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Isla
Holbox, Yucatan
Peninsula, Mexico
March 07, 2008
By 9:00am, both Ted and I are running on determination alone;
the light breakfast (coffee, cookies, toast) we’d had
at 6:00am had burned away.
At 7:00am, innocent as the newborn day, we were out on a broad,
clear flat where in previous days we’d seen and jumped
lots of schools of baby tarpon. The sun was out, it was beginning
to blow 15 knots or so. Not many tarpon present, or at least
in view. In the distance, to the west about 1/10th mile away,
many big dorsal and tail fins glisten in the sunlight. They
look like a school of some kind of big ray splashing at the
surface, and we and our guide Toms decide to investigate.
Motor running at idle, panga shortening the distance, more and
more tails showing, and mud being stirred up by their feeding:
dozens of tails; big fish bullying their way across the bottom.
They’re eating something right at the bottom. And from
the shape of their tails, they have every appearance of being
big jacks terrorizing a area of over an acre. Fins flapping,
big wakes pushing....you can almost hear their snorting and
grunting and lip-smacking as they root their way across a flat
no more than 4 feet deep, leaving destruction, death, and the
wailing of widows and orphans in their wake.
Ted hooks up with
a brute immediately, and watches line and backing melt from
his reel at an alarming pace. Less than 20 seconds later, we’re
both hoist on roughly the same petard. At least Ted has a good
stiff 9-weight rod with a heavy fighting butt section to battle
his 25+ pound bruiser. Me, I exercised the incredibly poor judgement
of flinging a big Clouser Minnow into the mix with my standard
bonefish rod: a very lightweight 8-weight St Croix Legend Ultra,
and a cheap-but-serviceable old graphite-body offset drag reel.
What the heck, it works fine on those 8 and 10 pound Bahamas
bonefish.....BUT we’re not in the Bahamas. And I normally
would have/should have thrown my fly into this field of holy
terror with the beefier 10-weight St Croix rod I use for sharks,
barracuda, bigger jacks, etc. What the HELL was I thinking??????
I’d like to blame all this on Ted Angradi. For a day or
so afterwards, I DID blame him. We boated our fish - a double
hookup on 25 to 30 pound Crevalle Jacks - in less than an hour
and a quarter, but it was the most unrelenting 75 minutes of
fish battle I’ve had in a long time. Had the little tarpon
we’d gone there to catch been where they HAD been, SHOULD
have been, that morning, we might have sweated, grunted, cursed,
fought, and scrambled around a light panga pitching on a growing
swell in a 20+ knot wind a lot less, and done the sensible thing,
which WOULD have been to go inside the big bay, into the mangroves,
to pursue snook, baby tarpon, snappers, and ladyfish in peace
while the winds raged outside.
The rest of the week - both before and after the Big Jacks -
was less brutal. Maybe more fun, though. On this visit to
Isla Holbox, Yucatan, Mexico, we caught long list of species.
Some cool, windy weather throughout the week of March 01 - 08
somewhat dampened what should have been fast ‘n furious
little tarpon action, but we caught enough of them to count.
And there were snook, ladyfish, several species of snappers,
barracuda, jacks, mackerel, etc to catch, too. A fun time. I’d
definitely go again - and will.
It’s a great trip, and budget-priced. Isla Holbox is the
quintessential small Mexican fishing village that has been recently
discovered by the Lonely Planet set.....young people with backpacks
looking for the best deals on everything from a bed for the
night to the cheapest cold Dos Equis and marijuana. It has a
late-sixties feel, and a kind of friendliness and casual fun
that’s long gone from Cancn. Great lodging and food, superb
flyfishing guides, and of course, lots of sportfish to chase.
Streets paved in white sand traveled by a few motorbikes and
golf carts - no cars. Poster ads for whale shark and flamingo
tours, and fishing-fishing-fishing.
Next stop in Mexico:
Xcalak; on the Baha Chetumal. 
And
let’s not neglect the Bahamas.
For heaven’s
sake, the very best bonefishing of the year is ahead. And we’ve
got space remaining at the best little bonefishing lodges at
the best little prices throughout this best bonefish paradise.
A world of islands, sand, crystalline water that was MADE for
Albula vulpes. And for those who love to catch this wonderful
fish.
Ted Angradi says that if I’m going to blame him for the
jacks, in fairness I have to tell you about yers trewlee sightcasting
for (and hooking) the pelican I caught with a Deceiver (Lefty,
are you horrified?) .....he unhooked it. P.E.T.A.,
where are you when things like that happen?
