...driftless garden. And, jelly...

Well, its almost that time...something has been in the back of my mind for a while and I think I finally figured it out.  Its in the background of one of the jelly shots...But, my wifes hard work in the garden is sure showing.  I think it looks pretty good...my efforts besides the sweet corn and squash have been mainly focused on berry picking.  Mulberries, blackberries, and gooseberries...still waiting on the wild plums.  But, I've picked 20 lbs of blackberries and another 10 of mulberries...the mulberry tree was heavy this year.   Like the plum trees last year...at best I'll be able to mix blackberries and plums this year.  The plums are thin...but, the mix was maybe my favorite last year.  Gooseberries may get mixed with the blackberries, too...for tartness.  But, the blackberry jam by itself is in a league of its own...

The garden has the corn and squash...but, also has garlic, onion, tomato, lettuce, peppers, muskmelon, watermelon, and numerous spices and wild and domestic flowers.  Only my wife knows their names...my jelly is only small payment for the hard work of planting and weeding she does.  Its really her garden.  But, surrounded by my wild plums, blackberries, mulberries, and gooseberries.  Besides the deer, grouse, turkey, and trout...

...did I say deer?  Thats it...those antlers.  Its almost time to scout and set up tree stands...but, there are still trout to be caught.  That driftless living thing...

Afternoon trude hatch...

Mayflies, caddis, hoppers, ants, and crickets...the trude will cover them all.  I wonder why nobody seems to fish the afternoon rise.  Too complicated, maybe...changing flies to cover each fish.  Or just fish a trude.  Today, I fished the royal variety...

The hex was on...

...I love that line.  I've told and written this story many times but lost the original.  It remains the same and since I just got in from fishing in the back yard and caught four little browns while my two youngest sons played baseball...I thought I'd share it with you.  But, I should be fishing...two on the first three casts and could have been more but Otis was with me.  He doesn't understand resting a hole and thinks he's my gillie.

It was probably 30 years ago but the visuals will never be forgotten.  Usually the hexagenia hatch has very little of that.  Even with a flashlight those big browns are all about the rise and the fight in the dark.  This night was different...now, the big flies either come or they don't.  And, its a guessing game.  Down here in southern Wisconsin it is earlier than up north and I've recently heard of accidents caused by so many they have to bring out the snowplows to clear bridges and stretches of roads.  The first week of June is hex time on Black Earth creek outside of Madison and it was my closest place to find them.

I had grown up dreaming of the hex hatch on the Mecan in central Wisconsin...the box of big mayflies next to the cash register at the local sporting goods store told me the hex was on.  It was years before I got to explore that river but my very beginnings of success at flyfishing come from there.  Somebody finally let the cat out of the bag and told me BEC had hexagenias, too.  And, it was only 10 miles from my house.  Fruitless, would describe my early ventures at dusk chasing the hatch...it was the hatch not the trout.  The trout would come up if the hex was on...Years later after some success on that driftless stream where I had fished for trout like religion...I finally saw the light.  Literally...I had found a place to access away from the dozen or so cars that would park at every bridge looking for a sign of anything.  It was not known hex water and I would cross the stream at an old cattle crossing and walk along a cornfield downstream to a slow, silty stretch behind a chiropractors office and the back yards of a couple of houses.

I approached the slight slick of a riffle just above the flatwater...my timing was good and just a little light allowed me to get a bearing on things before it went dark.  I just stood and watched along the bank and waited.  At first, nothing...like so many times before.  I'm always prepared for nothing when chasing the hex.  Then, something...big, too.  Fluttering over the opposite bank...it was hard to see for the light coming from the houses on that side.  Then another...and another...I stepped off the bank into the the water to get in position.  I heard a rise...ploop.  Then, a small fish made a showy rise trying to gulp the almost 3 inch long mayfly...the big ones just suck water.  Ploop...

As I was stripping line to cast, some folks from the houses with the backyards on the other side of the creek, came out and made some noise while having a beer and I was sure they would ruin my hopeful fishing.  To make maters worse, they lit a roman candle.  Then fireworks...on the water, too.  Hexes were everywhere...in the air, on the water, and being taken by trout.  Big trout...and their rises reflected in the most brilliant light show I've ever seen.  The hex was on...

