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Friday, March 20, 2020

Ghost Fish
(Part 4 of a Story for My Son)

Sunset where Grindstone Creek flows into
Lake Ontario at Selkirk Shores State Park,
about 5 miles south of my family's old
NY farm. If you are going to waste
countless hours hopelessly casting a fly
to a wraith of a fish, the epic
sunsets are at least a wonderful reward.
By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

Back home in Virginia, after that first trip to Upstate New York, despondent over all I was missing by not being raised there, life was a slow burn. If we had a foot of snow, local people cowered; Upstate, my uncle called that “a skiff of snow, a dusting.” That was the life, I thought, especially in summer, when our front porch thermometer soared toward 95 degrees, and my uncle would confirm by letter that it was only 75 there.
    My dad and I agreed on almost nothing, but he did fish, and he would take me fishing: that was our common ground. But even at that, we differed greatly. He loved to fish plastic baits, fake worms and lizards and such, from the bank, throwing them out, letting them sink, crawling them back one agonizingly slow turn of the reel handle after another—feeling the details of the lake bottom as if he was trying to draw a map of it. I liked fishing topwater, watching the splash of a big bass taking a deer hair bug, or the tiny dimple of a trout sipping a microscopic #22 midge; I happily traded catching quantities of fish for that one magical moment when I could entice just one to the surface. Most of all I loved the constant movement of fly casting, the complete focus it took to keep back casts out of the trees then cast the artificial fly to a target the size of a quarter.
    In the angling world, fly-fishers are often dubbed purists. As I tend to do with many things in life, I took being a purist to a whole new level. Catching fish on a fly wasn’t pure enough, they had to be taken on a dry fly. Anything less was just fishing.
    As the years flew by, my fly tying greatly improved, to the point I started creating my own patterns instead of just copying traditional favorites. My casting distance never recovered from being self-taught, but my accuracy and presentation became literally pinpoint.
    Spare time was too often scarce, but college travels, and a job that enabled travel, allowed me to catch just about every fish willing to take a fly. The bluegill, bass and trout I grew up with gave way to bluefish and striped bass in the surf, to northern pike and muskellunge in Canada, to bonefish, permit and tarpon in the Florida salt flats and points further south. I even managed to catch a walleye, a shark, and a hefty channel catfish on high-floating dry flies of my own design—a trifecta many fellow fly-fishers deemed nearly impossible.
    Through the haze of years and travels, adventures and misadventures, there was one dream I kept having, and one fish I kept chasing.
    I learned there were only two places where Atlantic salmon reliably rose to dry flies: Eastern Canada, and Russia. The latter was out of my reach, and my budget, but the eastern coastal rivers of Canada became regular getaways for me. The weather hardly ever cooperated, and the fish never cooperated, but at least the experiences and the scenery were wonderful. By the time I turned 50, the famed ‘fish of a thousand casts’ was my fish of hundreds of thousands of casts, and tens of thousands of dollars.
    Despite the impossible odds, on any trip I made Upstate I would be somewhere casting a dry-fly at dusk—and hoping, and remembering, and reliving. On my favorite outings I would go to Selkirk Shores State Park for a long run on trails I would cross-country ski or snowmobile come winter, then I would cast and hope, cast and hope, into Grindstone Creek, where it emptied into Lake Ontario just a few hundred yards west of the Salmon River—less than a mile from where the ghost fish had caught me all those decades ago.
    On rare occasion I did catch a salmon, but it was the wrong kind. Of course. Not that catching a 15-pound fish on a flyrod designed for 15-inch fish wasn’t enjoyable, but it wasn’t that enjoyable, because it was an alien invader that shouldn’t have been there, instead of the native fish that belonged. Due to an over-abundance of forage fish, New York State was part of a movement to bring back salmon in Lake Ontario, and they established a hatchery on the Salmon River. Unfortunately, that effort introduced king and coho and other “Pacific salmon” instead of the Atlantic salmon, and the difference—to me, anyway—was as bad as a hatchery-raised trout compared to wild, native trout.
    The Pacific salmon re-established a fishery, but it was nothing I wanted any part of. In the early years, “snagging” or foul-hooking these salmon by rapidly reeling weighted hooks through the water was not only legal, it was encouraged. There was nothing purist about that, obviously.
Me, kayaking with humpback whales
off Point Gustavus, Alaska. No, I
was not fly fishing for them.
    After doing their part to assure survival of their species, a hefty percentage of Atlantic salmon return to deep water—the ocean usually, or, in this case, the lake. Pacific salmon die after spawning, so the logic was to catch them any way possible. As the fishery evolved, snagging with heavy gear was phased out and fly fishing caught on, but it was mainly about drifting nymph and fake egg patterns and I still wanted no part of it. For most people, however, catching a 20 or 30 or even a 40-pound salmon was catching a very big salmon: who cares about aesthetics?
    The popularity and abundance and ease of catching Pacific salmon sealed the fate of the Atlantic salmon. And yet, there I would be, night after night, as dusk fell, casting and hoping, casting and hoping.
    Fly fishing is the most delicate of “blood” sports – most of the time you are literally casting feathers – but to me it always had emotional heft to it. Fly fishing didn’t start in Scotland, but the modern form of the sport was arguably perfected there. My Scottish ancestors lived on the shore of salmon-rich Loch Lomond – the largest freshwater lake in Scotland – and my Viking forbears before them no doubt had considerable interaction with salmon as they enjoyed summers under the midnight sun, in Iceland. When I cast a fly, I feel centuries of connection to those roots, and to those who introduced me to fly fishing when I was young. All the people who first took me afield have been dead for years, but when I cast a fly it is as if I still feel them there, much as I can envision a thick mist rising off a Scottish loch I’ve never seen.
    I grew up hunting and fishing, and helping work on a farm – doing everything from driving a tractor to shooting a cow or a pig between the eyes before we processed it into various cuts of meat. By the time I started college, however, I was on the way to becoming the only vegetarian I knew, and by my 30s I had become an animal rights activist who looked back on my involvement in hunting, fishing, and farming as a sort of psychotic phase of my early life.
A friend wading the salt flats,
fly-fishing for bonefish,
somewhere south of Miami
    And yet, fly fishing remained a part of my life, not because I had any interest in terrorizing fish, but because it provided a palatable way for me to spend time outdoors with the few very special people I would compromise my personal ethics for. When an old friend who had taken refuge in Cuba revealed he had a terminal illness, I dug out a stout 9-weight saltwater outfit and waded the flats one last time with him. By the time my uncle Carl turned 90, most of his old hunting and fishing cronies were long since dead, so I once again threaded lines through the guides of our wispy 4-weight rods and took him on what turned out to be our last trip to Tug Hill to fish for native brook trout. I spent many hours prowling the banks of Virginia’s famed Mossy Creek, seeking the trophy brown trout that put the tiny meadow stream on the angling map, with a much older but very close friend, a retired architect named Ollie. None of them knew what a moral dilemma it was for me to be stalking fish with them, and I’m not sure any of them would understand why I felt such conflict within me. Nor do I think they would understand that if I go fly fishing again someday, it will be for the bond I will always feel with them, and my ancestors, not for any interest I have in fishing.
    And so it was with the quest to recapture the magic of the night of Ghost Fish. I was fishing for a wraith, but every cast was also targeting something real and deep within me; my back cast didn’t just unfurl between the trees behind me, it reached back through the eons to people and places I had never seen, yet felt as if I had always known.