But Ted’s not
writing this newsletter, is he? And no harm done.
Give us a call. We’ll
fill you in on what’s biting in OUR world.
TEL: 530 842 6355 Or email us: db@buccaneertravel.com
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Here's
a reply to man who says he's writing an article about Deadman's
Cay, Long Island Bahamas, and solicited our input about a specific
lodge and group of guides there:
Yes, we represent Greenwich Creek Lodge, and the Knowles clan:
Dwayne, Elvis, Champ, Ivan, etc.
So far as I know, I was the first angler with a fly rod to show
up there to really check it out: this would have been in 1993,
although Randall Kaufmann had a reference to the area in the
then-current edition of his bonefishing book Anyway, I always
give credit to him both for that specific reference, and more
generally, for being the pioneer that he is. No one has done
more to popularize, and interpret the sport of bonefishing than
Mr Kaufmann
I recall my first visit there; I bought a ticket to Deadman's
Cay after a thorough review of the existing hydrographic maps
of the Deadman's Cay area, and after having flown over the area
several times enroute to Crooked and Acklins Islands, where
we then had (and still have) operations. From the air, the huge
bay system near the village seemed like likely bonefish habitat:
it was shallow, and had a complex sprawl of sand berms, what
appeared to be dikes and channels, and vast, clean, sparkling
flats. When I arrived, a nice lady who had a guesthouse in Hamilton's
picked me up at the local airfield, got me settled into a room,
fed me lunch, and then introduced me to a fellow who she claimed
was an expert fisherman, and knew where the bonefish were in
the local area. That was Ivan Knowles.
In his old skiff, Ivan took me out to a flat about five minutes
from the shabby landing where he kept his boat. He anchored
at a perfect white-sand spit extending into a vast shallow flat,
and I watched his eyebrows lift into his cap as I assembled
a fly rod and tied on a size 6 Gotcha. He examined my fly, and
asked whether I didn't want to "sweeten" it with some "bonny-sicker"
crab, which he'd gathered and had brought in a small bucket.
"No", I said: "I'll try to catch a bonefish with this fly rod,
first. I just want to look around, and get a feeling for the
area."
While I was explaining to him what I hoped to do, Ivan was examining
my equipment - the rod, reel, line, leader and tippet, and my
fly box with an extremely critical - skeptical - expression.
He shook his head as he felt the tip of my 9 foot 7 weight rod,
and the spiderweb-thin tippet. And then he told me, in emphatic
machine-gun Bahamian English, that I was not likely to fool
a bonefish with such an unlikely tiny bait; and that even if
I did manage to hook one: "Mon, no bonefish be bitin'
dat little 'ting - dey only be bitin' on da bonny-sicker or
crawfish bait. An' dat be impossible to reel in bonefish wid'
dat skinny pole, he break de line in ONE PULL." As
he said this last, he tried to break my tippet with his calloused
hands to show me just how much of a fool I was......
He was so disbelieving and so convincing, that I myself began
to doubt that it was possible, even though I'd just spent 5
days at South Andros, and had caught lots of bonefish there
with just such a rig. Ivan was holding out his big plastic handline
spool with what appeared to be weedeater string, a hen's-egg
sized lead sinker, and a pair of size 2/0 hooks to secure the
little crabs he'd caught. Yes, he'd heard rumors that on other
Bahamas islands, foreigners were paying big money to hire locals
to take them out to catch bonefish. And he was interested in
the concept of "guiding"; he just didn't believe they
were doing it with flimsy stuff like what I had.
My sense now is that Ivan was extremely anxious to catch some
bonefish right off, because he believed that would quickly convince
me that the Deadman's Cay area had a lot of them TO catch. He
obviously had no confidence that this guy with the skinny pole
and the box full of tiny fuzzballs knew what he was about. I'm
sure that he foresaw bringing me back to the dock at the end
of the day frustrated, tired, angry, and disappointed. And that
would have been his one chance - FAILED - to pull himself into
the world of professional guiding.
So I challenged him on the spot: let's see who catches the first
bonefish.
I won't boast: within a few minutes, half a dozen smoky gray
shapes appeared fifty yards away, drifting along toward the
tip of the dazzling sand spit we had anchored on. I marveled
anew at how bonefish seem to float, and to move ahead seemingly
without propulsive effort. At a distance of perhaps 25 yards,
two of the fish stopped, and one backed up slightly, and poked
its snout into the sand. I laid a cast out, and the other fish
rushed forward onto my fly. It tipped down, and its wet tail
broke the surface, waving excitedly. I pulled the line tight,
gave a sharp tug, and........nothing happened.
