Posts Tagged fishing

Hat and Rod on the Junco River

“A bad day of fishing beats a good day of work”
~ Anonymous 

On my recent vacation, I fished two small streams on the North Shore that I had never fished before: The Junco River and the Devil Track. Neither is on anybody’s list of blue-ribbon trout streams, but they each have brookies capable of putting up a fight much bigger than their size warrants.

Both the rivers are small and difficult to fish. Fast and rocky runs, thick underbrush, and fallen trees across the stream make difficult wading. But I managed to find enough holes and the right fly enough times to feel… “successful.”

In fishing success is a relative thing. In my life I have fished with people who are dis-satisfied unless everyone in the party limits out. And I have fished with other who do not even bother to “bait their hook.” I prefer the latter.

In matters of fishing, I am an underachiever. I am in love with the process, not the result. As a life-long catch-and-release fisherman, all that matters to me is that something hits my hook. When it is a fly I have tied myself, it is even better.

Unlike a lot of fly-fisherman, I do not eschew other kinds of fishing. Indeed, my daughter Morgan and I spent a beautiful afternoon on a lake in a canoe stalking bass with spinners. It was, for me, the best afternoon of my vacation. Bass like trout put up the kind of fight that makes fishing interesting to me. And an afternoon with one of my daughters fishing is the best day I could ever ask for.

Those familiar with the North Country know that canoeing is viewed  here as sacramental. This reverence for the canoe has always been something I have  never been able to fully appreciate… at least until this most recent vacation. Now after 30 years of being contrarian, I am hooked.

Hat on the Devil Track River

I have spent the weeks since returning from vacation researching fishing canoes and fishing kayaks. When or if I will get one is hard to say. In the meantime, it is something to dream about. In dreaming, as in fishing, I am also a bit of an underachiever. Oftentimes the process is more interesting to me than the result.

Summer is coming to a close here in the North Country. A few trees already have leaves changing colors. In a couple months it will be de facto winter again and fishing will only be either dreams or memories.

Sunday I took my eldest back for her second year of college. Next week my youngest begins her senior year of high school. The seasonal change from summer to fall mirrors the changes I am feeling in my own life.

I like fishing new rivers for the same reason that I like trying new beers and new books and new foods and new poets… it keeps things fresh. It pushes me outside my various comfort zones, which is, of course, good for creativity and for the spirit.

This year it was two new rivers… and a lot of other new things. Next summer… I hope it will be even more rivers and more new things.

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The feature Hugh’s Journals appears here most Sundays. For some basic background on Rev. Hugh Bebb Jones and his notebooks click here.

Rev. Hugh Bebb Jones on the Hungry Horse River

Today’s selection from Hugh’s notebooks is a short one containing just two quotes about fishing.

Hugh loved to fish. In his retirement on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, he fished as often as he could. There are a few photos of him from those days, including one of him holding a pretty good-sized large-mouth bass, but I prefer this one of a younger Hugh fishing the kind of western stream I grew up fishing.

It comes from his days serving as a pastor in Great Falls, Montana in the 1930s… or at least from before he left Great Falls to become a chaplain in World War II.

One of the books my wife inherited from Hugh is the Herbert Hoover book, Fishing for Fun: And to Wash Your Soul, from which the Hoover  quote comes.

Opening up the book, there is an inscription that reads:

To H.B.J.
12/23/94
With sincere appreciation for your patients [sic], confidences, support and friendship.
Jim Anderson

It is a small volume decorated with beautiful drawings by Bill Hoffman that separate the little mediations about fishing and “fisherman and fisherwomen” (Herbert’s words). Flipping through it now I see that the first quote from Hugh’s page also comes from Herbert’s book. Hugh had marked it with a blue pen.

Flipping through the book, I find that he had marked just one other quote, one by Izzak Walton. It is one of Hoover’s favorite Walton quotes and one of my favorites as well: “God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.” The chapter that the quote about boys out-fishing men comes from a chapter entitled, “The Affinity of Boys and Fish.”

On a beautiful May day, some quotes about fishing seem like just the thing.

Enjoy!

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Nick slipped off his pack and lay down in the shade. He lay on his back and looked up into the pine trees. His neck and back and the small of his back rested as he stretched. The earth felt good against his back. He looked up at the sky, through the branches, and then shut his eyes. He opened them and looked up again. There was a wind high up in the branches. He shut his eyes again and went to sleep. ~ Hemingway, cf. “Big Two-Hearted River”

Longtime and regular readers of MontanaWriter may know that each year I re-read Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River”… my secular Lenten discipline I suppose. Usually I wait for April to arrive before I read it again. This year, maybe because it has been so unseasonably warm… maybe because I have been feeling of late the need to be re-connected with the most essential parts of myself, I opened Hemingway’s book of collected short stories earlier than usual and  – for the 30th time at least –  read the story again.

Hemingway was the first writer that mattered to me. The first that showed me what literature could be. The first that made me want to read and to care about art and beauty.

