Song of Myself

fishbeer.com

2008-06-24T00:47:00.002-04:00

After much anticipation, Fishbeer.com is now live. Please enjoy.

Fishbeer.com

what creek? sugar creek.

2008-06-22T20:03:00.004-04:00

Amy and I traveled to Shades State Park on Friday to see what is touted as one of the most beautiful natural places in Indiana. We took my boat and floated a short section of Sugar Creek above Shades State Park.

Shades is pretty. We didn't see too much of it, but it is definitely pretty. Turkey Run State Park, just a couple miles down Sugar Creek, is supposed to be similar. The bad thing about Shades is that the campground was full. People were there to party and party they did. All. Night. Long. Of course, pleasant weather, mid-June, Friday night might have something to do with it. Whatever. The take home message here is perhaps, unless you want to drink all night long with your neighbors, stay away from Shades on the weekends.

Sugar Creek was nice. It was a nice float. The boat performed well. I even caught a couple smallish smallmouth bass. But Clement's Canoes, the outfitter that ran a shuttle for us at a reasonable $25, was kind of booked up and while scheduled for an 11:00am shuttle, didn't get on the water until 1:00pm. Not sure what the take home message is here. Maybe just don't count on an on-time shuttle on a nice Saturday in June.

Also, try to avoid wicked hail storms when breaking down your boat.

By the way, the new blog is imminent.

things

2008-06-19T23:49:00.003-04:00

I've been doing a lot of things lately.

It was Adam and Katie's wedding. This is Ben and Leigh who are themselves getting married in a few short weeks.

Click to enlarge.

I explored more of my favorite creek and caught many fine bass.

Dr. Saunders came through town and I dragged him out to go fishing.

Click to enlarge.

good for philadelphia

2008-06-03T20:28:00.003-04:00

Philadelphia is going to kick the Boy Scouts out of a rent-free city building unless they change their policy of excluding gays or start paying rent. I am an eagle scout, and think being a Boy Scout was good for me. However, I remember having problems with the religious component of the Scouts and their intolerance for gays.

Welcome to the 21st century Boy Scouts.

bass bonanza

2008-05-31T14:59:00.004-04:00

Went fishing a couple days ago with a guy I met on the Indiana Smallmouth Alliance discussion forum. Pretty cool guy. Got me onto a nice fish. Here is a picture:

Then, yesterday, I went to my favorite little creek and explored upstream further than I ever have before. And it was worth every extra step. I found a long, deep, boulder strewn pool with many smallmouth bass cruising about. I saw one fish that had to be at least 20 inches. A true monster. I caught at least five or six smallies over 15" (I'm guessing on the size, you be the judge below) and a number of fish in the 10"-12" range as well. The new stretch of water is quite pretty and secluded. I very much enjoyed fishing there. But I do need to get a stripping guard.

stripers not strippers: a photographic extravaganza

2008-05-27T20:19:00.003-04:00

Adam is getting married to the beautiful Katie in two weeks. So, for his bachelor party, we rented a house and chartered a boat on Tilghman Island on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay at Harrison's Chesapeake House. And we fished for stripers. Striped bass. Rock fish. We caught a ton.

And everyone knows that a good, Irish-made, 10 pound Shepard's pie is the best fishing food and a fine good luck charm.

On Sunday R and I went back to Pell's house and fished the Potomac and B&O Canal north of DC for bass. I didn't have much luck fly fishing but Pell and R caught a couple nice smallies.

More video to follow.

ain't no high water gonna' keep me home

2008-05-18T23:39:00.005-04:00

I braved the high, turbid, turquoise waters of my favorite little creek today and scored this nice smallmouth on a new variation of my sculpin pattern.

Then, I went to Yaniv's house to drink a bunch of stouts and porters for NO MAAM night which is men's night which I assume is also a clever acronym for something. It was at Yaniv's house that I learned that Yaniv had been caught by one of Google's cameras and can be seen in three or four images on Google Street View outside the Runcible spoon apparently on a Saturday or Sunday morning because that's when Yaniv goes there. Note that he is recently showered as his afro is not in full effect. Also, note Yaniv's Honda Civic Hybrid and how he is actually waiting for the Google car before crossing the road. Yaniv's infamous thong picture was also discussed and it turns out that it was stored on my old Insight account, thus it no longer comes up on the first page of a Google image search for "yaniv". So I must repost it here. Google runs the world. Long live Yaniv. Simulations are not experiments.

behold the boat

2008-05-11T13:15:00.003-04:00

I received my boat on Monday. It is an Outcast Fish Cat 13 (the pontoons are 13' long). It is an inflatable pontoon boat, also known as a cataraft. Outcast is a division of AIRE inflatables, one of the leaders in the whitewater raft and cataraft industry, one of the reasons I chose this boat over some others.

A cataraft is pretty much two inflatable pontoons connected by some sort of frame. There are large and small catarafts. They were designed, I believe, primarily for whitewater paddling and river running. Here are some videos of some serious whitewater catarafts (that cost much more than mine). This is a 16' cataraft surfing a big wave. And here is a video that includes a bunch of catarafts running Lochsa Falls in Idaho. I think it's actually the same place as the first video.

Outcast claims my boat could handle that river, but I don't think I could.

Catarafts have also proven to be excellent fishing platforms. This is because catarafts are extremely stable. You can stand up in them and lean over the side or the front and it won't tip over. Try that in a kayak or canoe. And they are lighter and go more places than a drift boat or skiff can.

My boat comes with a modular two-seat frame. I have it set up for one person right now. And I can actually car top it (that's the higher seat pedestal in the picture with my car which is convenient for fishing but not so much for rowing).

I caught this beautiful bass in a lake 10 minutes from my house. I like my new boat.

behold the boat

2008-05-05T12:57:00.001-04:00

...in my garage. It is here. The boxes were heavy. I have to make my syllabus for summer session before I can play with it. Damn.

Photos to follow.

Aesculus is blooming, dem bass are eating

2008-05-02T14:49:00.002-04:00

After driving to the airport this morning at 4:45am I went fishing at my favorite creek again. It stormed a bit but that's ok. Because I caught a lot of base and it was actually a rather nice day and I saw a large water snake. I caught a large smallmouth and several spotted bass. And this beautiful rock bass for Pell.

Click all to enlarge.

And isn't this a fucking tease? The boat sits lonely and cold in a warehouse in Indy...

indiana springtime smallmouth...are everywhere except stinesville

2008-04-30T20:41:00.006-04:00

I have the makings of one fine fishbeer.com post. It's about Stinesville. And Jack's Defeat Creek. But that has to wait. I went back to my favorite creek the other day and caught a couple more smallies and many more rock bass for MB Pell.

Also, my boat is scheduled to arrive on Monday people. Monday. Unfortunately, the boat's arrival coincides with Brian's. Brian is going to have to ride the boat whether he likes it or not.

Behold them. Click to enlarge them.

dem bass ate real good

2008-04-24T21:02:00.008-04:00

Click to enlarge all.

I caught this rock bass just for MB Pell.

Then I caught this portly smallmouth just for me.

This fish took the rabbit fur fly I made earlier. I guess it's closest to a sculpin in the water, but I'm happy to just call it an attractor pattern.

That's a pretty nice fish for a river this small.

But that's what Indiana Catch and Release* regs will do for you I suppose.

*Some Indiana rivers do have regulations actually designed to improve the catch and release fishery, for example Sugar Creek has a 1 fish 20" or larger regulation and the Blue River has a slot regulation, something like keep no fish between 10" and 15". I just hope my favorite little river is never deemed unpolluted.

bass food

2008-04-24T15:27:00.002-04:00

I made bass food. I will now attempt to feed the bass.

catching stonerollers for MB Pell

2008-04-23T09:16:00.002-04:00

Michael B Pell is a bit of a snob when it comes to gamefish. Therefore, I heretofore forever more take it upon myself to fish exclusively for rising, spawning stonerollers with a Turks Tarantula. I particularly like how colored up this fish is. And his tubercles. I also caught my first trophy smallmouth of the season yesterday.

Click both to enlarge.

clifty wilderness

2008-04-20T21:00:00.004-04:00

The Clifty Wilderness is a federally designated wilderness area located in central eastern Kentucky. It is part of the Red River Gorge Geological Area which is part of the Cumberland Ranger District of the Daniel Boone National Forest. The federal management units in that area seem to be a real bureaucratic cluster fuck. The area seems to be heavily used and may need a more centralized management structure than the Forest Service can currently provide in order to minimize damage to the natural resources the area provides. See this website for a good summary of some of the problems.

The most accessible area of the wilderness, and the only place where trails are maintained by the forest service, is in the Swift Camp Creek gorge. Swift Camp Creek is tributary to the Red River that cuts a rugged gorge for twelve miles or so from the town of Campton (where the four lane Bert Combs highway ends) down to the Red River. The section of the creek in the wilderness is all downstream from the highway and the town of Campton which might have something to do with some of the bad things about the Swift Camp Creek gorge.

Here are some things one might want to know before heading to the Swift Camp Creek Gorge.

(1) While the gorge truly feels like a wild place, a prehistoric place, with old growth hemlocks and white pines, 200' cliff faces, caves, waterfalls, house sized boulders, rhododendron thickets like the best in North Carolina, moss and liverworts dripping from every tree etc. etc., the river was full of trash. There were many, many tires, right in the middle of the river miles from any road, plastic soda bottles, white styrofoam coolers and this was all just in the river. In areas where people obviously camp a lot there was some toilet paper, cigarette butts, tin foil etc. Now the place wasn't trashed. But there was trash there. More trash then in other comparable places I've been.

(2) If you're interested in fishing the creek, as I was, or any other creeks in the area, be forewarned that they aren't so hot. Some older regulations say that Swift Camp Creek is stocked for 8 wiles in the Clifty with rainbow, twice a year, and it is delayed harvest. But if you look at the 2008 regs, they say only about 1 mile upstream from the Red River is stocked. I didn't see any fish in the river. No smallmouth, no largemouth, no Kentucky spotted bass, nada. Maybe they were there, but I didn't see them. Though here is some good video of people catching trout, presumably on Swift Camp Creek because they say Rainbow trout and I'm not sure if any other creeks are stocked with rainbows in the red river gorge.

Chimney Top Creek is in Red River Gorge as well and is touted as one of Kentucky's best "hold over" brown trout (read: put-grow-take) fisheries. Well, the creek is quite small and I didn't see a single trout in it.

Dog Fork is a small tributary to Swift Camp Creek in the Clifty and is one of four creeks in Kentucky that hold wild brook trout. Looked like brook trout water to me. But I didn't see a single trout there either.

Needless to say, Kentucky doesn't have great trout fishing (unless you count the Cumberland tailwater). Then again, I didn't really give these creeks a thorough fishing either. But from what I saw, they weren't so great.

(3) As I mentioned above, Swift Camp Creek gorge is super rugged. I was looking forward to exploring the river a bit, but that is nearly impossible as the Swift Camp Creek Trail, #219, though it does follow the Swift Camp Creek, follows about 100' above the river on the west side. There are a very very very few trails down to the river (there is good access where Dog Fork runs into the river). Most of the time it is a sheer cliff or even an undercut cliff. One slip of the foot at the wrong place and you're toast. Hopefully that comes through in some of my pictures below. Similarly, the trail is narrow, angled towards the river, very rocky and rooty, and muddy after rain. It goes up and down and up and down and follows creek beds sometimes. There's not a lot of net elevation gain, but it is tough hiking.

(4) Finally, I had a hard time finding a good topo map of the area. One of the only ones I found is made by Outrage GIS. DON'T BUY THIS MAP. There is a better one endorsed and published by the USDA that is a real topo map. The OutrageGIS map is a topo map, but the contour intervals are fucking huge, number one, and number two, the whole goddamn map is printed over a shitty green satellite photo of the area. This makes it confusing to look at and the shading on the photo is all fucked up so that ridges look like valleys and vice versa. It's a terrible map for many other reasons I hope to detail in a post in a series I will call "my maps." Buy the USDA map, not the OutrageGIS map.

OK then. The rant is over. Here are some pictures. It was quite a nice trip actually. I just had a hard time finding information on the area online so I thought I should actually put some detailed commentary up here.

Click many to enlarge.

The rare Kentucky Snow Nymph emerging from her egg case.

On Chimney Top Rock

The Trillium were en fuego.

So were the morels.

And black snakes. Snow nymph is not a huge fan of snakes.

Above Creation Falls on a tributary to Swift Camp Creek.

Creation falls again.

Rock Bridge over Swift Camp Creek. Note three beer cans on lower left side of picture.

This picture might give you some idea about the difficulty in accessing the river from the trail.

Swift Camp Creek

Swift Camp Creek

Dog Fork

Dog Fork

Me crossing Dog Fork.

Amy at the confluence of Dog Fork and Swift Camp Creek.

On Swift Camp Creek.

Swift Camp Creek

At the end of the Swift Camp Creek trail.

behold the boat update

2008-04-15T20:42:00.004-04:00

I haven't purchased a boat yet. But I'm one tax refund closer. Also, I've decided to buy a different boat. Vinyl bladders, but way better frame construction. Behold it:

And click to enlarge.

writing in a southern accent

2008-04-14T12:27:00.003-04:00

I'm submitting a story for the Traver Award today and I've been debating whether to write in a southern accent for one of the characters or not. I decided against it. But here is an excert before I changed it back to standard spelling.

Is this obnoxious? Some of my favorite writes do it (Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Denis Johnson) and I love accents. I think they add a lot to a character. But I think for a contest for a mainstream fishing magazine it may hurt.

“Ok. All rot. Fon. I was jus’ excited about gettin’ to fish fo some while trout on a famous reeva. I suppose I’m a little ahead of myself. Thanks for the pointers I gayess.”

He turned and began to walk away. I made two false casts and dropped the fly at the head of the run about five feet in front of a previous rise and mended the line. A small fish rose and the man heard the splashing and turned around.

“I stood here for two hours and didn’t catch a thing. Now you come up and WAYAM! on your first cayist!”

................

“Yeah, pretty crowded up there by the hatchery. That’s why I came down hee err, try an’ get away from ‘um.”

“Then I came wading right into your hole. Sorry about that.”

“That’s all rot. I wasn’t catchin’ anything anyway. You were catchin’ ‘em pretty good though.”

“Yeah, I was doing ok. You really have to use tiny flies and small tippet. These fish are super selective.”

“I gayess so.”

panthertown outted, Eastern Fly Fishing peddles misinformation!

2008-04-09T11:35:00.003-04:00

This was once a 1300 word rant about a recent article in Eastern Fly Fishing regarding southern strain brook trout. It was an incoherent ramble and I'm going to take some time and polish it up some more before I post it.

With love,
Matthew D Dunn, DDS.

indiana done got them hollers...

2008-04-06T22:32:00.003-04:00

...and I ain't got no boat. Yet.

These are pictures from a nice 10 mile trip on the Low Gap trail in Morgan-Monroe State Forest.

Click all to enlarge.

sell guitar, buy boat

2008-03-26T18:39:00.003-04:00

I'm thinking of selling my electric guitar, amplifier, and pedals so that the impending boat purchase will not be entirely unsound financially speaking. I never play it any more. I've played it for maybe five hours total since I moved to Bloomington five years ago. I play my acoustic a lot, but not the electric. So I thought I'd make a video to show people how the guitar and amp sound (pretty good if you ask me, it's an Epiphone Sheraton from 1995 and a Crate Vintage Club 50 VC5310 amp, all tube, very nice). But I had such a good time making the video I'm having second thoughts about selling it.

But if someone wants to give me $1000 for everything it's a done deal.

Of course I was thinking of enlisting the Irishman's help and fabricating my own pontoon boat. That would be cheaper.

behold the boat

2008-03-21T10:39:00.003-04:00

I will purchase this boat from North Fork in the next few days. I will put it on my credit card. Then I will fish the ever lovin' bejesus out of the White River and Sugar Creek and probably some others as well. I will take 1000 mile float trips through the NW Territories. I'll sail the Yangtze. I'll tame the Tigris. Aggravate the Amazon. Sustain the Susquehanna. Devastate the Delaware. Maul the Madison. Blow up the Buffalo. You get the idea. Want to take a float trip with me?

Behold more pictures here.

Spring Break Extravaganze 2008 Part III: wherein our hero consumes a wild pig tamale

2008-03-17T11:40:00.002-04:00

I am a coyote in a frozen field hunting morning mice. I am a black bear carcass rotting slowly in the cold woods. I am one hundred species of salamander scampering amongst wet leaf litter. I am a war painted brook trout rising with a cocksure pop to a mayfly. I am a lazy brown trout just hooked on a midge in a writhing slimy circle of fat meat. I am a six hundred year old hemlock in the Cataloochee Valley dying. I’m a gully washer eroding the mountain side silting the river. I am the Southern Apple Latch In Mountains.

Stopped on the Delayed Harvest section of the rather high and muddy Tuckaseegee River on my way home and caught five or six stockers on Double Bunnies and big rubber leg stone flies. This is Mr. Fatty Labrador:

Spring Break Extravaganze 2008 Part II: wherein our hero catches many fat trouts

2008-03-15T13:24:00.004-04:00

The Davidson River begins as rainfall running off parkway asphalt at 6000'. It percolates through Pisgah's Spruce-Fir forest and falls off the flanks of Cold Mountain. It runs through a fish hatchery then winds through four wild catch and release fly fishing only miles until running out flat and slow into Brevard.

The fish run large. They see a lot of fisherman so you can walk right on top of them. But they also see a lot of flies so they're rather difficult to catch. Midges are their standard fare and small, sparsely dressed is the only way to catch them most of the time (though large mayflies were hatching, blue quills?, but they weren't feeding on them at all). I didn't use anything smaller than #22. I caught most of the fish below on #26 parachute, thread body midges. I love casting tiny flies on 7x tippet to large sipping fishes. Lot like tailwater fishing.

I caught a lot of fish. Which was nice after getting skunked in the park. I caught a lot of average size, 12" rainbows and browns but also a fair number of larger, fatter brown trout. I hooked up with some very large fish, 20"+, but broke them off. I also caught the same brook trout twice. Probably an escapee from the hatchery.

Click none to enlarge.

Stay tuned for part III wherein our hero digs ditches in Cullowhee to prepare for the arrival of the Atlantean tornadoes.

Spring Break Extravaganze 2008 Part I: wherein our hero finds himself fishless

2008-03-13T19:52:00.004-04:00

Ahhhh, blogging from the road. My favorite kind of blogging when you get right down to it. I'm here in beautiful Brevard North Cackalack fresh off of two days on the Davidson River catching many trouts. But the trouts will have to wait. I will first regale you with tales from Cades (sic) Cove, the first of my three Spring Break Extravaganza 2008 destinations.

Cades Cove is a large, flat, mostly treeless valley in the northwest quadrant of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Through this large, flat, mostly treeless valley runs Abrams Creek. It should also be indicated at this juncture that Cades Cove supposedly sits over predominantly limestone thus giving Abrams Creek an abnormally high alkalinity and more stable temperatures than other creeks in the southern Appalachians. This is all good for the trouts. What’s bad for the trouts is that there was a serious drought this past summer and the fish that took the hardest hit were rainbows below 2000’. Abrams Creek is mostly rainbows. And Cades Cove is below 2000’. This may be one reason I did not catch a single trout. Other reasons might be the high water and cold temperatures. And my lack of angling prowess should also be considered.

