, and finally to mountains as I approached the town of Pecos in the middle of the afternoon.

My goal was to make it to the Pecos River northeast of Santa Fe to fish and camp, but as I drove upstream from the town, I was shocked and disappointed by the number of people I saw at the public access points. I kept driving, aiming for the Jack Creek campground at the end of the road. That’s where I met Mike, who had been there for a couple of days, contemplating his next business deal and hiking. Mike isn’t a fly fisherman and didn’t have any advice for me on that front, but he had a topo map that showed me it was possible to hike down the ridge behind my campsite to find the creek for which the campground was named, a tributary of the Pecos River. Here’s a shot of my rig parked at the Jack Creek campground, where hosts Dave and Barb (who formerly flew for Delta) preside over a beautiful and quiet space surrounded by giant aspens and firs:

Although it was already late in the afternoon, I rigged up my little Murray Mountain rod, a 6’11” Scott 3-weight that served me well back in Shenandoah National Park, and I began the steep traverse into the creek canyon, passing a young elk on the way to the stream. My disappointment about the Pecos River was not immediately mitigated when I came to Jack Creek and found that it was tiny and brush-covered in most spots. When I finally found a little pool that was open enough to throw a fly into, I was thrilled when a fish came up and tried to eat my fly on the first cast. Four more times I cast back into that hole and on the fourth try I snagged a 9” Rio Grande cutthroat trout, the New Mexico state fish. That experience reminded me of what I’ve long known, that the best fishing is often available to those who are willing to drive the farthest, hike the farthest, and cast into the most secret of streams. I was to discover over the next two days that Jack Creek abounded with these native beauties whose last bastions are the remote headwater streams high in the New Mexico mountains. Although all species of trout produce some gorgeous specimens, I’ve long thought that cutthroat trout are the most consistently beautiful, and especially those rare subspecies like the Rio Grande, or the Greenbacks further north in the Rockies. Here’s what a Rio Grande cutthroat looks like:

Informed by my experience that first evening, high up in the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains, I hiked for the better part of the next two days on Jack Creek with my camera and tripod close at hand.  I hiked down to the Pecos River at one point on Day 29 and caught a dozen or so little brown trout in an hour or two, but that was too easy so I focused my attention on the creek. Like many small rivers that are over-fished, the Pecos fishery relies on stocking and non-native species (browns and rainbows, primarily). The river is much wider than the tributary creeks and it’s much easier to cast there, but the far greater challenges and rewards were in the feeder streams.

It’s easier to show you than to fully describe what was involved in fishing on Jack Creek, so I made a little video that suggests what it was about. I’ll just say this, that the little pools containing the larger trout were, with few exceptions, very nearly impossible to cast into. Most fisherman simply won’t attempt this kind of fishing, not only because of the hiking and bushwhacking required, but because it requires preternatural stealth and the most precise casting imaginable (often to four-square-inch targets). I’ve long enjoyed this kind of challenge, but I found on this occasion that I relished it even more. I’m a much calmer person now than I’ve been for decades, and that’s a big advantage in situations like this. When I was working, every task needed to be performed yesterday, and I was almost always in a rush. But in the past few days I’ve been able to practice mental skills that I’ve longed to repossess - patience and slowness - characteristics that were prerequisites for catching these wily trout.

In the 1-minute video at the link below, you’ll see a Rio Grande cutthroat going about his daily business in a quiet pool under close cover. There were lots of smaller trout in the runs and riffles and tailouts of pools, but the larger trout almost always occupied places like this. When you watch the video, focus your attention on the little branch protruding down into the water on the right part of the screen. The trout finned quietly under that branch most of the time because the branch represents excellent cover (and a major obstacle for a fly fisherman trying to cast there).  He can hover on the edge of the calm pool and the current that carries food to him along the bank. A couple of times you’ll see him circumnavigate the pool or pop his head up to feed.  What the fish wasn’t counting on was a persistent guy with a beard who excels at the bow-and-arrow cast and is capable of hurling a tiny fly precisely into his window of vision through a maze of branches. The result? You’ll have to watch the video to find out.  Here's the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W3p660hVa0


Mike drove off early on June 18, heading back to Austin. He had come to the mountains to spend a few days alone and to think. Perhaps the advice he got from his coach long ago was just the direction he needed.  I understand that.  As I've said many times before, I sorely miss my wife and friends, but I'm finding valuable lessons in solitude.  I am not afraid to be alone.  As I sat in a camp chair outside Camelot last night and watched a hummingbird repeatedly buzz the red reflectors along the roof, I realized that I had gone for days without TV, internet, a phone or even music.  I was not even attracted to the idea of reading a book.  I was perfectly content just to watch the hummingbirds, listen to the aspen leaves twirling in the wind, and smell the plume of black smoke wafting over the campground.

