Angel in the Night

Angel in the Night: 

My college friend Dean and I were in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey. The year was 1980 just before the huge downtown restoration project was going to take place. We were both in school at Rutgers and wrestling for the team. We would sometimes hop on a bus and get dropped off in the downtown George Street area, or we would drive down in his green Comet,looking for good food. A place called “Stuff Yer Face” was there and Tomaltys’ pub and a few good ‘hole in the wall’ pizza places. 

It was a mild fall night so Dean and I were sitting outside at a table sharing a huge pizza. We would often pig out, when we did not have an upcoming match. I loved to eat a good east coast style pizza and converse. 

We were enjoying our meal when we noticed a homeless man limping his way up the sidewalk slowly. He was dragging a stuffed dirty pillow case in which, I assume he was carrying everything he owned. I noticed he had a spasm in his jaw/mouth that bothered me. He also smelled of urine and body odor. So the odor and the spasm were enough to set me back and to pull away. 

Dean kept urging me to talk to this man and in fact he wanted me to offer him some pizza. I kept saying no; that I just did not want to. And I knew the scriptures; I knew the arguments. I knew I was saying no to a lot more than a homeless man. 

Dean was bolder than I was when it came to talking to strangers  And in sharing his faith. In fact, Dean was on his feet already, ready to greet this man. Dean would soon be in seminary so he was quite serious about his faith. I was a bit timid, far too self centered but that is no excuse for not feeding the hungry. And I knew it. 

I think I was trying to stall just long enough in hope that this guy would disappear around the corner and it would be over. Dean persisted, still trying to get me to feed this man, but I held my ground. He was slowly walking away from us down the sidewalk, slipping away. Thank God, I thought.  

I am now embarrassed for being so self centered. I feel a bit ashamed of myself. I kept saying to Dean, “I just want to eat my pizza and relax.” as though if I kept saying that to myself it would justify my choice. Yeah, there I was a college kid on a full ride scholarship and well fed. What a tough life!

The space between us and the lame man was lengthening. And then, just when I thought  this was going to all be over a strange turn of events took place. The man, as though he read my mind,  or God’s mind. Or both, slowly did a 360 and was heading back to me. Straight toward me. 

Slowly, step after step, limp after limp, he came right up to our table. It was Dean, not I , who handed him the two slices of pizza which he gobbled down. He did not say a word. Nor did I. 

Dean also reached out and gave the man a hug saying God bless you.” 

I did nothing. 

But I still wonder if perhaps we entertained an angel. Or the angel was entertained by my pitiful selfishness. 

 

Help from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451:

Books are amazing entities. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is a prophetic masterpiece. I read it in high-school but was too young to appreciate it but  have reread it several times in the past few decades. 

The book chronicles the life of a fireman.  His job is not to put out fires but to start them. His job is to find books and burn them. In this society all individuality is suspect, and because books have individual thoughts, opinions, and feelings, all books are suspect. Books are hidden in secret places of houses.

How strange that everything is a little upside down in our current cultural system. Suppose we were fined or persecuted, or even burned, for merely reading or possessing a few books. Would we take a stand or would we just let the government burn them? Montag, the main character watched a woman remain standing on a pile of burning books. The image stuck with him. He concludes, and later recalls the story to others saying, there must be something in books for a person to be willing to do that. Why would someone just allow one self to burn-up with a pile of books?  

The other problem in this society is that everyone, ironically, is terribly lonely. No one really talks. They have a lot of high tech social media devices. Everywhere! Folks literally stay at home and talk to the walls. If they go to a restaurant/bar its the same story. Tv's are all over the place blaring. 

Here is Montag's complaint, "No one listens anymore. I cant talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I cant talk to my wife (spouse); she/he listens to the walls. I just want someone to listen to me. 

Anyone ever feel that way?

   

      

Can We Talk People out of Fishing for that last "one more" fish?

I have, more than once, literally and with great patience, talked some fly fishers out of trying to catch "just one more". 

Of course I don't mean I am trying to talk people out of the sport of fly fishing. What I mean is we need to share the resource, slow down a bit and rise above our compulsiveness and egos. Maybe the goal is that everyone in a party gets one fish and that is enough.

If one fish is not enough then 10 will also not be enough. Here is how I see it. If you are fishing with family and friends and you catch a fish but your friend or family member has not, then we need to allow him or her, if possible, to catch up so to speak. We stop fishing, we stop competing and help the person out. 

