One such “extinct” trout was the Pyramid Lake strain of the Lahontan cutthroat. Historically found in ancient Lake Lahontan and its tributaries, its territory shrunk as the lake receded. The fish were still found in Pyramid Lake and its tributaries into the early 20th century until the lake became a source of water for irrigation. When the lake levels dropped too far, the Pyramid Lake Lahontans could no longer reach their spawning tributaries. And the fish was thought extinct by the 1940′s.

In the 1970′s, a fish was found in the Pilot Peak range in Utah that didn’t belong in the Utah mountains. Don Duff sent information to Dr. Robert Behnke about this fish. Dr. Behnke identified the fish as the missing Pyramid Lake strain of the Lahontan cutthroat. (I hope to provide more of this story at a later time.) These fish have subsequently been restored to Pyramid Lake. A brood stock has been kept at Pilot Peak to help supplement the National Hatchery’s brood stock. The Pilot Peak project is on the property of Steve Doudy, who has been the caretaker of the population in the creek and in the brood stock (both of which are on his property).

This past Wednesday I had the privilege of spending the day with Dr. Behnke and some of the morning with Don Duff and Steve Doudy at the Pilot Peak brood ponds where we planned on helping spawn the Lahontan cutthroats. (More about the Pilot Peak project in another post later.)

Interestingly enough, Dr. Behnke, who was so instrumental in the identification of this strain of cutthroat, had never been to the Pilot Peak brood ponds. So my fishing buddy, Dan Line, decided to invite him. Since our trip seeking the extinct Alvord cutthroat a couple of years ago, we (actually Dan) have been in contact with Dr. Behnke as efforts have been made to try and keep at least a phenotypical remnant population of the Alvords alive. Dan invited Dr. Behnke to spend the morning with us at Pilot Peak and then help us give a presentation later that evening to our local TU chapter (Cache Anglers) about the Alvords.

My memory stinks—I’m lucky to remember details of what happened yesterday, let alone a year or more ago. Dr. Behnke’s got an incredible memory. The day was filled with his remembrances. Just ask him a question and he would fill us in with all the minutiae of dates, people, places and events. It was incredible to learn firsthand a few of the many things Dr. Behnke has been involved in with the conservation efforts of native fish and also with the furthering the world’s knowledge about fish.

I would imagine that someone as knowledgeable and experienced as Dr. Behnke could easily become snooty, arrogant or condescending, but he was extremely polite, patient and entertaining. And there is a fiery side to him as well, especially when it comes to tracking a fish’s ancestry through meristics versus genetics (Dr. Behnke is firmly in the meristic camp). (Hopefully some more about this topic in another post.)

I think I’ll write a couple other posts about this day and issues and conversations that surrounded it. I just needed to get a post up now while I had the time and inclination to write it. Hopefully I’ll become a bit more of a regular writer again.

Don Duff  is another instrumental and passionate man when it comes to fish. I’ll have a post dedicated to him later too.

PS The next issue of Rise Forms is nearing completion (Scott’s been a very busy man, and therefore very lazy about anything writing related, but things are getting better.)

They are touched, in some way, by the object of their passion—a wisp of ether; a mere glimpse of the past—but to them it is often enough.

A few months ago I spent a couple of days on my homewater away from home. It was more crowded than I’d ever seen it before, but Dan and I found a few stretches if open water. The fish seemed skittish. Or maybe hesitant. As if they had been fished over already. Or maybe they were toying with me—trying to get as close to my fly as they could without getting hooked.

Along the grassy bank I saw a sizeable fish repeatedly rise. I clambered up his side of the river a good forty feet below him, then cut a wide swath around his lie and made my way back to the water’s edge thirty feet above him. I was afraid I had mentally mismarked his location as I didn’t see any movement where I thought he was. I slowly worked my way downstream, letting my fly swing free below me in the current. I was 20 feet upriver from him when he rose again. I dragged the fly toward me then flipped a rolling cast, landing the fly half a dozen feet upriver of him in his feeding lane.