Hemingway occupies a special place in my pantheon of writers… along with Yeats and Heaney and Auden and Whitman and Keats and Shelley and Blake and Milton… The list is long, but he is the first non-poet I put on the list.

Hemingway has always seemed poetic to me… the most poetic of all prose writers. It is is something in the rhythm of his language and his use of space. You see it especially in some of his short stories and in The Old Man and the Sea. This is one of the reasons that it has always seemed strange to me that so few women I know like to read Hemingway.

Hemingway understood… better than any prose writer I know… that the key to great writing is to leave things out. If things are written well we do not have to be told specifically what a character thinks or believes, we do not need to know the character’s back-story, we can tell by actions: actions (not back-story) reveal character.

We are never told by Hemingway that the character of Nick in “The Big Two-Hearted River” is trying to use a fishing trip to keep from thinking about something great and terrible. A lesser writer – and let’s face it, most writers are “lesser” writers – would tell us this fact directly. They would write something like, “Nick tried not to think of the terrible time when….” or, “Nick who had just ….” Even more likely they would start their story by creating a long back-story, a whole novel, and end with what Hemingway wrote as a final scene. They would not trust themselves to tell the story the way Hemingway does nor trust their readers.

Hemingway trusted his talent enough to leave things out. He writes the story in a way that even though almost everything is left out… left unsaid… we can still know by what Nick is doing what is happening. It is a marvelously difficult way to write… the most difficult. It places immense demands on the writer and the reader. It is daring writing. It is poetic prose. It is the kind of writing we should all aspire to.

It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. ~ Hemingway, cf. letter to Max Perkins

* * * * * * * * * *

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things. ~ Hemingway, cf. Death in the Afternoon

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Beaverhead Rock (copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

As a poet,  I have often used syllable counts to provide a form or structure to my poems. My baseball card poems predictably use a 9-syllable line-count… “Madison Buffalo Jump, 1975″ uses a structure of an 11-count line. As I have said elsewhere here, the odd-numbered line-count attracts me because it is naturally anti-iambic, less likely to become sing-song.

Predictably wanting to push myself and the boundaries of what is possible, I have “experimented” with ever-higher syllable counts. The challenge, of course, is to create a line denser in consonants and vowels without increasing space. Space provides the silence in poetry necessary for sound. Without space you have prose.

Readers of A River Runs Through It will recognize the reference to the “four-count art” of casting with a fly-rod. Maclean’s title story, a reminiscence of his brother Paul, his Presbyterian minister father, and his Montana boyhood, remains the single best story about Montana ever written.

A final word on syllable counts: A careful reader will no doubt let me know that I quite often “stray” away from my “announced” structure… that I am quite “loose” in how I count. Let me say up front, “Guilty as charged.” Ever uncomfortable with rules and authority, I even rebel against my own authority… my own rules.

Enjoy!

Reddo 

The poem that once 
appeared in this space
is being re-drafted
and re-typed.

It will be re-posted
someday soon
at MontanaWriter.com.

Stay tuned!

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“Coffee, whiskey, and fishing poles. That’s really all you need in life.” ~ Brandi Carlile

Until yesterday morning when I heard this quote on the Current, what I knew about Brandi Carlile was her name… and that just vaguely.

Women country singers not named Emmy Lou, Jessie, Tammy, or Dolly quickly bore me. Female pop-divas leave me completely flat. I leave the whole contemporary-female-pop-country-genre/pop-diva stuff in the more than capable hands of my youngest daughter.

But how can someone who can summarize life as perfectly as the above quote NOT become my next new favorite artist.

Its official… for the next little while I am going to be listening to a singer named Brandi!

On Easter Monday.. I really can’t think of any better words to live by.

Enjoy!

Fly-fishing and Montana are two things that I return to often in my poems. The poem “Mountain Remembering” was written more than 20 years ago. It is not a poem that needs “explanation” but I will say a few words about it and about the style it is written in.

My brothers (Paul and Jon) and I were in the East Pioneer Mountains (near Dillon, Montana, in the Beaverhead National Forest) camping and fishing. One morning we got up just after sunrise to fish a mountain lake. If you are lucky enough to have stood on the shore of a mountain lake in the early morning or in the dying light of evening when there is no wind and the water is like glass and trout are rising and sky is so blue you cannot tell it from the blue of the lake, you never forget it.

I have experimented over the years with how to lay a poem out on the page so that there is little or no punctuation marks to fumble with and so that line endings are the natural places to pause. I do not always write the poems this way, it is only when the poem is done or nearly done that I start to lay it out that way. I like the way the poems look without punctuation marks cluttering up the page and I like space and distance acting as a natural pauses. It is closer to the way I speak.

Like other poems referenced here, “Mountain Remembering” is available in my volume of poems called Montana Poems.

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In the summer of 1984, I drove my brother’s 1964 Galaxy 500 (Deluxe Sport Coupe) 1713 miles from Dillon, Montana to Saginaw, Michigan with only one companion – a beat up paperback edition of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. The radio was original with the car. In eastern Montana and western North Dakota I could seldom pick up stations. I entertained myself by pulling over every once in awhile and reading a chapter or section of Trout Fishing in America. It was the perfect kind of book to do that with.

