Isolation Diary
Always been a sucker for old
wooden boats. Paid too much for the one in flames, above, & it was already
too far gone for restoration at the time I bought it. But I’m an optimist
& have been for the last four years while the old drifter aged under the
pine trees in the yard. And no it didn’t age like fine wine. It aged like plywood
left shamefully out in the weather. Until I noticed the rotting bottom had
sprouted a fairly good crop of jackpine seedlings.
Sometimes you just have to
let things go & admit a loss. I suspect a lot of us are confronting that
right now. Don’t let it pull you off the
high ground, ladies & gentlemen. Everything changes. Everything passes.
Time for a poem.
Anthropocene Memory
Contemplating
Tung Po’s poem & the peace is broken. The rumble of an approaching wave
& a fighter jet making the daily border run vaults from behind the
ridge, hunting low. Tilted to a diving arc the jet claws down the smoky sky
& roars down the swollen river course – pines on the bluffs turning red
from the beetles.
~
The
river writhes bearing the loosened detritus of country ragged & worried at the
edges – traumatized landscapes & topsoil of the Pend Oreille & Flathead
valleys. The wracked & splayed medusas of upended roots carried on the
spate’s silver tipped shoulders.
~
A fallen tamarack. A drowned
mouse. An emptied & crushed beer can & a spent condom. The severed
jawbone of a slaughtered wolf inching over bottom stones. Secret poison &
the quicksilver dream of a tiny mayfly – the stained river a canticle of
heartbreak whispers hinting shadows passing like the memory of fish – like the
muscle memory of arms & hands.
~
Resurrection lays hidden
asleep beneath the shifting silt awaiting a word that cannot be written or
spoken.
~
Everything passes.
~
And who resists the ambiguous
torrent even knowing? Sidestepping a dreadful dream, careful to conceal my
executioner heart, repeating a gesture,
I lift the rod & hurl an
offering to the dazzling void.
The Reel News
Aquaz Wader Review
I never do a paid endorsement
though, once in awhile, when I use a product that I feel is an outstanding
value to SHJ readers, I do a voluntary review of that product. Aquaz waders
have been around for awhile & are a favorite among some professional guides
in the PNW who are savvy, though are just beginning to get some traction in the
land of name recognition marketing that is America.
A few years ago, on the
advice of a guide friend, Jeff Cottrell, I ordered some Aquaz, felt-soled,
bootfoot chest waders like the Evening Hatch guides where wearing on the
Klickitat. While visiting there I’d been impressed with the obvious quality &
also the natural colors of the Aquaz waders.
When mine arrived & I
tried them on I was pleased to find they were the best fitting waders I’d ever
pulled on. Each size comes in regular-cut & full-cut, allowing for a fairly
tailored fit. The rubber boots, though heavier than lightweight wading boots,
feature built-in, cushy, neoprene linings that hug your feet providing a snug,
form fit. The boots are supportive & don’t flop around.
Of course the Aquaz are
available in stockingfoot models as well. And for those of us whose bladders are
shrinking toward the size of a penny balloon, they are also available with a
zippered front so as to allow easy, quick access to the nozzle. That’ll be my
next pair. If I can ever wear my first pair of Aquaz waders out.
I need good equipment for my
guide work. I’m in waders about 150 days a year. And I like a good value, I’m
not rich. Been using the Aquaz waders for three years now & haven’t even
developed a single pinhole leak, & the half-inch thick felt soles are
barely showing wear. That’s a first. I usually get, at most, two years out of a
pair of waders, & by then they are plastered with Shoe Goop.
After a three-year trial, I
would rate Aquaz waders equal to the best in quality, while the price point is
pleasantly lower. In my opinion these are the best value in waders available.
I have an Aquaz wading jacket
on my wish list as well. Here’s a review of the Aquaz Trinity jacket – & I
also like the looks & the price of the Kenai jacket on the Aquaz site:
Here’s a review of the Aquaz
zippered waders: https://www.tu.org/blog/aquaz-dryzip-waders__trashed/
Aquaz, partnered with TU, is
working on a habitat restoration project on the North
Oregon coast called the Salmon
Super Highway (SSH). Aquaz is giving back, having agreed to donate
25% of each product sale from its website to SSH.
Aquaz Products: https://www.aquazfishing.com/
At
the Tying Bench
At last, as the merry month of May wraps up
& the river rises, the two major hatches of May & early June are
underway. The arrival of these two completely unrelated insect species, the
grannom caddis & the carpenter ant, occurs simultaneously, hence I fish
imitations of both, as a tandem rig, a grannom softie trailing behind the ant.
Carpenter ant mating flights
occur on warm, sunny days. The ants are
everywhere & many end up falling on the river where the trout are waiting
for them. This simple thread ant is my favorite.
 |
| Carpenter Ant ~ hook: #8 ~ thread/body: UNI 3/0 wound to form the body shape ~ hackle: black or furnace hen ~ coat the body with head cement or Hard As Nails |
 |
| Grannom Pupa |
Grannom emerges mid-day
through the afternoon with egg-laying flights gathering in the afternoon & occurring
into evening. On my home water the best fishing begins late afternoon when a
lot of spent egg-layers have accumulated on the water. Emerging pupae are
various shades of olive over the abdomen with shades of brown through the
thorax area. Adults are nearly black over the body with subtly mottled, tannish-grayish
wings. A plain old Partridge & Peacock is usually good fished over the spinner fall. Here's some grannom patterns I like:
 |
| Partridge & Peacock |
 |
| Grannom Pupa/Emerger ~ #14 hook ~ thread: brown ~ hackle: partridge ~ rib: silver wire ~ body: olive dubbing with thorax of brown (rabbit) dubbing |
 |
| Grannom Spinner ~ #14-#16 ~ thread: black ~ hackle: partridge ~ egg sack: highlander green UNI yarn ~ rib: silver wire ~ body: peacock herl |
 |
| Grannom Spinner ~ #14-#16 ~ thread: black ~ hackle: partridge ~ egg sack: highlander green UNI yarn ~ body: a few strands of black midge flash twisted with the tag of the tying thread & a thorax of 50/50 black & brown rabbit |
 |
| Rootbeer Spade ~ Henry Loiseau Graphics |
A dark comedy of sorts:
The Silent Pines
Bill carried his boots not wanting to clunk through the
house and wake Ada.