The
fish had the fly stuck in its lip, but as yet had no idea that
something was dreadfully wrong. Both bonefish then continued
toward us at a leisurely pace, and passed near enough that I
could see their eyes, the little black crescent on their noses,
and the Gotcha in the corner of the nearest one's mouth. I had
never encountered a bonefish that declined to fight when hooked,
so I bent down and slapped my open palm on the surface - hard.
And they bolted so fast that in a second all that remained of
their near presence were two washtub-sized muddy boils in the
water, less than twenty feet away. And, of course, my singing
reel and arched rod. Not to mention the look of smug satisfaction
on my face; carefully concealed, of course.
I brought the fish to hand; unhooked it and released it with
as much nonchalance as I could muster, and deliberately did
not look directly over at Ivan. However, from the corner of
one eye, I could see that he had his hat off, and was mangling
it with one hand. With the other hand, he was tugging furiously
at one earlobe, looking off into the middle distance, mumbling
protests in a low, emphatic voice . For the remainder of the
day, he muttered to himself, scratched his head, and when I
hooked still another bonefish, shook his head and said "That's
good, Davie; mon, you be catchin' 'em GOOD."
Of course, we're a lot more refined now. We book at a gorgeous
airconditioned lodge with a swimming pool, and a tantalizing
view out over miles of the most perfect bonefish wading flats
anywhere. Our guides at Deadman's Cay are superb: experienced,
smart, fun to fish with, well-equipped and skilled professionals
who can tie a deadly fly, and throw it a hundred feet into a
twenty-knot breeze.
As I review our nearly 14 years of doing business at Deadman's
Cay, I think of the hundreds of anglers who've come
back from there ready to get right back on the plane and go
again. I think of the hundreds of bonefish I've caught there,
the baby tarpon, snappers, ladyfish, barracuda, and other fish
I've caught. Seemingly endless days of sunshine when all one
has to do is stand in one place and cast to the smoky gray shapes
as they drift by. Two hours in one spot, a half-dozen nice bonefish
caught. On every trip, the opportunity to plant my feet on a
flat I didn't know existed on my previous visit. Lunch on a
dazzling beach: fresh caught conch, fresh sliced Long Island
pineapple or a local orange, a nap in the shade of a palm or
casuarina, and the kind of aimless conversation one enjoys with
the best and oldest of friends. Going crawfishing with our guides'
kids.
All of the folks at Deadman's Cay with whom we do business are
equal business partners, and more importantly, dear friends.
I love being there; it's home. Still, for the sheer thrill of
A CATCH, that first day almost 14 years ago with Ivan Knowles
will always be my favorite.
DID
YOU KNOW.....? That you can "hypnotize"
a bonefish?
That's
right: after unhooking a bonefish (and being extremely careful
to LOOK AROUND YOU for barracuda or sharks), put the fish in
the water, cradle its belly, and repeatedly stroke its nose
toward the lip lightly with your fingertip. The fish will
stay motionless until you remove your hand.
Happy
Holidays from Buccaneer Travel
November
22, 2007
November 2007 TRIP REPORT
It
was a pretty ambitious plan, really. 12 days, visit two islands
for a total of 10 days guided bonefishing. We chose Deadman’s
Cay, Long Island (map, right), and South Andros. Departed the
U.S. on November 02, 2007 to spend a night in Nassau, then on
November 03 on to Long Island aboard an early morning Pineapple
Air flight. What they didn’t tell us when we boarded was
that the 20-odd inches of rain that fell on Long Island as a
result of Tropical Storm Noel had closed the Deadman’s
Cay airfield, which is just minutes from the Greenwich Creek
Lodge, where we book our clients. Not just closed the airfield,
but left about 4 feet of water on the runway....thanks Pineapple
Air. So, it was a 4 hour journey from Stella Maris, on the north
end of the island, south the 40 miles to Deadman’s Cay.