Did I just say "plume of black smoke"?  Early in the evening a fire started near the Santa Fe ski area, about ten miles to the west of our campground, directly upwind.  It was interesting to observe the ensuing mob behavior.  Within a couple of hours, 80% of the campers had departed in a panic, only to be stuck behind a road-blocking accident half way down the mountain to Pecos, I later learned.  I was one of the brave or foolish ones who remained behind, and enjoyed the quietest night yet.  There was little evidence of the fire this morning when I pulled out of my site, again on the road west.

Day 26, June 15, Foss Oklahoma

Another hump day.  Excalibur crossed the mighty Mississippi and like a loaded conestoga wagon in a land rush, bounced all the way into Oklahoma.  Tonight I find myself back in Camelot, parked near the infamous Washita River, officially in cowboy and Indian country.

Originally I had planned to stop in Arkansas along the way west from Memphis.  I’ve always wanted to fish for big trout in the White River or one of its tributaries, but I was discouraged by reports of high water.  Sure enough, most of the way across Arkansas I saw muddy rivers filled to their banks, and flooded fields.  Not until I passed Fort Smith did I start to see reasonably dry-looking country.

When you travel as broadly and as fast as I’ve been doing since I left PA May 20, you can’t help but notice that America is not only a glorious nation, with amber waves of grain and all that, but it also has a dark past that we’ve buried in our collective subconscious.  On one hand there are the glories of the pioneers and industrialists who conquered vast lands and created a great civilization, and heroes like Lewis and Clark and the founding fathers of our democracy.  On the other hand, there are the tragic legacies of slavery and Indian genocide.  This morning the signs reminding me of slavery were left in my rear view mirror when I passed the exit for the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.  This evening the signs of the genocide surround me.

The first thing I noticed upon entering Oklahoma was a sign that said “Welcome to the Cherokee Nation.”  I assume the sign, and many like it along my route celebrating various other tribes, are meant as an honor to the Indians.  But it’s sad and ironic that in order for the Cherokee to be honored in Oklahoma, they had to be rounded up in their traditional lands in the southeast U.S. and herded like cattle to this place, where they were forced to settle on lands that were subsequently taken away and given to migrating whites, and where they helped to displace other native Americans who had lived here for thousands of years.  Their route was called “The Trail of Tears,” and closely paralleled the route I drove today.  I had air conditioning and music and a V-8 engine.  They had disease and injury and starvation and death.

Now, as I said, I’m camped along the Washita River.  Everyone knows of George Custer, who led his troops into a massacre near the Little Big Horn River in Montana and, for a time, was considered a martyr as well as a fool.  It’s much less commonly known that a significant portion of Custer’s fame originated at the Washita River about 50 miles upstream from where I now sit writing this.  There, at the crack of dawn one fine day in 1868, a drum and fife band played lofty music while Custer’s men calmly charged down on an encampment of about 250 dozing Cheyenne, including women and children, and brutally slaughtered a great many of them.   Eventually the Son of the Morning Star got his just desserts, but the Indian victory at Little Big Horn was much too little, much too late.  The Indians lost almost everything and everyone before the genocide concluded.

If you’ve never seen the movie “Little Big Man,” you should definitely check it out.  The movie stars Dustin Hoffman as Jack Crabbe, aka Little Big Man, in a picaresque adventure that Forrest Gump would have envied.  The movie is worth watching for many reasons – it’s both hilarious and poignant - but I call your attention on this occasion to a scene in the movie when the “battle” at the Washita River is reenacted.  The scene is made intensely personal by the presence of several of the lead characters.  If it doesn’t make you weep for the fate of the Indians, you are a heartless coward, I don’t mind saying.

