Tag Archives: writer

The Underground’s Post-Thanksgiving, err… Post

November 29, 2009

The bird has been eaten and the relatives are seeing our driveway in their rear-view mirrors, and while holidays are always hectic, this might be the first in recent memory when fly fishing wasn’t even a blip on the radar.

That, of course, flies in the face of common sense; in what I’ll call one of the Upper Sacramento River’s Dirty Little Secrets, the October Caddis bite remains pretty good through the middle of December.

That means big fish on big dries, which is something I don’t take lightly.

Still, family get-togethers are rare things at the Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters, and with Little M now racing around the house on two legs, it’s clear a new World Order has taken over.

Thus, does life nudge us forward.

The Turkey Talks, We Cringe

My Thanksgiving sadness extends beyond the lack of river time; in a move sure to disappoint the legions of Undergrounders, I must admit slightly undercooking the turkey on our charcoal Weber, despite producing perfect birds on several prior occasions.

In other words, I failed charcoal huggers everywhere.

I could recycle the same excuses widely employed for fly fishing (too hot, too cold, too many people lifting the lid/wading the river, etc), but all I can say is the fire just didn’t burn hot enough long enough.

I hang my head in shame.

The Word Count

More startling is this admission: I haven’t written a word in days.

In some ways, that bothers me more than the lack of fly fishing. I’m a writer by trade, and the absence of a little daily keyboard abuse raises alarms of every kind.

Never fear Undergrounders; two nearly finished posts are waiting the in the wings, and you’ll see them shortly.

The world my be spinning faster than it did ten years ago (OK, maybe it just seems that way), but we’re still on this horse.

This week, I begin teaching four nights a week for three weeks – the kind of honest workload that I simply have no stomach for. Sadly, the die is cast, and for three weeks, I’ll fill the role of hardworking, responsible educator/online marketing consultant.

Naturally, any sentence including the word “responsible” chafes the hides of fly fishers the world over, especially given that I’m not only hankering to get a little fishing in, but would love to annihilate a few more clay pigeons with the Browning, and yes, practice a little more precision shooting before the nearby range closes for the winter.

In other words – like my dinner plate on Thanksgiving – my recreational plate is also full of half-cooked goodies.

See you in the classroom, Tom Chandler.

Also tagged , , , , , , , , – Comments Off

Tom McGuane Awarded Fly Rod & Reel Magazine’s “Angler of the Year”

November 24, 2009

Following in the footsteps of earlier awards to writers John Gierach and Ted Williams, Fly Rod & Reel has chosen author Tom McGuane as their 2010 Angler of the Year.

With so many of McGuane’s novels and screenplays set against fly fishing locations – and populated by fly fishermen – it seems only right that McGuane would receive this honor on that basis alone.

To do so would be to overlook his publication of the best fly fishing essay book ever written: The Longest Silence.

That book – which solidified many of my observations about fly fishing – opens with a startling passage about fish counters robbing the trout (and the sport) of its soul:

The fisherman now is one who defies society, who rips lips, who drains the pool, who takes no prisoners, who is not to be confused with the sissy with the creel and bamboo rod. Granted, he releases what he catches, but in some cases, he strips the quarry of its perilous soul before tossing it back in the water. What was once a trout – cold, hard, spotted and beautiful – becomes “number seven.”

I could strip mine McGuane’s book for enough material to fill a hundred blog posts, but I’ll leave the discovery (or rediscovery) of those gems to my readers.

Instead, I’ll reprint part of what fly fishing publishing legend Nick Lyons has to say about McGuane on the FR&R site:

In Tom McGuane we have a different species of writer. He has loved fly-fishing for more than five decades, since he fished the rivers and small creeks of Michigan as a boy; he has pursued trout, false albacore, steelhead, bonefish, striped bass, permit and salmon with great passion and success; he has fished from Tierra del Fuego to Russia, Iceland, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, Florida and throughout his now-native Montana, and widely elsewhere; and along with his great novels and stories and films has written, with dazzling skill, much about what he calls his “life in fishing.” He is Fly Rod & Reel’s Angler of the Year and my Angler for the Last Hundred Years.

McGuane says that “what fishing ought to be about” is to use “the ceremony of our sport and passion to arouse greater reverberations within ourselves.” Reverberations: a richer response to all aspects of the natural world, perhaps—and our responsibilities to it; something telling about ourselves, surely; more about our subtle connections to all the texture and detail of fly-fishing; and a lot about our understanding of leisure and friendship and expertness and the enduring value of ritual, and so much more. Mostly, what we know about these matters comes from those with words—words that shock us into some new awareness, that, long after we’ve read them, echo in our brains.

This is, of course, what we call “literature” which is not something fancy dan or pretentious or irrelevant to any other matter in the universe, not sentimental (which is exaggerating sniffles), not trading ever in clichés (which is like claiming fish you haven’t caught). McGuane does these things in a major body of nearly a dozen novels, from The Sporting Club in 1968 to one he just finished, in time for a trip this past summer to Iceland and his annual fall trip to the Dean for steelhead, around which week he says he designs his year, “for these pools, these beautiful fish.” And he does it in what has become a major body of work about fly fishing—parts of An Outside Chance, all of Live Water and The Longest Silence. He is, as all of the best writers must be, a man on whom nothing is lost.