But Cades Cove is pretty. Here are some pictures. I think that's a coyote. Or maybe a fox? Red wolf? Stay tuned for the Davidson River, wherein our hero angled many fat trouts, and the ~~impending backpacking trip through the Jocassee Gorges in search of the elusive South Cackalack steelhead wherein our hero will undoubtedly catch many fine and large fishes~~ wrap-up from inside Sean's keg of Guinness.

Click some to enlarge.

Trout sneak peak.

the many ways in which life has screwed me over in the past five days or so

2008-03-08T18:14:00.002-05:00

So on Tuesday I woke up feeling pretty crappy. Went to the "Health Center" on Wednesday, they counted my white blood cells (which was pretty cool), and they inferred from this that I have the flu. Fair enough. They are doctors. And lab technicians. They put me on Tamiflu, gave me some more codeine syrup (which really helps me sleep...) and sent me on my way. This was particularly bad timing because, as you all know, I had been planning a large fishing/camping/backpacking/drinking/friend seeing extravaganza to the Carolinas (aka the Cackalacks) for some time now. I was supposed to have left yesterday early in the morning. I might have been able to do that even with the flu had some punk ass bitch not broken the rear driver side window of my 1997 Honda Accord. Break the rich people's windows you mother fuckers. That'll show them and their bourgeois ways. Leave the old Hondas out of it.

So I had to get that fixed.

Then I yelled at the toilet for a while this morning. That was awesome.

But now I'm feeling better and I shall have many pictures and tales of trouts to share with you in the coming weeks.

Love,
Matthew D. Dunn, LPN.

dude, it's the tortugan way

2008-02-27T10:49:00.003-05:00

Daniel "The Coolest Person I Know" Hanks sent me these scans from our 2002 trip to the Dry Tortugas along with some maps for "Thee Greatest Spring Break Extravaganza Ever." We will be bisecting the Transylvania escarpment. Falling on the fault. Tumbling down waterfalls. All in search of the elusive South Carolina Steelhead.

Daniel:

Me:

Sean:

Seb:

be a fisherman not a wisherman

2008-02-22T16:57:00.002-05:00

My favorite fisherman is your favorite fisherman's favorite fisherman.

fishapples.net

2008-02-18T23:16:00.000-05:00

Fishbeer.com's new sister site.

fine strong ales

2008-02-17T17:30:00.002-05:00

A group of friends are trying to have regular so called "tastings" of beer. I've missed the last couple due to sickness and grant writing, but I made a come back in strong fashion this past Wednesday by hosting barley wine night. Yaniv, Phil, Chris, Ryan, Jeane and Jeryl (sp?) were in attendance. Here are some remarks.

North Coast Old Stock Ale 2002: big fruity nose, apples, musty palate- quite sweet with a pleasing tart acidity in the finish.

North Coast Old Stock Ale 2007: more subdued nose, a bit hoppier, but also a bit sweeter with fuller mouthfeel.

Old Dobzhansky 2003 (my homebrew): bready nose, honey on the palate, quite sweet, floral, tight finish.

Gale's Prize Old Ale 1996: still, molasses in the nose, sweet palate but with a hint of mustiness, surprisingly dry

Gale's Prize Old Ale 1997: tart and sour, the way all other Gale's I've ever tasted have tasted, the 1996 is the sole exception. But the sourness is well balanced by sweet malts, quite nice really.

Mikkeller Big Worse 2007 (?): all the way from Denmark, brewed in Belgium, the Danes apparently have a hard on for big American hops. Very clean, almost chemical like hops and caramel malts dominate, very resinous.

Old Foghorn 2006: nice hoppy nose, fruity also, grapes?, tight palate, winey.

Nogne O #100 2007 (?): this name has a line diagonally through the O but I don't know how to render that with HTML. Another big American hop bomb, kind of astringent, very dark, kind of harsh.

Victory Old Horizontal 2005:

Left Hand Widdershins 2007 (?): oak aged, very smoky, big phenolics, going bad?

New Holland Pilgrim's Dole 2007 (?): tasted like bourbon but we don't think it was barrel aged.

Port Brewing Imperial Stout:

Gales Christmas Ale:

Dogfishhead Olde School"

random gose:

Troegs Rugged Trail:

fairly drunk:

Click the first to enlarge.

scarce o'fat

2008-02-11T16:01:00.001-05:00

Like miniature men
we inspect rugged waves of corduroy
covered with a forest
of slender gray winter ingots
and a mottled brown carpet of leaves.

We walk a graphite crucible's rim
that threatens sylvan calcination
and switchback down a crumpled hollow
full of yellowwood trees
and a falling stream
obvious and bright
betwixt green pillows.

Meandering from wall to wall
leaving to ascend
waves of land
rolling to and fro.

Ingot.

What what.

converting malt/beer ratios to original gravities: the beer historian's conundrum

2008-02-07T09:51:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite blogs, Shut up About Barclay Perkins, is mostly about the history of beer and brewing. Ron Pattinson posts some really great stuff from primary sources (where he gets it all I have no idea) and I think this semester I might have my beer class (which I should have been preparing for instead of writing this post) read some of when we talk about the Porter Revolution. Maybe.

Today Dr. Pattinson posts some recipes from A Cyclopaedia of Six Thousand Practical Receipts, and Collateral Information by Arnold James Cooley (1854). It was common practice before the widespread acceptance of the hydrometer (or saccharometer) to express the strength of a beer in terms of how much malt was used to make it. This makes sense considering the fact that alcoholic strength depends mainly on how much sugar the yeast have to convert to alcohol and how much sugar depends on how much starch you have from the grain.

But there are other things that effect the alcoholic strength of a beer and this is what makes using malt/beer ratios problematic. The quality of the grain, how the mash is conducted (temperature for instance), the moisture content of the grain, how the fermentation is conducted (temperature for instance), what kind of yeast is used etc. all influence the strength of a beer. So the malt/beer ratios can be pretty variable indicators of beer strength.

But historians of beer and brewing have little choice but to make do with this system because it's all we have. And to get an idea of how strong these beers were it's helpful to try and convert the malt/beer ratios into original gravities, into figures that represent the density of the wort prior to fermentation. Because the density of wort is influenced primarily by the amount of sugar in the wort, it is a good indicator of how strong the beer can be. Of course you have to take into account how the fermentation it conducted etc. but original gravity is a much better indicator of the potential strength of a beer than is malt/beer ratios.

And it's the way we speak about the strength of beer today so it's something we can wrap our heads around pretty easily.

So let's get down to the brass tacks, as it were. Dr. Pattinson intimates that Cooley had no idea what he was talking about for several reasons, but the one I latched onto was the fact that he thinks Cooley got the malt/beer ratios wrong.

For the "Ale, Burton" Cooley says a barrel and a half of beer (48 gallons) was drawn from a quarter of malt (64 gallons of malt). Pattinson says this would result in an OG of over 1400. This is very, very strong. With today's technology you could probably make a 16% abv beer from that wort. In the 1850s, they probably would be able to coax that wort down to a final gravity of at most 1040, probably lower, making a beer of over 13% abv.

Similarly, in his description of "Ale, Dorchester" Cooley says they drew two barrels (64 gallons) from one quarter of malt. Pattinson claims this would give an OG of 1100. Again, this is very strong. This wort would likely make a +10% abv beer.

I think Pattinson might be overshooting a bit.

In her wonderful book Country House Brewing in England, 1500-1900 Pamela Sambrook says that October Beer (the strongest brewed in the English country house) would typically be a barrel drawn from ("well over" in some cases) one quarter of malt (more than eight and a half bushels). And I doubt this brew had an OG over 1140 and therefore a FG probably over 1050 FGs probably go higher the farther back in history you go). And by Pattinson's conversions a quarter of malt would make a barrel of beer with an OG probably over 1180, extremely strong.

Similarly, the "Ales" that were commonly brewed in these country houses were made by drawing one barrel from usually four bushels of malt, or half a quarter, or two barrels from one quarter (p.117). And this brew was meant for regular consumption (at least by the families, at least before ~1700) so I doubt it had an OG of 1100. Because regular consumption of a beer over 10% abv would make you drizunk like you wouldn't belizeve.

Moreover, entire guile small beer in both Sambrook and Ellis is about five barrels from a quarter (Sambrook p.121), which by Pattinson's calculations would probably be around 1040, too strong to adequately quench the field laborer's thirst without making him fall down wasted betwixt the rows. I'm thinking small and table beer had OGs around 1020.

Ellis gives similar numbers in The London and Country Brewer for strong ale as well.

In Bennett's Ale, Beer, and Brewsters she claims that on Lady Clare's estate in the 14th century they were brewing almost 500 gallons of ale per week, drawing two barrels from each quarter (p.18). On Pattinson's conversion, that's a shit ton of 1100 OG ale to be brewing every week. And a lot of very strong ale to drink considering Bennett says that in an average household a person would drink about 1/4 gallon of ale every day (p.19). A drunken household indeed.

I suppose I would just be interested in knowing how Pattinson does his conversion and the justification for it because it doesn't square with what I know from the primary and secondary literature on the subject. I've built this nice little house of historical beer strengths and with one wave of his hand Pattinson threaten's to blow it off like so much fart in the wind.

30 Rock vs Arrested Development again

2008-01-30T22:08:00.000-05:00

Listen people (Yaniv), I worked for 13 hours straight today. Literally. So Now I'm watching an episode of 30 Rock on the internet.

And guess who makes a guest appearance in episode 18? That's right, Will Arnet, AKA G.O.B. from Arrested Development. Yes it kind of blew my mind. And yes, he comes onto What's the Frequency Ken. Which is pretty much him coming onto his retarded brother in Arrested Development, Buster. Just sayin'.

On Fishbeer.com I will never, ever, post something about TV. Ever. Fishbeer.com will be the most pure website you've ever seen. Snow white like cocaine. Or South Dakota. Like apple pie on a Sunday morning. Vanilla ice cream on a Thursday night. An NSF proposal on a Wednesday night. Fastlane on a Friday morning. A Monday. Saturday. All day. Every day. Batman.

30 Rock vs Arrested Development

2008-01-28T17:41:00.000-05:00

The Rural Juror vs. Bob Loblaw's Law Blog?

The Meat Machine vs. The Cornballer?

You decide.

fishbeer beta

2008-01-26T17:21:00.000-05:00

It's just a screen capture. Don't freak out. Click to enlarge.

30 Rock

2008-01-24T16:50:00.000-05:00

When I first saw Arrested Development on TV I thought it was a poorly done Fox knockoff of Curb Your Enthusiasm. What with the hand held cameras and improvisational feel. Turns out I was way wrong. Sure, the hand held cameras and improvisational feel are two things those two shows share. And they're both hilarious. But that's about where the similarities end. (turns out Arrested Development was actually very heavily scripted as well, it just feels improvisational)

When I actually gave Curb Your Enthusiasm a try about two years ago I watched every episode on DVD in about two weeks. I loved it. I still love it. I feel bad that I didn't like it when it was on TV. Before it's time? Probably.

And that brings me to today's topic: 30 Rock. Great show. Just started watching it yesterday. I'm four episodes in. You can watch the whole first season here for free.

It is a giant fucking Arrested Development knockoff.

Completely absurd humor. Quick cuts and flashbacks. Same use of music. Lots of references to things that happen in real life. Lots of references to NBC's parent company GE and NBC itself. Hell, it even has a Buster character..."what's the frequency Ken?"

Though I have to say that I dislike shows about shows. Or writing about writing. That shit bugs me to no end. So in that sense, bravo Arrested Development. And 30 Rock, you're good, but not that good.

I've cribbed Wolfe, you stickler

2008-01-20T15:56:00.000-05:00

A place for everything was kept
in cold corners of the day
where the breeze walks softly
on skinny worn leather pads
and no dust is there.

Had speech been made
voices would bounce
aghast from plaster
wall to wood
floor freely.

Had things filled space
with hulking shoulders
or skinny waist
a breath you could not take
between their shadows.

But fertile ground it is
waiting perfect for the stuff
of a life too short.

january deam

2008-01-13T14:21:00.000-05:00

Recent rains kept the dust down on the gravel road. Driving gently over crunching stones through a forest of bright gray poles each pothole was half filled with milky tan rainwater that splashed up and lacquered the rear fenders of my car. The easy upland landscape rolled in large, broad waves and the road swung and curved around them splitting the carpet of warm brown leaves arbitrarily in two.

The tower tapers toward the top and is capped with a gray box full of empty window frames. It sways back and forth like the road but we climb to the top for a view anyway.

The trail stays to the ridge barely elevated, barely delineated from the rest of the landscape. We pass fields of dark green lycopods and verdant walls of plush moss that stand out distinctly from the rest of the world.

Slipping into the woods, becoming a true foot path the trail winds its way towards the lake through a gauntlet of persistent dry brown leaves. It follows the right arm of the ridge where it splits and the land begins to fall away to each side and the ridge narrows and some sensation of elevation is finally apparent.

Yaniv is standing at the end of the trail in the middle of the cold, leafy fire pit on a broad knob where the land falls steeply away two hundred seventy degrees around him. The lake shimmers dark bluely in the distance through the trees several hundred feet below. He holds my wallet open in his hand and removes two twenties and a ten and crumples them up and stuffs them in his pocket. “I stole your money well. You never verb something good. You verb it well.”

I let him keep the money. That kind of tip is well worth fifty bucks.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

winter extravaganza part 5: this is why pennsylvania is this best

2008-01-04T23:06:00.000-05:00

Brandywine River Museum

After three hours of frigid midging in Washington's winter encampment I finally landed this wild brown trout today. Hazah.

winter extravaganza part 4: 10th annual new years celebration featuring the second annual dance off

2008-01-01T20:29:00.000-05:00

winter extravaganza part 3: MIP2K7 in pictures

2007-12-31T01:48:00.000-05:00

All the way live from the 215.

The constitution is not a living document.

Ian won MIP2K7. A kitten and a Roth IRA? Seriously? What a fucking travesty.

winter extravaganza part 2: my father's domain

2007-12-30T00:37:00.000-05:00

My father's domain is aeroplanes.

My brother's domain is a wave.

Duane Reade's an Oaxacan boy who is at ease in tumbling subway cars.

winter extravaganza part 1: christmas eve at the Dunn's

2007-12-29T18:00:00.002-05:00

Much like Bella the bug eyed Boston terrier, Ben loves Leigh.

MB Pell using secret signals of the double-d club behind Dan Dunn's back.

ice trout

2007-12-20T21:58:00.000-05:00

Why not drive three hours out of my way to catch a fat brown trout on this winter day? I gerrymandered (MB Pell) my way from Pittsburgh to the Barree Gorge and hiked through the thin snow and caught this nice trout on a #24 midge emerger I tied for Brookville. It was cold so I only fished for an hour and a half. Then I went to Boxer's Cafe and had a cajun burger and a pint of Brooklyn's latest brewer's reserve, a very nice "golden ale." I also purchased a bottle of Penn's Penndemonium to take away, a strong Maifest style lager that was released, yes, last May. This 8% brute has hopefully aged gracefully.

Click to enlarge.

fabrication

2007-12-19T01:30:00.000-05:00

a deluge of posts

2007-12-14T15:46:00.000-05:00

Found a sometimes whimsical, usually weird, oftentimes clever website today called Magicmolly. If you don't like art (Yaniv) you probably won't like this website. Brian Leiter posted a link to it, to an "ad" for a food company whose foods are all named with Nietzsche puns. I wish there was an "about" section there. Very mysterious all around. A quick story that I like very much. Weird but good. This is good too.

Also, here is something I wrote while I was supposed to be thinking about Saul Kripke:

I want to be persecuted
for something so right
that I can, with a clear conscience,
tell everyone how stupid they are.

I want to say “Jesus lies!”
and make the pedophiles mad.

I want to say “Gay people love too!”
and make the unloved mad.

I want to say "Everyone knows reference is fixed by description!"
and make Kripke mad.

I want them to protest out front
in the street all night
and I’ll stand at the door, with a bullhorn in hand,
and tell them to fuck off.

MIP2K7

2007-12-12T18:05:00.000-05:00

Remember last time? It's been two years since a full strength MIP[insert year] competition has taken place, largely because last year two of the core members were stuck in Denver because of those blizzards.

In an effort to increase the objectivity of judging Ian proposed a Craigslist ad. You should go and look at it and if you know anybody in NYC who might be interested, forward it to them.

inundational, infatuational (take #2)

2007-12-11T17:25:00.000-05:00

Bloomington has done been dra
Ain’t got no rain since August fav
The lake is down below the piles
Impendin’ storm?
Another la

The foliage is drought shock brilliant this year with hot mustard-yellow maple leaves flapping hard in the breeze as if they seek to attract the attention of passersby. Lipstick-red oak leaves struggle to stay attached. The ones that fail skitter down the sidewalk in awkward arches, pushed by the dry wind painfully scraping the rough concrete with their brittle points and corners making that sound they make.

Sometimes it wakes me up. In the middle of the night. I think it’s funny that such a quiet sound will wake me up. But it does and I realize I’ve been grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw again. A muscle just above my left ear sizzles and pops and I can’t get my teeth to align quite right. I sit up and place my face on the wall on the molding just in front of the window and with my left hand carefully pull back two or three metal blinds and they make a sharp tinkling sound and I feel the warm Indian summer outside on my face through the glass. I rest there for a minute watching two bright, pointy, reflexed leaves slowly make their jerky way through the puddle of yellow light cast on the white concrete sidewalk by the street lamp in front of my neighbor's red jeep and it’s all really quite beautiful. It sounds like someone is slowly fastening and unfastening a small strip of Velcro next door. I can barely place it but there it is.

I release the blinds and they pop back into place and I lie down into my bed and throw the covers off and pull them back on and place a pillow between my knees and finally fall asleep again.

The city told us to conserve water in late October. The Showalter fountain has been turned off and dirt swirls in the big bowl in the wind around stranded statues of fish. Every car is dusty and the grass crunches audibly underfoot and you can’t really walk on the grass without shoes because it’s just too sharp. Monroe reservoir is low and the eighty five degree late October days have delayed the fall turnover causing fish kills along the whole length of the lake. Fifteen pound hybrid bass float blazing-white belly up under the hazy autumn sun, swelling with the gases of rotten entrails until they’re picked apart by birds feeding in their fetid tissue.

Wells are drying up in Brown County to the east and it’s hard to find bottled water in the grocery stores. People are nervous and so am I.

Jet black clouds rolled and folded ominously over the landscape from the west. They seemed miles high and dangerous. The bulging black line stretched from north to south as far as the eye could see. Reports of tornadoes in eastern Illinois were on the news, but talk of imminent relief was too. The dog whined and whimpered as crackling, startling, tornadic thunder rolled through the town shaking the house violently. The gusting winds tore down the last lipstick-red oak leaves and strewed them about the streets and yards no longer slowly raking concrete. Tornado sirens wailed.

Then the rain came down in buckets.

The leaves were swept from lawns and roads and regained their elasticity and their youth in the soaking deluge. They flexed and flopped and spread their wings and danced in the gutters hand in hand until they found themselves pressed up tightly against each other in pliable arms of red and gold and were carried quickly in the runoff towards sewer grates where they were stuck and their embrace prolonged.

We found a patch of tall, succulent green grass next to the river so we laid down on our backs with shoulders touching for a while talking. The pleasant smell of broken chlorophyll surrounded us and she rolled over on her side and propped herself up on her elbow holding her head on her hand and caressed my chest slowly under my shirt and it felt very good. We kissed in the soft afternoon sunlight that sifted down through tinted window panes of robust, dark green mid-summer leaves and the land felt overwhelmingly fertile and healthy.