Let me be clear.  I’m not a sentimental dreamer and I’m not ridden with guilt about the actions of my ancestors. Combat and conquest have been tools of the entire human race throughout history, as pathetic as that is.  It’s PC to refer to the Indians as “Native Americans,” but they have only been in the Americas for a little over 10,000 years.  That’s a pretty long time, to be sure.  Nevertheless, they were immigrants just like the Europeans, and while they apparently didn’t have to brutalize other humans to gain dominance over two continents, they did wipe out the better part of the megafauna that pre-existed them here.  Subsequently, most tribes were almost continuously in conflict with one or more other tribes right up to and even after the European invasion.  There’s nothing romantic about the Aztecs cutting the beating hearts from their enemies chests as a sacrifice to their gods, is there?  The Indians weren’t saints any more than the Europeans were saints.  It just so happens that the Europeans who came to America were the most recent conquerors, and so they get to write the history books now.  We can’t turn back time, but we shouldn’t forget the injustices that were committed.  Maybe by remembering we will someday learn not to repeat our offenses.  For example, we would do well as American citizens to study the history of Afghanistan and realize that, even as I write this, we are actively repeating the mistakes of empires from Alexander to the British and the Russians.  History is chock full of valuable lessons if we would simply pay heed to them.

And you thought you were reading a fly fishing travel blog!  If that’s what you thought, I’ll try not to keep disappointing you.  The reason I’m driving so much the past week is that I’m trying to get to where I believe the fly fishing will be good again.  Unlike most of the other western mountain states and much of the rest of the country, New Mexico has been relatively dry this spring, and I’m hoping that the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are showcasing some clear streams and stonefly hatches.  I expect to be there by tomorrow evening and I’ll let you know soon.

Day 25, June 14, Collierville TN

In my last post I mentioned that "alone time" in Excalibur incited me to compose a song.  I wrote a couple of dozen songs in my early teens and late twenties when I also played guitar (fairly) and sang (poorly), but this new song, called "Lead Me to the Well," is the first one I've written in over three decades.  I actually have rudimentary music for it.  The music exists only in my head for now, but I have a couple of ideas about who can help me convert it into an actual tune with instruments and voice.  That's an activity for my future.  For now, here are the lyrics, for better or worse:

Lead Me to the Well

Then I was a kid
Roaming in the woods
Next to cotton fields
Near my grandma's neighborhood

Saw crawdads in the slough
Waving their red claws
Fetched my BB gun
Watched the sparrows fall

Stole some cigarettes
From my grandpa's store
Saw some naked girls
Tried to open every door

(chorus)
Lead me to the well
Where the water is so deep
Before I say farewell
Have to waken from my sleep

Then I was a man
Taking all the loot
Staying at Four Seasons
And wearing power suits

Leaning over golf balls
At the L.A. Country Club
Driving a green Jaguar
With gleaming custom hubs

Staring out my office
Where twin towers once stood tall
Flying out of Frisco
Another redeye curtain call

Lead me to the well
Where the water is so sweet
Before I say farewell
Have to get up on my feet

Now my inner child
Is coming back around
Roaming in the woods
Covering lots of ground

I see a tarpon leaping
And a bass is jumping too
The salmon may be sleeping
In a river that runs through

I'm looking like my grandpa
But my eyes are full of smile
Embracing mother nature
And the call of the wild

Lead me to the well
Where the water tastes like wine
Before I say farewell
I'll find the divine
Lead me to the well
Lead me to the well


Okay, that's it.  I'll be back on the road tomorrow (Wednesday), cruising west.  I'll spend most of my time trucking the next two to three days, then I plan to settle for almost a week at a couple of spots in northern New Mexico.  I understand it's hot and windy across Oklahoma and Texas where I face a lot of drive time.  Maybe I'll dream up another song or two, hopefully about something other than wide open spaces.

Days 21-23, June 10-12, Marathon to Memphis

In order to linger for several days in desirable fishing spots such as the Florida Keys, I have to bust a hump on certain other days to rack up miles on Excalibur, considering my ambitious national circuit.  So that's what I've been doing the past three days, rumbling over 1,300 miles from Duck Key, FL to Collierville, TN.