Copyright © 2020 by Paul Clark

20 comments:

  1. Very enjoyable read this morning Paul. It had a unique calming effect on me. Here is an interesting side note for you. I lived in Bremerton, Washington where those Pacific Salmon came from. It is home of the first commercial fish farm. The ferry to Seattle would go past it each way. There were large nets spread across Puget Sound, this is where they raised the Salmon. They kept 50% and released 50% back into the wild. It was a big deal when the idea came along to restock the Great Lakes. Dum Sea Farms(not sure about the name spelling but that is how it sounds) they got the contract. Charles Lindbergh's nephew was one of the owners.

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  2. Ed, it is simply amazing that you have a personal connection to the history of Domsea Farms and Jon Lindbergh--who, by the way, is not a nephew, but is actually the oldest surviving child of Charles Lindbergh, and who, as far as I know, still lives in New York at age 87. Depending on who you believe, those Pacific salmon were the salvation of the Great Lakes salmon fishery, or the ruination--or at least the horrible delay to getting back to where the fishery once was and now again seems headed. As it is currently playing out, the Atlantic salmon that once clogged the Salmon River, Oak Orchard Creek, and other tributaries of Lake Ontario, are finally returning and replacing the Pacific salmon who helped bring them back--or delayed bringing them back, again depending on perspective. I will never know with 100% certainty if I actually caught an Atlantic that night five decades ago, but--to use your phrase--it has a calming effect on me to know I will hopefully soon have opportunity to take my son to New York to fly fish for Atlantic salmon, same as his great-grandfather fly-fished for them when he was growing up in New York as an early 1800s immigrant from the Loch Lomond region of Scotland.

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  3. I never knew this Lindbergh's first name, only met him once. But this one lived on Bainbridge, Island. A friend and I were diving on/off the Inland and as we were coming out he was going in. He introduced himself as Lindbergh and asked how the sea bass were running as we had a number of them in our bags. I only found out later that he was related to Charles and one of the owners of Dumsea Farms. I really don't remember if the person who told me said he was a son or a nephew, in my mind's eye he has been the nephew, but he was around 10 years older than us which would be about the right age. I've enjoyed the story very much, and one day I'm sure so will your son.

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  4. I looked it up: Jon Morrow Lindbergh, the second child of Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow, brought his family to Bainbridge Island in 1964, where they lived for 20 years.

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  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    1. Ed, I deleted this duplicate comment. Were you having sign-in trouble commenting?

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  6. Ed, I'm not sure which is the most amazing aspect of your story: that you were diving (and spearfishing?) in such cold water, or that you by happenstance met Jon Lindbergh, who would be famous in his own right if not overshadowed by his father. Jon helped pioneer cave diving, was one of the first aquanauts, served several years in the U.S. Navy as a demolition expert, and had a long career as a commercial diver.