She stood up slowly and adjusted her shirt and tucked some loose hair behind her ear and whispered something delicately and bent over to kiss me on my forehead and turned and walked into the tall grass up the hill away from the river. I rolled over onto my stomach to ask her where she was going but all I could see was the tops of the long leaves of grass swaying softly in the breeze.

The rain abated as quickly as it had begun and the dry, crackled earth swallowed up all that was given to it by the sky. The relentless sun reappeared, the wells still empty.

The leaves began to separate and curl up in the tense, hot, dry morning after heat. They were awkward and found relief only in coming apart. The wind picked them up and passed them down the street, distributing them widely throughout lawns and parks and sidewalks where they slowly raked the concrete and woke me up again.

congratulations Ben and Britt

2007-12-10T15:58:00.000-05:00

NYC on the fly

2007-12-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

The latest issue of This is Fly "dropped" recently, as they say, and I was happy to discover there were no hack-job beer pieces (see the end of that post). But more importantly, I was happy to discover part 2 of "Coney Island Zombies." Check it out. Because it's all fancy pants Flash there's no way to link to the specific page so you'll just have to navigate on over to page 95. It's quite good. Here's an excerpt:

"I walk up beside the two anglers to inspect and admire the catch. The choppers flop about with mouths full of tin, their yellow, fierce eyes screaming in thick Howard Beach accents, 'I'll kill all youz!' True fighters. Boxers and brawlers, just the way I like 'em."

Also, while I'm in a linking mood, a story about how freakin' small the roads are in England has been making the rounds. I saw it in the NY Times and then on NPR. When I was there even the big country roads were pretty fucking harrowing.

a faux beginner's guide

2007-12-02T02:45:00.000-05:00

We always started at seven but on the first day Chris told me to show up at eight. I knocked on the door for several minutes before it opened. His small frame swayed and stumbled shirtless holding up loose, unbuttoned faded blue jeans with one hand while his giant, round, ruined glasses threatened to drop from his bulbous, swollen red nose. He was leaning back and slightly to the side where his right hand was held upon his goose neck of an arm, single finger extended lazily, others drooping loosely, his eyes traveled in two long, torturous circles, passing over my face slowly without seeing, ultimately settling on my left shoe. His body was contorted in such a way as to appear almost comical had it not been so apparent that he was in pain. He spattered something incomprehensible at me while wagging his finger vaguely behind the house then disappeared into a haze of cigarette smoke and children’s voices. I closed the door and proceeded behind the house where I saw a young man on hands and knees amongst rows of yews and aspens pretending to weed while smoking a cigarette. He was Kyle and this was the second to last time I would ever see him.

Mike secured this summer employment for me at Kalgan’s Gardening in West Chester. Mike had worked for Chris Kalgan on and off for many years so I had some idea what was in store. Chris was an alcoholic. This much I knew. But he somehow managed to run a very successful landscaping company, caring for many historic homes in Chester County. Stone and plaster homes with walls twenty inches thick, built in the 1720s, commanding thirty acre lawns dotted with forty old-growth white oak and beech trees, perched above mill races and vast arrays of outbuildings and well houses.

I liked landscaping. It was real work. The smell of fresh cut grass and two cycle exhaust is a potent aphrodisiac to the would-be philosopher. Shins plastered with grass clippings most days, arms caked with mulch dust, a ruddy complexion and hard calloused hands appealed to me when I knew I would quit in August.

Kyle and I pretended to weed the nursery and smoked cigarettes. Around noon we heard Chris yell hoarsely from the house, “Yoooooooo! We’re goin’ on a road trip! Ge up ‘ere! You’re drivin’!” And so it begins, I thought to myself. Mike had recounted many stories of his time at Kalgan’s that simply involved driving Chris around for hours, taking him to the Alley Bar in the morning and job sites during the day. Chris had earned many DUIs and lost his license to operate a motor vehicle some time ago.

“Where’re we goin’ Chris?”

“Don’t woooorry ‘bout it. You ga a full tank? We’re gonna need a full tank.”

“Um, no, I don’t have a full tank. We’re taking my car? We should take one of the trucks I think.”

Tilted always to the right, yelling strongly now, spitting with each hard consonant, holding each long vowel for several seconds in a low groan of unhinged timbres , “I wanna take yer car duuuude…I’ll buy fuckin’ gas so shut up and let’s goooooo!”

Chris sat up front with his ubiquitous, tall, milky white plastic cup half full of a red liquid I later learned was usually cheap vodka and a splash of fruit punch. He was now wearing his jeans, a dark blue, wrinkled, short sleeve collared shirt fastened by two buttons, dirty, untied white sneakers and a faded green ball cap with an absurdly long bill, his round, photo-chromatic glasses began to darken in the sunlight.

He told me to pull into Wawa. He leaned back hard in his seat trying to straighten out his legs so he could gain access to the pockets in his jeans. He finally managed to retrieve a significant wad of cash spilling twenties and hundreds on the floor and into the cup holders. He had several thousand dollars. He peeled off a twenty and I filled the tank.

“Which way?”

“Ge on to-o-ta south. We’re goin’ ta Delaware.”

We got on 202 and before Painter’s Crossing Chris was crying. Like trying to catch his breath with a series of short, deep, staccato inhalations that ended with three or four out gassings through loosely closed lips that caused them to flap and make soft smacking sounds. I had been pressing him for the details of our so-called road trip since we left Wawa and he was not terribly forthcoming. He was falling in and out of consciousness and becoming less and less coherent .

“Jus’ keeeeeep driiiiving! Aaaaaaaahm gonna fuck ‘em up! Fuck ‘em uuuuuup!” He was screaming hoarsely through a mouthful of drunken slime working it into a hot mess of froth that broke with each exhalation and splattered on my dash board. When I tried yelling at him he began crying in earnest.

Between sobs, “I’ll fuckeeeen kiiill hiiiim…I’ll fuckeeeen kill that soooon of a bitch…I have a gun and I’ll fuckeeeen uuuse it!” He was rocking back and forth with his knees gathered up awkwardly in his arms sobbing quietly, glycerin drool escaping his lips, drizzling over my parking brake handle like so much Karo syrup.

I immediately yelled at him: “Do you have a fucking gun Chris? Chris? Do. You have. A fucking. Gun?” But it was all to no avail. He was completely gone now, motionless except for the glycerin spittle. I looked back at Kyle.

“He doesn’t have a gun dude. Don’t worry about it.”

I wasn’t as confident as Kyle but I figured I’d persevere until I could extricate myself in a more graceful manner than by kicking Chris out of the moving car on the highway, though the thought did cross my mind. Chris was in and out of consciousness. Sometimes his large, yellow, rubberized Motorola cell phone would startle him awake but he could never figure out how to answer it. He became frustrated and threw the phone at the dashboard and it bounced into the lower right corner of the windshield causing several cracks to spider web out into the glass at all angles. I yelled at him some more and he continued to sob. I told him he was paying for that and we’d never take my car on a “road trip” again.

He somehow managed to get us where he apparently wanted to go. Somewhere south of Newark. A large subdivision with hundreds of two story, two bath, two car garage, cookie cutter houses stacked up next to each other on an endless arc of lane and cul-de-sac. About in the middle of this suburban American normalcy Chris demanded that I pull over. He opened his door and literally fell half way out of the car into a nicely manicured lawn, resting on his face and shoulder, right arm pinned between his body and the car seat, feet and knees propped still in the car. His shirt had come open and was tangled around his body exposing a large swath of lily white flank steak bespeckled with small brown freckles and shiny, metallic, purple stretch marks.

He lay there. Motionless. In a stranger’s quiet quarter acre yard. In the middle of Monday. In the middle of May.

Kyle and I yelled at him some more, but ultimately had to scoop him up ourselves and place him back in the car. He managed to tell us that this is where we were meeting “him” and that we had to stay in this neighborhood. “Who are we meeting Chris? Do you have a gun?” I should have left him then and there, but for some reason I didn’t. We drove to the entrance by the neighborhood marquee where he fell out of the car again, laying spread eagle on his back on the bare gray asphalt in the sun. Lily white flank steak blinding the passing traffic.

Only a few minutes had gone by when a green Dodge Ram 1500 rolled slowly into the neighborhood, past our disturbing little showcase and turned around in the first driveway. The truck parked behind my car and a heavily bearded Ernest Hemingway in dark aviator sunglasses got out. He walked over to Chris and tried to pick him up. My heart was racing. I didn’t say a thing. Hemingway said: “We’ve got to get him up. They’ll call the fuckin’ cops. Chris, you’re a fuckin’ mess dude. What the fuck! You can’t lay in the road like this in the middle of the goddamn day in the middle of this goddamn neighborhood!” He hoisted Chris into the truck cab and drove away without another word.

“Shit Kyle. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

So we left him. Driving north on 95 through Wilmington I was relieved but still unnerved. I called Mike and told him the story. He laughed. “Chris doesn’t have a gun man. He hates guns. You can’t leave him down there like that. You should go back and get him.”

“But where the fuck is he? And who the fuck is Hemingway?”

Just then Chris’ rubber phone rang from under the seat. It was Chris himself sounding slightly more coherent. “Wheeeere the fuuuuuck are you! Come pick me uuuuup!”

So we turned around. And went back to the neighborhood. And there was the green truck. And there was Chris. He walked under his own power more or less in a straight line to my car clutching an open, dewy can of Busch in one hand and two more dangling from the six pack rings in the other. He opened the back door and got in. He yelled at us a bit. He was remarkably coherent now and seemingly at ease. He was constantly fishing tiny white pills from a plastic sandwich bag in his pocket, working them quickly with nimble fingers between his narrow lips, swallowing them with Busch.

Chris told me to show up the next day at seven; I was going out with the crew to cut grass. I arrived early on Tuesday and Chris was in the driveway talking to Nazario in his distinctly pained and grumbly, though now slightly less unhinged, timbre. He was completely sober and wearing a plastic yellow hospital bracelet. He had overdosed on oxycontin the night before and had his stomach pumped in the emergency room. Sobered him right up. Then he died in the autumn time.

autumntime west chester photographic extravaganza featuring Bella

2007-11-25T00:54:00.000-05:00

autumntime hair cut

2007-11-23T15:15:00.000-05:00

louisville

2007-11-22T00:40:00.000-05:00

Rapid travel down
through auburn corridors,
piercing Dixie over the river
on iron girder bridges
dissected black in squares and diamonds
against the gray night sky,
stretching out like spindly insects,
connecting north to south.

Broad boulevards
of tall tan and yellow brick buildings
collect themselves in a rush
and push uphill to the East
where they shrivel into streets
and bearded men and bespectacled women
in thick black frames
drink ‘round tables in neighborhood bars until
four in the morning on weekdays.

A soft warm breeze blows down the side street
between a bright red brick building
and our colorful muraled tavern wall
along which we sit
at round tables,
under blue umbrellas,
watching the tepid wind push
ten thousand crunchy yellow leaves
down the street a while.

Morning comes, yet another time,
still too warm for November.

We take the snaking parkway lanes
through auburn corridors again.

indianabeer all up in here

2007-11-16T10:25:00.000-05:00

Went to Chicago's Barrel Aged Beer Fest two weeks ago tomorrow with Yaniv and Phil. Stayed with the beautiful Tracy Snowberger and generally had a very fun time. I wrote about it for Indianabeer.com and experimented with a new layout which my brother of Nimblelight fame helped me put together. Doesn't go very well with the rest of Indianabeer.com, but I think it looks pretty damn good if I do say so myself. Click the picture to be whisked away to that magical place called beer.

Don't forget about the busting wipers below.

wipers don't rise. they bust.

2007-11-15T00:34:00.000-05:00

Well, I think I've finally become a true Midwestern fly fisher. I've gone after wiper four out of the last five days. Although it's hard not to. Lake Monroe has a very healthy population of these fish and you can catch them on the fly in the shallows off the dam. Fifteen minutes from my house. Fly fishing on a big lake is a strange thing for me. You feel terribly impotent, standing there, waving the silly little fly rod around in front of this 10,000 acre impoundment. But it's pretty cool. Kind of what salt water fly fishing is like I imagine. Kind of.

Wiper are a hybrid species bred exclusively for sport fishing (and food?) mainly in the Southeast and Midwest. They're a cross between the salt water striped bass and the freshwater white bass (hence the cute name). They are extremely aggressive and fight like a bull on cocaine. They are probably the most fightenist fish I ever done caught. I fish for them with my fast 8wt rod mainly because it helps to be able to cast 70 feet into the wind, but even the little ones put a bend in that big rod.

I've been meaning to go out after these fish and even made one half hearted attempt back in September when all I caught was this crappie on a dry fly in the spillway. Oddly enough. They were rising, what was I supposed to do?

But on Saturday, Zack of JL Water's Fly Fishing Department fame took me out to the dam and I caught three little ones (~12") in a row in about 30 minutes (unfortunately my camera batteries were dead so I didn't get any pics). Then we went up across from Fourwinds where I caught another little one.

I was pretty much hooked after that. Went back out on Sunday by myself. Nothing. Monday by myself. Nothing. (last night was Upland night). Tonight by myself: caught a few, and even a decent sized one. But they get much, much bigger. 30" long, 20lbs fat. How great would that be on a fly rod?

It apparently helps when the wind is blowing in towards the dam pretty strongly because it pushes the bait fish into the shallows and the wipers come in to feed. Every once in a while you'll see a flurry of shad skippin' across the surface of the lake fleeing for their life until WHOMPSHHH! A big old wiper comes up and busts on their aces. So you look for the fish busting and cast at 'em. But tonight it was so windy the baitfish weren't very obvious and I didn't see a single bust. But no matter. The wiper were in 3-4 feet of water and I must have stumbled onto a school of them because I caught five in a row on maybe ten casts. Just one after another. It was pretty awesome. Caught them all on Clousers. #4 orange over white was all I used on Saturday. Tonight I caught them on all white #4 and black over white unique hair with blue flash #8 (the others were all bucktail with silver flash).

Check out how much the leaves changed in just four days (maybe it's just the light). Click all for bigger.

Littlest buddy.

Bigger buddy. Click to enlarge.

And fattiest McGee. Click for bigger.

london calling?

2007-11-09T00:28:00.000-05:00

(finally got around to putting this bit up from my trip to England this summer)

Is that a music reference? I have no idea. But I do know that Cesare "Galileo is my dad" Pastorino was born and raised in Italy. Genoa to be precise. So close to France that he has an inordinate fondness for cheese. I said: "Isn't Italy a third world country? Lots of dust, not so many trees, right? The womenfolk are constantly heckled by sweaty, annoying thirty five year old men clad in red neck bandannas that still live with their mothers? I've really got Italy's number, don't I Cesare?" You know, idle chit chat between friends. Any time someone opens their London home to me for three days when I'm abroad I introduce myself immediately by insulting their native lands.

Tamara, Cesare's live-in girlfriend (scandalous!), stood there not quite sure what to make of me. I was bearded. Large. Smelled faintly of the tumbling, tannic waters of Dartmoor and sweat. I smelled not so faintly of sweat. We had met once before, briefly, at a department party. And here I was insulting the man she loved not more than five minutes after I set foot in their nest, crashing the harmony party like so much lawn mower. "New Mexico [editor's note: Tamara's native lands] is nothing but a dressed up Mexico. More sand and dust than Italy. That's saying something. It's a filthy place."

Tamara didn't like that one bit and struck me fast across the face with the back of her right hand. With impeccably good timing Tamara took advantage of my leeward motion and drove her right knee quick to my crotch. I crumpled to the ground in a heap. A low moan escaped my lips, I curled into a ball and rocked slowly back and forth, holding the vomit in.

"Alright then, let's go the park. Throw the frisbee around."

"Ok. But let's get some beers first. We'll lay on the blanket and sip and sup the afternoon away."

Beautiful day. Blackheath Standard is quiet. We purchase several bottles of English strong ale and proceed to Greenwich Park, ten minutes walking away to the north. Blackheath is so quiet because everyone is at the park. The sun shines brightly through a clear blue sky and lukewarm breezes waft the smell of grass and trees on the air. I lick my wounds. We consume several bottles of Young's Special London Ale which is much finer fresh, untransported across the Atlantic. Truly a great ale. Perhaps the best beer I had the entire trip.

The bleak bulging grass land stretches out before us endlessly. We skirt the edge arriving at the brewpub perched on a high corner where the street swoops down and around the patio like swirling stone bathwater carrying pedestrians into the bowels of Blackheath.

Zerodegrees Micro-Brewery is a small chain of brewpubs with locations in Bristol, Reading and Blackheath. Pretty fancy pants modern decor. Lots of glass and gleaming stainless steel. Slick logos and well placed beams of light shine from mysterious origins. They make a Pilsner, a Dark Lager, an American Pale Ale, and a Wheat. Not exactly your traditional English establishment. The Pilsner and Dark Lager were quite good. As clean as freshly polished glass and gleaming steel. I was interested to see American styles exported to the UK. All Cascade hops in the Zerodegrees Pale Ale. It was above average, but nothing special. Didn't try the wheat.

Two pots of mussels: one Thai style, one cajun style. They were excellent. Two pizzas (that Cesare endorses). Two orders of fries. Several beers. Fat, fat, fat. We walk it off down into Blackheath, led by the smell of fried food like Atlantic Salmon back to their natal rivers. We arrive at an assortment of fried foods so glorious and artery clogging that I gasp and exclaim, "Good god man! Is this a common type of shop?" Apparently it is. But we were quite full already and passed up the fried foods in order to indulge in Magnum handheld ice cream bars. I got the brand new Ecuador Dark. Tasty.

We crossed the heath like Ethelred the Unready. Wasted by a day in the park, mussels, ice cream, fighting Viking invaders, ours is a hard life.

The next day we took the train to Southwark near the old Thrale's Anchor Brewery, one of the most famous breweries from London's porter heydays. We went to The Market Porter pub, one of the better real ale venues in the city. Eleven real ales on at any time and one real cider. They typically go through 50 different casks a week. The bartender was very cool and gave me samples of lots of different beers. The ceiling was covered in pump clips from the beers that have passed through the pub. They fill the ceiling in less than a year.

The Sussex Best Bitter (4% abv) was quite bitter actually, grapefruit rinds, well put together. Royal Oak showed big, rich malts. Bolton's Port O'Call Porter was mellow and chocolaty. Beowulf Beorma from Staffordshire (3.9% abv) was light and extremely drinkable.

From here we took the tube north to an obscure residential neighborhood whose name escapes me now and I didn't write it down. We had dinner outside at a pub with pints of Wychwood from the cask (of course). Then we walked a couple blocks into an even more obscure section of the neighborhood to the Wenlock Arms, perhaps London's most traditional of cask ale outlets. It was a dirty bar. Well lived in. Old red carpet. Everything dusty. We were by far the youngest folks there.

I had a half pint of Crouchvale Brewer's Gold (4.0% abv), Champion Beer of Britain in 2005 and 2006. Very light color. Hint of apricots. Good. Old Bear in the Red (4.5%) was crap. Artificial red coloring made it look like a red light but didn't taste bad. Earl Soham Gannet Mild (3.3%) was quite good with a touch of chocolate malt character and herbal tea like hops. A great, traditional mild. Glad I got to try it. Unfortunately they had just run out of a Dark Star ale, one of the more famous traditional British beers amongst beer geeks here in the states.

The pub was a hot box with no breeze. A very hot day in London.