The fly reached the target area and the fish dutifully rose to meet the fly. He gave the CDC emerger a good nose bump as I set the hook into an expanse of blue Wyoming sky. In fact, twice in three minutes I tried lassoing the clouds with a sudden jerk of the rod. The second time put the fish down for good.

I know slow takes, and these were not them. This wasn’t a case of pulling flies past teeth. Nor was it a case of beginning-of-the-season-jitters. These were complete misses. Purposeful misses. On the part of the fish.

They were getting as close to the fly as they could without getting hooked. Tempting fate and a barb they came again and again. In eddies and chutes. Through slicks and riffles. A mile upriver and two miles down.

It was frustrating as the count grew: first just a couple fish, it quickly multiplied to what seemed like a score or more of them had snubbed me and nearly as many fly patterns. Eventually I came to recognize their point—to see their game for what it was.

I swear, these fish were counting coup.

I could play the game too. I began reaching out my coup stick with the same chutzpah the fish had shown. I reached into their element, and no matter how darting the peck, for just a moment, they reached into my element. I counted myself fortunate to touch without touching something I could not hold.

And on that day, the ethos of the coup was enough.

If you’d like a little music to get in the proper frame of mind, press play before looking through the rest of the post.

The Bluest Blues – Alvin Lee

April—an interesting month weather-wise. One moment it’s sunny and 60. Green shoots and blades poke out from winter’s detritus. Then, suddenly, it’s struggling to make it into the 30′s and everything is re-sheathed in white. Spring is just a temptress, toying with the hearts of anglers. A little more than 6″ of snow fell a couple of days ago with more forecasted the next two days. It’s enough to bring on the blues.

Blues comes in many varieties. But it’s in water where I find some of my favorite blues. Little grottoes in the early morning gather what little light they can to themselves.

Rushing, tumbling around rocks the rill races it’s course ever downward. A surreal little landscape of mist and moss. Thoughts of floating a fly through chutes and channels bob and weave their way through the dendrites.

Our patience, flagging in the wind like so many of last year’s forgotten leaves, will carry us: we’ll hang on and wait out the last fits and sputters of winter’s encore.

And, just around the corner, our thinking-spring-thoughts will pan out quicker than we realize. The white frame of winter will give way to a permanence of green. As permanent as seasons can possibly be.

Cutthroat Stalker Ezine - February 2010

The long awaited (okay, nobody actually knew I was tinkering with this, so obviously they weren’t waiting for it) ezine version of Cutthroat Stalker is hitting the virtual stands today. Just click here to view the ezine where I have three new (and short) pieces of writing (I’ve found viewing full screen (f11 in Firefox) and clicking on the magnifying glass on the top makes it a bit easier to read). I am mostly just playing with the software that can produce this kind of ezine, I don’t think I have any real desire to do something like this on a continual basis. Maybe to archive each month’s content?

Come back and post a comment to let me know what you think. I am specifically interested in the following:

• Do people really like this “magazine” format (for any content out their, not just mine)?
  • Why?
• Do you personally prefer to read fly fishing content as a daily/semi-daily fix like most blogs, or do you prefer to get a big chunk in one fell swoop (like an ezine)?

For those of you who would prefer the ezine as a pdf file, here you go.

I’m also playing around with making this as an epub file for ereaders (including Kindle).

And check out this flash version from Prezi (after you click on the play button, click on the “more” to the right and choose “fullscreen”):

I was reading a friend’s blog the other day (Mark, I count you among my online friends, I hope this is not too presumptuous of me), and he was discussing some finer points of sumi-e art (see Forest Rat’s full blog post about it here).

In Japanese, sumi means ink and e means picture. You have seen the beautiful works of black and white Japanese ink art, this is sumi-e: ink painting. Like so many things from the Japanese Zen tradition, sumi-e is a way to focus on the core of something.