My first stop (more of a pause, really) on June 10 was Miami Beach, FL, where I dropped off Bill Nelson at the Raleigh Hotel, an Art Deco classic.  I intended to have lunch there with Bill's wife Lara, her parents and friend Terri, but it was impossible to find a parking spot that would accommodate my truck and boat trailer.  Instead I forged on through Miami traffic congestion and construction, aiming for I-75.  A couple of hours later I was profoundly relieved to reach the Everglades and leave the sphere of Miami influence.  I-75 across the glades is commonly referred to as Alligator Alley.  Fences that extend the entire length of the Alley keep the gators off the highway, but it's interesting to observe the egrets in the canals and the varying flora along the route.  Immediately west of Miami is a broad sea of grass, which gradually transforms into cypress, pine and palmetto forests along the western side of the glades east of Naples and Marco Island.  Near Naples, I-75 turns north, and I decided to roll on until late evening.

Near the junction of I-4 and I-75 just east of Tampa was a startling sight - a Confederate flag that may have been the largest banner of any kind I've ever seen.  Later in the evening when I stopped for the night near Brooksville, FL, I Googled the flag to see what it was all about.  Apparently the Sons of the Confederacy applied to erect a veterans memorial and raise a flag at that site a couple of years ago, and an inattentive town council assumed that the memorial was for American war veterans and the flag would be an American flag.  Wrong!  As you might expect, the flag is now highly controversial, heightening sentiments on both sides of a lingering racial divide.  When I was a kid growing up in the north, having moved in first grade from my birthplace in Mississippi, I was proud to embrace my rebel heritage, always fighting on the side of the south in make-believe playground civil war battles.  I still connect to that heritage, in some respects, but the fact is that such a bold and ostentatious display of the Confederate flag sends a terrible message to African-Americans, which constitute a very large minority in the deep south.  It's a clear statement that there are certain white people who refuse to accept racial equality.  The bigger the flag, the more powerful the message.  It made me feel sad.

Excalibur pulled out at the crack of dawn on the 11th, no longer bound to the interstate system.  Highway 19/98 north from Brooksville to Tallahassee proved to be a blissfully flat, smooth and direct route, skirting the gulf coast most of the way.  The human population thins out north of Crystal River and there are long stretches of tree-lined, development-free and sparsely-traveled road.  The drive was quiet and relaxing, and gave me a lot of time to think bittersweet thoughts.  At one point I was beset by simultaneous feelings of deep melancholy and pleasant humor.  I laughed out loud at my good fortune, and almost wept at the next moment, pondering my home, my wife, my friends and my cats, which I long to see again.  All those emotions churned up discrete childhood memories and by the time I resumed interstate travel on I-10 and passed Tallahassee mid-day, I had written an entire song in my head.  I'll post the lyrics to the song tomorrow.

Rolling west on I-10 I crossed a long bridge across the Blackwater River, which flows into the gulf next to Pensacola.  The river was an impressive body of water, but not so impressive as Mobile Bay lying a couple of hours to the west.  I wasn't taking the most direct route to my ultimate destination, but I thought it would be interesting to view the site of the civil war naval battle in which Admiral Farragut lashed himself to the mast of his ship and famously said, "Damn the torpedoes.  Full speed ahead!"  That's not exactly what he said, but it's a good paraphrase.  Mobile Bay was a broad blue expanse, shimmering in the high sun and lined on its east banks by dozens of high cranes and rows and rows of oil tanks.  The city of Mobile itself featured only three tall buildings, but the unusual spires on two of them lent a modicum of flair to the downtown area.  I exited I-10 there, taking a convoluted path through an industrialized area that reminded me of Long Beach, CA, which is similarly dominated by shipping facilities and oil storage and refining structures.  My reward was that I found myself on Highway 45, winding through a set of hills in southwest Alabama and crossing into my home state of Mississippi.