26 years later, I have another battered edition of Brautigan’s classic – the same faded salmon border, the black and white photo of Brautigan and a friend in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue. Reading it is like hearing an old song you once listened to on AM radio… I am carried back to that summer and the trip east from the mountains and streams of Montana to the failing heart of the American Rust Belt.

To call Trout Fishing in America quirky is to considerably understate the point. It is part short story collection, part prose poem, and part 1960s time capsule. The very name “Trout Fishing in America” morphs from character name, to hotel name, to book title, to the very act of fishing itself.

I tried several Brautigan books in the years immediately following my Trout Fishing in America summer. But none ever measured up. That is understandable… because nothing could ever measure up. The other Brautigan books always seemed like pale attempts to recapture youthful magic.

Rereading Trout Fishing in America in 2010 at the age of 50, some things hold up well, other parts fall altogether flat. Some parts that seemed to me once magical creativity now have the characteristic of gimmicky oddness. It remains, however, a book everyone should have on their resume. At least everyone who has ever been young, trout fished, and lived in the West.

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I do not get to fish as often as I would like, but I can still read and collect  quotes about fishing. Fishing, like baseball, lends itself to great writing. The pastoral nature of the pursuit in its purest form leads inevitably to contemplation. And contemplation leads inevitably to expression.

Here are some of my favorite quotes about fishing. Enjoy!

The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent in fishing. ~ Babylonian Proverb

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.  ~ John Buchan

Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.  ~ Ted Hughes

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers. ~ Herbert Hoover

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles. ~ Doug Larson

A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.  ~ Author Unknown

The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad.  ~ A.K. Best

It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.  ~ John Steinbeck

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.  Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.  ~ Author Unknown

Calling fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job.  ~ Paul Schullery

Three-fourths of the Earth’s surface is water, and one-fourth is land.  It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn.  ~ Chuck Clark

You must lose a fly to catch a trout.  ~ George Herbert

A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it.  ~ Arnold Gingrich

Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers.  Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher’s salary.  ~ Patrick F. McManus

You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don’t want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something. ~ Mitch Hedberg

There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot. ~ Steven Wright

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Heron on Big Chief (photo © m.a.h. hinton)

Every summer we spend a week with my wife’s extended family in Wisconsin. It is a week of fishing, family, and relaxation. The past couple of summers we have been staying at a place near Hayward, Wisconsin, on Big Chief, part of the Chippewa Flowage.

Those who know their fishing records know that the Chippewa Flowage is prime muskie country. Since we have kids running ages 4 to 18 (this year’s ages) we do not fish for muskie –  primarily crappies and blue gills. But the muskies are there, and so are big northerns.

This year my daughter Dylan and I talked grandpa Dan into driving the boat for us while we fished weed lines for our favorite prey, bass. Dylan inherited her mother’s good looks but she inherited my restless preference for casting and moving while I fish. (Her mother and sister prefer the more sedate and patience-requiring “bobber” fishing.) Since Dan likes his family and likes to be out on a boat on sunny, warm days… it was not a hard sell.

It was a picture perfect afternoon for casting, watching herons fish, and for getting sunburned… it was not, however, a good afternoon for catching fish. Dan was game though and Dylan was patient, and so we soldiered on. Over the afternoon we transitioned away from weed lines and bass to whatever came our way: a perch here, a blue gill there.

When it was time to head back-in for dinner and something colder to drink, Dylan tried one last cast to a spot I had already tried a few times myself, a small, sandy patch  between a weed line and an old tree that had been in the water for a few seasons at least.

I was in back of the boat putting gear away with Dan, when we heard her excited scream, I turned toward her in time to see the rod bend quickly and hard. This was not just another sunny.

By the time I wrestled the net back out of the hold where I had just put it, she had the big fish up next to the boat. By the time I got up to the front of the boat, the Northern was just breaking the water, shaking its big head and teeth. She screamed again and the line broke.

For a few seconds she sat looking into the water where the fish had disappeared. Then she looked at me and said, “my hands are shaking.” Dan and I laughed.  The northern may have got away, but I will remember that moment and that afternoon for the rest of my life.

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Those who know me know that I do not watch much television at all, unless there is a ball involved. I do however make an exception for a show called River Monsters. I am not alone. It is now officially the most popular show ever in the history Animal Planet.

River Monsters is centered around the travels of biologist Jeremy Wade who takes adventure fishing to a whole new level. He travels the globe to catch the biggest and meanest freshwater fish. From the Congo to the Amazon, Wade stalks and studies the most dangerous prey he can find: prehistoric arapaima, goliath tigerfish, and piranha.

Each episode Wade travels to another part of the world to find and catch another “monster.” For an active or armchair fisherman, the show is addictive. Turn off Jersey Shore and Survivor… this is reality television the way it should be.

Check out their Website: River Monsters.

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