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  7. Bainbridge Island. Jim Rix and I visited Morris Knudsen on Bainbridge Island one summer about a dozen years ago. Mo was visiting family. I like to know that I have visited the place you – Ed & Paul – are talking about.

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  8. The water up there never got above 50. You had to wear quarter inch full rubber suits and only your face was exposed and your lips would get so numb that air would escape from around your regulator. He was diving alone, which is never a good idea, but you can spot a mossy back Scuba diver and he had that look. I have also been on Jacques-Yves Cousteau's ship the Calypso. They were filming Octopus, Octopus out of Seattle--the largest octopus in the world live in Puget Sound. I have always told people that if you can dive the Sound you can dive anywhere. Commander Seals who headed the first deep water underwater habitat lived in Bremerton. My first wife took diving lessons from him. Her first salt water check out was going down the anchor chain of the USS Missouri. She was one hell of a diver.

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  9. I was living there at the same time as Rix. I went there in 1965 and moved to Cali in 1976 or 77. You had to have money to live on Bainbridge, Island. In fact the first question Lindbergh asked was if we lived on the Island, we said we were visiting friends.

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    1. Rix didn’t live on Bainbridge Island, but in Seattle somewhere (or a suburb). We visited him and his young family there around 1972. He writes about this period of his life in the “My Life” column, Chapter 4 (February 26). A sibling of James Knudsen (our Loneliest Liberal) moved to Bainbridge Island sometime early this century.

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  10. I have to confess, though (if “confess” is appropriate, for there may be no culpability on my part for perhaps just “being different”), but I can’t relate to the allure of going to old haunts and doing again some activity (like fly fishing) to relive beloved times past and revisit loved ones who have passed. My own personal analog for this could, however, be to write a story or a poem about such times and people in my own life, as when I have referred to walking along country roads with my mother.
        Certainly “lost times” are significant for “everyone”; but different people go searching for them in varying ways. Proust wrote a very long (seven-volume) novel “a la recherche du temps perdu.”
        But still, I do confess, for I love this story for your son, Paul, and I wish I could identify with fly fishing better than merely in my imagination. But that may be what reading great literature (which I consider this story to be) is all about – to enable readers to experience so much more.

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    1. Morris, people maintain their memories through different means, I guess, and while I don't think it is a good idea to overdo living in the past, I do think it is a good idea to remember and strive to honestly understand one's past. Some people value cemeteries for that purpose, or dressing in green and (worse) drinking green beer on St Patrick's Day--both of which I frankly don't understand at all--but if that works for fans of such, well, good for them. I guess. Props (as in tombstones and green beer) may he helpful in the quest for understanding, so maybe my prop is a fly rod? I've never actually thought about this, may have to explore it in some future writing.

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    2. When my daughter Shelley got married, she asked if I had any advise. I told her, "Go make memories because one day you'll be old and that will be what keeps you warm on those cold nights."

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  11. Ed, "if you can dive the Sound you can dive anywhere" certainly seems accurate. My only experience with such cold water is accidentally flipping a kayak or canoe: refreshing is one way to describe it, going numb all over (not just your face) and almost dying from hypothermia is another way to describe it. I just can't wrap my head around the idea of willingly going into water that cold. Your first wife sounds epic, as do many of the vignettes from your life. Most people lead lives that could never match their imagination; I often wonder if your real life has been more exciting than any life you could ever build for any of your colorful fictional characters.

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  12. Lucky we didn't live at the same time Paul--we would have died a young death if we combined the two paths. I'm surprised I'm still alive, but it is good materials to drawn from for writing a book.

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  13. Ed, sound advice, but I will have to add that having a much younger wife to keep you warm at night may actually be better than even the greatest of memories.

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  14. Ed, but if we had been on the West Coast at the same time maybe I could have opened your eyes to the merits of surfer girls in warm water in bikinis versus diver women in cold water wrapped in layers of thick neoprene? That said, us collaborating in Central America would most likely have been a disaster, although I made a fairly big mess of it on my own. On the bright side, knowing what I do of your life by enjoying reading about it, and knowing what I do of my own life by surviving it, I at least have a wealth of knowledge to pass on to my six-year-old son about what not to do in his life. Not that I expect him to listen...

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  15. Another good tale, Paul. Thanks.
    I also haven't gotten in the habit of revisiting the past. When my mother died, though, I did return home via visits to Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Yosemite, the places I learned to love the woods, including most of the fishing I tried.

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  16. Thank you, Chuck. At my sister's wishes, my parents are buried side-by-side in a local cemetery. I haven't been there in so long I doubt I could find the plots. I celebrate them in much the same way you did in your trip, by revisiting the places where I can remember them at their best. Since I now own and am renovating the house they once owned, I'm also fortunate that everything I do on the property is in its way a nod to what they started here. My six-year-old son was admiring flowers blooming on our side hill the other day, and it shocked me to remember I helped my mother plant those flowers when I was his age. I had planned to dig into that area and put a waterfall there, now think I will revise that plan.

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