Considering that Mississippi is the poorest state in the union, I expected the roads to be in bad condition.  As it turned out, Highway 45 was my favorite road of those I've traveled since I left home May 20.  Traversing the eastern side of the state, it's a remarkably smooth, lightly-traveled and forest-lined four-lane divided highway that skirts, but doesn't quite pass through, every town it connects.  Along the way I stopped in Meridian, where I spent the night.  The next morning I passed signs for the Natchez Trace and, here and there, the Mississippi Blues Trail.  I floated by little towns such as Scooba, the name of which was embossed in a low, impeccably-trimmed hedge on a field of white stones.  A nearby sign announced that Scooba is the home of world champion turkey caller Jack Lewis Dudley.  Later I Googled him.  Sadly, he died in 2008, but it's good that he's still honored in Scooba.

North of Macon, the hills and pine-dominated forests lining the highway transition into flat farm fields brimming with catfish farm ponds, cotton, beans and corn.  I was surprised by the amount of almost-mature corn I saw.  The rise in corn prices due to ethanol demand and other factors must have attracted southern farmers to that crop.  If I hadn't known better, I might have thought I was in Iowa.  Further north and west, cotton asserted itself as the more dominant crop and the landscape assumed the character of my childhood memories.  Soon I bypassed Tupelo, one of the Mississippi towns where Elvis Presley first gained traction as a rock-and-roll pioneer at the county fair when he was just a gyrating kid with a growl and a greasy pompadour.

I took a slight detour as I angled toward Memphis.  As I mentioned earlier, I have rebel sympathies, the genesis of which was my childhood love for the Ole Miss Rebels.  When I was a kid, my cousin Bobby Franklin was an all-American quarterback at Ole Miss.  While I attended junior high and high school he was a defensive back and kick holder for the Cleveland Browns.  Bobby was the star of our extended family, and inspired me to want to attend Ole Miss.  In the long run my attentions turned elsewhere, but my emotional allegiance never completely faded.  So I decided to stop for lunch in Oxford, which is not only the location of the Ole Miss campus, but was also the home base for William Faulkner, one of my favorite novelists.  I looked for evidence of Faulkner's legacy while I was there, but saw none.  I strolled around the town's magnolia-lined square with its obligatory statue of a Confederate solidier standing sentry before a classic white courthouse.  I had intended to eat a traditional southern meal at the locally famous Ajax Diner, but found that it was closed on Sunday.  A friendly young couple at a gas station told me about Proud Larry's, so I lunched there instead.  No beer served on Sundays.  Oh well.  The calzone was really tasty - not southern American, but perhaps southern Italian.

On the final stretch from Oxford to Collierville I paid special attention to the congregations exiting the Baptist and Penecostal churches attended by black people.  When I was a child, those congregations were an amazing spectacle, creating a Mardis Gras atmosphere with women sporting brightly-colored dresses and hats that were at least as wide-brimmed and fanciful as those adorning the proper English women who attended Prince William's recent wedding.  Alas, the general American trend toward casual dress has apparently diluted that tradition in Mississippi.  The black congregations I saw were tidy but bland.

Finally, after being ridden hard for over 1,300 miles in 2.5 days, Excalibur sauntered into Collierville, TN, an eastern suburb of Memphis where my parents live.  I'm spending a few days with them now.  We'll have some private time together and most likely I won't write about it.  I probably won't have time to go fishing while I'm in the deep south, but it's been good to tap ancient recollections.  I'll resume my westward trek on Wednesday.

I'll leave you with this picture that Bill took of me writing my blog on the screened balcony at Dove Creek Lodge on Key Largo.  Y'a'll take care now.

Days 16 -20, June 5 - 9, Marathon, Florida

As good as this is . . .

Those were the words that Bill Nelson, Captain Rich Keating and I exchanged countless times this week as we searched for tarpon near Marathon in the Florida Keys.  “As good as this is,” one of us would say facetiously, “let’s move to another spot.”  The fact was that the tarpon fishing this week was the quietest BIll and I have experienced in more than ten years of fishing in early June.  Due to a hot dry winter and spring, the tarpon migration peaked early, and we simply didn’t see the numbers of fish we normally see.  To make matters worse, the winds were fierce and always in our face, and the skies were often cloudy, making it hard to see or cast to the few fish we did encounter.