Flooded roads, flooded homes, general human misery. As usual,
however, the people of the Bahamas rose to the disaster with
their usual good humor and creativity. Small boats took us over
parts of the road that were too deep for vehicles. The last
part of the journey was on the back of a big flatbed truck loaded
with Kalik beer, VitaMalt health drink, and sundry other travelers
including local schoolteachers, rasta men with hair in dreads,
wide-eyed children, and the “foreign fly fishing gentleman”
(who of course would be me). One dignified man, a Nassau banker
with whom I’d visited at his home on Long Island years
earler, recognized me, and remembered our previous conversation
in detail. I amused the kids by assembling my fly rod aboard
the truck, and pretend-casting to giant crocodiles lurking in
the bush along the road. The kids were doubtful at first, but
soon were pointing out real trophies I should cast to, and offering
expert advice on croc fly selection and presentation.
 To
our initial shock and surprise, the big bay and backcountry
system where we do much of our bonefishing on Long Island was
just about dead. The water was a roiled greenish color, and
it was fresh, sweet water. No detectable salt, even though it’s
part of the Bahamas Bank. Our first hourlong exploration was
discouraging: hundreds of dead fish: grunts, small mangrove
snapper, a few ladyfish. No dead bonefish, though.
Next day, we rode out to the ocean flats, where evidently most
bonefish had gone to await the return of salt to the interior.
And we also found some bonefish, alive and apparently healthy
(they were actively feeding in plain fresh water) on a flat
5 minutes from the lodge. Apparently, bonefish can survive fresh
water. On the big ocean flats there were thousands of bonefish
feeding....not in big schools, but dispersed in groups of 1
to 10 fish. And they were consistently the largest bonefish
I’d ever seen at Long Island, we caught several in the
7 to 10 pound range. On low outgoing tides, we also amused ourselves
by catching jacks and snapper in the deeper channels. I caught
an average of 8 or 9 bonefish a day at Deadman’s Cay,
pretty good given the unusual conditions. And time and tide
will correct the salt imbalance....in a couple of weeks, bonefish
will again be feeding in droves on the inside flats.
ON TO SOUTH ANDROS. November 08. Met another group of Buccaneer
clients at South Andros on our arrival there, some had already
been out fishing that day. And they were WIRED. Apparently,
they’d had a perfect day of weather and wind. Lots of
fish caught. My week there was not quite so perfect, but I had
a fine time: one day 22 bonefish caught and released, one day
only 4, and three other days of 8 to 11 fish.
 We
went all the way to Water Cay, where we explored Stanley Bain’s
(R.I.P.) “ghost town” bonefish camp. Curly- tailed
lizards, birds, and ants are now the only inhabitants, and even
in fine weather after a big lunch, the place has a weird, graveyard
feeling. Nearby, there are some wonderful sand-bottomed flats,
where one can sneak along casting to big single and double bones
- my favorite sort of bonefish challenge.
Evenings at South Andros, we amused ourselves with trips to
the nearby Deep Creek bridge to view the tarpon feeding in the
dim streetlights. We caught jacks aplenty in the creek, but
no one hooked up with a tarpon, which was not much of a disappointment.
The
day after my return to the U.S., I opened the recent issue of
Fish and Fly magazine, and delighted poring over Brian O’Keefe’s
pictorial/editorial on the Bahamas....I’m envious of his
photography, and grateful for the experiences he’s shared
over the years. One of my heros.
July
15, 2005
Home
for the Terminally Irresponsible
There is a metallic sheen on the water today; a faint gauze
over the rising sun. The sky is a little less blue than it has
been all week, and has a gleam that seems to hint of afternoon
clouds, and perhaps a thunderstorm. As he gazes down toward
the shallow water stretching out to Stork Cay and Man 'O War
Cay, Franklin’s toes dig into the sand at the edge of
the walk. There is no dampness underneath. It has not rained
in ten days; the tomato plants will need some water again today.
He counts five ripe ones, smooth, red and cool, ready for a
tomato-and-cucumber salad this evening. That, and a mutton snapper,
if we're lucky, he thinks.
In irregular formation against the small pier, three skiffs
lie absolutely motionless. There is not even the customary soft
lap-lap-lap pause lap-lap of wavelets on the coarse sand at
the water's edge. It is quiet; the only sounds individual, discrete.
The convoluted talking-blues of a mockingbird, and then the
screak-bang of Doree Albright's chicken coop door as she attends
to her morning egg quest for their guests. Her half-shy; half-teasing
"Good moahnin’ Mistah Franklin" to him as she
passes beneath the clothsline, bearing the clutch of still-warm
eggs in her apron.
"Doree, what're our guests having for breakfast - besides
aspirin?"