England really isn't a great place to go beer sampling. I know that sounds crazy, but we're spoiled in America. In England, everything is a bitter. Milds and porters are extremely rare and really not all that different from bitter. Dann Paquette has a pretty good piece in this month's Beer Advocate magazine pretty much lamenting the homogeneity of British beer. Sure, it's great for traditional English real ale. But after not too long they all taste the same. In England, beer is for drinking, not for "tasting." And I actually think that's a good thing. But if you're a standard American beer geek looking for a wide experience in a foreign land, Belgium's probably a better place to be.

We walked fairly far south from there (maybe took the tube too?) to Chiswell Street and the old Whitbread brewery, another of London's famous porter breweries from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was cool to see it as we talk about it in my beer class. Unfortunately it's being converted into luxury apartments.

We took the tube back down to Southwark and the train to Greenwich (I think) and hung out there by the observatory. We sat around in the park and got some drinks at a Philadelphia Phillies themed hot dog restaurant. I shit you not. I told the guy I was from Philadelphia and he asked me if I knew a lawyer he knew in Jersey. I didn't.

beer and philosophy

2007-10-29T21:06:00.001-04:00

Well, all good things must come to an end and this blog is one of them. It saddens me to think how this is one of the very last posts on this blog (not THE last, but we're getting close, so don't stop checking in quite yet).

Fuck it.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

Like a phoenix rising from the smoldering ashes, Fishbeer.com will soar triumphantly over the interwebs for many more years to come. I bought the domain. I even posted something over there. Check it out. Maybe a month from now? Six weeks at the most? Prepare yourself people. Prepare yourself.

In the meantime, life must go on. And it went on in a big way for me today. I rarely check my mailbox in the department here. Mostly academic press catalogs, bulletins from various offices on campus, ethical guidelines for instructors of scantly clad undergrads. You know, the typical stuff. But today, today there was something special waiting for me when I arrived. Beer and Philosophy went to press, into the mail, and arrived in my box sometime in the last week. I wouldn't have checked my mail today either if it hadn't been for post on A Good Beer Blog about Beer and Philosophy's release.

Remember when I said I wrote a chapter for this fine book? It's pretty cool to see my name in print with the likes of Garrett Oliver, Sam Calagione, Peter Machamer, and the late Michael Jackson. Yeah, I wish I had more time to write the chapter, it was a bit of a rush job, but I guess it turned out OK. If you're interested in beer or philosophy you should probably pick it up. It's cheap. Only $13 on Amazon. I haven't read anything except Michael Jackson's foreword, but some of the chapters look very promising. Neil Manson's chapter on The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Beer look great (it's a dialog) as does Dale Jacquette's on authenticity and the aesthetics of the brewer's art. These two just caught my eye. I'm sure the other's are great too.

Click both for bigger.

indiana autumntime smallmouth

2007-10-21T20:08:00.000-04:00

My parents arrived on Friday and we dined together and my brother and I drank half yards of Guinness at the Irish Lion. Then we played Contra on his laptop until midnight and drank Wild Turkey Rye. The following day we went to the IU-Penn State football contest where the boys from Happy Valley squeaked one out with the help of four IU fumbles. We tailgated the hell out of that game. Mom and dad rented an RV and everything.

It was good to see them. I'm just starting to realize that my family is funny. Not weird funny, but comical funny. Not goofy comical, but comedically comical. You know, they make good jokes. Here is a good picture of my mom "cannonballing" jungle juice with some other Penn State fans at the tailgate (my father laughing in the background). It's 10:30am. Click for bigger.

I awoke at 7:30am this morning to see them off. The box on wheels literally lumbers down Maxwell into the rising sun. It's early. Might as well go fishing.

8am I'm out the door, heading west on a deserted Sunday autumn morning through Spencer and onto Gosport to try for another beautiful bass. The air is crisp and cool, the sky clear like it doesn't exist, the sharp angle of the sun slices through the void like soft lasers. The West Fork of the White River is big water. And it flows almost exclusively through farmland, for over one hundred miles before Gosport. It was a bit muddy. We got heavy rains on Thursday.

I fished it anyway. But didn't catch nothin'. There are big fish in there. I know it. I will catch one.

This is what happens when you aren't catching fish. As for those of you who haven't seen me since oh, about June, this is what my face now looks like. I guess I do need to trim it up a bit. Although I think a full beard will be something I emphasize in my MIP2K7 speech. Click all for bigger.

I packed it up after about an hour and headed back towards Bloomington and down 37 to Ketchum Road and Clear Creek which is much smaller and had probably cleared by now. It was also during this drive that I heard Robert Plant and Alison Krauss signing together. Apparently they have made an entire album? I will have to purchase it. The song was good.

I've developed a bit of a bond with Clear Creek. Fished it probably fifteen times and I know how it smells and it looks and where to walk and where the fish are. And it was a very pretty little creek today. Click for bigger.

And had a very good day today. I didn't catch any huge fish. I got my big fish on Wednesday. Today I caught a lot of decent sized creek smallies and it pretty much ruled. The fish were really quite pretty (for bass). Not the dull olive-yellow color I've seen there before. They were killing the little Clousers. As far as colors go chartreuse worked the best but I lost the only two I had to rocks. The "weedless" design with the dumbbell eyes is great and all, but those eyes get caught in rocks pretty easily. Caught a couple on orange and fire tiger as well. They didn't seem interested in olive. I picked up fish in deep holes, smaller holes, riffles, wide flat sections, everywhere. I was finally thrilled to be fishing in Indiana. Click all for bigger.

I'm holding a beautiful bass like a trout! Holy shit!

out damn skunk!

2007-10-17T21:02:00.000-04:00

There are so many things I want to post here, Pennsylvania's performance at the Great American Beer Festival, the recent bear attacks in Pennsylvania, other ways in which Pennsylvania is the best state etc.

But I went fishing tonight instead.

And caught a fish.

Lord have mercy. I cried. Loudly. Last week. With Michael. When I caught no Steelhead, when I caught no Chinook, no Coho on Trail Creek. Fourteen hours of fishing effort. Slogging up and down the muddy creek bank boulevards. Casting and casting. Driving and Driving. And Mike had to drive back to Missouri on Sunday.

Despite the fact that no fish were caught, over all I'd say the trip was a success. Further scouting of the creeks, familiarizing myself with the highways and byways of Porter County. Eating chicken and butter and ham and potatoes and butter and onions cooked in tin foil on the coals with Mike Pell and bottles of Marzenbier and Wild Turkey Rye around the fire? Good times.

Despite loud people in the next campsite.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

I start awake with mad face. Sneering in my dreams. Alcohol is prohibited in the National Lakeshore buddy, I'll call the goddamn security presence down on your ass unless you shut your fucking trap. Piece of shit.

"Who you callin' piece of shit? Piece of shit."

"I'm callin' you a piece a shit. It's 3:30 in the am and we have to wake up in less than three hours to catch the salmon. I mean, dude, cut us some slack."

"Um, yeah, sorry about dat dude. Wer gonna, ah, go on over ta da, ta my buddies site, ova dare by da, by da thing, the dumpsta."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Here's Mike above a really good hole on Trail Creek were the river narrow and deepens and all the fish have to come through here. We saw somebody hook up with a fish in this hole on Saturday, and saw several large fish move through and hold there, we put everything we had right over their noses. Several times. Nothing. But this creepy picture. Click for bigger.

Saw these guy's fish flopping in the water and I yelled at Pell, "I see a fish! It's freakin' out!" They claimed to have hooked these fish on spoons. Big spoons. They had incredible Chicagoland accents. Really incredible accents. I can't even begin to come up with a homonym. The one guy said "spoons" in a very cool way. I'll just put it like that. Click for bigger. (note purple plastic sled in background)

After we passed these guys we came upon an older couple fishing the absolute hell out of a hole much like the one we were at earlier. The dude had like three rods out, supported by sticks, and one in his hand. His wife was standing at the head of the run flingin' spinners into the hole, methodically. Again and again and again. These people accused those damn kids of snaggin' them fish. "You don't catch two like that one right after the other. They snagged 'em in the face." I really don't know. The fish weren't cut and battered looking. Looked Quite clean actually.

And the Pell again. Click for bigger.

So we got skunked. We had a good time though. However I was a little concerned that some of Mike Pell's skunk streak wore off on me. It came up a few times. "Skunk streak this, skunk streak that. Put a glow stick in a bottle and shot it with a pellet gun, skunk streak, skunk streak." Like that it came up. It was weird. You're right.

But no matter, for I have caught a fine bass tonight! And I think I'll be ok until next week.

I decided to try a new spot because all I hear about Indiana is that it has great bass fishing. I've caught a few decent fish down at Clear Creek, but there are other rivers around that are known to be better smallmouth fisheries, like Sugar Creek, Blue River, and the West Fork of the White River, which happens to be the closest to me.

Thirty minutes past five and I've arrived. Gosport. Public Access. This river is large. I thrash about the brush trying to hike up the far side which is more clearly not somebody's property. But the fishing sucks there. Way too deep. Can't wade out in it. So I grow a set and walk back across the old bridge and down through more jaggers and out into a rocky section only one to two feet deep. Eight or ten huge carp stacked up about twenty feet out, I could see them from the bridge. They created quite a wake, hoovering the silt and slim off the rocks. Really quite active. Black and pink and shiny from above like some elegant mahogany koi. Much paler down here. And bigger.

I cast at them for while with nothing to show for it. I caught a carp this summer on a Clouser in New Mexico, so maybe. But no. I tied on a popper and cast it about, slurp, slurp. Slurp, slurp. Missed one fished. Couldn't tell how big it was. Cast it about some more. Nothing.

Tie on the small Clouser again. These are Clousers. I tied a shit ton of them for Wipers about a month ago. But then I never went fishing for Wipers. Click for bigger.

This time I pick up two small bass on two consecutive casts. These were quite small, about five inches. But things were picking up I could tell. It was getting fairly dark and the clouds to the west and north were menacing. Possibly tornadoes tomorrow. Nobody comes to class when there's a tornado warning.

But I start to notice more fish feeding on the surface. Probably a hatch of some sort, but all my dry flies are back in the car so I tie on the popper again but get no looks for ten minutes. It's pretty much dark now, low glow orange hum on the horizon. So I tie the little Clouser back on, begin false casting and strip gobs of line off at a time until the cast is difficult to handle, maybe sixty feet for me. I haul on the back cast and haul on the forward cast and shoot the last few feet of line out, just into the deeper water at ten o'clock. I strip the line in fairly fast and regularly so as not to hang up on the rocks. About half way back and a strong bass made a big take pulled line from my reel for five minutes before I grabbed his lip and held him up for this picture. Click for bigger.

And this one. Which I call, "Fat Pink Hand with fish." Click for bigger.

Well look at that? An all "click for bigger" post. Astounding. I don't know how he does it.

Also, I think you should check out this website, er, magazine. It's called This is Fly. I'm not so keen on the beer reviews, but read this article. It's pretty good. A great website. Smart, easy, aesthetically appealing with the great Flash (?) turn-the-pages thing. Incredible photography. Perhaps a bit too hip in general, but they do have an eye for design.

It's raining hard now. It's supposed to continue for some time. Several days perhaps. Flush out Trail Creek, waft the scent of home to Steelhead in the lake. I'll be back. Hopefully in ten days.

4-H

2007-10-15T23:28:00.000-04:00

The 4-H has an online Flash game they call Horseland where players breed and raise their own show horses. It's somehow affiliated with a kids show on CBS called KEWLopolis. The basic membership is free, but only with the premium membership can you "own stables and host shows. They also get a larger allowance of play money each week." Horseland is "easy to learn, but you can play it for years."

The internet continues to blow my mind.

Unfortunately, after trying the game myself, I have to say it sucks. The only fancy pants Flash animation was on the first page. After that it's really pretty crappy. Lots of people playing though it seemed. Over 12,000 registered American Mustangs.

So anyway, what brings me to this delightful Interwebs crossroad is that I was trying to find out, for whatever reason (none of your business), about 4-H, the organization that I thought was exclusively about kids raising farm animals. Never doubted it, like P or not-P. 4-H = kids and farm animals. Maybe the Harrisburg Farm Show too.

I went to their site (the National 4-H Council) and there is virtually nothing at all about farming. From their PDF document "an overview of 4-H today" in the About Us section: "4-H has three primary program areas: science, engineering and technology; healthy living; and citizenship. Youth learn leadership, citizenship and life skills through more than 1,000 projects with topics as varied as rocketry, GPS mapping, DNA analysis, public speaking, photography, nutrition and community service."

Where's farming?

You can kind of guess that 4-H is involved in agriculture by the list of companies that sponsor it: Carhart, John Deere, Monsanto, ATV Safety Institute, and The Farm Credit System Foundation. But the list also includes: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, New York Life, Met Life, Toyota, and JC Penney.

If you look very carefully in the Programs area of the site in the Science, Engineering, and Technology section, there is a small pie chart that is rather difficult to read which says that 41% of 4-H youth participate in Animal Science, 11% in Agriculture, and 13% in Plant Science. The others participate in Engineering, Technology, and Other Sciences (16%) and Environmental Science (19%). But they point out in a tiny footnote that members often participate in more than one project. So really it could be that almost every single person in 4-H does Animal Science (read: birthing cows) and ALSO have participated in at least on other project in one other area.

Anyway, I think they're trying to hip it up a little over at 4-H and I think it's kind of silly to hide all the slimy lambings and brutal slaughters behind Science and Technology. I don't think it's dishonest though (perhaps not mentioning farming in the "overview" when 65% of 4-H members do it might be dishonest), but 4-H folks know a lot of science and they are probably more likely to go onto careers in science or technology.

I mean, check out this incredibly charming webpage about raising sheep from the UC Irvine 4-H farm. Very cute, like a kid wrote it, from the Why Raising a Sheep is Fun section: "walking a lamb every day after school can be relaxing" and "Wet sheep smell like wet wool." Followed by explosions of science: "Watch for the afterbirth. You can discard it right away or let the ewe eat it. In the wild this is what mothers do to remove some of the birthing smell, hoping to discourage predators. The afterbirth also contains hormones that, when consumed by the mother, stimulate the uterus to contract and return to its normal size." And those that are somewhere in between: "The second hardest part is identifying a lamb's body parts when your hand is exploring the inside of the ewe's reproductive tract."

He leans back in his chair and it squeaks. He kicks up his feet and slowly places his hands interlocked behind his head while exhaling, "Ahhhhh, the internet.

dear Feist

2007-10-12T01:13:00.000-04:00

Is it so wrong that I should want to lick your lemony eyes? That I should worship at the tips of your dangly bangs? Brush gently your well formed cheeks in dutiful reverence to your siren song? Dare to kiss the wide horizon of your mouth? Sunset. Breathe in your breath. I am obsessed.

Last weekend I went to the Brookville Tailwater and caught these beautiful brown trout for you. Their beauty reminds me of your beauty. Their spots of your spots. The way they shake, slippery and slidey, away from me as I stalk upriver.

I had your delightful songs in my head while I spoke with local Kevin about crossbow season and catching seventy pound catfish with chicken liver. And the Schaffer boys from Rasselas who helped pour the foundation for uncle Joe’s new house ten years ago and how I went squirrel hunting once with their grandfather Wally and how the boat ran out of gas and he didn’t swim and was quite scared actually and I had to swim to shore with a rope and pull the boat in and how Tim Bremen and I walked back to the truck and he siphoned gas out of the tank and it got in his mouth and it looked intense what with the burning and the spitting and the coughing and the red eyes. And psoriasis Glenn who fishes there five or six times a week and smokes those little cigar cigarettes and has a yellow mustache and who is a very good fisherman.

It seemed rather tenuous, too many irons in the fire if you will, to keep your songs on my mind while I spoke with these men. How funny it would be if they knew. But I kept them there anyway.

I am going to catch steelhead and salmon for you this weekend Feist. I’ll mail you one.

all the way west: a new movie

2007-10-01T19:30:00.001-04:00

I finally got around to looking through all the shotty video footage from my road trip out west this summer. I made a movie. My brother, Adam "the Heed" Dunn, master of Flash, built this sweet player for me, note how the player maintains the theme of the website. He's the man. He does this stuff for a living. The video is big, ~50mb, so let it load before watching.

Director's commentary below.

I took the first shots while driving east through Western South Dakota on my way back. There were big thunderstorms on the horizon to the south. The song is Feist's "The Water."

Part 1: this shot is of Greenback Cutthroat trout in the stream below Spruce Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Then a greenback in Fern Lake in RMNP. Then pictures of some fish I caught: a brown trout in the Big Thompson River below RMNP in Colorado, a rainbow I caught in Indian Camp Creek, a tributary to the Middle Fork of the Gila River in New Mexico, a rainbow from the McCloud River below Ah-Di-Na in Northern California, four greenbacks from RMNP, and a Volcano Creek Golden Trout from Golden Trout Creek in the lower Sierra Nevada. Then a magnificent sunset near the California-Oregon border. A Golden Trout I accidentally killed in Mulkey Creek (the only dead fish of the whole trip that I know of). My shadow and the same trout. Shadow of the ferry from Vancouver Island to Vancouver. Driving through dusty western Kansas. Driving toward Denver in Colorado.

Part 2: driving north on the east side of the Sierra, just south of Yosemite I think. Driving south through northern New Mexico. Driving east through eastern Wyoming I think. A lizard along the Middle Fork of the Gila River. My brother in Lake Quinault on the Olympic Peninsula. The same. Mythbusters and my brother's Havoc Heli in our room at the Quinault Lodge. The music is Feist's "My Moon My Man."

Part 3: in the tent, seeking refuge from mosquitoes near Fern Lake in RMNP. Stretching out near the Fern Lake trailhead in RMNP. Chris fixing some wires somewhere in windy Kansas. My brother on the windy ferry from Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula to Victoria on Vancouver Island BC. Ian fly fishing for the first time on the Big Thompson River. He likes poker better. But he has good nymphing mechanics. Should have used an indicator though. Ian fed up with fishing after he fell in a river somewhere in RMNP. Mt. Lassen in California. Again (or maybe Shasta?) Sunset in Oregon. My brother fed up with the video in Quinault Rain Forest. Sunset near the Illinois-Indiana border. My car plastered with bugs after the drive back. The song is Old Crow Medicine Show's "I'm Stickin' to the Union." That is all.

Indiana steelhead: the Charles Bukowski of great lakes fishing

2007-09-22T01:45:00.000-04:00

The highway hums persistently in the background. The river is flat and muddy mostly, yellow and brown mostly, sandy in some places. Beer cans, styrofoam worm containers, plastic bags, garbage can lids: various Michigan City cultural artifacts litter the log jams. It’s ninety degrees and humid. The ever present sheen of grease on my forehead does little to dissuade the multitudes of blood sucking insects that swarm exposed skin. My hands are exposed. I swat at the back of my hand with my other hand killing three and four mosquitoes at a time, smearing swaths of blood over my knuckles. They get into my nose. Stinging nettles rake my legs and with no balsamic Jewel weed around I plunge into the cold river to ease the burn. It’s better like this anyway. The mosquitoes can’t bite underwater.

Indiana is a pit of hell and despair. But there are steelhead here. And salmon.