I cast to risers in reflected reds, yellows, blues, and brilliant whites...and, caught trout as long as my arm.  All the while, the revelers carried on...Big trout take time to play but I muscled them to take another.  I knew this couldn't last.  I hooked big browns rising less than a rod length from me and others in shallow water over a pod of nymphs rising from the silt.  All in the brilliant reflections...

One extra large brown took me downstream into some willow lined water away from the silt and my Hardy screemed 20 feet of line...it was enough to make the light givers take note.  Someone else had been part of their celebration...without them knowing it.  Now they did...and stopped.  No more fireworks...no more hexes, and, no more trout.  But, forty five minutes of a once in a lifetime event.  The hex was on...

Marley and me...

...Bob Marley that is.  Not the movie...but, Bobs trips to Madison.  Back in one of those prior lives I mentioned...I met Bob Marley.  It was '81 I believe...and, his second concert at the Orpheum theater.  I had been to Jamaica in '75...and seen Toots and the Maytals in Boulder at the Boulder Hotel.  What a great show...I came back the second night it was so good.  And I had seen Bobs first concert in the late '70's in Madison, too.  Bob was getting treatment at UW Madison for his foot cancer and living at the Edgewater Hotel on Lake Mendota.  And, one of my old college room mates was the promoter who brought him to town.  here is a link to the first concert at the Orpheum...

http://www.panicstream.net/vault/bob-marley-and-the-wailers-5251978-madison-wi/

At the second show my friends and I had the first two rows in the theater...many shots from the Bob Marley documentary are from this Madison show including the one where he thanks the people of Wisconsin.  It was one of the best shows ever and the I three backup singers were outstanding but you could see the worry on their faces at such close range.  Bob came out for the second set in a crouch and blew a cloud of smoke that engulfed him and then jumped up out of the cloud and started singing.  Jammin...

After the concert my old bud the promoter came up to me and asked me and a couple of friends to Bobs hotel suite for a little after show party.  Well...of course we'd be there.  I'd hung out at the Edgewater many times so knew my way around but was surprised to see a small get together when we got there.  Seeing an old friend on the couch with the I three was stunning when I walked in.  Somehow the bass player and I ended up in a hallway with a hawaiian I had left over from the concert.  Strangely it came from my guide friends from Bozeman.  Those Bozeman boys could party back before it became bozangeles.  We were talking about the concert and Wisconsin when Bob came up to us with a skinner in his mouth.  The hawaiian fattie was slow burning and he never lit the one in his mouth.  I'm sure Bob came into the hallway because he could smell the pineapple...

His stage presence was amazing...he seemed huge and powerful on stage.  The show was real and heartfelt...you could see it on his face.  My promoter friend said Bob asked to do the show to thank everyone in Madison who had supported him.  The smell of Bob 'cooking' had wafted up and down the halls the the Edge for months and was no secret.  But, back at the hotel his size was diminutive and frail...but, his presence in person was larger than his stage presence.  It was impossible to not be in awe of the, at the time, most famous man in the world.  The party was a respectable get together and we left after an appropriate time.  Bob was still fighting and we knew he had just given his all to the people of Madison.

Well...I have no pictures of Bob and like when I was in Jamaica...my camera was my minds eye.  But, the early '80's were a fast moving time for me.  Many fishing trips to bozeman and canada...including an invitation to fish Montana's opening day with the Governor and Jack Hemingway arranged by on of my fishing friends.  Mount St Helens blew the day we were to fly out and we never made it farther than the twin cities.  A few days later my cousin and I went out anyways to fish the spring creeks of the paradise valley and in an earlier picture here you can see dust from the volcano over the brush on the banks of Armstrongs srping creek 800 miles away.  We clicked up a cloud of it as we walked.  Still Jammin'...

...and, flyfishing.  My western trips had done wonders for my spring creek fishing here.  Nelsons, Dupuys, and Armstrongs are not a lot different from our driftless spring creeks and most flies and techniques worked as well here as there.  It wasn't long before driftless days were equal to those Madison nights.  Flyfishing the driftless was long forgotten by most anglers who were pillaging the larger trout here with spinners, rapalas, and bait.  As if catch and release was a crime...the same way many catch and release anglers think keeping a trout now is.  Only a few old  time flyfishers remained and those numbers were dwindling faster than new flyfishers were being enlisted.  Imagine that today...but, as for a dyed in the wool yuppie bmw driving flyfisher...I was the first and felt I had the entire driftless to myself.  And, I did...