Doree giggles conspiratorially. "Aspirins and gallons of
coffee, Mistah Tom. I makin’ them some eggs and johnnycake,
but our gennelmans may need something stronger than aspirin
before the day ovah. Two full case of Kalik gone in two hours
las' night!"
"Good thing Mangy and I live in a state of grace - he won't
drink all our sports' water in the first half-hour of the day."
"He doan’ drink no moah sinz he wuz baptized, you
know. I so happy!"
Tom laughs and says maybe they won't notice that we're late
getting started this morning. Doree goes inside, and the screen
door bangs.
A moment later, there is a fluttering in the yard behind him
as a banty rooster descends from the mango. It steps into the
sunlight, all coppery barred feathers, and an upright, dignified
air. Tom scratches some sand with his toes, and the little rooster
comes over to investigate; his wattled head tilted to one side
like a bonefish snooping around a crab hole. The banty watches
carefully for a moment to see what might be stirred up, then
stands on tiptoe and stretches wings and neck in a comical gesture
and emits a hoarse falsetto squawk by way of a good-morning
crow.
"Tom, dat all de betah you do; a croak lik dat?" To
demonstrate his superiority, Maynard, who has emerged from the
house quietly, jumps up on the picnic table, stretches mightily
and shakes himself, and looses a horrible bellow. The little
banty, alarmed, launches itself into the air with another squawk
and a cloud of dust and sand, and lands on the coop roof. From
this vantage, he glares disapprovingly at both men, who are
now laughing.
Casually, Maynard pulls a small banana from the pocket of his
voluminous khaki trousers, and begins to peel it fastidiously.
Indicating the sky with a brown forefinger, he nods and says:
"Fine day. Maybe some cloud later. Be a good day fishin'
wi' fly rod."
"Yah Mangey, be plenny bonefish up da creek wi' da' tide,
hey? What say?" Occasionally, Tom twits Maynard and Doree
with "island talk". Both of them are atypical of the
folks in and around Hard Bargain, most of whom are village-born.
Gentle, good-humored people; quiet and pious, but not sophisticated.
The Albrights are tall; from south Abaco, not Long Island. Neither
is really village folk. Both took teaching degrees from the
University of the West Indies, in Jamaica, and are quite capable
of speaking idiomatically-flawless, barely-accented "white-man
English”, as Doree put it. On occasion, if she is sure
that Tom is within earshot and listening, Doree refers to him
as "dat whi’ guy" to Maynard.
"Our guests up?", Tom asks.
"Drinking the last of the third pot of coffee. Checking
their rods and reels this morning before light, you know. I
saw one of them catch a nice gray snappah off the pier. He put
it back in the water, and I told him now he was going to have
go without dinner tonight unless he caught another one."
On their way back toward the house, Tom plucks a pair of mangoes
from the lowest branch of the tree, and brushes some ants from
them. Maynard cocks an eyebrow critically toward the drowsing
rooster on the coop, and in a mock-threatening voice says that
perhaps his position as top cock of the yard has now been usurped;
that tonight they will turn his only useful parts into bonefish
flies, and put the pitiful remainder into the stew pot with
the rice. The rooster's head sinks a little farther down onto
its chest, and it closes its eyes.
At the door, they pause and look up at the new sign over the
lintel. It reads:
Home for the Terminally Irresponsible
Two weeks ago, Tom, Maynard, and Doree were having a strategy
session, and decided that a guest house in the Bahamas specializing
in fishing vacations needed a catchy name. Doree, who descended
from an infamous tribe of wrecking pirates, and hence has an
entrepreneurial streak as wide as the Great Bahama Bank, came
up with the basic premise, and Maynard refined it into the current
appellation.
It fits, although the local folk are mystified. Somehow they
had envisioned something grander by way of a tourist facility
than the fixed-up old plantation house, with its massive stone
walls and verandah. A REAL hotel, like in Nassau. A porte-cochere,
potted palms in the lobby, sixteen-piece orchestra playing old
show tunes in the lounge. Something they could be proud of.
Instead, they are now graced with a gaudily-painted, rambling
old bonefish guesthouse. The graying piles of old conch shells
are gone, to be sure; and the two rusted-out pickup truck bodies
towed offshore and sunk as snapper casitas. Still, it is “rustic”.
Franklin and the Albrights have taken pains to assure the locals
that there will be jobs, and that has mollified them. Doree
immediately selected as cook a woman whose husband was away
at sea during the crawfish season, and Maynard spent nearly
3 months training as guides three local fellows whose sponge
business has fallen on hard times.