Se la vie.  We’ve had a great run with Captain Keating and caught a lot of tarpon over our years together.  We were due for bad luck.  But we counted our blessings.  Although the fishing didn’t match what we’ve grown accustomed to, it wasn’t a total bust, as evidenced by this video that (Emmy-nominated) videographer Bill helped me assemble.  I think you’ll enjoy this - click on the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2v86BsRyE4

Although jumps and catches were few and far between, we had some fun and crazy moments, like the time when I hooked a big tarpon and discovered that my fly line was wrapped over the butt section of my Sage Xi2 rod and crossed behind my Tibor Gulfstream reel.  I made quite a nice little cat’s cradle with the fly line, as the following picture attests, but it was absolutely not what I wanted to see when there were 80 pounds of raging megalops about to haul ass and bring that line tight.

I frantically tried to unravel the mess and almost did it, but the fish was a split second faster than me.  For the first time in my life I saw a fly line break.  The tarpon sailed away with forty feet of blue line trailing behind him, never to be seen again.  I tried not to be a drama queen, but it was tough in a week when there were few chances.  The language on our boat was salty, to say the least.

One of the things I’ve learned on my trip thus far, not surprisingly, is that fishing is not getting any easier as the years roll by.  Rapid growth of the human population and its demands on the rivers and oceans is clearly having an impact, and climate change is making things worse.  In the last few years we’ve witnessed substantial fish kills due to weather – the populations of bonefish, snook and barracuda in south Florida have obviously declined.  The tarpon population is holding up, apparently, but is probably not what it was in the days when Ernest Hemingway and Zane Grey prowled the waves around the Keys.  Our guide told us about Stu Apte, a saltwater fly fishing pioneer, who remembers when schools of a thousand tarpon cruised the beaches before the days of heavy boat traffic and overfishing.  The schools we saw were packs of 25 or less.  I try to remind myself that our biggest problem this year was just bad timing, and hope that’s all it was.  I also remind myself to keep supporting organizations like Trout Unlimited, American Rivers, the Nature Conservancy and The Bonefish and Tarpon Trust – organizations that strive to protect what remains of the natural world so that our children and grandchildren will have a chance to enjoy the earth and its waters as we do.

Bill and I come to the Keys every year and we love it.  We usually stay at a modest but sharp little place called The Ranch House in Marathon where other tarpon fisherman join us at the patio tables in the evenings to share stories.  We made new friends this year, including Randy from Santa Rosa, California, and a father and son from Kentucky.  John (the son) told me I was “living the dream,” and all I could think of was that he was right, and I’m so grateful.  We also met Randy’s friend Jim from California, who has a rare disease that has given him a short life expectancy.  He was funny and smart and engaging, a guy who is making the most of every remaining moment of his life.  When it gets right down to it, we all have a short life expectancy, don’t we?  Are we making the most of every moment?

One last story – two stories really.  After dinner one evening at Lazy Days, Bill and I stopped at a local park to watch a little league game.  One of the teams was coached by our friend, fly-fishing guide Albert Ponzoa.  At one point in the game a player hit a foul ball over the fence where we were standing with our friend Bob from Ohio, who fishes with Albert every June at the same time we’re with Rich.  Bill, who pitched for BYU on an athletic scholarship, scrambled for the ball.  Seeing the first baseman holding up his glove, Bill tried to fire the ball to him.  Much to the amusement of the crowd, the ball hit Bob right in the butt.  “And he’s my friend,” Bob said dryly.  The audience roared.

A few minutes after Bill and Bob’s comedy act, Albert’s team was up by two runs in the bottom of the last inning and the opposing team was at the plate with a man on second and no outs.  The outcome of the game was dicey.  Albert had told us a couple of days earlier about having put in a pinch-runner for a slow, heavy kid and how he was worried that he may have made the kid feel bad.  On this occasion that same kid was playing center field when a batter smacked a hard line drive in his direction.  The crowd held its collective breath while the kid calmly held up his glove, sucked in the ball and fired a flamer to the second baseman, who tagged the base runner for a double play.  The place went crazy.  Albert’s team won the game, the heavy kid was awarded the game ball, and the world’s balance was restored.  It was more thrilling than watching the Phillies.

What’s the lesson here?  The tarpon don’t flow at the same time every year and the weather isn’t always good, but you can meet some great people, and underdogs sometimes come out ahead.  That lesson may be a mite obscure but it’s a lesson nevertheless.