So, I was hanging out in the only flyshop around...telling lies of the west and my driftless exploits when the shop owner recognized such talent and hired me to teach flyfishing classes and guide for him.  I had been guided for free many times by the half dozen guide friends from Bozeman and knew the routine.  The only difference was we caught more fish in the driftless...and, the farm I now live in was the farm I guided folks on at least a decade before I bought it.  Provenance is the best guide...

As, was the chance meeting at a collectible flyfishing show in Mt Horeb in the same year Bob Marley was in town.  I think...another Bob.  I remember the event and meeting Bob but not the pictures taken.  It was decades later that I saw them.  On another flyfishing website someone posted them and asked if anyone knew who they were...besides Bob.  The synapses were a little slow to grasp what I was seeing but I finally recognized the guy who helped me teach flyfishing classes.  The tall guy threw me...too much hair.  I finally recognized the flannel shirts...two of them.  It was me.  Imagine my surprise to see me talking to Bob Summers.  I barely remembered and it came back slow.  Maybe  the same rod I fished for a season and let Kevin Searock fish on my homestream 20 years after meeting Bob Summers is the same one I'm holding at the show.  Provenance.  A picture of me and Bob...followed by one of Roger who helped me teach flyfishing classes, an unidentified angler, and Kevin Searock fishing the Bob Summers rod.  I still kick myself for not buying one on the spot that day in Mt Horeb.  Or for not telling Bob Marley how great he was.  But, the greats never want to hear that, anyways...

Birthplace of DuraframeDipnet...

It all started with Clair and Dave.  Our nets are now on their second trip to the Congo for the New York Museum of Natural History.  And, doing heavy work for salmon research in the Pacific northwest...among most states in the country and many native American tribes.  We have a long history together...buying the pond farm and giving Clair and Ida a lifelong lease to the 100 acre farm with this beautiful spring pond.  They were already neighbors to our 80.  Clair became a second father to me...I had found my 80 acres just days after my dads funeral and Dave became my older brother.  Duraframe Dave in an earlier post.  Those were hard years but good years because of our 'family'.  Clair attended the death of our infant son and we supported him when Ida passed.  Its how things are done in the driftless.  Clair and I shared a love for trout that was our first bond.  I taught flyfishing classes on the pond for the first flyshop in the driftless.   And, Clair was always a highlight of the class.

One day with 10 flyfishing students Clair came out of his house and leaned an old 12 gauge on the tree.  When he left I went over and unloaded it...and sure enough, the mink he had seen from his porch came swimming out looking for an easy trout..  It had been doing damage enough...along with the blue herons, it was sometimes hard to balance feed with income.  He was more than a little surprised to find the gun empty but managed to load one shot and stop the mink from doing more damage.  Photographers, anglers, and others like myself supplemented his income along with the sale of trout.  One of my most memorable days was with the kids of Iraq vets on the pond and the photos we sent.  Cancer patients, handicapped, science classes, and some serious anglers took advantage of Clairs generosity.  He loved it.  All but the most jaded flyfisher could find a smile at catching one of the large brood fish or watching a young hopeful flyfisher getting a first lesson on them.  It was the best of times and the worst of times but we would never haved survived but together.

Duraframe carrys on in our new shop with only the old bending machine made by Clair from an old wagon wheel, left.  But, We believe Clair and Dave would be proud of my wife for saving the business and me for just plain living this long...

Driftless vacation...

Some folks think I'm on permanent vacation...living in the driftless.  But, like anybody else there is always obligations.  I'll spare you those and stick to fishing here.  I had a window to get out today and took advantage of it.  It was after 2:00 when I finally made it over the ridge into the next valley.  A bluebird day in the low 80's in the middle of July...it ought to be illegal.  Fish rising to trudes...wild fish, too.  After several nice trout I tried other flies...sulphurs, elk hair caddis, and last weeks hendrickson that was so successful on another stream.  One rise to the caddis was all I could muster...so back to the trude and more success.  In fact it was fast fishing.  That afternoon rise I mentioned that few anglers fish in the driftless...stops by late afternoon and I think I got into it a little late.  But, a couple dozen trout in a couple of hours is more than anyone has a right to hope for.  And, I finally got some new batteries...

And the long walk back...didn't seem to mind at all.  I was on vacation...