The brown western cut polyester suit fit him too snug. He’d decided he didn’t
need the necktie.
In the kitchen he poured a cup of yesterday’s coffee, heated
it in the microwave, then drank it black and bitter while watching the first
light of day spread along the flat horizon beyond the kitchen window. A skiff
of fresh snow covered the ground and lined the bare limbs of a tree in the
yard. He drank the cup empty, placed it on the table, then pulled an envelope
from his jacket pocket and propped it against the cup so that it would stand
out above the clutter of bill and notice envelopes filed on the table.
He pulled his boots on, took his hat from a peg by the door
and walked outside. His footsteps crushed the dry snow with a sound like
groans. The sky sagged. Signs, he figured. The world was losing its light and a
secret foulness ranged afoot. Bad damn
luck. He spat.
Passing the pickup truck parked in the barnyard he caught
his distorted reflection in the side window, the head freakish, elongated.
Averting his eyes, he plowed on. The pickup would not take him where he needed
to go that day.
At the barn, he threw a few handfuls of oats into the trough
in the paddock then went out to the corral and caught his horse and saddled it
while it finished the oats. He was already leading the sorrel out when he
thought of it, and returned to the tack room to fetch his spurs.
The spur rowels clinked and his breath streamed in the raw
cold. Bill swung up onto the horse and urged it to a fast walk and then into a
trot out across the pasture over the leached, snowy ground. A broken line of
cows escaped single file down the distance, their heads bowing and lifting.
Beyond the pasture the land tilted and juniper and pine
thickened along the higher ground. He followed a cow trail, then hooked off
onto a narrower path, a trail made by coyotes and rabbits. The path wound over
a rise and down into a draw where an old bullpine stood in the snow like a
hefty ranch wife in a dough spattered house dress, its limbs akimbo in a
posture of eternal furor against the ambiguous sky.
Bill reined the sorrel to a stop next to the tree, directly
beneath a stout branch almost low enough to brush his hat. He took his Stetsen
off and tossed it away then unstrung his riata from the saddle and threw the
loop over the branch and then reached up and tied the bitter end hard and fast.
He placed his head into the loop and drew the honda tight
against the back of his neck. The sorrel stomped a foot and blew.
Unable to extricate himself from the momentum of his own
designs, he drew a plastic zip-tie from his pocket, looped it around both
wrists and used his teeth to pull the loop closed to make sure.
Bill sat on the horse and looked straight ahead inhaling the
scent of pines. A crow lit in the top of a nearby tree sending a spit of snow
falling down the branches. He couldn’t think of one good reason to pray. He
pulled his feet from the stirrups and the big Spanish rowels of his spurs sawed
upwards against the sorrel’s loins and the horse leaped forward.
Snow avalanched from the tree and down onto him. The fall
was not enough to break his neck and his face turned from red to purple to
black and his eyes bulged out onto his cheeks and his bladder let go darkening
his pants while his coupled arms went up and down in a chopping motion faster
than they had ever dealt cards, and his feet danced and kicked and danced,
faster than they had ever danced at the whorehouse in Wheeler. And he danced
and danced.
He dangled.
The crow dropped, spread its wings and lifted over the
trees. Bill’s body slowly rotated at the end of the rope, this way, then that
way, under the branch in sepulchral light amidst the silent pines.
* * *
The letter began:
Dear Ada,
You have been a good
enough wife and this is not your fault. There is evil in the world and it has
got a hold of me. Those times I told you I was going fishing…
He confessed nearly everything.
Ada’s
mourning was fused with anger. Breaking all of Bill’s fishing rods helped her
to work through that. Of course, she’d already known. Not the details. Until
the letter. She’d detected the wind change long ago and looked the other way.
You can’t change a person, really. Especially not Bill. She knew. Trying would
have just made her life more miserable. He’d done some pretty crazy things she
knew of. He’d always been surly under pressure, and her mother had warned her
that was a mark of weakness in a man. He’d been worrying about the bills a lot.
The Wheeler Chicken Ranch addiction had cost him at least three hundred dollars
a week. And all that crazy political talk-show stuff he listened to on the
radio all the time seemed to make him angrier, spinning him even further off
his footing. Still, she simply couldn’t wrap her mind around it and didn’t
really want to, didn’t think she ever wanted to. She’d quit going to church. It
didn’t seem to do anybody any good. Hadn’t done Bill any good.
Selling the ranch brought enough to pay off the bills and
buy the condo. She loved Hawaii.
The ocean. Year around flowers. She didn’t miss that never-break-even ranch at
all. Nothing but work. Cold winters. She forgave Bill for almost everything.
Men are fools. She forgave him that. And, though she would never admit it out
loud, she had to allow that, in the end, Bill had given her a gift of sorts,
and she secretly appreciated and thanked him for that. ~Steven Bird
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