Economy of stroke and familiarity with technique are important aspects of sumi-e, as the ink and rice paper are unforgiving media. However, Forest Rat says that typical sumi-e artists often do not paint from the actual subject, but rather spend much time in learning the subject (whether it be a flower, mountain, fish, etc.)—not just the physical characteristics of the subject, but “the essence of them.” After they have a sufficient grasp of the subject, “the artist meditates to clear the mind, to think about the subject, to visualize the finished work,” and paints it. Even though the artist may master the technique, if the study of the subject has not taken place, the art does not reach its full potential because the essence of the subject is not there (essence comes from the Greek einai, meaning “to be, to exist, to happen, to be present”). This makes me think of the Lawrence poem from my last post: the “soft life” put into things that man makes.

Forest Rat talks about his attempts to incorporate this approach in his photography by getting to know an area well enough that when the time and light is right, his study of the place allows him to more easily take the shots he wants instead of just taking hundreds of random shots hoping a few turn out.

This thought struck a chord in me and reminded me of several attempts I have made in writing about this type of thing in my fishing (such as here). In that piece I talked about the anticipation of fishing someplace I have come to know intimately. As I said in a comment on Forest Rat’s blog, “I often think of it as a reverence for the subject/location that, at least for me, causes me to pause and think before taking the first cast. It comes from time spent knowing the place. I think about my favorite places to fish long before making it [there] each year.”

Not only is there a reverence (or longing), but this oneness with a place can aid the angler in being successful because they know the nuances of the water and fish behavior. When some else fishes with them, they may think they have an intuition about the place. Which is true. The word intuition comes from the Latin in + turi, meaning “to look at, contemplate.” It is the long contemplative process the angler puts in over a lifetime of fishing the same waters that gives them that “edge,” or insight.

As with sumi-e, the angler must be familiar with technique in casting and reading water as fish are typically unforgiving the botched cast. Although the mechanics of casting might be well known to the angler, changing rivers or species fished for can change the dynamics in such a way that the experienced angler feels like a neophyte.

This idea was driven home when fishing with Doug from Canada. I mention in that post that where and when we are fishing on the Logan River called for different approaches. And the particular place and time that day called for fishing in front of the rocks, not behind them. This surprised him a bit.

I have found that photography often gives me that pause, that time for reflection about the place I fish. On both a macro and micro scale I’m able to see the places I fish in new light, with new eyes that I might not bring to the experience when just walking through the landscape. Every place, each different river, even different stretches within the same river, has a feel. Taking the time to know the heart or core of a place, its essence, is imperative for my success. Because, for me, knowing a place intimately (not the fish count) is the success.

As a side note, it is interesting to me that the etymology of zen includes words with the following English meanings: quietude, meditation, to see, observe. These characteristics are the embodiment of sumi-e masters as well as those of the artful fly fisher.

The kanji lettering on the art is an attempt to write “cutthroat stalker,” but the closest I could get was “fish chaser” (if someone has a better grasp of kanji, please let me know a more correct rendering).

Things Men Have Made by D.H. Lawrence Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing for long years. And for this reason, some old things are lovely warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.

The wood rod was deep amber with burgundy wraps. A three piece rod, its ferrules mottled with a metallic rime that flaked away beneath my fingernail. The deep forest-green backing was like a heavy cotton thread.

Picture (C) Robin Rhyne

I can’t remember now if it was bamboo or just wood. I was 14 and playing around in the abandoned garage/shed at the back of the house we rented. On a high, deep shelf was the rod. I took it down and balanced it in my hands. I fished, but knew nothing of fly fishing, yet this rod had a feel to it.

Thirty years later I wonder what became of it. When I close my eyes and think of this rod, I dare not trust my memories, for I find myself thinking there was something to it, a spark in which someone “put soft life into” it. It is this that draws me to thoughts of owning a bamboo rod—not the so-called “status” of it, but rather the “transferred touch” put into it by the maker.