He knows that “the best angling is always a respite from burden,” not part of a competition or PR jaunt or a chance to transact business with those you fish with or a banquet for your ego. He knows we need to be stewards and riverkeepers, lest “there will be less than nothing, remnant populations, put-and-take, dim bulbs following the tank truck.” He knows how to make memorable and precise observations about our emotions and affections: “Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives.”

Speaking as a writer, I revere McGuane for his ability to deftly peel back the unsightly layers that obscure what should be a beautiful sport. As a fly fisherman, I never tire of his obvious love for the sport itself.

See you with a good book, Tom Chandler.

Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , – Comments Off

Small Stream Reflections, And Why Fly Fisherman Sometimes NEED a Trout

September 26, 2009

At some points in your life, a little reflection is needed. Here’s why it should happen on a river.

The next step's a doozie.

The day before trout season opened in 1999, I ditched the Silicon Valley and moved to a tiny mountain town with its own trout river. I spent a chunk of that trout opener just sitting on the bank and watching the river go by, wondering just what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

Then, on the first day of the new millenium (1/1/2000), I fly fished Baum Lake (not much was open in the winter back then) – despite doing some things the prior evening that I did not discuss with local religious leaders.

Due to the hangover, I don’t remember a lot about that trip, but I do remember catching a fair number of Baum’s stockies on a BWO dry, which is a pretty good way to start your next 1000 years. At that point, I had no idea just what the hell I was getting myself into.

Today, I’m packing for Ethiopia, making yesterday’s trip to a small, never-fished-by-me stream – my last as a childless angler.

A couple times after I moved to Dunsmuir, I toyed with the idea of becoming a trout bum/writer/largely single guy, but never did quite pull the trigger. And frankly, I’m happy about that.

I greatly admire people like John Gierach, a man who decided to fly fish for a living and then made it happen (and does so without the posturing, false bravado, and suspiciously compensatory behavior that marks so many who take that route).

Still, admiring someone doesn’t necessarily mean following in their footsteps, and while I’m aware my new adventure represents a right turn from an earlier, more carefree existence, it’s not The End of An Era or anything remotely that dramatic.

Still, it is a moment that demands a little bank sitting, wondering just what the hell I’m getting myself into this time.

Fly fishing trips will do that to you. They force the rest of the world to recede, yet still invite you to ponder the imponderables – a neat trick for any sport.

I’m also aware that when I start thinking too deeply in the above vein, maybe it’s time to simply go fishing.

Which I did.

The Schedule = The Fishery

Due to the madness that has become life, I haven’t fished much lately, and yes, I badly needed to go despite a schedule suggesting zero tolerance for fun.

That’s why – the day before I left to start my pretty-much-around-the-world trip – I ran to a nearby small stream I’d found by accident earlier in the year, but hadn’t fly fished.

Small, pretty and almost certainly unfished.

The Wonderdog sure remembered our previous trip, and his first act – after marking every tree near the truck – was to spot the rings of a rising trout in a pool at the bottom of a small gorge.

I’d seen those rings too, but I didn’t gallump down the hill at speed and plunge headlong into the pool after the trout.

Naturally, he caught nothing, but quickly got over the disappointment after finding the bones of a recently deceased deer.

Thus, the key differences between fly fishermen and retrievers are revealed (stealth and a gag reflex).

Sure he's happy - he smells like dead deer.

I knew in advance there would be no big trout, and there was a chance there would be no trout at all.

That’s inherent in any fly fishing trip (especially one already severely constrained by distance and time), but the thought was a little punishing this time.

I hadn’t fished recently, and because this was something of a turning point in my life, I needed a trout to make the occasion. Any sized trout.

Needed one.

Just one…

Thanks. I needed that.

Deep breath.

With all the uncertainty ahead, it’s nice to know that dogs still roll in dead things, undiverted streams still flow during droughts, trout still eat dries, and fly fishermen can get their heads screwed on straight through the simple act of catching fish.

A portrait of the fly fisher as a newly young man

Working my way upstream was a challenge in stealth, casting, and yes, Wonderdog management, but I managed to land another half-dozen little trout, the biggest of which might have gone seven inches.

I didn’t care of course – this year I’ve been on a small stream jag which pretty much guarantees a dearth of “Slab of the Month” entries.

It also guarantees a slower-paced fishing experience, one which invites some odd photographic experiments, including those which find your tiny point-and-shoot camera half submerged in the water:

Why not experiment with your camera?

Or even fully submerged and looking up, trying to approximate what a handsome, local, small-stream fly fisherman might look to a trout:

Is this what trout see right before they're unhooked and released?

An hour after I started, I was finished.

Deadlines called, bags needed to be packed, people needed to be met, and I ended my last outing as a childless fly fisherman wondering if my daughter would find the same peace on small streams filled with tiny, largely ignored trout.

She’ll see plenty of running water (I’ll see to that), but will she ever find her way to a stream in the middle of a busy day, turning over stones, watching for telltale shadows on the stream bottom, rolling her eyes as her dog plunges into a fishy looking pool, and desperately wanting just one single trout – confirmation the world isn’t tilting wholly off its axis?

Cleary, the future is filled with little certainty. And a lot of possibility.

What trout see?

See you on the Stream, Tom Chandler.

Also tagged , , , , , , , , – Comments Off