I woke up at 3am this morning to drive more than two hundred miles to the shores of Lake Michigan where the anadromous fishes of autumn are beginning their annual migration up Trail Creek, Salt Creek, and the Little Calumet River, following their biological orders like good soldiers would. The commando is strong. Little do they know their efforts are mostly in vain. They too were once hatchery brood. They’ll spill their futile gametes all over the river in a sad genuflection to their native cousins swimming strongly in the Pacific. Then they’ll get snagged in the face, taken home on ice trying to breathe the thin, foreign atmosphere, feeling dizzy and disoriented. The youngest son will help dad with the “cleaning”, but while father’s sharpening the knife, junior pokes at the still gleaming eyes until one pops crooked, exposing plastic looking, layered white tissue underneath. Dad tells the kid to stop. Then sticks the knife in the fish’s asshole and cuts open his stomach and his guts spill out. Then he dies.

It’s a cheery day.

I arrived at Trail Creek around 6:30am. Still dark. I strapped on my headlamp, rigged my rod, and had filthy, sweaty unprotected sex with a disgusting 47 year old Michigan City prostitute behind the porta potty in the Public Access parking lot along route 20. Several people saw us.

The sun rised. I fell.

I raced up and down the dirt banks of the river, over tripping tree roots, cigarette butts, and half buried bottles of beer. The mosquitoes were horrible. The worst I’ve ever seen. They feasted on my fat blood. They feasted through my shirt. I let my hair down and tried to evenly distribute the tendrils over my face, forming some sort of faux mosquito netting. It worked pretty well actually, but was incredibly uncomfortable considering it was so hot. And I couldn’t see.

After several hours of racing around, possibly trespassing, I hadn’t seen a single fish of any consequence. Where were the forty pound Chinooks? The silvery Cohos fresh from the depths of Lake Michigan’s blue-green purity? Fresh from BP’s last illegal ammonia discharge?

I kept my muddy wading boots on and got back in the car. I ate three hardboiled eggs with Tabasco sauce and sliced ham. And some carrots. I drove to another Public Access parking lot further downstream. There were no prostitutes there unfortunately.

I walked through the woods to the translucent yellow-brown waters and immediately saw my first real fish. A behemoth to be sure. Thirty five, forty inches long? Twenty, thirty pounds? It was a big one and swam away rapidly like a log alive as I blundered in for a closer look.

I fished my way upstream through the swarms of mosquitoes, around impenetrable tangles of logs with cans and lawnchairs pushed tight against the upstream side. Eventually I stumbled across two dead steelhead. So they are here. One was still alive, it turns out. Belly-up in a stagnant pool, but still alive. I wrapped my hand tenderly around his massive tail and gently maneuvered him into cooler, clearer waters. I cradled his soft body with my left hand and held his tail with my right, keeping him upright, his gills pumping quietly while I absurdly sang to him in a low voice, “and I know loving you is not enough, and you know future is as future does.” When I gave up my grasp he turned over, fat white belly like a ball floating down the river over wood and rocks roughly.

A long green shape shudders on the shallow edge of that pool. I’m in a good position. I cast an orange egg at his nose. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Several more times. Nothing. Change flies. A red egg. Several times. Nothing. A chartreuse double bunny. Several times. Nothing. Turks Tarantula with a Caddis nymph dropper. Several times. Nothing. I’ll try my plastic eggs. Smaller than the glo-bug eggs. But when I have the new fly tied on the large green shape has disappeared. But then a pod of ten fish move into the pool, fish of all sizes, just like that. I sink the eggs into the pool for thirty minutes. Nothing.

Thoroughly chewed and exhausted at noon I start to head back downstream to my car. I’ve had enough of Charles Bukowski’s great lakes fishing adventure. Screw Indiana. I trespass briefly to access a shallow bit of river so I can cross to the public side. I walk for ten minutes then cross the river again when the brush becomes thick. I walk another ten minutes. I don’t recognize anything. Where am I? That dark blue pine tree is very conspicuous. I would remember that. Am I lost in Indiana? In the Chicago metro area? Are you kidding me? I had lost the trail so I head away from the river and walk parallel to it hoping to hit the main trail back to my car. I do. I was actually nervous. What if I got lost in the woods in the Chicago metro area? After spending weeks in the western mountains this summer without incident? I thought about getting bit by a poisonous snake in Indiana. That would be funny. Kind of.

I’m relieved to find the trail and decide to take another shot at actually fishing, as opposed to walking around the woods getting progressively itchier. I tie on an egg sucking leech (black wooly bugger with a pink chenille head). I step into the river and think I see a large tail flick in a long, deep run ahead along the bank. I cast the fly several times and strip it back slowly. The marabou tail undulates like a hula dance or an experienced stripper with wide hips and a narrow waist. The silver flash tied into the tail throws light in a quick, disorienting pattern. It looks delicious.

I readjust the faux mosquito net and swat a fresh batch of mosquitoes from my hands, smearing their little crushed bodies with blood. I just want to catch a fish. A fish for all of this my wish. On the next cast a fish hit my fly with fifteen pounds of salmonid ferocity so stunning that I cried out loud, “holy fucking christ!” The fish made a long first run upstream, stripping forty or so feet of line from my reel, the drag screaming its scared little whine. I palmed the reel to slow the fish and eventually he turned and I took up the line as fast as I could. He was running for the log jam just ten feet below me. If he gets in it he’s gone. I hold him back and hope that the 10lb 2x leader holds. It does.

I capture many pictures of the fish during the fight as backups in case I can’t get a good one of him once landed. Turns out that was a good idea as he slipped away before I could properly photograph him. The last picture below is of the fish I tried to revive.

I’ll be going back as soon as possible. To brave the mosquitoes and tie into another beast of a fish. I have a problem with fishing.

Click all for bigger.

rainbow hawk

2007-09-18T10:08:00.000-04:00

Well, the new blog is coming along nicely. I've had to change the concept around some, but it will still probably blow your mind. Plans are under way for a rather extravagant MIP2K7. The steelhead and salmon are running into Indiana from Lake Michigan and my new 8wt arrived yesterday, so I'm headin' up to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on Thursday night. I'll also post something about the rest of my time in England one of these days, new and improved with 200% more beer!

But now, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the toughest, the coolest, the rainbowest, the most well mannered raptor this side of Sesame Street: RAINBOW HAWK! (applause, applause) Click for full size.

Rainbow hawk was born in Columbia Missouri on the 16th of September, the year of our lord 2007. Rainbow hawk's father is Matthew D Dunn of Bloomington IN. Rainbow hawk's mother was copious amounts of beer and drugs and some crayons and a large beef roast. Also present at Rainbow hawk's birth were Robert "Bobby no no" Norris, MB Pell, D$, and Chris "Rasputin" Saunders.

Click evil Chris for bigger.

The birth of Rainbow hawk.

Rainbow hawk also had a retarded little brother called One eye fish. D$ drew a picture of me and Bob and Mike. I'm the short little red one. Bob is the tall green one. Kind of fucked up if you ask me. D$ was taking jabs at me all weekend. Insult after insult hurled from the catapult of her mind. I'll get even with that bitch. I'll send Rainbow hawk on a vengeance mission. He'll come streaking out of the clear blue sky, shrieking his shrill shriek and pluck out one of D$'s eyes. Sure, Rainbow hawk isn't much given to violence as he is a rainbow. But he's also a hawk so, you know, he has to kill little animals to survive.

Click for bigger.

cleaning house, going corporate

2007-09-09T21:36:00.000-04:00

Well, not quite corporate but I have big plans for a new blog. A brand new blog. Big plans. Have no fear. This one won't go anywhere. It will be mainly a repository for bad poetry. The new blog will be focused exclusively on Beer and Fish. Hopefully it will be exclusively Fancy Writing but I can't promise anything on that score. I'm definitely going to take it upscale though. Only post the best writing and photos. Quality over quantity. 18 year old biddies from Connecticut that drive daddy's Range Rover over slam pigs, as MB Pell might say. Get my own domain name. Make it respectable.

My brother, java juggernaut, Knight of the php, HTML pimp, said he can help me with all the hard stuff, like, you know, the code. I'm pretty excited about it actually. A radical new idea in the world of blogging sure to awe and impress, daze and bewilder, confuse and obfuscate. I'll be honest, it might be pure shit, but right now, in my head, it is the coolest thing I've ever thought of. Hopefully it will happen in the next month or so.

But in the meantime...we drank a bunch of hoppy beer Wednesday over at Y-to-the-niv's house.

Courtney was making venison and trout stew for her dogs. I am not kidding.

After six hours of drinking things deteriorated quickly. The once academic conversation collapsed in a fit of political rage and flying spittle. "The president of the IMF is, in fact, the devil. He skewers African children and roasts them over dung fires on the open savanna, slurping gristle from their bones, smearing his lava countenance with the fat of their millet fed bodies."

But we did manage to try some interesting beers from all over this fair nation of ours.

Mishiwaka Hop Head: this beer is from Indiana and I don't really like the labeling very much. The beer is pretty average. The palate is dominated by a harsh piney bitterness.

Hoppin' Frog IPA: I'm pretty sure this was the IPA and not the double IPA, but I could be wrong. This beer drives a rusty iron spike through my tongue with a large sledge hammer. Not a huge fan. Had it once before. Same opinion.

Founder's Pale Ale: skunky.

Ale Smith X: interesting hop character. Smooth, glassy, citrus.

Bear Republic Racer 5: a sunny, shiney Lake Tahoe fills my glass as I stand on the porch looking through fir trees. I had this beer for the first time in Lake Tahoe a couple years ago and was really quite fond of it. I still am.

New England Brewing Sea Hag IPA: this beer comes in a can. I love that. Good hop character. Big. I think pale ales from a can, e.g. Dale's Pale Ale, always taste bigger to me than they do from a bottle or a glass.

Highland Brewing's Imperial Gaelic: the truly incredible Dr. Sean O'Connell gave this very rare beer to me last Spring. This is Highland's anniversary beer. It was bottled in one liter swing top bottles. It's a big beer at 8.7% abv. Best nose ever? Warm, whole grain bread delivered in a basket made of fresh hop bines. Big barleywine-esque palate that is extremely malty and sweet up front but finishes abruptly with a strong hop bitterness. Excellent.

Moylan's Hopsicle Imperial Ale: what a stupid name. A skinny ice dancer falls. Her skate lacerates her tongue. She has a huge bruise on her ass.

Two Brother's Hop Juice: not a great name. Mellow compared with the others. Malty with a pleasant hop flavor. I like Two Brothers.

Founder's Devil Dancer: offensively hoppy. Talk about lacerating. But this beer comes prepackaged with a goopy salve that one can apply to the salty fire. However, take heed of the goop. It will suffocate you.

Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree IPA: I had this beer a couple years ago and loved it. I still love it. A malty mountain climbed with fresh hops in hand, spilling, crushed underfoot releasing pleasant resins.

Lagunitas Sneak Release Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale: what a stupid name. Good beer.

The beers. Click for bigger.

Other beers.

Yaniv with a glass from his new favorite brewery.

Chris with broom.

Rockit's Famous Pizza.

Phil discussing politics in his typically calm manner.

I feeshed for 11.5 hours today

2007-09-02T22:50:00.001-04:00

chapter 1: bh = p

I realized something of great phonic importance this evening as I struggled to stay awake on my drive home from Brookville. I realized that if you pronounce the 'h' in 'Bhudda', it sounds like you're saying pooda. Of course then I realized that you don't spell the name of the Buddha 'bhudda'.

This thing of great phonic importance was on my mind because Ben, one of my now slightly less-new housemates (story at 6!), who you may remember from such classic posts as "the friday ramble" and "halloween 2006"! introduced me to a singer/songwriter by the name of Mason Jennings. I really like Mason Jennings. Another activity that kept me awake on the drive was thinking about all the people he reminds me of: Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, a little bit of Jack Johnson for the kids, G-Love, and I swear to god Matthew Mcconaughey. But I also think Mason Jennings has his own style and it's hard to describe, but his melodies are particularly distinct, lots of small steps. Great melodies. And the way he blends the fantastic and metaphorical with mundane, modern life, e.g. "I went in to twelve bookstores looking for Ulysses, Motherwell led me to believe all my questions would be answered, Now i have it here sitting on the table, Another word for the universe, Loose green tea and a bonsai tree, an underground apartment, Check my e-mail and wash my clothes while my rice is cooking, Oh jesus christ, how I hate making phonecalls". Good stuff.

Chapter 2: we're on the watch list

Had a big party on Friday night. Good times, good times. I got very drunk and was quite "jolly", according to Grant, my other new housemate (story at 6!), that you may remember from such classic posts as "NYC Mayhem" and "holy shit I'm a slacker and my understanding of Indianapolis is still fucking iron clad bitches". And that's not all! For the same low, low price you can also read about Grant The Other New Housemate in that new new goodie mob "native brown trout and bovey tracy too!"!

Well, the cops came at 12:15am and issued myself and the housemates (story at 6!) $50 tickets and about half the party left. Which is actually a good thing because they wouldn't have all fit in the house. Cracking down. First weekend. Cops were younger than me. Everytime they have to come back this year the fine increases. $100 the first time. Up to $1000 fucking dollars. What a scam.

But I'm not going to rant about this mistreatment here despite the myriad ways injustice was served. People at the party voluntarily took up a collection and we have enough money to pay all the tickets. Which is pretty freaking cool. Good people here in Bloomington. Good people. Someone also put a blunt in the collection jar. Feels funny to type 'blunt' so bluntly. Get it? That's ambiguity kids. And use/mention distinction all in the same sentence. It will be on the first exam. Study hard.

Chapter 3: it could be worse, at least I'm not a Michigan fan

Suffice it to say that watching Michigan football at the bar with [EDITED] is a risky proposition, particularly when they lose. Particularly when they lose to Appalachian State. He was three or four shots of Wild Turkey deep at half time and by the fourth quarter was berating a fellow Michigan fan at the next table for not "believing hard enough," slurrily threatening to "stab him in the heart with this fucking knife" (holding butter knife in air, making stabbing motion). Needless to say I got the hell out of dodge as soon as the clock ticked down to 0:00. No reason to get involved with what would surely be an ugly scene.

Chapter 4: southern Indiana sunrise, fly fishing in the heart of America

Left for Brookville today at 6:00am and watched the sunrise over cornfields in the glorious very early fall weather. A swollen blood orange fresh squeezed rich fuzzy velvet red juices dripping and bleeding onto the horizon as the half-crispy tall corn stalks stood guard by the highway for miles (I also came up with this last sentence on the drive to stay awake).

The Tricos were hatching, the hoppers were hopping and the tailwater called my name with its sweet siren song from across the state: "come waste a day with me Matthew, we know you're addicted to fishing". Indeed.

I caught somewheres around 10 fish which isn't so good for 11.5 hours of fishing, but I did take an hour break for a turkey sandwich and carrots. But still, the fishing was slow. The water is extremely low and the fish are extremely selective. They were feeding voraciously all day long but only occasionally deigned to sip my offerings. The Tricos were coming off but they didn't want the females I tied. Perhaps they were too big? #18 and #20 were probably too big. Perhaps the parachute style wasn't right? The tails were probably too long. So many variables. I tried the flat wing spinners to no success and they're just so freaking hard to see. Luckily I tied two all-black #24 flies and they liked those good enough. But fishing for good-sized browns with #24 flies and 7x tippet means two flies aren't going to last very long. And they didn't. But luckily I managed one fat pig of a brownie before I broke the second one off. The Brookville tailwater is going to hold some very large fish if things stay on track for the next few years.

I caught most of the others on #24 parachute ants (yes I'm way into tying parachute style dry flies these days, they just look cooler than the standard Catskill style) and a tiny, #28?, rainbow-sparkle midge emerger thing that a guide in Colorado gave me this summer to use in the lakes in the mountains for the Greenbacks. Only had one and broke it off as well. I also tied a bunch of Turck's Tarantulas for grasshopper imitations and broke one of them off on what seemed like a very large fish. That was early this morning and they showed no interest in that gangly, behemoth of a fly for the rest of the day. Grant was worried the Tarantula might scare the fish. Maybe that was it?

So I'm getting to the point with my fly tying where I think I'll try taking some pictures and posting them here. A new stage in the addiction? Photographing your flies? It's a slippery, slippery slope folks. Best to just stay off it altogether.

A #24 parachute ant pattern I tied. I like using just thread for the body of such a small ant and the fish seemed to like it pretty ok.

A #20 (?) female parachute Trico I tied. Tails are long.

A #6 Turck's Tarantula I tied. Spun deer hair heads look much better before you chuck around through the air, slappin' the water, etc. Now it looks like I deliberately shaped it to look like a dog's head.

The fat pig brown trout and its rippling blubber. Maybe she's full of eggs? That would rule. I hope I didn't mess that up. I'm not sure when Brown trout spawn in Indiana tailwaters. My giant paw and tree limb forearm make this trout look smaller than it really is I think. I'm just sayin. Click for bigger.

Hello little buddy.

Caught a nice rainbow which is a bit of an unlikely bonus as you're allowed to take up to five a day and most have gone the way of worm and bobber fisher dinner. Say that five times fast. Worm and bobber fisher dinner.

Ahhh trout fishing in picturesque Indiana. This is just below the dam. Obviously. Most of the river is actually bearable what with the trees and more or less natural banks. But this section is loaded with fish. Note the rise.

Now let's make some fun and easy fish art! Here's how: release fish and photograph under riffly water in full sunlight. Voila! Poppin' fresh dough! Click all for bigger.

The last one is my favorite. Make sure to check it out full size, particularly the top of the photo. It kind of blew my mind. Dude.

dearest Melissa

2007-08-28T11:32:00.000-04:00

I went to Beer and Sweat two weekends ago with Ryan and Dar and some other local homebrewers. It was beery and sweaty and a pretty damn drunken time. Read all about it at Indianabeer.com by clicking on the picture below.

the REAL Indiana brown trout

2007-08-24T00:57:00.001-04:00

So Ben and Britt (two of my new housemates, story at 6!) run a lot. They just go out and run ten miles every morning. Sometimes more. Ben runs marathons. I'm not sure if Britt does. Probably. She's pretty tough.

Anyway, one place they go running is the woods.

I'm not going to say which woods but let's just say there's a creek in these here woods where they run and after I took Ben fishing for the brown trout last week at Brookville he was just so durn excited about the brown trout that he convinced himself and Britt that there was brown trout in this here creek and told me about 'em says "they's this big" (held up his hands real wide) and I says to him I says well I don't think they're brown trout but let's go out and have a look and so we did and we walked and walked and it was one hundred degrees in the shade and real humid too and when I stepped up to the creek and looked at the feesh and on account of their black tails I knew pretty good they's was bass and cast a fly at 'em and I caught one and then I knew for sure they's was bucket mouths the real Indiana brown trout eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. This I knows for certain.

tailwater's alright with me

2007-08-15T18:17:00.000-04:00

I fished my first tailwater today. Well, that's not entirely true. I've fish rivers that have dams on them. But they were all places where trout would live regardless of the impoundment. In fact, they were all places that once had their own native populations of trout.

South central Indiana is not one of these places. Nonetheless, two hours east of my house I can enjoy some very fine angling for brown trout in the Brookville Tailwater.

Brookville is a rather quaint, small town stuck in the 1960s, stuck in the surprisingly topographically diverse valley of the East Fork of the Whitewater River. Brookville is only thirty miles or so west of Cincinnati. About 100 miles east of Bloomington. The Brookville Reservoir spills it frigid hypolimion under the dam and keeps the river around fifty degrees all year long (as long as discharges from the dam are regular). Thus where before there was a river well outside the native range of any Salmonid that regularly hit eighty degrees or higher in the summer (far too hot for a trout anyway), there is now a cushy, clean, cold stretch of river just right for cold water fishes.