Sitting near me as I write is a fly tying chest, leaning more toward honey than amber. Brass handles and hinges. In the old house I used to own there was a shed, I think an old chicken coop. A large shelf, about seven feet in depth, spanned the shed’s width. I tore down the shed to make a woodshop on its foundation. I salvaged the shelf, which turned out to be four inch wide Douglas fir tongue-and-groove flooring. It was old growth fir—its growth rings packed tightly together.

I saw a fancy toolbox in a catalog. I was tempted to buy it for my fly tying paraphernalia, but it was nearly $200. When my shop was erected I needed a project to christen it. I thought of the salvaged fir and the tool chest.

I took my time, planing the 7/8″ thick tongue-and-groove to 1/2″ stock—something more delicate for the design I was planning (I had no plans and made much of it up on-the-fly). I ripped it down to 2 5/8″ widths and spent hours gingerly crosscutting to length this species so prone to splintering. In time the box took shape.

I often wonder where it will be in 100 years. Who will have it? Will it be “warm still with the life of [this] forgotten” maker?

Whatever man makes and makes it live
lives because of the life put into it.

*first strophe only

As we drive the dark road east, I look up where stars dot a narrow path through the morning. I feel the press of hundreds of feet of sheer canyon walls more than see them. Ahead of us the dawn unwinds its hours, slowly unveiling the skyline—a jagged, ancient silhouette stretching for miles.

Today our goals are lofty but we are under the press of time: drive a total of 680 miles; find an undisclosed creek and catch one rare fish discovered in only a one mile section; who knows how many miles to walk; see incredible sites, ranging from redrock sandstone to alpine meadows. And 17 hours to get it done.

Details gradually emerge as time peels away the dark: layer upon layer of vermilions, ecrus, ash, blues. Sand and mud pressed by the weight of one another wait out time, who solidifies them. Thrusts them up. Weathers them down.

The dirt road takes us over the streambed which is surprisingly dry. Do we go up the mountain, where the water may still run, or has it percolated down only to rise again as a trout-bearing creek below us? We go up.

Stands of aspen, scrub oak litter and pine duff, fill the ravine a mile further up. The ravine is steep. An old fence cuts through it marking the forest boundary. An old skull lashed to a wooden post mocks us as it overlooks the bone-dry creekbed. Dan hikes up the far side and into the next, also empty, creekbed, then returns.

How does such a creek support a rare fish? How long does this bed hold water and how often? If there were fish here, where are they now?

A couple of miles further up, after driving an ATV track cut through dense trees in a pickup truck, we hike a mile through healthy, white aspen. Thick-boled, they grow in gentle arcs, this way and that, giving a motion to the trees, as if they are dancing, keeping time for the seasons.

Small seeps feed nearly imperceptible trickles. Taking their time to build to anything substantial, and only two miles above the last dry place, we’re fooled into thinking we’re in the wrong place.

Time to cut our losses, we pack up and head down the mountain, shaking our heads.

This is what I know: As the earth revolves day in and day out, around the great polestar, fixed, immovable, I take my bearing on the here and now, then look forward, past autumn and beyond winter.

The autumnal equinox is no downward tumble to the solstice, rather, a momentary teetering and tipping then continuing its course. Never stopping. Never starting. Eternal revolutions are not acts of death, but renewal—making new again. And again.

“Making new” is a revising, a re-visioning. Unmasking to see what is hidden. Chlorophyl recedes. True colors emerge. A divergence where chromas eventually succumbs to chronos.

Leaves fall, piling their detritus to loam the seeds against the cold. Where they wait, while the colors flame out like so many ashes, and turn to duff—the bedding ground for spring’s genesis. Red as embers, producing oxygen that feeds a fire or fuels a cutthroat (its crimson gill plates squeezing out every element). Its fire warms me while fishing through the season. These leaves, this color, sustains.

To see, really see the enigma autumn holds, one must stand as still as Polaris and look, facing against the current like the trout:

the current of time that turns the leaves,

and leaves one turned against the current.

Perspective.

I also have a gallery of many of these photos but in much more “subdued” colors. It can be found here.

