I went out on the lake in the high pressure, bright sun, and wind. That was foolish and I repented of the decision in the end. There was nothing there.
 hopeless Then I went up in the mountains and camped overnight, the goal being to catch wild trout. I’m having a little trout phase this winter. It behooves me to be reminded that fishing for little wild fish fulfills my angling desires. For one, it’s relatively easy. Relatively. Plus the fish live in a nice place, which is true even if it’s trite to mention it. I assume most fisherman have home waters. My home waters exist in the Appalachians. Anywhere else I fish, however pleasant or consuming, represents a deviation from the original home waters. This stream was particularly nice, with big park-like bottoms that give me the feel of fishing in a hemlock cathedral. But enough of this bullshit. If you want to be exposed to a dewy-eyed nerd yammering on about his extreme sensitivity to natural beauty, you’ll have no problems finding that.
 hemlocks
 hugs
 pink I will mess with stripers a bit the next few weeks, but this is the winter doldrums, a quiet time when I try to improve my character through deep contemplation or perhaps through reading a bunch pulp science fiction.
At 9:30 pm on New Year’s eve, wearing my jammies, I wondered if I should open the bottle of cheap champagne I bought for New Year’s eve 2005. But I don’t like the stuff, my wife won’t drink it, and the bottle has become an important item of lowbrow decor in our household, perfectly complementing the broken futon and the empty mayonnaise jar collection . So nah, I’ll skip it again, and save it for a similar contemplation next year. I’m not a big New Year’s celebrator, though I like to think I’ve done my modest part in life to increase the general social level of drunkenness and debauchery, and thus have paid proper tribute to the spirit of the New Year’s eve celebration. Anyway, the date is meaningless to the universe at large. Anyone not aware of our arbitrary calendar (aliens, say), would not recognize the day we call January 1st as an important beginning for anything. The day of the winter solstice is what matters. I always feel an excitement on this day, a sense of lifting burdens and heightened prospects. The worst of winter still lies ahead, but there will only be more good clean daylight in which to face it. I like to fish in significant blocks of time that end at dark. When dark comes in the middle of the afternoon, life sucks. So we’re over that hump and into the new year.
Last year I fished a bit less, in terms of number of trips, than I have for many years. It was my first full year of multi-offspring parenting, so I’ll just blame the situation on that. I completely missed the fall striper thing, and that didn’t feel too bad, actually. I’m consciously accumulating a vicious, pent-up, heart-full of blackest grudge against stripers that I will unleash in the spring, causing shock and awe in striperdom. So last week I reset the clock and fished for trout. I went alone to a mountain stream and caught, frankly, an assload of little wild trout. I like it in the mountains on dim, lonely winter days.
 medium high falutin  plenty mayo I have no idea what this is all about.
 huh I took the kids fishing. They tend to get soft during the holidays, and I can’t abide it. They need a dose of stern survivalist reality in mid-winter. So we took some worms we’ve had in the fridge since August and went out to the water. We couldn’t catch any fish and so spent the time looking for scorpions, which is educational and something the kids enjoy. Couldn’t find any of those either.
 D  scorpions Did you notice the lowbrow angler got hacked a few days ago? Probably not. Not to worry though, we’re all clean and disease free now.
It’s been a long stretch. Now, more than ever, my secret dreams of becoming a powerful and high-paid blogger seem pitiable. But not to worry (or rejoice as the case may be), I’ve no plans for abandoning the cause or the blog of lowbrow angling. I closed out carp season, as required, and made my way to the salt in an unprecedented manner.
 rainy carp We went camping in the Keys. It was not, in fact, a fishing trip, though I did spend 5-6 hours over the course of several days poking around the flats. Did I confidently plan to stand out among the herds of vacationing dads by casually catching bonefish in my spare time off the campground beach? Yes. Alas. I saw some fish, which was exciting, and caught any number of misc. tiny non-sexy fish.
 flat
 not a bonefish So moved was I by this brief exposure that I planned a solo trip a few weeks later to more local salty environs. This was a balls-to trip by my standards. I drove after work on Friday to catch a late tide and finished the 2-hour paddle to an uninhabited island in the wee hours. I poked around the grass next morning, seeing no evidence of fish, spent the afternoon scouting around and casting the net, then fished with bait. Yes indeed, bait. I’ve had a few words to say about bait and purism in the past, and I’m aware of the risk of sounding awkwardly defensive or apologetic. But I must say that I’m a fly angler deep inside, and a catcher, in general, deeper inside. For many years, outside of fishing with the kids, rare episodes of fishing in the surf with bait have been my only deviation from relative purity. This fishing remains one of the most viscerally enjoyable things I do in any given year. I like throwing a cast net. So much so that I spent a lot of time doing it when I could have been nobly casting about with the 8 wt. So I spent the eve and into the darkest hours tossing cut baits into the racing tide at the mouth of the inlet. I caught a couple big red drum, the target of the endeavor, and reveled in the exposure and wildness of a southern barrier island.
 packed  alive an hour ago  camp  good  bait
 bull Now it is fall, season of the 2-pairs-of-pants work week, and for once I have ignored the striped fish deep into the season. And I’ll continue to do so for another week or so. Then it will be time to get back on the usual program.
Today the temperature at dawn was under 70 and fall-time feelings flickered fitfully across my synapses. I can (with my eyes closed after ingesting powerful hallucinogens) imagine what autumn will be like. Alas, to hunger for something so distant is unhealthy, I’m certain. Summer will never beat me, not even close, but this is a bad one and there’s still plenty of it left.
I’ve done the usual stuff, perhaps ranging a bit farther afield than typical. I find myself thinking more seriously about my trips than I usually do during the lazy days of summer. I can’t really claim this more aggressive approach has done me a damn bit of good. Fishing has been average, at best.
The formal cursing of the eastern striper population seems to have had some effect, at least. Scarcely a week after I laid a curse on the striper kingdom, a new world record fish was caught. I never intended to affect saltwater fish, but the curse obviously had a broader reach than expected. I hardly think the timing of this event can be explained by coincidence. While I can’t, in good conscience, claim direct ownership of the world record striped bass, I’m thrilled to be so meaningfully involved.
More importantly, I caught a few of my own local fish. I returned to a spot where I was blanked twice last season. I got lucky with good weather–overcast with fog and drizzle. I suppose it was not an orgy of angling success, but I got a few fish to hand, and figured out some new approaches to a problematic area.
 summer striper
 urban I went camping and fishing in the mountains, which is technically illegal during August, according to my personal code of angling regulations (2008 addition). But I had a hankering for something known, and someplace cooler, and JC was free the same weekend I was. We sat around a fire and drank and talked and listened to music on tiny ipod speakers. The next day we worked hard to fish a section of stream few people ever see. We caught a few wild trout, small and unremarkable. In the evening we went down the road and caught a couple stocked trout which we ate. It was the kind of weekend I had envisioned.
 jc
 coarse woody debris
 chute This is a good and unusual beer.
 black I admit that I’ve moved away from the core lowbrow value of cheap and unpretentious beer. This is something I’ll have to address, if for no other reason than to calm my own philosophical turmoil.
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