Here There Be Monsters...

Remember how people a long time ago were so ignorant and superstitious that they believed in sea monsters? What morons! But, then again, maybe we haven't advanced as far as we thought.

Click for expandable map.

These are all clearly bogus, and seriously, only a moron would believe they were real...except I met this guy once, and he's a real outdoors guy, you know, the kind of guy who ought to know, and he told me that he was over on Lake Chelan once just after ice out and....

Revive, Winter 2013

Thanks to Chi Wulff for tipping us off to this one. See it for yourself HERE.

Oldie But Goodie: "Sipping Dry" Trailer

Magical images of sipping trout.

"Sipping Dry" trailer - by Sharptail Media | Fly Fishing Movie from The Fly Fishing Film Tour on Vimeo.

Solstice Countdown: 15

So when it gets cold, the river begins to freeze up, and the drifting shards of ice make an ethereal, tinkly music as they shuffle by...

And you can see the vapor trail of an F-16 from the base in Spokane whose pilot is in a good mood as he makes his training run (I hope that was an F-16, and not a 737)...

And the ice on Bass Lake makes unearthly Star Wars sound effects as it tightens its grip.

Just 15 more days until the Solstice.

Big R Fly Shop, December 2013

Farm Store Fly Fishing at its best. Check it out HERE.

"The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows -- O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Robert W. Service has been called the "Bard of the Yukon."

Must Be Winter

We're in for a bit of a cold spell. So far we've had it easier than parts of Montana and Idaho. So far.

Good luck to you folks, and in the upper Midwest, too. Must be winter.

• Today

  Dec 4

  Very cold with periods of sun25°Lo 3°

  more

• Thu

  Dec 5

  Partly sunny and very cold18°Lo 3°

• Fri

  Dec 6

  Partly sunny and very cold18°Lo -1°

  more
• Sat

  Dec 7

  Partly sunny and frigid15°Lo 1°

  more

• Sun

  Dec 8

  Bitterly cold with some sun19°Lo 6°

  more

flymage Issue #21 - December 2013

Get a good look at all them rubber-lipped bottom feeders HERE.

Dude, Check This Out: Iceland, the Sugarcubes, and Bjork

Iceland is an amazing place with amazing fishing.

Fly Fishing in Iceland from TT FlyFishing on Vimeo.

And Iceland is the birthplace of Bjork, and Bjork is an amazing person and amazing singer.

She started out with the Sugarcubes in the late Eighties and early Nineties. They were a pretty amazing band in their own right, considering they were and remain today the biggest rock band ever to come out of Iceland.

Here's a sample of their music and of Bjork's amazing work with them, first a demo of Lou Reed's Sweet Jane, and then a song from their 1989 album "Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!"

Then here is my favorite of Bjork's songs, beginning with the original and including three of the many remixes that have been done. In my humble opinion, an amazing song by an amazing artist.

"A Green Stream" by Wang Wei

Landscape by Wang Hui, Ching Dynasty

I have sailed the River of Yellow Flowers,

Borne by the channel of a green stream,

Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains

On a journey of less than thirty miles...

Rapids hum over heaped rocks;

But where light grows dim in the thick pines,

The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns

And weeds are lush along the banks.

...Down in my heart I have always been as pure

As this limpid water is...

Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock

And to cast a fishing-line forever!

Wang Wei, sometimes known as the Poet Buddha, lived from 701 to 761, in the Tang Dynasty.

Good Reading

Thanks to Moldy Chum for the heads up on this good read over on Men's Journal:

Fly-Fishing Confidential

By Callan Wink  Dec 2013

A Montana river guide (and aspiring novelist) is a pro at taking corporate execs to the big trout – but meets his match when he lands two outlaw literary legends in his boat.

Read it HERE.

For All You Nymph Fishermen Out There

"The Nymph of the Stream" by Edward John Poynter, 1906

"A List of Praises" by Anne Porter

"Autumn Wheat Harvest" by Walt Curlee

Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath, 
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes, 
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry 
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.

Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far away 
With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle
As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in the morning,
Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the pinewoods, 
At night give praise with starry silences. 