Of course this is not a perfect system but that could be our goal. One fish, maybe two for each one of us. One or two is enough. Its going to have to be if we want the fish to survive. We would have to talk ourselves out of fly fishing for the good of the resource and for the good of a friend or loved one. But this is not going to be easy as I know I love to catch as many fish as possible and don't like to leave an opportunity unfinished.

I remember guiding one afternoon on the dream stream when I was in my late 20's. It was a large group and we were spread all out on the river. My 3 clients had caught several fish and it was time to head back to the bus. As we were walking along the river I saw another guide and friend. Steve was still with a client working a fish in a run we used to call "Lower two Riffs".  Steve suddenly yelled "strike" and the client did a bass type strike and broke off the fish again.

"How did you do Steve"? I asked. He said they did ok but there was one big fish that they broke off three times. Steve helped his clients out of the run and were slowly walking back to the bus. I also kept walking but more slowly as I was scanning the run where that client had just broken off that big fish and I saw that it was still rising to the BWO hatch. I half heartily mumbled to Steve, "So, how big was the fish".  He said, "Over 20."

That was the way the dream stream fished in the old days. You could get several chances at a big fish. Now a days, if you spook a big fish he will disappear and rest somewhere licking his wounds. Or so it seems.

While guiding I often carry a 2 weight rod rigged with a dry fly in case we have a hatch I will sometimes work with a client on dry fly skills but it is generally harder to get a beginner to hook a fish on a dry. But I love to throw a dry and especially back when I was in my late 20's and felt I had a right to show off now and then.  So I hastily said to my clients that I was walking with that I just had to make one cast (Since I could see the fish rising I justified it???). We were probably 60 yards away from the run. I said, "Ill catch up to you, it will only take a minute",  as I started a light jog to the run. I made one cast, hooked and landed the large 22 inch rainbow. I got a few cheers from my clients, and the gentleman who broke off the fish 3 times; well I'm not sure how he truly reacted, perhaps he was angry that I caught his fish.  Before releasing the fish I gently pulled out 3 extra flies from his mouth. I caught up to Steve and gave Steve his flies back. Yep, they were all his. I enjoyed a bit of laughter from Steve and the clients.

So, for a few minutes on the Dream Stream I was a type of fly fishing Guru, a "jet I fish-master",  or maybe, when I think about it more deeply,  I was a loser; a pathetic, arrogant guide in my 20's who just  had to show off and catch the big fish and stress it out even more. (at least I got those 3 extra hooks out of his mouth but that does not justify my behavior that afternoon.). I was not considerate to the fish nor the gentleman who broke the fish off 3 times, nor my clients who I was walking back with and chatting about the afternoon of fishing.

It is hard to say "no more" to oneself while fishing. It is difficult to leave those fish alone.  Maybe it only comes after one has fished a life time. I don't know. I think many people think just because a river is catch and release that we have a right to catch all the fish we can.

There are a lot of great guides and fly fishers out there who could have duplicated my actions and caught that fish and probably even done it in a more graceful manner. But that is not the issue. The issue is that we are going to have to think of these fish as a treasure and that when we fish we are going to have to learn to back off and not feel that we have to catch every fish in the river  and go for every opportunity. Or another way is to think of these fish is as our personal property. If that is so, then another question I like to ask myself, is to consider if these were my fish on my private ranch would I allow thousands of people to have "limitless" access to catch as many fish as possible every day of the year and be allowed to use all fly fishing techniques from 3 fly nymph rigs to shuffling to using pegged eggs and worm patterns? 

I would not. I would not allow nymph rigs. Perhaps I would make it a dry fly only river. I would not allow people to wade the river (you would have to learn to cast from the bank). I would close the river at least one day a week. I would close the river during the spawn. I would limit the number of anglers per day. I would not allow fishing in the heat of the afternoon hours. Close the river down at 1:00pm. These are just a few suggestions.  I would do what ever is necessary to preserve the wildness of the fishery. But in our public waters such as the "Dream Stream" we are light years away from enacting such regulations. We place our egos and money above protecting the resource.

Perhaps as a guide in his 20's I would not be able to understand these kind of fishing regulations and preservation. But now at age 63 and a retired guide I can see the damage done by guides like myself and I have no excuse. 

 

    

Injury Upon Injury: 

I have been injured in the past to the extent that I could not wrestle or run for weeks. Torn ligaments in my ankle, torn cartilage in my sternum, Plantar fascittis issues in my foot. These were injuries that left me sidelined. Being an exercise junkie it was very difficult to carry on without the endorphins in my system and in my brain. Very, very difficult.