Once again the ingenuity of man triumphs over nature's ramshackle hut. Pave paradise, put up a parking lot. Even us long-haired, bearded, granola (?) crunching hippy beatniks can appreciate a big concrete dam if it gives us trout. Although the real hippies (chub and sucker lovers) clash with anglers over the removal of dams (and great tailwater trout fisheries) to save native fishes that are not game fish. I'm not sure how I feel about this. If they get the San Juan in New Mexico, I get the Raystown Branch of the Juniata back. Drain Raystown you motherfuckers, and every last jet skier and pleasure boater with it. Down the tubes. Back the brookie! Back the gigantic mother fucking brook trout that fed on month long sulpher hatches in the shade of Tussey moutain for millenia before the arrival of the white man. Fuck Whitey! Err, not me. The other whiteys. The ones that damned the Raystown Branch of the Juniata.

Fun fact! Did you know that the WORLD RECORD brown trout came from a tailwater fishery in, you guessed it, ARKANSAS! Nowhere near that fish's native range. Fun, no?

Anyway, so the Central Indiana Trout Unlimited (not actually an oxymoron) has been stocking the Brookville Tailwater for some years now, along with the Indiana DNR. The DNR plants rainbows (which can be harvested) and the CITU plants brown trout, only one of which over 18" can be harvested. There is a nice population of holdover trout in that river. I don't think there is any natural reproduction, but I imagine it's a possibility. Just as long as the people who manage the dam can schedule discharges to keep the water cool all year long.

I went to fish the tailwater today for the first time because I have the fishing bug real bad like. I can't think of anything except fishing. It's pretty weird. I hope I'll be ok. But at least not until after I fish for some Indiana Steelhead soon. In Indiana. In a national ~~park~~ landmark. In Indifuckingana. Did I mention that I would fish for steelhead in a national ~~park~~ landmark in Indiana?

Anyway, Ben, one of my new housemates (story at 6!) and I went fishing there today and it was good. I caught a bunch of fish and so did Ben. Here are some pictures. Click them all (except three of them) for bigger.

It was Ben's first time fly fishing. He didn't know you're not supposed to dress like Van Gogh.

It was Ben's first time fly fishing. He didn't know you're not supposed to hold the fish like that.

It was Ben's first time fly fishing. He didn't like the knots.

It was Ben's first time fly fishing. He didn't know a giant brown trout was going to eat his head.

It was Ben's first time fly fishing. He didn't know you aren't supposed to catch three fish your first day.

2007 brewers of indiana guild festival

2007-07-29T18:51:00.000-04:00

I went to the Broad Ripple Brew fest last weekend. Now I'm in England for a conference. My talk went fairly well today. I also moved two weeks ago. There's lots of catching up to do. But for now, read my latest Indianabeer piece on the beer fest.

I love my pennsylvania

2007-07-20T12:38:00.000-04:00

I have a great nostalgia for Pennsylvania, particularly the central and western parts of the state, and the NY Times has two, count 'em, two stories on that area of this great nation in today's travel section. On is about Williamsport and baseball, lame. The other, however, is about the inclines of Altoona, Johnston, and Pittsburgh.

Also, part one of LISTS FROM MY TRIP out west: things that broke.

-wires in the passenger side wheel well of my car (chris hit a truck tire)

-TFO 7'9" 3 weight fly rod (already fixed!)

-whisperlite stove fuel pump (a little plastic-y bit that holds the pump to the pump assembly)

-Katadyn water filter (I pumped too hard and the plastic seat where the out-tube is connected to the body shot into the grass, need to get that fixed before England)

-camera flash (dropped my camera in a creek in Colorado, let it dry for a couple hours and everything works now except the flash)

-wading staff/trekking pole (not sure how it broke but I beat the shit out of it so it's really no surprise that the bottom section doesn't extend any more)

Also, don't forget to see the last set of pictures from the trip.

I love my family

2007-07-19T00:39:00.000-04:00

Sometimes my brother goes completely anti-fly fishing. Click for bigger.

free from the desert at last

2007-07-07T03:34:00.000-04:00

Once you're on the eastern side of the Sierra it's hard to get west. Can't get west. From San Bernardino, Lone Pine, Bishop, Mammoth, you drive in the desert and can't get out. You can get up, but not over. And I passed up all the eventual opportunities, Sonora Pass, Tioga Pass (through Yosemite), and I drove right through Carson City, right through Reno as 395 arcs westerly into the northern California woods. Not quite mountains, some volcanoes here and there, but its not Sierra. Stayed the night in Susanville and had to leave 395 to head west.

I fished the McCloud River in the shadow of Shasta and it was one of the most beautiful rivers I've ever seen. Incredibly clear water. Blue and green in the light. Gray, white, red head sized rocks countable from fifty feet up. And big, fat Rainbows rising to the first real stone fly hatch I've ever experienced. Unfortunately, my 6x tippet was a bit small for these fish (and my fighting skills) and I broke off all my vaguely stone fly flies. Managed a couple. Here are some pictures.

Mt. Shasta. Click for bigger. I also have some video of Mt. Lassen that I'll include in the forthcoming epic video account of the road trip.

This is Lake McCloud.

The river below the dam at Ah-Di-Na

Click for bigger.

Shooting the National Forest outhouses seems to be a favorite pastime in California. The outhouse at Ah-Di-Na. Paintballs and shotgun slugs. The slugs were still in the holes.

From here I took the I5 north to Eugene where all the hotels were booked solid so I had to drive another 40 miles towards Portland past midnight to find a hotel. Arrived in Seattle in the rain around 4pm and went to the condo my folks rented in East Lake, just a couple miles north of the city on Lake Union. Very cool neighborhood. Very cool condo. The rain abated, the sun came out, I made myself a steak and enjoyed a good IPA before my parents arrived after a long, delayed flight around 11pm.

My steak.

On Lake Union. Click for bigger.

The view from the condo towards the city. Click for bigger.

A orange limo down the street from our condo.

My dad loved the pig sculptures in Seattle. I love Seattle.

The first Starbucks at Pike's Place.

The Space Needle. We ate dinner up there. Overpriced but good. And, of course, good views.

We left Seattle after a few days and headed south to Mt. Ranier and then up to the Olympic Peninsula and on to Vancouver and to our current digs in Whistler BC. Here's Mt.Ranier. All those volcanoes look the same. The glaciers were cool on Ranier. Click for bigger.

california golden trout

2007-07-01T21:50:00.000-04:00

I wrote a bit about the Golden Trout Wilderness in the last post. Here's a picture of the New Balance Cowboy. I wasn't kidding. Well, about the fact that he was wearing sneakers at least.

The Golden Trout Wilderness is in the southern Sierra Nevada and contains the first "big" mountains going north in California. Mt. Whitney, over 14,000ft, is just a few miles north of the wilderness. Golden Trout is part of Inyo National Forest and borders Sequoia National Park to the northwest and maybe Kings Canyon National Park as well. Lot of land down there.

The Kern River, South Fork of the Kern, and Golden Trout Creek flow through the wilderness. It is in these watersheds that the Golden Trout evolved from a northern Rainbow trout species that eventually gave rise to many other local endemics as far south as central Mexico in western Mountains. Golden trout, Oncorhynchus aquabonita (the species name means pretty water and some people actually say that it is a subspecies of rainbow trout, the name thus being O. mykiss var. aquabonita), is one of three local endemics in the southern Sierra. There is another species of Golden Trout, the little Kern Golden and then the Kern River Rainbow as well. Productive place. Here's a decent webpage that overviews the natural history of the Kern Plateau.

The Golden Trout was mostly wiped out of its native range through habitat degradation and hybridization with stocked rainbow trout except for one tributary (stringer?) to Golden Trout Creek, Volcano Creek. In the last several years (decades in some cases) non-native fishes have been removed and trout from Volcano Creek have been planted. California "markets" the Goldens, their state fish, as "Find some California gold!" I think it's more like "Catch some California Magma!" You know, Volcano creek and all? Liquid hot magma?

These fish are small and incredibly easy to catch. Just let your line lay in the water for 2 minutes while you do something else and you'll probably catch one. The hard thing is catching one over five or so inches. I found that using a large fly, size 12 or 10 is a good way to avoid the very small ones. I caught Goldens out of Mulkey Creek, South Fork of the Kern, and Golden Trout Creek, the latter having a resident (native?) population? I think there was some hybridization with Rainbows there but much less than the other rivers and they didn't have to do as much work to restore the population?

Click for bigger.

These guys were spawning I think. Very pretty bellys.

In Mulkey Meadows looking east. About ten miles that way and you drop seven thousand vertical feet into the desert. Click for bigger.

Click these 2 for bigger.

This is looking southwest in Tunnel Meadow. That's Kern Peak (11,510') in the distance. Pretty much the first big mountain going north. Click for bigger.

This is Golden Trout Creek, looking northeast. In the very far distance you can see the ridge leading to Cirque Peak (12,900'), maybe Cirque Peak itself?, and ultimately to Mt.Whitney I think.

The biggest Golden I caught. From Golden Trout Creek in an unnamed meadow below Tunnel Meadow and the place where Golden Trout Creek and South Fork of the Kern come within less then 1/4 mile of each other. Click for bigger.

Closer to Kern Peak now, with Red Hill in the middle ground. Lots of volcanoes. Click for bigger.

There were old growth Spruce everywhere. This is near Bullfrog Meadow.

The trusty, wrinkly palace in Bullfrog Meadow.

These look like frog legs.

the new balance horseman

2007-06-29T14:35:00.000-04:00

The eastern Sierra is a strange place. Desert on the border with Nevada, Arizona. Death Valley lurks lowdown. Volcanoes above. The mountains explode from the brown desert floor seven thousand feet erect, straight up, gathering trees finally at the top. In twenty five minutes you can drive from the desert in Lone Pine to alpine forest and meadow at ten thousand feet. Twenty degrees difference. Shocking the system.

Luckily I started walking at ten thousand feet. Up over Trail Pass in the sunlight that shines poison UV through thin air to sear my face skin red hot and blistery. I actually felt feverish each night going to sleep I think because I was excessively exposed. Up over Trail Pass, descending into Mulkey Meadows. All the “stringers” were dry. Out there, small tributaries are called “stringers.” Only the main stem had water in it. And thousands of Golden Trout. I pulled out a dozen or so. They’re ridiculously easy to catch. Killed one by accident. Hooked him deep. Second fish I‘ve killed this year. Felt pretty bad about that. Hiked down Mulkey and into Bullfrog Meadow and camped there. My water froze that night.

Everything except the meadows, and even those in places, were sandy. It wasn’t really sand, but kind of. Dirt and small rocks. Each step produced a puff of dust. Each step slipped back two inches. Walking in sand is a pain in the ass. Carrying a 40 pound pack in sand is a serious pain in the ass. And all the trails were six inch deep ruts of sand, carved out over the years by cattle and horses. Cow pies everywhere. Crusty gray and light as dried meringue. But I didn’t see any cattle.

I did see horses. Horseshoe tracks and the errant horseshoe itself here and there. Bent tacks rusted tetanus needles on the trail. Keep the horses out and I imagine the trails would be a lot more walkable. But the Golden Trout Wilderness is horse country. Too big to see it all by foot in less than a month. Big wooden corrals in the middle of nowhere. “Horse camps” I suppose. Not much of a wilderness if you ask me.

Leaving Bullfrog Meadow I come upon twenty horses mulling about a small clearing in the woods. No saddles. Just horses hanging around. Their minder probably puts them out at night and collects them (i.e. rounds them up) the next day. I planned to hike up over a small pass and into Tunnel Meadow and down into the Golden Trout Creek watershed. Not a terribly taxing hike, but around four miles. Take close to two hours. And the trail is Sandy, sandy, sandy. This is horse country, eh? Maybe I’ll just borrow a horse.

Tried to approach a pretty palomino but he wasn’t having it. But big brown came right up to me. Bitin’ at my hand. Lookin’ for meal? Tell me Mr. Horse, what is your deal? I put my hand up behind his ears. Stroking his neck. A big, beautiful animal. Rubbed his head on my chest, knocked me back a step. He seemed gentle. I stepped to his middle and stroked his back. Put my arm around his back. Didn’t seem to mind it back. Put my weight on his back, hung there for minute.

He had his head down, nibbling at the sparse, dry grass.

I put both my hands on his back and pushed myself up as if I were climbing out of a pool. Balanced there for a minute. Big brown didn’t care so I hoisted myself up astraddle my new wheels. He didn’t like that too much. Took off at a trot and I fell hard on my pack. Ouch. But there he was. Just standing next to me, nudging me with his giant head. I pulled myself up and gave it another try. He gave me the trot again but I was ready with a handful of mane. He started off down the trail on his own at the trot. It was tough to hang on with the pack on my back but I managed.

We crested the pass and there before me were two men on horses about twenty yards down the hill. “Hey! What are you doin’?” No time for answers. Big brown didn’t seem to like this situation. He took off at a run to the right. I hung on tight, a two cowboy pursuit.

My horse tore down the sandy slope and into a dry stringer bed at tha-da-thump, tha-da-thump, tha-da-thump top speed. I flail around coming completely disconnected for seconds at a time. The cowboys are gaining. John Kinney’s riding up your ass, the balls are flying, the blood goes right to your head. You hear trumpets sound and angels sing a fargin’ hymn. It’s quite a sensation. I was terrified.

I ain’t no Billy the Kid.

We continue through a canyon, a watered stringer now, three horses in a row throw Vs of creek in the air. The closest cowboy’s lynching lariat held up and out in his right hand. He’s going to try and rope me! Like so much calf at the rodeo. He draws out a loop five feet wide and swings it rapidly over his head in rhythm with the gait of the horse, holding himself just off the saddle, all muscles tensed in synchrony with his animal, one big pulsing hunter. He’s within fifteen feet now, lining it up, lining it up, he shoots the loop, it falls below my shoulders, around my pack, he jerks it closed and me off the horse, tying the rope around his saddle horn.

I hit the ground hard, collapsed in two inches of water trying to get my wind back in. He jumps off the horse with a short length of rope and hogties my arms to my right leg with a particular alacrity. I’m not in a good way to say the least. The other cowboy comes up next to me, an older man, short gray hair under his white wide-brim hat. He has on a leather jacket, a denim shirt, and denim pants, otherwise known as jeans. Cowboy boots? No. White New Balance.

So I says to him, I says, “Is it typical for cowboys to where sneakers? What about the boots man? The cowboy boots?”

“Cowboy boots are for Brokeback fags.”

I look over at the lariater and he’s wearing tall black cowboy boots with tall, skinny black hard heels. The older cowboy looks back at me nervously.

Click for bigger little doggy.

delux burger, delux desert: phoenix is a farce

2007-06-24T01:01:00.000-04:00

Ed Abbey is full of shit. The desert isn’t beautiful. It’s harsh and hot and prickly with cacti and snake fangs. Perhaps the Gila isn’t desert, but it’s really close. I saw three types of cactus. Lots of Ponderosa pine on the north facing slopes of the mountains. I saw the cliff dwellings and hiked up over the mountain and into “The Meadows” which is about in the middle of the Gila Wilderness on the middle fork of the Gila River. I went to the Gila to fish for the Gila trout, a sub (?) species of rainbow trout native to the mountains of SW New Mexico and SW Arizona. It has been protected for the last 50 years or so. They were only in a few headwater streams and fishing for them was prohibited. But they’ve been nursed back to health and fishing opens for them on July 1st. When I planned this trip the date was still undecided so I thought I might get to fish for them. But I was early. So I fished for rainbows and smallmouth and hoped to see a Mexican wolf. No dice on the wolf. Or bear. Or mountain lion.

I spent six nights in the Gila, four in the back country. Hiked out nine miles on Thursday and drove six and a half hours to Phoenix where I met up with THE MB Pell at his temporary home The Crystal Meth Suites. Phoenix is a strange city. One big strip mall. 111 degrees. The water’s briny and tastes like chlorine. People shouldn’t live here. But they do. A lot of them. But there’s a cool restaurant here called Delux that serves a mean 9$ hamburger and has a good beer selection. I had an Alaskan Amber, New Belgian Wit, Lost Coast Wit, and a Bridgeport IPA. Good stuff. But the service wasn’t so hot.

The Gila Cliff dwellings. Some Mogollon folks lived here in the 1200s. Also kind of looks like a Planet of Apes Mt. Rushmore. Click for bigger.

The only snake I saw was a Sonoron mountain King snake which was cool.

Tha cacti.

The insects.

Click for bigger.

There was a nice hatch of these bugs that the trout were feeding on pretty well. I think it's some sort of caddis. Or maybe even a little stone fly? Click for bigger.

A dobson fly. What hellgramites turn into, I think.

The bane of my existence in the Meadows. These things hurt when they bit and they didn't let go when you stamped your foot.

The clouds were nice in the Gila. Click them for bigger.

The feeshes. In all their glory.

I got a huge carp on a Clouser minnow. Click for bigger.

Don't know what this fish is. He was feeding on the surface like a trout. A chubb maybe? Daniel? Maureen?

Some bronzebacks. Caught most of them on Clousers and a brown wooly bugger.

Click for bigger.

And last but not least, the trout. I only caught rainbows. There are supposedly browns higher up, which is kind of weird. I also like to think that some of these rainbows were gila hybrids. But they probably weren't.

Click these three for bigger.

Most of the fish were fairly pale. But I hiked up Indian Creek Canyon one day. It was pretty much bone dry. But towards the bottom there were a couple of very stagnant, algae covered pools. And in one of the biggest ones I saw several fish feeding voraciously on the surface. Who knows how long they can live in that? Either way, I thought this was pretty cool. I liked how the fish from the pool is much darker than the others.

Click for bigger.

Some cool rocks I saw up Indian Creek. Looks vaguely like Mars eating his children. When I told MB Pell that he said "you spent too much time in the desert".

downtown with my pants off, Santa Fe

2007-06-15T20:31:00.000-04:00

Or I was. With a towel wrapped turban-style around my wet hair. Pants off until I had to go explore a bit. New Mexico is a lot like Old Mexico. But better roads I guess. And actually, it was mostly Mexico until 1912. Lots of clay or adobe or whatever it is all the buildings are made out of. A little disorienting to be honest. Lots of Mexicanos, or people with some sort of native American genetics I suppose. Mexicans have always struck me as tough. I'm always afraid that they're going to try and push me around. Is that racist? Is that a stereotype? Does the fact that I don't think black people should get reparations for slavery but I'm fine with reservations and tax breaks and legal gambling for natives, does this make me a racist? These are the things I wondered about as I drove around the crooked streets of Santa Fe.

The city center is a bit of a tourist trap, despite its very early colonial charm. I tried to go outside this area, down to the 2nd Street Brewery on Grant's recommendation, but it was packed with dirty hippies and I didn't think I'd fit in.

So I went uptown to the Cowgirl (also on Grant's recommendation) where I ordered food to go and waited at the bar staring at the 37 year old bartender's beautiful ass sheathed in tight, low cut blue jeans. She was very flirty. I tipped well. I'm a sucker. I enjoyed an Odell's Cutthroat Porter (fitting name) and a Steamboat (?) IPA. They were both excellent.

I also chatted with a guy whose making a movie in the area. The 4th Indiana Jones. He's a grip. I asked him what else he worked on and he listed a bunch of movies made when I was still an infant: Blues Brothers, Biggest Little Whorehouse in Texas (one of my grandfather's favorites), 9 to 5 and other Dolly Parton greats. He had a lot of tatoos.