Down-drafting night winds cool the canyons. And the plants are shaken. It’s like another spring with everything awakening, only this time rousing from the slumber of hazy summer doldrums. Chilly nights, warm, dry days prep the mountains for fall’s color burst. But now, here at the cusp of autumn, it only flirts with a glimpse of what will come. As many as can busily store energy for the long winter ahead.

The seasons twine about, precessing around each year which are mocked at by the *Jardine Juniper looking down at us from another four miles up the trail. The young-looking aspen surrounds the juniper’s mountain and taunts Jardine’s **youth—Quakies’ braided trunks nothing in comparison to its own roots coursing through acres of soil.

Now, at the end of summer, age spots appear—holes eaten through like so many moths on wool—in stark contrast to the smooth white skin of its bark. Other trees are creased and scarred with branch nodes—millions of eyes turned to our every move. These riddled leaves are a temporary condition, remedied every year for generations.

I will go home and turn my thoughts to cool night air breezing through my windows. To the sun marching southward along the 9000′ spine of mountains a mile from my house. I will hope for the colors splattered across its canvas. And I will dream of cutthroats, their orange slash a reminder year round of autumns that have been and will be.

** Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) reproduce through both sexual reproduction and cloning. Stands of them here in the Great Basin are thought be as old as the last glacial period, 10,000-13,000 years ago.

Our ascent mimics his and we arrive at the top of the canyon at the same time. Aspen, showing the first, faint tinges of yellow, flicker in this early light. Dust kicked up from tires coat trees and shrubs a sagey-grey.

In the long shadows of early light I hike toward the ridge at nine thousand feet, shotgun over the right shoulder. An eleven month hiatus slows my senses—and I forget to look, really look. I’m merely hiking with a weapon, not stalking. My nerves are deadened from the nearly year-long break, spent mostly stalking cutthroat, which is nothing like stalking blue grouse.

Ten minutes into the hunt and a noise to my right, a fluttering, startles me. I swing toward the sound, bring the 12 gauge Winchester around, but do not shoulder it. My eyes sweep left-to-right-then-left. Searching. A winged blur comes into focus bearing away from me to the left. Although it is out of range I snap a quick shot in its direction, at the same time hearing a second flutter of wings to my right. By the time I pick out the bird in the dappled light of trees and shadow, it is quickly lifting. I fire a shot, missing well below it. It settles in a tree eighty feet away.

Grouse are notorious for their ability to completely disappear in plain sight. I move toward the bird, keeping my eyes on the tree while keeping my feet free of the tangled underbrush.

I approach the trunk of the tree and move toward the far side. While still under the lower branches, the bird launches from above in a flurry of wings. The branches shield his flight until he is a hundred and fifty feet away and forty feet off the ground, dodging through the next stand of trees.

I turn back toward the ridge and work my way uphill. A little more alert. More on edge. I periodically stop and let the breeze wash over me, the wind soughing through the fir and aspen trees. Nearing the sharp spine of the stony ridge a rattle comes from below my feet, startling me until I realize I’ve I jostled some lupine seed pods.

I look east over the next half dozen ridges to the mountains in Wyoming, thirty-five miles away. Hundreds of square miles lie before me and I’m blind “casting” for grouse. In a river, blind casting for trout in a river that holds hundreds of fish per mile is doable, considering the fish are contained laterally by banks only separated by twenty or thirty feet. But dozens of miles wide, the land before me does not give of itself so easily.

On the water, the mind works and the eyes pick out pockets and potential lies. Casts are mentally measured then made. All energy seems to flow from eyes to brain to nervous system—all working in concert to determine where the quarry is and then to catch it. The other senses, with maybe the exception of the hearing, seem to fade into the periphery.

In rushing mountain streams and rivers, other sounds are masked by the water’s tumble over rocks. This sound becomes the backdrop for angling. The ears become accustomed to it. Yet amazingly can pick the slurp or splashy rise of aggressive fish. Then I swivel and look for the riseform or shadowy afterimages darting beneath the surface. It’s a curiosity and reaction to sound and movement—but the tension of the hunt isn’t there.