As good as this is, here in the Keys, I have to end this post and get ready to start north and west tomorrow.  This is the end of the first leg of my trip.  The next leg ends in California.

Days 11-15, May 31 to June 4, Titusville, Florida

I am blessed. Not only do I have the most generous, kind, and loving wife who tolerates my wanderlust, but I also seem to have an angel sitting on my shoulder these days. I don’t know how much longer my good fortune will hold out, but I will always be grateful for what I’ve already had, and die happy.

As I write this, I am sitting on the balcony of a modest but beautiful little resort on the ocean side of Key Largo. A cool breeze is blowing through my hair and before me the sun is shining on a broad expanse of shallow water which, in angling parlance, is a fine-looking bonefish flat. When my friend Bill Nelson and I arrived this afternoon, having made a last-minute reservation for a room in which I had planned to spend the night on the sleep sofa, our kind host Debbie offered us an upgrade to the best suite in the resort, at the same low price. I’d like to think it was my charm, but probably it was Bill’s, or perhaps it was just the happy vibe we’re both throwing off after three of the most interesting, pleasant and rewarding days of fishing we’ve ever had.

Although I’ve said it many times, I’m not actually sure that a picture says a thousand words. But in this case? Well, take a look and decide for yourself:

That’s how it was the on upper St. Johns River in central Florida, where Bill and I roamed with Captain Paul Cave on Wednesday and Friday. Paul, an easygoing pirate with a genuine passion for fly fishing for bass, guided us to some of the most exotic and mysterious pools and bends we’ve ever seen. While big gators patrolled the depths across which we cast small popping flies, we tried not to be distracted by the possibility that we were ringing the dinner bell for one of those river monsters. Our reward? Dozens of bass ranging from 8 inches to 10 lbs. The cherry on the sundae was a cornucopia of wildlife – herons, egrets, bald eagles, ospreys, sweepers, stilts, and ducks, among many other birds, and river otters, and even a water moccasin, an extremely venomous snake that we feared even more than the gators. It was like fishing on another planet, intoxicating and dangerous. When I caught a small gar, and briefly hooked a three-foot-long gar, I started thinking that the planet isn’t even in our solar system.  Here's what a little gar looks like (that's the gar in the foreground and me holding it):

Here’s a 1.5-minute video montage Bill helped me put together that illustrates the nonstop action and fantastic scenery we witnessed on the St. Johns River:  http://youtu.be/kp8NhKdfDHc


In between the two days cruising with Captain Paul, we spent five hours on a late afternoon and evening with Captain Shane Ryan in the Ponce Inlet area, which was another strange planet entirely. Weather conditions for that trip weren’t ideal and it was tough to find the fish we wanted to target, but Shane put us on a big school of ladyfish and a couple of them burned our reels. Bill and I accomplished two things Shane had never seen before, although he’s been fishing in the area all his life: Bill caught a big sailcat on a fly, and I caught a 1-inch (that’s stretching it) pinfish on a fly. A sailcat is a type of catfish with beautiful fins, a rare catch on any lure. I had never heard of that species before I actually saw one. The pinfish I caught was the tiniest fish I’ve ever hooked and landed. How it got stuck on the hook is beyond me. We had a lot of laughs and talked about coming back in the winter when the redfish schools are abundant and visible.

I said I was blessed, and I truly am. As I was driving to the Orlando airport to pick up Bill before the above events occurred, I was contemplating the fact that I am getting to do exactly what I want to do from all the choices available to me, a luxury to be sure. But it also occurred to me that life can never be “perfect,” no matter what we choose, because it is human nature to always want more than one thing at the same time. I want to be home, sleeping in own bed. I want to be with my wife. I want to see my friends from home. I hope and plan to spend a lot of time doing all those things in my future. But for now I choose to travel and fish because for many years my ability to do that was very limited. Some people are paralyzed by choices, or they spend too much time thinking about the choices they didn’t make. I made my choices and I revel in them. Regrets and indecision are a waste of time.

We’re heading out to dinner soon. Last night we ordered Royal Red shrimp at Dixie Crossroads in Titusville, and they were the sweetest, best shrimp we ever tasted. I don’t know what we’re going to eat tonight but I’m 99% sure it’s going to taste great.