Also, a short but tough looking Mexican man with a skull cap pony tail (a tuft of hair on the top of the skull, the rest shorn clean, descending tightly in braids to the middle of his back) told me to "enjoy your beer man, you earned it." There was only one open seat and his wife sat there and I offered him mine, I only had a wee bit left in the glass. I think he assumed that because of my severe sunburn and two week old beard I was some sort of manual laborer, a landscaper perhaps. I was a landscaper at one or two times in my life, but this beard and burn were accumulated by standing around at 10,000' flinging a little tuft of hair and feathers at rising trout.

But it wasn't all luxury up in Rocky Mountain National Park. Hiking up and down the mountain at altitude can really take it out of you. And the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes and flies were horrendous. Particularly in the woods. It's like Canadian shield of something.

Anyway, I spent five days in the backcountry, fished three different lakes, caught a lot of greenback cutthroats, got some serious sunburn, and generally had a very fine time.

Here are some pictures.

I camped above "the pool" the first night. I thought the pool sounded like good fishing, but it wasn't. This is the pool.

Back when I was paddling whitewater, I could have run this. Fern Falls.

This was posted at Fern Lake. I didn't see anything bigger than a Marmot. Except the elk and deer. But the elk were everywhere in the park. Like squirrels at IU.

The patrol hut at Fern Lake that is "not routinely staffed".

It rained the first day I was there. This is above Fern Lake. Click both to enlarge.

Giant cutthroat eats Rockies.

The greenback cutthroat is a rare subspecies of cutthroat that survives in small, headwater streams and lakes mostly in Rocky Mountain National Park. This is the time they spawn (supposedly) and they all (or just the males?) have on their fancy red color. They always have a little red on their throats, hence the name, but this time of year they are rather spectacular. I've made a mosaic of greenback. Click it for a glorious bigger version. Click to enlarge.

Spruce lake is a couple hundred feet above Fern lake and about a mile to the north. I caught a lot of fish there. I also wanted to get up to an even higher lake, Loomis Lake, but I couldn't find the trail. There was a lot of snow and it was very, very steep. Click to enlarge.

A second giant cutthroat discovered!

Fern lake again. Click to enlarge.

Odessa lake is about a mile to the south of Fern lake and a couple hundred feet higher than Spruce lake. It was very pretty there. Click for bigger.

I really wanted to climb above tree line at least once and this seemed like the best way to go. This was steep, about 45 degrees, but above that, at least looking at the map, it was a fairly easy half mile walk to treeline. Unfortunately, about 1/4 of the way up I broke through the snow and found myself dangling four feet above a pretty serious torrent of runoff. I was lucky I guess that I didn't break through with both feet and get stuck under there. I slid down slowly and carefully.

Odessa lake looking east back down toward Fern lake. Click to enlarge.

The outlet of Odessa lake. There was a lot of snow up there.

Looking down on Fern lake from the trail to Odessa.

Fern lake again.

Did I mention the bugs were bad? They loved my stinky sock liners.

Tomorrow it's off to the Forks of the Gila, the land of Mogollon. The land of Geronimo. The land of Leopold.

The land of many rattlesnakes.

Then onto Phoenix. The temporary land of MB Pell! The blaze of leather.

you don't see us, but we see you

2007-06-10T23:33:00.002-04:00

Wednesday and Thursday June 6th and 7th

A hot wind blows in Kansas. 30, 40, 50 mph sustained winds? I’ve got to hold the wheel constantly to the left to make up for the wind. Killed the fuel efficiency. Roughly 375 miles per tank. Normally I get over 430. I guess the good thing about Kansas is that’s it’s hard to hide as a policeman. Except Chris got a ticket. 84 in a 70. He also ran over a shredded truck tire. It made a very loud noise. Chris and I tensed. Eyes wide. Ears perked. Leaning forward. Not speaking. Listening. For something. Hissing of tire? Can you hear that in the car flying over the wind scoured Kansas prairie? No flat tire. We keep driving. No problem until we pull into the gas station and Chris makes a sharp left turn. There was a clunk. A cruuaaanch. A bundle of wires hanging dangly from the wheel well. The sheathing worn through by the rubbing of the tire. Bare wires. Holy shit. This is not good.
The interior of the gas station was generously adorned with deer heads. And an elk head. White tail. Mule deer. We bought some electric tape and slowly wrapped each bare wire then bundled them up and with two pieces of Daniel’s red rope I secured the bundle to the holes in the wheel well where the original plastic clips held it for a dusty decade. Seems to be holding so far. I guess we’ll see. I think the real test will be wet weather.

Six hours of flat. But Kansas does has wireless internet access at rest stops. Which is cool.

Arrived at Ian and Kate’s in downtown Denver. They have a very nice apartment with an incredible view.

Some beers I drank:

Odell’s 5 Barrel: too prickly, long, spindly hop darts, kind of musty. Target? Challenger even? Not my favorite but widely loved by Chris, Ian and Kate.

Odell’s 90 Schilling: nice, toasty, almost burnt, but restrained. Beautiful. Drinkable. I love you.

Stopped in Lyon’s on the way to Estes Park and our cabin on the Big Thompson. Oscar Blues is there. Nice brewery. Wish I would have tried the Imperial Stout, Tenfidy (10.5% abv), and the cream ale, but I didn’t.

Oskar Blues Leroy: good, hearty brown ale. Tuned-down Old Chubb. Very drinkable.

Oskar Blues Dales: big for a pale ale. Not as good as the New York Times says it is. But canned craft beer rules.

Oskar Blues Old Chub: love it. Sweetish, but not too much. Very malty.

Oskar Blues Gordon: big, dare I say standard, American double IPA. It’s ok. Heartburn bringer.

Deep in the Big Thompson Canyon, Ian assaults me on the couch. He’s drunk. I’m a little drunk. Chris is kind of drunk. He’s got a cold. I’m learning to play hearts, a strange game. I don’t really have any intuition for the thing.

Caught a beautiful wild rainbow trout in the river tonight just behind our cabin. The Big Thompson River is very nice for the fishing. Wild browns and wild rainbows. Catch and release. We will catch many fish only seconds from our rustic cabin along the highway.

Got three hours of sleep last night sleeping with Chris in the king size bed in the guest room in Ian’s building. Denver is a manageable city. Clean. Pretty. Tame. That’s not why I didn’t sleep well. I think it was the discovery that there’s more bureaucracy to wade through than I expected. Reservations. Fees. Phone calls. Golden Trout Wilderness trailheads are rationed. Rocky Mountain National Park is really cold and snowy. Though that’s not a bureaucratic detail. Luckily, the Gila Wilderness, my 2nd destination, is a good old fashioned wilderness: 3.3 million acres open to exploration. No permits. No fees. “Camping is permitted anywhere in the wilderness. Please dispose of human waste responsibly. No littering. Camping in the wilderness can be dangerous. Please plan accordingly. Have a nice time.”

Friday June 8th

Bonobos are lovers. The thumber is one of their favorite moves.

Big Sky Moose Drool: Sean O’Connell brought this back from his trips to the Yellowstone wilds one time. I like this beer a lot. Very solid brown ale. Excellent session beer. Maybe on the strong side but I’ve had three or so in the last 2 hours and I’m enjoying myself very much thank you. Better than Leroy. A bit lighter and more drinkable but still flavorful and just terribly enjoyable.

Ian’s gas is dense like liquid foam. Brown, liquid foam. Chris and Ian are very much outdoing me in the gaseous expulsion category this weekend. Matt Dunn, a person of small wind on this trip. Tis a strange time.

My Indiana plates in the parking spot. Chris in Missouri from PA. Ian in Denver, in Nashville!, from Westport Connecticut. We are not from the Midwest. After my trip through Kansas I can at least say: Indiana, hey, at least it’s not Kansas.

Ian wants to start a science themed brewpub with me. He talks a lot of nonsense when he gets going.

Saturday June 9th

Caught a 12-14” greenback today in Dream Lake. The elevation makes hiking hard. We have a very nice table in the cabin. Laminated. But still, nice and worn and scratched up with the veneer worn off on one end, perhaps from fly tying, I thought as I clamped my vice to the table.

Ian caught a fish today. He has good nymphing mechanics (that I taught him). I caught a nice fat 14” rainbow and pretty 10” brown. Chris hooked up with a couple fish but lost them. As per the norm. He then sat on the bank for 30 minutes trying to tie a blood knot. He had the direction of wrap all wrong.

Finally got around to the O’Dell’s Double Pilsner. A very excellent “double beer”. My experience with double pilsners has not been great. Rogue? No good. But this beer actually tastes like a pilsner. Maybe a little tight in the finish. Glassy, but tight. Nice, grassy, herbal (appley?) hops up front. Strongly bitter, but only enough to balance the rather sweet finish that is the downfall of many double pilsners. Pils are light, crisp, refreshing beers. Not sweet, glassy, goupy 8% behemoth. But O’Dell’s comes closest to maintaining the façade of a pils.

Had more Moose Drool. Four more tonight. I love that beer.

I wiss mhiskey. You say that like you actually do miss whiskey.

You say that like you actually do miss whiskey.

Back in Denver now. Heading back to Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow for four nights of solo backcountry camping and fishing. Hopefully I won't get the terrors.

Supplies in the cabin.

Big Thompson rainbow. Click for bigger.

Chris and Ian in the Fall River in the park fishing for Greenbacks. Chris caught one! It was very windy. Click for bigger.

Big T brown trout that was rising but wouldn't take my dry flies. So I tossed him a wooly bugger and the rest is history. Click or bigger.

Ian and some of the cabin's incredible art work.

Ian and his first fish on a fly rod.

Big Big T rainbow. Click for bigger.

Greenback I caught on Dream Lake. The camera took a movie instead of a picture so this is a snapshot from that. Hence the quality issue.

Dream Lake. Click for bigger.

Chris fishing on Dream Lake.

Ian didn't bring his rod because he said he wasn't going to fish. But then he wanted to. Kate said "tie some leader on a stick".

Me and my camo. You don't see us, but we see you.

That is all.

mysterious, remote, brook trout stream

2007-06-05T12:44:00.000-04:00

I'm leaving in about two hours for the wild west. Well, first to Missouri. The Gateway to the West. But then tomorrow to Colorado I go. So it's time to get the east coast out of my system for now and post some pictures from an exciting and tiring 12 mile hike I took about 10 days ago in Pennsylvania. I circumnavigated a four or five mile section of a small stream that is in an isolated watershed on the Allegheny Plateau. I won't say where because there are no pictures of this stream online (at least that I can find) and I want to keep it that way. Suffice it to say that it is SOUTH of route 80. That's a huge hint because not much of the Allegheny plateau is south of rt.80. Particularly not a section as remote as this.

So this stream is supposed to hold a ridiculous population of native brookies and some big ones too. I caught a few little guys, 5-6 inches was the average, and missed many more. But I did see a big guy, probably 10-12 inches that I spooked. A very nice trout for this extremely skinny water. Reminded me of Panthertown actually.

This is a pretty transitional area, from the Ridge and Valley province and it's Appalachian Oak forests to the Allegheny plateau and its northern hardwoods association. It was all logged maybe 100 or 150 years ago so the forest isn't terribly old. It's a strange, open, park-like forest with a thick shrub layer of blueberry on the uplands and scattered in the valleys, but rhododendron is more common in the valleys. This is about 2000' in elevation. I walked along this for a mile or so then descended a medium grade slope a couple hundred vertical feet into the stream valley that was less than a mile wide and about 4 miles long. Click for bigger.

Busy beaver. Lots of beaver dams in the valley.

The valley was a mix of open, dammed, marshy, sand and silt substrate areas with blueberries, and wooded, high gradient, rocky sections.

A wooded, rocky section. I caught a number of trout out of this tiny pool at the top of the picture.

A big, open spot where I saw the big trout. Click for bigger.

Average size fish. They were much lighter in the open spots than in the wooded areas. Click for bigger.

Good spring flowers. Lot of Trillium and I saw that orchid on Penn's Creek. Click both for bigger.

The headwaters. A lot of little springs. Click for bigger.

Did some fishing one night in Black Moshannon Lake (another hint). Caught a pickerel and these other fishes. Click none for bigger.

The western onslaught will begin soon. Brace yourself.

the not wholly unexpected double posting: bass fishing

2007-05-31T13:04:00.000-04:00

This is about as good a time as any to show you a picture from my trip to Central PA last week. From Penn's Creek. One of the most famous trout rivers in Pennsylvania, on the east coast even. It's very hard fishing. The fish are ultra selective and fight like bulls on acid at a bullfight on acid. I hooked up with a couple big ones on the elk hair suplhur emergers but they broke me off. After an hour of casting at the one trout sipping something delicately off the surface under an overhanging hemlock branch, losing three or four flies in the process, the breaking off is a real let down. But, such is life. I'm walking up the river, about a mile or so upstream from the Poe Paddy bridge and I come across a very deep run along the bank. It looks maybe six or eight or even ten feet deep. Very deep and very long for Penn's. So I tie on a Wool Bugger, run that through the hole a couple times. Nothing. I know big brown trout eat crayfish. So I tie on one of my big, fat, #4 crayfish flies that I use for bass, weighs about seven pounds, and toss that thing in there, ticking it off the bottom.

Now I hope you all remember the lesson I learned a couple weeks ago in Pennsylvania, because it is immediately relevant. If you use a bass fly, you'll probably catch bass.

So I'm ticking it off the bottom. Tick. Tick, tick. Tick. SHAKE. SHAKE, SHAKE. I set the hook. Missed him. That was a big fish nice. I throw the shotput back in the hole. Tick. Tick, tick. SHAKE. BOOM. I set the hook. The fish makes a run downstream, sending the reel's drag into a screaming fit. HAHAHA. Nice.

Smallmouth don't fight as long as big trout, in my experience, but they fight strong.

What I love so much about this is that I caught this big smallmouth in a famous trout river. Nice. Click for bigger.

Today is a good day to post this picture because yesterday, thank the good lord, I caught two decent sized smallies at Clear Creek. Finally. That was probably my six or seventh trip there and it finally paid off. Caught a lot of fish last night. Sunfish, rock bass, some other bass I think. All on a green popper. Nice top water fishing. But a little after eight, it began to get dark, and BOOM. A big take. Made my reel scream again. I love that. It's rare when I trout fish.

R fucked with my camera when I saw him last and I thought I fixed everything but I didn't. He had the ISO set at 400. So these fish look a little funny. They really were a little on the yellow side though.

Click both for bigger.

And yes. Please do check up on our friend Stunt Pilot Buck Jones in the post below.

stunt pilot buck jones, part deux

2007-05-31T12:52:00.000-04:00

Stunt Pilot Buck Jones flies around camp in awkward, stilted loops. Ducking. Dodging. Flapping. Fighting with his loose, membranous wings to stay afloat.

Hey Mr. Buck Jones, where is it that you go?

He lands on the trunk of a young Tulip Poplar, sucked to it like magnetism. Clinging to the rough bark with tiny claws so high, his head hangs down towards the ground. I see his pig nose expand and contract, gulping air, recovering from aerobatics.

“I have rabies you fat fuck. Why the hell else would I be flying around in the middle of the goddamn day? Bats are nocturnal, dumbshit.”

Stunt Pilot Buck Jones still seems to have his wits about him despite the daylight flight.

“I’m sorry sir. I know bats are nocturnal. I suspected you might have rabies. I’m very sorry.”

“You can stuff your sorrys in a sack mister. Who the hell are you anyway? Coming into my woods, my mountains, gawking at my poor infected soul like I’m some sort of fucking circus freak. Well I’m not. I’m a little brown bat that’s had a rough go of it lately. So what. You win some, you lose some. That’s what my mother always used to say at any rate. Cold comfort at a time like this.”

He comes unstuck from the tree and flappity-flaps his way through three big rings around the grove of trees and then fwhip, right back to his perch.

“I know I shouldn’t be flying around,” he says, gasping for air, his tiny pig nose pulsing purposefully, “but I can’t help it. It’s amazing how powerful the desire is to just fly around in circles. I know it’s the little virus in there like a commando in my brain, making me do things I shouldn’t. I know that. I’m not stupid. But it feels just like any old desire I might have. Eat. Sleep. Fuck. Fly around in circles in the middle of the goddamn day. Whatever. I’m a slave to my neurons, you know?”

“So you feel completely normal?”

“100% Buck Jones.”

“That is fascinating.”

“Maybe for you. I’m a little worried myself. But enough of this. You sound big. What are you, 298? Three bills?”

“Well, more like 330 these days, not like I keep track.”

“That’s not good man. A guy like you. You’re young, right? Your vocal cords sound fairly young.”

“I’m impressed. I thought the radar was just for catching bugs and what not. Finding your cave.”

“I wish I could find my cave. Got a bit turned around here. Well, it’s like Gould and Lewontin said, or was it Gould and Vrba? Aptations my man, aptations are where all the money’s at these days. Evolve it for one thing, use it for another. Done alright by me so far.”

“Sure, sure, I see that. But the fact that Gould and Vrba got credit for an idea that’s been around since, well, at least since Darwin, bothers me sometimes. I mean, sure, Gould had a way with words, and Vrba, that’s a catchy name, right? But back to my weight. This is interesting. It’s kind of like your rabies, my weight. I know I shouldn’t eat as much as I do, but I can’t help it. The commandos in my brain tell me what to do and I pretty much don’t have a choice but to listen.”

“Ah, I see. So you don’t believe in free will?”

“Well, yes. You’re right. I don’t really believe in free will. But that’s no excuse you know. And I don’t think that’s really what’s at issue here either. I’m really just trying to sympathize with your case of hydrophobia by recounting a similar problem in my life. Seems to help people. Get them to sympathize with you for a minute. Makes their problem seem a little less pressing. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Hydrophobia?”

“Yeah. Hydrophobia. I heard somewhere that when you have rabies you’re scared of water.”

“Huh. Come to think of it, I am mighty parched. All this flying around and what not. Maybe I’ll get a drink.”

“Yeah, let’s go down to the creek there and have a look.”

Stunt Pilot Buck Jones releases his grip on the tree and glides very close to the ground before clapping his skin flaps and heading, more or less, towards the stream. He alights on a small Witch Hazel trunk, about three feet high, just above the edge of the water. I sit next to him on a large, flat, gray rock. He is at eye level.

“Yeeeeaaaah, soooo, I’m not thirsty now.”

“You just said you were ‘mighty parched’ a minute ago. All that flying around…”

“Well, that was a minute ago. I ate a big juicy bug on the way over here. I’m fine.”

“Ok, but I think it’s the hydropho…ack! Goddammit Buck Jones! What the hell…get off of me…OOOWWW! GODDAMMIT YOU BIT ME! ON MY FACE! SHIT!”

“Sorry dude. The commando. I guess you’ve got him now too. Oh well. Gotta go. Give my love to the kids!”

a goose in the woods is good

2007-05-27T21:40:00.001-04:00

The Brothers Dunn production company is proud to present a Mushemeelin production:

a goose in the woods is good

Featuring the Little Juniata River, brown trout, sulphur emergers and a goose in the woods at Penn's Creek.

Click the image to watch the movie:

If you can't watch WMV format videos, go here to watch it, although the quality is not as good.