Yet on this ridge I notice something different as I think about the vast possibilities of where grouse might be. My eyes quickly survey the space around me. I have previously found grouse in semi-open areas, more frequently around evergreens than deciduous trees. It is mere milliseconds of brain power used to spot such terrain and move toward it.

And then what? I become aware of my thinking. My mind wanders and wonders why this is so different from fishing. Yet my physical senses are active. My whole body becomes a finely-tuned receptor of stimuli, hyper-sensitive to every nuance and change. The sun on my cheek. The flitting wings of juncos seventy feet away. The flickering tail of a chipmunk, usually camouflaged by leaves and branches, though a hundred feet away, immediately uncloaks. The scent of fir and juniper, crushed below my feet, or brushed against, wafts about me. The index finger of my right hand rests lightly on the safety, feeling its reluctant give as I test it.

I am aware of all this simultaneously and I wonder that since these heightened senses accompany the predator, what are they like for the prey?

It has been several hours and I should probably head back to the others. I move off the ridge thirty yards and circle back, now heading south. I continue scanning with my eyes, but rely more on my ears. After ten minutes and covering a couple of hundred yards I hear flapping to my left and slightly ahead of me. Looking directly into the sun I see a grouse fly to my left sixty feet away. I fire and the bird tilts to the left, momentarily dropping its left leg, then rights itself and continues away. Another bird flushed when I fired and it flies directly away from me toward a small cluster of trees near the ridge.

Instead of approaching directly, like I did the earlier bird that came to roost, I circle a hundred feet to the north, making my way toward the ridge. A thin line of seven trees mark the spot where the bird landed—I think it is in one of the trees toward the south end of the row, although it could have just as easily landed and taken off on foot. I slowly work my way along the trees, keeping thirty feet away so I can see up and down each tree’s height. I stop when I have worked past the first five trees.

This looks like where the bird was heading. I stand as still as possible. A zephyr lifts over the ridge toward the west and ripples the coneflowers, now dried with a dark brown button capping each stalk. I hold my position rotating my head left and right, attuned to each nuance of my surroundings. A minute passes. Then two. I’m not sure if it’s a slight noise or movement in my peripheral vision, but something to the right and slightly above me causes me to turn and stare directly at the blue grouse staring back at me. He’s twenty-five feet away, fifteen feet off the ground.

A head shot drops him and four other grouse flush from the far side of the trees as the shot reverberates off distant cliffs. I get glimpses of them between the branches, but no clear shot. I chamber another shell then pick up the spent, smoking shell from the ground. A handful of feathers flock the Douglas fir. I retrieve the grouse then move north again.

I plan on circling around the far side of the copse of trees the four grouse glided toward. As I move a dozen feet north, a small movement forty feet ahead of me, on the ground, captures my attention. I pause and look up. Another grouse quickly moves between two trees. It is on the far side of a log and I only see its head bobbing past, almost ready to disappear behind a handful of trees to my left. I fire slightly above the bird. She flies directly at me and raises to settle on a branch twenty feet in front of me. I drop her just before her feet touch the branch. The load catches her in the gullet, exploding her crop. Leaves and berries sprinkle about.

Circling around to the stand of trees the other grouse are in I make a cursory glance about me. I feel the heightened perception slowly drain as I realize I need to make my way back to the Jeep. Each step I take seems to bring me back to the task of working my way through the deadfalls and brush, and away from the role of stalker. A dull throb develops in my left knee. I feel a few hotspots on my feet where my boots have rubbed. But I’m relatively unaware of sounds except for a few echoes of other shotguns from several miles away careening off the rock walls of the mountains.

The grouse, hanging upside down from my belt, bounce against my leg, dripping blood and a few leaves and berries. Death is messy. At the Jeep I dress the birds. Later I’ll marinate the breasts in teriyaki, honey, garlic and olive oil. Tonight they will be grilled and served to a handful of friends. And I’ll remember the keen senses of a predator that will have long since left.