However, I don't think I was ever injured to the point of not being able to fly fish. Until perhaps now. I currently have two bad hips. I can still bike, do gobs and gobs of pushups, but that is about all.  

There were however injuries to my soul where I felt spiritually paralyzed and did not want to fish or still worse, felt I could not fish. 

I have had a few friends speak of such injuries to the soul. My friend Mike and coauthor of this book spoke of a divorce that was so painful that he was unable to lift his rod up to cast.  No doubt getting out and at least making the attempt to fish and or hunt has helped him recover.

D.H. Lawrence spoke of such injury to his soul and how those wounds have made him ill and how they take a long long time to heal.

I'm not sure if I am currently injured due to some deep soul injury. When I was in high school and college, if I lost a match, I felt beat up and lost. I felt wounded to my soul. Or perhaps that was all in my imagination. Its difficult not to take such wounds and losses deeply and personally.

I do know that at age 61 plus I have bad hips, mainly from over running. I have had one complete replacement on my left side. Second replacement on the right hip is coming up in two months.  Oh, how I miss running. But how stupid of me to pound my body to death for all those years.

Besides running in some crazy races (ie. Pikes Peak) I mainly did half marathons along with a few full marathons. If I had an area of specialty it was to cut loose and fly down hill. I called it free speed. My favorite race was out in Buena Vista called the Autumn Color Change. They bused us part of the way up Cottonwood Pass, dropped us off and then we ran all the way down to the downtown intersection in Buena Vista, and then  down to a small park with a pond.If I got there early I looked for fish.  It was 13.1 miles of pounding down hill. Maybe that is why I do not have any cartilage left in my hip joints.

Did those fish I went after with my clients take a pounding like I have? I have had fish that my clients caught so wrapped up in leader, that their fins were wrapped so tightly to their bodies that they were un able to move; unable to wiggle even a little fin! 

The image of injured fish can keep me up at night. Along with images of hooks lodged in the gills and eyes of fish leaves me trembling with fear. There is currently an ongoing debate with in the fly fishing community, or at least among the sensitive ones,  considering if fish feel pain.  

I don't think the issue of pain is the issue or at least its not the whole issue. To me the question is more of do we want to treat our fish so badly?  There has to be another way; a way to lighten up?  

I have said it several times in this book, on my blog and elsewhere. We need another way, something "beyond" catch and release. It does not make sense that catch and release fly fishing means we are without limits. We cant keep pounding the fish without limits. We can't keep giving them injury upon injury.

  

 

Stuart Iittle On The River With Miss Aims:

Stuart Little was born looking like a tiny mouse.  I think we can assume he was a mouse living among humans searching for someone who was his size.

In his travels he meets a gentleman who owns a general store and the owner knows a young lady who is the same size as Stuart. A date of sorts is arranged for Stuart to meet Miss Harriet Aims. 

Stuart works on the plans for the date. He buys a small souvenir canoe at the five and dime store and spends the whole day in preparation rigging up an anchor, fishing rods, and paddles. For paddles he decided to use paper ice cream spoons.

The time arrives. Stuart meets Harriet and takes her down to the river to get the canoe hidden in the bushes.. But the canoe has been vandalized. Stuart is beside himself, running around screaming. The rods and lines were all tangled up.When one finally meets someone who is the same size one can imagine there is a lot riding on this date. Talk about the pressure.   

This reminds me of a fishing trip, perhaps a guide trip that has gone south before we even got started. Sometimes things happen on guide trips. Rods break, everything gets tangled up. Waders and shoes go missing. One time, I sank in such deep sticky mud that I pulled my foot out of my shoe. My shoe was gone.  

Another time we brought two extra rods and both got broken and ended up being short a rod.

People get upset, clients forget their fishing license. Often we have to back track and start all over. 

Sometimes as a guide I just feel like quitting before we even get on the river. Delays often mean we don't get in the water we want. So we have to move around and try to find the fish and in recent years this can be tough. 

Stuart is not handling this well. Stuart and Miss Aims are both looking at the fishing rods and lines. Stuart says "Look at that mess, I could never get that undone." 

I also have not always handled such situations well. 

Miss Aims makes the suggestion that they could just allow the lines to drag behind the canoe and pretend to fish. Well, Stuart would have none of this. He yells, "Look at that mess, I could never get that undone; I don't want to pretend I am fishing."