Also, their neighbors have come to appreciate the regular Friday-night
invitations to a community fish-bake in the yard. Everyone gets
to meet the guests, pictures and stories of family are exchanged,
and it has always been a fun evening.
It is cool in the kitchen, and smells of fresh-baked bread,
coffee, bananas, and scrambling eggs. Their four guests are
sitting around the heavy old mahogany table in the dining room,
sipping coffee and admiring one another's fly collections.
"Dis one gonna catch a worl' record - mebbe today; mebbe
tomorr'." Maynard speaks with authority, holding a fly
up between thumb and forefinger, and squinting at it in an exaggeratedly
approving way.
The fly's owner, a doctor from Cincinnati who already is perspiring
with anticipation, asks eagerly: "You think? That's one
I tied myself."
"Definitely. Flies lahk dese, you cyahn't miss wid these
bonefish. They gonnah fall on dese like little kids on Easter
eggs. Hope you all got some flies lahk dese....." Maynard
shakes his head sadly, as if asking for the Lord's mercy on
the poor local fish, who haven't a chance against these experts.
Besides his gentle skill with the school children in his classes
and his good fellowship, Maynard has a natural flair as a host,
and more than a little acting talent. He is able to draw all
their guests into the great fun of the game.
The four sports look at one another, and without a word spoken,
the competition begins. By tonight, they will all be keeping
up a running banter imitating Maynard's fraudulent "island
talk" accent; calling into question one another's manhood,
skill with the flyrod and ancestry, and raucously disputing
one another's piscatorial claims. By midweek, someone will find
a fish head or a hatful of little 'bonny-sicker' crabs between
his sheets at bedtime.
Two of the four guests have some bonefishing experience, and
as Doree begins dishing scrambled eggs onto plates, Tom says
he would like to split them up into pairs of one experienced,
one inexperienced. Maynard interjects that this way, both of
the experienced men will surely have at least two days of utter
humiliation at the hands of both the fish and the beginners,
and things will even themselves out. Everyone laughs. Maynard
snags a plate of toast and eggs from the counter, and goes out
to get the boats ready.
A moment after the screen door bangs again, Tom hears a low
murmur of conversation outside, then a chuckle. Elbert, one
of their three other guides, has arrived on his bicycle, and
is chaffing Maynard about something. A brief silence; another
murmur; then a peal of laughter. Together, Maynard and Elbert
stroll down the walk toward the pier, each carrying a pair of
red plastic gas tanks.
Breakfast is over in fifteen minutes, and there is a flurry
of final preparations: toothbrushing, sunscreen application,
and such. One of their guests and Tom stand on the back porch
examining the two lunch coolers that Doree has set outside.
Down at the pier fifty yards away, Elbert is pulling one of
the skiffs toward the dock with a push pole. As Maynard steps
toward the skiff's front deck from the pier, Elbert suddenly
pushes the skiff away sharply, and Maynard, instead of landing
on the flat fiberglass deck of the boat, tumbles into the shallow
water. He snorts as he comes up, grabs the end of the pole,
and jerks Elbert into the water. After a scuffle and some whooping,
both pull themselves onto the pier dripping and laughing.
The man standing with Tom snickers, and pointing over his shoulder
with his thumb, says that perhaps the name of the house is appropriate.
Tom ruefully allows that they had assumed that the irresponsible
ones would be the guests; now it seems to have more the appearance
of an institution where the guests are the only sane ones.
If a few bonefish cooperate in their own torment, it will be
a good day.
* * *
Neither clouds nor rain materialize. In the hot afternoon sun
nine hours later, Tom stands at the end of the pier as both
skiffs approach at idle speed; their motors up at half-tilt.
Elbert and his two anglers are standing in their boat at attention,
each wearing a crown of mangrove shoots, like beachhead marines
wearing some kind of goofy camouflage. Both of the white guys
look sunburned, but animated. Elbert hoists a laconic thumbs-up
as he maneuvers the skiff in with one hand on the steering wheel.
Behind them 100 yards or so, Maynard suddenly kills his skiff's
outboard, and hissing to his two sports for their attention,
points toward a narrow channel running out from a point of mangroves.
There is some muttering, and one of the guys pulls a fly rod
from the rack as Maynard pivots the boat with the push pole.