Give praise with the skirling of seagulls 
And the rattle and flap of sails 
And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor. 
Give praise with the humpback whales, 
Huge in the ocean they sing to one another.
 
Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and cicadas, 
Give praise with hum of bees, 
Give praise with the little peepers who live near water.
When they fill the marsh with a shimmer of bell-like cries
We know that the winter is over. 

Give praise with mockingbirds, day's nightingales.
Hour by hour they sing in the crepe myrtle 
And glossy tulip trees
On quiet side streets in southern towns.
 
Give praise with the rippling speech
Of the eider-duck and her ducklings
As they paddle their way downstream
In the red-gold morning 
On Restiguche, their cold river,
Salmon river, 
Wilderness river. 

Give praise with the whitethroat sparrow.
Far, far from the cities, 
Far even from the towns, 
With piercing innocence 
He sings in the spruce-tree tops,
Always four notes 
And four notes only. 

Give praise with water, 
With storms of rain and thunder 
And the small rains that sparkle as they dry,
And the faint floating ocean roar 
That fills the seaside villages, 
And the clear brooks that travel down the mountains 

And with this poem, a leaf on the vast flood,
And with the angels in that other country.

From Living Things by Anne Porter, published by Zoland Books, an imprint of Steerforth Press of Hanover, New Hampshire. Copyright © 2006 by Anne Porter.

'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving...

So Many Memories

The first time I got on the river this fall I switched out the fly boxes in my vest and cleaned off the fly patch. It all still lies on my tying desk.

I hadn't cleaned off that patch since my first trip to Rocky Ford Creek last March.

So there, in one little pile, is the tangible record--minus the many flies I lost--of the entire trout season.

So many memories in one little heap of deer hair and feathers.

Be Thankful For What You Already Have

Thank goodness there are still sane people in this country. Go to Moldy Chum to learn more about what Patagonia is doing on this "Black Friday" to counteract the insane materialism running rampant in our culture.

Dreamtime: Philip R. Goodwin

The cold, dark months are a good time to dream of long, warm days, open country, and adventure. These paintings by early 20th century painter and illustrator Philip R. Goodwin certainly get me going. So dream on....

Darker, Colder...For Awhile Longer

Twenty-six days until the Winter Solstice:

The Winter Solstice occurs exactly when the Earth's axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 23° 26'. Though the Winter Solstice lasts only an instant in time, the term is also colloquially used as Midwinter or contrastingly the first day of winter to refer to the day on which it occurs. More evident to those in high latitudes, this occurs on the shortest day, and longest night, and the sun's daily maximum position in the sky is the lowest.

The seasonal significance of the Winter Solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days. (From Wikipedia. Emphasis mine.)

The Voices of Those Who Were Here Before

I was up on the flats on Saturday to visit some friends. This is high cattle country, and folks have been ranching up here for almost a hundred years. Bears and cougars are not uncommon. The cattle have already been herded in close to home where the ranchers can keep an eye on them during the hunger time. I look at this view, and all of my childhood dreams of someday being a cowboy come welling to the surface. I feel lucky to have gotten this close.

As I headed down I noted that the far Cascades are still only moderately snowy. We're enjoying cold but clear weather. There's a good chance that the next Pacific storm will bring snow not only to the high country but to the valley floor as well.

I passed McLoughlin Canyon on the way and made a stop. I like this place. I've posted on the history of this canyon before, but here's a reminder of the story.

I climbed up to a vantage point and looked south to where the canyon opens up and that party of white men entered the canyon on that fateful day. Standing here, it's easy to imagine the whole episode unfolding before you.

On the way back to the truck I passed the grinding rock with its mortar hole, now filled with ice. This is mute evidence that the Indians used the canyon for centuries for gathering pine nuts and other foodstuffs. They would grind them in mortar holes such as this, worn into the rock over generations.

About a year after we came here there was a major fire that burned a swath some twenty miles long from the south. It roared up this canyon and burned itself out. I remember what it was like before the fire, with the welcome relief of green against the grey stone, and the wistful call of canyon wrens as the evening sun sifted through the pines. Now, especially at this time of year, there is only stark silence.

It makes the voices of those who were here before seem even louder.