After a few other gracious suggestions from Miss Aims, Stuart cries out, "It just wouldn't be the same." Miss Aims does not understand, "The same as what"? 

"The same as the way it was going to be in my mind."   

Again, I can relate. Often I picture things in my mind and those pictures are like a perfect movie and if I cant have it that way then I don't want it at all. 

I remember, the night before one of my first guide trips my car was broken into and in their search for money they made a mess of things. Luckily, for me, none of my fishing gear was stolen or broken and I distinctly remember being able to utter those all too powerful words, 'Thank God';  However, I do remember feeling like Stuart.

It was not often but, sometimes in a wrestling match I would make a critical mistake in the first minute  and had to play catch up. One time I got penalized for a point or two. Another time I thought the ref blew the whistle calling us out of bounds but we were not. My opponent took advantage of the situation, shot in on me, and took me down. Again, I had to play catch up. 

Sometimes, on a guide trip, In the end I had to play financial catch up.  It was so windy one day that when I opened my truck door the wind caught it with such force that it bent back the hinges. 

Some "come backs" are psychological like the time on the very first cast my client hooked a big big fish. We chased it 200 yards down stream only to lose it in the last moments. We never hooked a fish again that day. I remember feeling tense when I was trying to net that fish. There was the feeling of knowing it was going to happen but I couldn't do anything about it. Sometimes ones worse fear cannot be avoided. Sometimes, or so it feels, one is better off to never have hooked or seen such a fish. 

Another time while pulling a rod out of the truck it got caught in my net and I thought I could just "un-wiggle" it out,  if, I just kept playing with it. I was wrong,(snap!). I was wrong by $900.

Sometimes one has to bounce back, psychologically, financially and emotionally but its tough.Sometimes we have to let go of that image of the way we pictured it going.

 

 

. 

 

Just Sitting:

I was sitting at the bottom of my dirt driveway waiting for my friend Mike to pick me up to get some coffee. Sometimes, I love these little segments of down time.

While I was waiting, I pulled out from the back of my truck a small fold away chair. I had a great view of my house and mountain. To say I was praying would be too much. I was just sitting and reflecting. Even calling it reflecting is saying too much. 

The only thing I was aware of was that I was at peace. Perhaps I was content. Being at peace and content are big things for me.  Perhaps for anyone.

I enjoy looking up at where I live. The forest up on the mountain marks the western edge of my property. The trail we built switch backs its way up the mountain. 

In a strange mysterious way these boundaries help me feel contained and secure. 

The same thing happens while fishing. However, sometimes it is not so easy to share the water or realize when we are crossing boundaries. Often we do not have clear cut boundaries on such matters.

   

 

As Fly Fishers We Have to Guard OurSelves From a Sense of Superority:

Back in the 80s when I really got into fly fishing for trout I had a sense of being on a mission. And that mission was to convert every bait and spin fisher to a fly fisher. This mission was real in that there was a religious component to it. I was good at selling the notion that fly fishing was superior to all other forms of fishing.

I did this while guiding and while I was a teacher at school and with folks at church and with family. I loved to tell people how much more rewarding and fun fly fishing was compared to the other forms of fishing. I grew to hate big lures with those stupid treble hooks and fish swallowing bait hooks. Yuck.

And of course like any good salesman I sometimes had to push it and beg. "Please let me teach you how to fly fish. Once you catch a fish on a fly you will never go back to picking up a spin casting rod again."  And usually I was right. 

But here is the catch, fly fishing can be so much fun, so rewarding and so productive that we end up hurting a lot of fish simply because we we catch a lot. We catch tons,  When we become good at something it is easy to become addicted. Part of the addiction is the sense of superiority that wells up inside of us knowing that we have mastered an art. Or at the very least, we figured it out. 

I remember wanting people to watch me. It was like I was wearing a sign on my hat or shirt, "Look at me."   

In my last years of guiding I shied away from that kind of thing. In fact I started to hate being noticed. I didn't want anyone to know I was guiding.

Ponds Upon Ponds

 

I remember in my masters counseling program I had one professor who said that when we get older, we return to the things that fascinated us when we were young. Well, I am getting older and I now find myself cycling back to little creeks and springs, wanting to build little dams and ponds, and hoping fish will find their way in those small impoundments where I can claim them as my own. I know as a kid I was often moving rocks around in creeks and I enjoyed watching the water back up in pools.