In a moment, fly line and fly are slicing through the air, and
the fly drops into the water at the edge of the channel. Without
a second lost, the angler begins to strip arm lengths of line
back as fast as he can. The other guy is chanting "he's
coming, he's coming"......and then the water heaves into
a boil as the barracuda takes the fly on a sprint and turns
in an instant. The rod bends sharply, and the guy holding it
screeches "YAHOO!" as loose coils of fly line leap
up off the deck into the air. From where Tom is standing, he
sees a spray of tiny water droplets drift from the taut line
and become a rainbow in the late afternoon light.
Mentally counting backward from ten, Tom waits for the 'cuda
to clear the water, as they sometimes do. Just as he passes
"four", the fish does so spectacularly, vaulting twenty
or so feet through the air like a silver-gray javelin with a
gaping, toothy mouth. The rest of the fight is not so spectacular,
and the fish succumbs within five minutes or so. Maynard gingerly
lip-gaffs it, pulls the fly with a plier and points the fish
back toward the mangroves. The fishing day is over.
As the guys retrieve their gear and help unload gas tanks and
coolers, there is an overlapping commentary, each boast a little
more extravagant than the one it interrupted. Quite a few bonefish
caught, it seems. True to a fairly dependable fashion, the new
bonefish anglers have slightly outscored the old hands, if any
of their claims can be believed. Elbert, however, has his mind
on what he believes the real prize to be: opening a cooler,
he picks a mutton snapper and a nice blue runner out with one
hand, and a yellowtail and another blue runner out with the
other. Maynard piles a dozen conch out of his boat onto the
boards. One of the anglers says he is relieved: Now the village
dogs will be safe from harm for another night. Tom says: Too
late, mon; already one stewin' inna pot. Everyone laughs, and
they begin hauling gear up to the house. One fellow is singing
- horribly off-key:
Oh, give me a home,
With a low-interest loan,
Some bonefish, a skiff,
and a pole!
Some cold Kalik beer,
so I'll never leave here,
And there you’ve got
Fish Camp Deluxe!!
June
12, 2003.
I forget sometimes that 'TIME' is a human invention. It was
- and is, I guess - a necessary but still artificial framework
for the importance we give the artifacts of our daily lives:
work; school; appointments with the doctor and hairdresser.
What we have made and hope to leave permanently behind us.
I thought about time a week ago, when I set my alarm for 4:00
am, so I could get up and make coffee, eat an early breakfast,
and then drive the half-hour to the upper Klamath River in California
to fish before the power company begins its summertime daily
release of great amounts of water through the Boyle Dam penstocks
to manufacture electricity for the consumers who later in the
day will want more than the usual electricity to power their
air conditioners, because it has been quite warm the past few
days. More people with the ability to afford the convenience
and comfort of artificial cooling of their homes when it is
hot weather mean a necessary human regulation of the flow regime
of the Klamath, and many other rivers throughout the west and
the world.
I have noticed that the upper Klamath fishes well up to about
800 cubic feet per second release; but that by mid morning in
June when the temperature is going to be hot in California's
Central Valley, the power company lets more water than that
through the steel and concrete penstocks, and the river no longer
fishes well, or is even hospitable to or safe for human wading.
The river changes in just an hour or so from a cool, rushing
mountain stream, into a massive, roaring torrent as its kilowatts
leave the huge generators to flow into the great power lines;
lines of copper or other metal held by towering pylons that
march across the countryside like iron skeletons of Paul Bunyan's
ghost.
The river is transformed from a cool, insistent, rushing flow
into an invisible flow of electrons that stream powerfully through
a substance that is impassible to water. The alchemy of a comfortable
home when it's too hot or cold for our comfort.
I have no opinion - of a political, or any other sort - about
this fact. My opinions are generally not very significant, or
even very deeply held. It is true: water, or a river's moving
energy, can be changed into something more agreeable to humans.
When I think of a family of grape pickers in Modesto living
modestly, but in greater comfort, because of this wonderful
alchemy, I am happy. If my mind turns to a family of three living
in 5600 square feet in a wealthy suburb of Sacramento, I'm not
so happy, even though their comfort is as valuable as mine,
or the family of the grape pickers.
Judging the value of others' lives, loves, and endeavors is
also, like time, a human invention. I try not to do too much
of it, but I am after all very human (who should know it better
than I?), and I often fail to discipline my mind from paths
of which even I disapprove.