When I was in Highschool my biology teacher and wrestling coach took a group of us boys to his parents’ home out in Pa, on a fishing trip. We fished the Juniata which was a fine smallmouth bass river and yet what really held my attention was the little pond behind the house which was stocked with trout and that pond spilled into a smaller pond via a pipe. I can’t quite remember where the water went from the 2^nd smaller pool (only about 10 feet across). Perhaps it just drained out onto the grass.  I just know I could have played and fished in that pond system for days. There was one big trout of 20 inches in the smaller pond that made things interesting. My one friend hooked the rainbow and it charged back up into the pipe trying to find an escape path and broke him off.

I am at the point now where I have little interest in fishing the popular/famous rivers such as the South Platte in Colorado, or the Green River in Utah, or the San Juan in New Mexico. I know it is a cliché to say it but there are just too many people and no one goes there anymore. And those places are no longer mine. They belong to someone else; The maddening and growing crowds.

Call me a spoiled brat but I want to discover my own place, a place I can call my very own.

If I plan to fish or guide someone to one of my favorite holes and upon arriving, I see a guide who I know personally and they are there with his/her clients, or I see friends fishing in the hole, it already feels too crowded. It feels over run. It is no longer my place. Sure, I could speak up and say, “I was going to fish here, this is my spot, I was here first.” or, “My clients are fishing here.” But if I have to do that, if I have to speak up, it feels ruined already in some way, and the experience is no longer pure.

I need my own strip of water that is contained and pure but I am not sure if such places still exist.

Dealing With Fly Fishing Expectations: Sometimes The Treasure Is Not Where You Think.

 

 

On the way home from the Grand Canyon, we made a southerly loop back home passing through Farmington New Mexico to the San Juan River below Navajo. This trip, and this stop on the Juan particularly was a gracious retirement gift from my wife. My wife was nice enough to stay at Abe’s and not complain. She did her art work while I searched for treasure in the San Juan Navajo Dam tailwater. I fished an evening and a morning and actually caught a fair number of fish.

 

But it did not live up to my expectations. It had been almost 20 years since I fished the San Juan. I had great memories of this place. Perhaps that was the problem.  Maybe past memories of wonderful trout streams will always be distorted and let us down as we try to relive them.

 

But even allowing for this unfair distortion there were a few glaring problems. Crowds.  The crowds spread out quickly and cover these waters. I could not get in the type of water I wanted to be in and then when I wanted to move I couldn’t because there was no where to go that was not already occupied. I could not move about and stalk fish. I had to stay in one place and keep casting over the same fish. Not fun for me. Not my game.

 

And the fish seemed tame. The fish seemed tired.  It was not that the fish were so ultra selective and ‘smart’ from being fished over (fly fishermen are fond of bragging about how smart their fish are) as much as they just seemed harassed and stressed from being hooked time and time again.

 

The treasure I was hoping to find on the Juan eluded me. I left feeling kind of flat about the whole experience.

 

So, we left the San Juan and headed to Pagosa Springs to soak in the springs. We had done a quite a bit of running in the Grand Canyon so our aching legs would find the hot waters to be comforting.

 

I was vaguely aware of a lake just outside of Pagosa called Hatcher. But fishing Hatcher was mainly an after thought. A long shot.  To fish the lake, I had to buy a day permit. There was some confusion (and in my frustration I almost gave up), on where to get this permit but after some running around town, on a wild goose chase, I finally obtained the permit. Repairs to the main road to the lake resulted in a detour and more driving around. There was that feeling of being lost. Once again there was the feeling of wanting to give up and the feeling of “Why bother”?  But we finally found the lake.

 

It was a beautiful lake. No one was fishing it. I walked up to the edge not knowing what to expect and immediately sighted a 22 inch rainbow cruising along a weed bed.  Wow!  I quickly and clumsily tried to rig my rod to make a cast but of course I could not get ready in time. It didn’t matter. There would be others.

 

And there were. Big fat rainbows. I casted an Amy’s Ant to these fish as I walked the shore line. I was doing what I loved best. Stalking fish. Peering into clear water. Moving along the edge of the shore line all alone like a solitary hunter. And then I climbed a small ridge to get a better view of feeding fish that might be in my casting range.

 

I had to make long casts to reach the fish. And when I put the fly in front of them, they were eager to take the fly and leaped wildly pealing off line as they headed across the lake. Anything, but tame.

 

I had found the treasure I was looking for and it was not where I had expected it to be.