The varying rocky substrata of our ancient planet (ancient at
least by the measure of my Timex) that make up the bed over
which the Klamath flows on its unwearying path from the cool
springs in Oregon and California's headwaters care nothing for
our time. Care nothing for my arriving at their broad shoulders
at 6:00 am, 10:00 pm , or any other 'am' or 'pm'. To the river,
to the rocks of ancient age, to the trout that live in its upper
reaches, or the salmon or steelhead that gather at the river's
estuary to begin their ascent to their natal streams to spawn,
to the insects that live and occupy only a moment or few hours
of our time before falling again lifeless to the cool flow that
bore them, my alarm clock, my ancient creaking truck, my marginal
brakes, my box full of flies, my modern graphite flyrod and
machined aircraft-quality reel manufactured with the help of
electrons that were water from this or some other great western
stream are incidental.
 I
know this: in the fall and early winter, I drive to the river
in early morning darkness. I will fish all day in bitter cold,
or drenching rain, perhaps, with a powerful wish to feel for
a moment the throb of a fish's life through the line and the
rod that connect its WILL TO LIVE to my dream to convert some
of its life, harmlessly to the fish, I hope, to mine. I arise
early to fish for steelhead in the winter, or trout in the summer,
or bonefish, or carp, or bass, or snappers for one basic, selfish
reason. The lives of these mysterious creatures (after all,
they live IN THE WATER, a medium that in undiluted form is unrelentingly
hostile to human life) enrich my life in their desperation just
to live. Not in airconditioned comfort, in a mansion or a hovel,
but in the only medium in which they are able to live. The only
home they know or conceive.
I cannot explain, or even myself understand, why this is so
important. It is more important than almost any other thing
I do, dream I dream, wish I wish, thought I think. This connection
between water and my life. Beneath the mountains are the rocks.
Water falls from the sky and rises from the ground or drips
from the glaciers into little runnels, and becomes the mighty
Klamath in its steep channel, that does not care that we borrow
from it and do not repay its energy in the form of water turned
into electrons that flow down along their own channel for purposes
that we understand but the river does not. The difference between
800 cubic feet per second and 2700 in the upper river may mean
the difference between the fulfillment of my dream of feeling
in my hand the living throb of a rainbow trout through my line
and rod, or going home empty-handed and even worse, empty of
spirit. What would the sullen-looking nymphal form of the California
Golden Stonefly know of our borrowing? It lives or dies in the
difference between 800 and 2700 cubic feet per second of river.
I also know this: my life and my body are composed of the same
elements that make up the rainbow trout; the stonefly nymph;
the cottonwood and willow trees by the river's banks; the otters;
the deer that drink from the pool where yesterday I hooked an
eighteen inch trout, felt for a few moments its desperation
to live, then released it after gently (it seemed gentle to
me) prying the fake food from its jaw. A nasty trick, that;
but my impulse to belong here for a moment; to become the water;
to talk to the nymphs; to pull some of the life from the trout
into my own, is irresistible. I have other impulses, as strong
or stronger, that have meant bitter heartache to me and those
I love, and who for some reason love me.
I take a certain comfort from my transience, if I am in fact
a transient at this riverbank. The river, and the fish, the
otters, trees, nymphs, deer - the mountains and rocks, certainly
- will be there in some form after I and all my kind are gone.
When my carbon-fiber flyrod is once again the dull powder from
which it was crafted; when my impulses and dreams are just shallow
feeble waves flowing out through space toward the edge of the
universe, when the river no longer at whimsical times is commanded
to become electrons that power air conditioners, water will
still flow from the ground and drip from the glaciers to gather
over stone on its journey to join all other water.
I really have no explanation for any of this, and my observations
may move nothing but my own mind in its own wandering through
terrain I already know is not knowable or explainable. If time
is a human invention, created solely to regulate other inventions
like cubic feet per second, and the flow of electrons into greater
comfort for humans, what does it matter if I artfully cast fake
meals at trout, or if you invent more clever and efficient ways
to harness the power of those electrons to manufacture greater
comfort for me and wealth for you? In the end, there is only
the rush of cool water over ancient stone; the nymph's simple
and humble surrender to the trout's hunger, or the river's final
cool embrace of all its offspring.
God does not explain to me why fish gather at the mouth of the
river to begin their urgent return to the wet gravels from which
they were born. Nor can I, apparently, know what the trout itself
dreams of while I, too, sleep.
Explanations, like "time", are also human inventions.
D.B.
June 12, 2003
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