And I've added a "video" archive section under "labels" to the right. Watch all the cinematographical magic from posts past.

nymphing with dad

2007-05-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

The extravaganza is rolling along smoothly despite some massive potholes on the home front. Been drinking at Victory two times now, went to Spence last night to see Colin's band Downhill Racer play, and The Bob and I are heading down to State Line Liquors near Newark Delaware in about an hour to buy $100 in fine fermented beverages. We might even swing through the Illadelph on the way back to hit up Monk's Cafe. Also made it to the Drafting Room last night and enjoyed a very fine Double IPA: Legacy's Hoptimus Prime. One of the best I've tried in a while. Intense, lingering bitterness with bountiful juicy hop character. Much better than Legacy's Hedonism I had at Boxer's Cafe last week, which was good, but much less flavorful with an intensely high perceived bitterness.

I head back out to Central PA tomorrow. Wish me luck.

So I went back to West Valley creek yesterday and caught this decent brownie on a Sulpher. Definitely looks like a stocked trout from the gills back. But look at the gills forward. From the gill forward it looks wild. I wonder why wild trout look like that and stockers look all silvery? Click for bigger.

Then, because I caught that Brook trout on a woolly bugger the other day, I threw a streamer in the hole a couple times. A Clouser Minnow. A bass fly. Know what happens when you fish a bass fly? You catch bass. Click for bigger.

the giant summer extravaganza continues

2007-05-16T13:33:00.000-04:00

Extravagant extravaganzas have rough patches just like other happenings, events, and goings on. And the GIANT FUCKING SUMMER EXTRAVAGANZA is no different. Michael "The Plucky Irishman" "R" Kelly canceled the North Carolina leg of the summer extravaganza. He's "in Canada" and "just has too much going on man". So we're scraping that leg. Which means I get to stay in the Dub-C [insert hand gesture here] until Sunday AND fish throughout central PA next week, including trips to hidden wilderness Brook trout streams with 70kg of fish per hectare. That is a shit ton of brook trout. I will also hopefully get to hang out with the Plucky One in Clairton and perhaps even be lucky enough to spend some time with Princess Kathy Yeo in Pittsburgh before she departs for the Iberian peninsula.

So, anyway, I fished West Valley Creek last night in the delayed harvest/artificial lures only section. I grew up fishing West Valley Creek, but the section I fished growing up is now closed. Remember when we got kicked off the property? Bitch.

Anyway, West Valley Creek is a small limestone stream that is about 5 minutes from my folks house and, somewhat miraculously, 2 minutes from Victory Brewing Company. There are a TON of fish in the delayed harvest section, but they weren't very interested in eating any of my flies. I missed a couple rises and a take or two on nymphs. I did catch a FAT Brook trout on a wooly bugger though. Which is weird considering the Pennsylvania Fish Commission says they only stock the creek with Rainbows and Browns. This makes me feel somewhat worse about making this fish bleed. Maybe it's a giant, secret native?

Anyway, the fish was hooked pretty deep and bled some, but after a minute or two of recovery darted off into the deep dark hole from whence it came.

Click for bigger.

breaking the slump, a photographic extravaganza

2007-05-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

The only way to break a fishing slump is to keep fishing. Things started out well on Wednesday. Caught a big brown trout. And a couple smaller ones. But then things slowed way down. I met my dad on Penn's on Thursday night and we didn't get shit. My father and I each caught one small fish on Friday. My brother caught three in about an hour that evening though. Decent sized, 10" brownies. That was on the Little Juniata again because even though we were staying within a stone's throw of Penn's Creek at the Feathered Hook in Coburn, Penn's was completely "blown out" by thunderstorms.

But we hit Penn's on Saturday. Drove out to Ingleby which is a tiny little group of houses and camps accessible only by 5 miles of dirt road. It's in the middle of nowhere. Morning started off great. My father and I each hooked and lost several decent sized fish on March Brown nymphs. But then they just stopped feeding and we never did manage to catch any. But Penn's Creek near Ingleby is beautiful.

That night we went back up to Coburn and fished a nice deep, flat stretch during an amazing March Brown hatch. But the fish weren't feeding at all. Very sporadic rises. I thought this was weird. Thousands of giant March Browns and no feeding! Frustrating.

Fished a bit on Penn's again on Sunday morning to no avail. But my dad and I went out to Valley Creek this morning in Valley Forge National Historic Park where there's a nice population of wild brown trout about 15 minutes from Philadelphia. And about 15 minutes from my parent's house. I missed one fish on a Sulpher, but other than that, no action. I'll have to go back out tonight somewhere to try to and break the slump.

The big brown trout from the Barree Gorge. Maybe 17". Caught it on a size #16 blue Copper John. A couple versions. Click them for bigger.

This is the first train bridge as you head upriver on the Little Juniata in the Barree Gorge. No road in the gorge. But a lot of trains. Click for bigger.

Before meeting my father on Penn's I tried for some brookies in the east fork of Standing Stone Creek in Greenwood Furnace State Park. No luck. But then I drove cross country style through Rothrock State Forest from Greenwood Furnace all the way to Boalsburg. I spent a good bit of time in that area in college. Particularly around Bear Meadow Bog and Alan Seeger. A view of the mountains. Click for bigger.

Here's a view of the bog. You can't enlarge it. Sorry.

This is looking up Penn's Creek about 1/4 mile below the trestle below Coburn. You can make out a bunch of March Browns in the air. Click to make it bigger.

My dad fishing Penn's in the fog. Click for bigger.

My dad and brother fishing Penn's in the midst of the huge March Brown hatch.

Up close view of a March Brown. March Browns are a group of very large Mayflies that hatch early in the season out west, but typically in mid May here in Pennsylvania. They are rather large Mayflies, but not quite as large as Penn Creek's most famous Mayfly, the Green Drake.

The path on the old railroad grade that follows Penn's from the Trestly below Coburn.

Two little Brownies I caught on the Little Juniata. That second one seems to have had a tough life.

Some one had a bad canoe trip on the Little Juniata.

My brother (and dad) on the Little Juniata with some of his fish.

Looking up the train tracks along the Little J.

My dad along the trail along the Little J. Click for bigger.

Funny story about this snake. Maybe I'll tell you about it some time.

My mom, dad, and brother on our annual mother's day hike in the Brandywine Conservancy's Laurel Preserve in southern Chester County. Look at the wilderness just a half hour from Philly! Click for bigger.

And, last but not least, General Maxwell's quarters in Valley Forge. Maxwell was from New Jersey and camped with the army in Valley Forge from 1777-1778. He had a nice house.

my lushfulness

2007-05-09T23:07:00.000-04:00

Now that I have a laptop I can blag from the road. Welcome to the future. Watch your step, the GIGANTIC FUCKING SUMMER EXTRAVAGANZA has begun.

I was up at 6:30am this morning, left Bloomington around 7:15 and drove 552 miles in 8 hours and 22 minutes with one stop for gas and peeing. That's an average speed of about 66 miles per hour.

Not bad.

I now sit in the Day's Inn of Huntingdon PA. I was supposed to camp out, but I decided against it for a number of reasons. Not least of which is the fact that my lushfulness is big and round and soft and pleasurable. Juniata College, my alma mator, is located here (in Huntingdon, not my lushfulness). I bought a bumper sticker and a t-shirt at the bookstore. Then I went to Boxer's Cafe, one of my favorite bars in the whole world, for some food and a pint of Legacy's Hedonism and short pour of Appalachian's Pils. Both were very nice. Huntingdon seemed very different to me. I've only been back once or twice since college.

Then, around 5pm, I drove 10 minutes down the road to the Barree Gorge. You remember Barree Gorge, right? Where that guy shot his deer rifle at me that time? I caught a very big Brown Trout. I will show you tomorrow.

the bob loblaw law blog

2007-05-08T11:51:00.000-04:00

I have made many grievous errors in the life of this blog, but one kind stands out particularly...ummm...brightly. Why hasn't somebody pointed this out to me before? That all my photographs I post are washed out. Too bright. Shit. Pure shit.

I purchased a new laptop on Saturday (and an IPOD). It's monitor is bright. Crystal clear. And when I look at my pictures on that computer, they appear to be washed out. I've had some suspicion that my desktop monitor is dark (it's 5 years old and was a discount, refurb to begin with), but the contrast between the two monitors is striking.

I apologize for any and all seared retinas and I will attempt to edit all new photographs using my new laptop.

The GIGANTIC FUCKING SUMMER EXTRAVAGANZA begins tomorrow, 6:30am. Prepare for an onslaught of blogging so fierce and varied it will confuse you.

taking off my shoes drunk

2007-04-28T01:25:00.000-04:00

Serious soldiers surround simple sins with celebrity
tickling tits left handed and tightening tourniquets.

Jumbling a bumble drunk and dark with whiskey.

Break a wall, all to fall, I am drunk.

Rye whiskey prickly and with cedar poisons
my reaction time a fog.

Avec un bon cul. Un gros cul pour moi.

All the trees leaning fees
to be paid.

My feet are hot
my head is not
take off the shoes today.

you don't need to be a fucking retard to have a good time

2007-04-22T13:53:00.000-04:00

I've seen some of my best friends reduced to stammering, drooling, incoherent sacks of flesh flailing about in vain at windmills. A good dose of booze, a social environment, and voila, the previously perfectly normal human being has become unchained. Unconstrained by rationality, by the broadest possible understanding of the social contract. I've seen a young child's Halloween ruined by a stealing spree. I've seen fights. I've seen money lost. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I've had my windshield shattered.

Of course, interestingly enough, I've had my windshield shattered once before by a drunk person. But I certainly wouldn't lump that incident in with the far more pedestrian event that happened yesterday. The first time my windshield was shattered by a drunk person the projectile's path originated from the passenger seat. On a trip to Newark DE to buy oxycontin. He was a bona fide alcoholic. A destroyer of lives. An intensely sick human being. He died.

The event that took place yesterday was more annoying than it was frightening. This weekend was the annual Little 500 bicycle race at Indiana University. The race immortalized in the rather good movie Breaking Away. It's a big deal on campus. Students here think it's the be-all end-all of college experience. Of course every college think they have some event like this. For Juniata it's Pig Roast. The students use this weekend as an excuse to be stupid. They drink heavily for the entire week leading up to "Little 5". They skip class. I had five students show up for class on Thursday...at 4 fucking o'clock in the goddamn PM. I call them my Little 5. I have thirty students in my class. This is unacceptable.

But everyone accepts it. The students here are generally very bad. Of course there are a handful of good students and I'm lucky to say I have a few this semester, but for the most part, students here are unmotivated in the extreme.

But boy do they know how to get drunk and be morons. College is not very hard. You simply have to go to class and study. The ones who know how to deal with the academic environment can probably get by with 15 hours of work a week. The less well suited to structured study, perhaps 30. You just have to do it. And most of my students this semester are taking easy classes. It's their final semester. Bowling. First Aid. History of Beer. History of Rock and Roll. No joke. But they decide to fuck off and get wasted and break stuff. Generally be reckless.

And this brings us to my latest Little 5 experience. It was about 7:45pm yesterday, Saturday April 21st. Around the peak of Little 5 debauchery. The race was over. The Cutters won. Everyone was wasted. I'm driving west on 3rd St. Locusts darken the sky. A giraffe and her offspring run free from the zoo. An old lady is mugged. Just past Henderson there is a group of young people playing baseball on the sidewalk. 1st St. is a fairly busy street. Not a great spot for baseball. The ball had escaped Lamonte's grasp and rolled into the street. Blown up with braggadocio, Lamonte steps nonchalantly into the avenue. The car in front of me swerves wildly into the left lane to avoid hitting him. Traffic in that lane stops. Lamonte does not acknowledge this scene. Rather, with his left foot on the curve, his right in the street, he picks up the ball and guns it. Apparently towards the meat that stands on the sidewalk next to my car. But, unfortunately, Lamonte's an idiot. Why throw the ball so fast when my car is so close to the target? Because Lamonte is a drunk asshole. Little 5 rules!

I was pissed. I got out of the car, shaking with anger. Swearing. Lamonte told me to chill out. There's no reason to yell at him. He'll give me the money. His meat friends said he was "legit". And that it's no big deal man, not even a day in shop. I told them that was a great fucking point. Not a pain in the ass at all. In fact, I should be thanking them for breaking my windshield because it's such a fucking delight to deal with.

I hate Little 5.

all around my hat, for a twelve month and a day

2007-04-15T01:06:00.000-04:00

Coarse, gray cement smells dusty in the sun. It rolls out unevenly in front of us blending into the sky in the shimmer at a distance. We walk for many hours. Feet sore. Throats dry and voiceless. A rusty chain link fence eight feet high runs parallel to our path, anchored in the sandy soil silently. Rusting. Slowly. Quiet.

The fence posts offer tempting shade where some insects congregate in the weeds and sand. But the long, cool, shifting bands of shade are too small for humans. No other shade in sight. Perfectly endless concrete we walk.

One foot in front of the other. Plodding. Sorely. Blisters burn buried below. Lips sliced through by dryness and sun, a mosaic of scabs. Slicing pain radiates into my dry mouth. Itself cracking, caking dust. Wheezing.

The concrete crumbles slowly, giving way to sand and dirt and concrete mixed together. It crunches and shifts underneath our feet. The fence rolls up and runs away rusty. Squeaking and scared.

No concrete now, just sandy and soil and chaparral rocks. Mesquite. Up and around the corner. Cliff dwellings wall off black holes in the rock. Bushes grow to trees and shake their limbs at us. How were we to know? We had to come this way, no other way to...proceed. Promise to go.

Large forest now with real soil moist. Cool breeze blows hair and mist on dry lips. Water falling in the distance. Plunge pools and mist. Clear cold water falling. Diving. In.

Here are some pictures from the end of my spring break. I thought I had more. But I don't.

Downtown Sylva North Cackalack. Click for bigger.

goin' down to paintnertown: spring break part II

2007-04-04T12:50:00.000-04:00

This here story ain't about no warm water fishes. Hell no. It's about Panthertown, where Brook Trout, the mighty char, rule the roost (and bears shit fifteen feet from your head while you sleep).

So Daniel and I hiked down into Panthertown and stayed in the shelter at the base of Big Green. Pretty nice accommodations. Open on all sides, just a metal roof over a wood floor, but nice compared to a tent. Except when it's pouring rain all night long and you notice the large, oval indentations in the leaves under the eaves that look about bear size. And Daniel left two days ago. It's just you and any bear that needs shelter from the storm. What was that? Was that a bear? It's hard to hear with the rain on the roof.

But when light returns to Panthertown it's one of my favorite places on this whole earth.

Complete with new bridges! These are a huge improvement over the old ones, although I'd very much prefer to not have any at all. That sure would slow down the traffic through the valley.

So Daniel and I didn't have much luck the next day. We each caught a tiny little Brookie out of Panthertown Creek above Granny Burrell Falls, but then he hiked out and the fishing started to pick up that evening. I caught a couple nicer fish, 5-7" out of the Talking Tomorrow Hole, one of my favorites in the valley. It's little, but there is a bit of a rock wall on each side and it sounds like a dinner party is happening somewhere nearby.

Daniel at the bottom of Granny Burrell. Click for bigger.

Daniel looking in the spooky pine woods on the way to the sandbar pool with the cliffs on Blackrock in the background. Click for all the glory.

Daniel with his women's energy bar.

I also caught a couple nice fish out of the apparently very deep hole right at the bottom of Granny Burrell falls. There is a big log in that hole and I'd throw my orange stimulator right next to it and the fish would come up almost vertically from the deep dark depths to devour it.

Click for bigger.

The next day I hiked up over Little Green Mountain and down to my very favorite hole in Panthertown. I pulled two very nice Brookies from it and about a dozen more decent sized ones.

This is at the bottom of Granny Burrell. Click for bigger.

A healthy spec from the pool below Granny Burrell.

A wee bit of snow clinging for its life on the back side of Big Green Mountain.

On the top of Little Green.

A long brookie from my favorite pool.

Uh oh.

Two big buddies from my favorite hole. Click both for bigger.

The shelter.

It rained hard all Thursday night and the river was way up and kind of muddy. So I decided to head out on Friday, a day early. I drove up to Deep Creek to try my hand with big streamers in the muddy water to no avail. But there was a guy there spin fishing with a big frog lure who hooked nice 18" Brown trout.

A waterfall less than a mile up the Deep Creek Trail.

I took a shower at Sean's and met up with him and Mark at the Tea House where much debaucherization ensued. Part three soon.

indianabeer all up in here

2007-04-03T01:34:00.000-04:00

A new and heretofore completely unexpected account of Gravity Head 2007.

Click the picture of Dr. Roger Baylor to read it.

clear creek

2007-03-27T23:49:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd make a run at fishing in southern Indiana. Try my luck at some smallmouth bass fishing. Zack, the fly fishing guy at JL Waters, told me Clear Creek has some good smallmouth fishing and I read a good DNR report that confirms this. So I went to check it out twice this week and I think I'll head back tomorrow. I got skunked the first day but yesterday I picked up two Long Eared Sunfish and a fat shiner. Hopefully I'll get some smallmouth tomorrow. I'm fishing the section near Ketchum Road a couple hundred yards upstream from Cedar Bluffs. It's a nice creek. Smells like the Brandywine. Reminds me of my youth.

Click for bigger.

it's a bonanza!

2007-03-25T01:34:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you just find a lot of good stuff on the internet all at the same time.

There's a lot of crap on Youtube, but these movies are great. They're mostly bluegrass and "old timey jazz" performances and jams, but there's also a fantastic rendition of Folsom Prison Blues by some young looking folks.

philosophy

2007-03-25T01:02:00.000-04:00

This is a great article about free will and philosophy's relationships to the sciences. I seem to remember that it was this kind of stuff that got me interested in philosophy. My sophomore year in college I think. I was pretty intrigued by a passage in The Brothers Karamazov where one of the characters claims that all our actions are just the wiggling of nerves in our brain. I wish I new philosophy of mind and metaphysics better. And The Brothers Karamazov.

I got the link at Leiter Reports.

stunt pilot buck jones

2007-03-23T23:28:00.001-04:00

Tell me Mr. Buck Jones, where is it that you go? You and your flap, flap, flappin' little leather wings, dipping and diving and swerving and flying around my head at noon. Don't you know little buddy, don't you know that bats aren't supposed to fly around during the middle of the day? You probably have rabies. I'm glad you don't bite me.

I hit up Gravity Head on Friday night with Ryan, Yaniv, and Chris then left directly from New Albany on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, yet again, I decided to take 441 straight through the Smokies because I wanted to go to the fly shop in Cherokee. I knew it was a mistake but I always forget about how bad the stupid fucking traffic is in the Gatlinburg area. Sean and I hiked into the site at the bottom of Forney Creek, slightly less than 3 miles from the end of the Road to Nowhere. Luckily I had packed steaks and a growler of Bell's Hopslam to ease to my frazzled nerves. Sean had a good bit of single malt and we got pretty tight that night. We cooked the steaks on sticks over the fire.

The wild pigs were real bad in camp. The ground was all torn up throughout and the little bastards even had the nerve to come rooting around while we slept. The rooted up the area where we cooked and where I was laying next to the fire.

Sean I explored the area on Sunday, walked down to where Forney Creek empties into Fontana. Pretty weird landscape. Ran into a group of backpackers that were on the wrong side of the river and too chicken shit to cross it. Who knows how they got there.

I did a good bit of fishing that day but only ended up with a 6-7" rainbow under the bridge at the junction of Bear Creek trail and Forney Creek trail. But I did catch it on a Hares Ear nymph I tied myself. Which was pretty cool.

After a couple pulls on Sean's signature backcountry whiskey vessel (a metal fuel bottle), he set off down the trail and I hit the creek again but came up fishless. There was a pretty serious hatch on, maybe Blue Winged Olives, but the fish just weren't feeding on the surface.

The next day I hiked up Forney Creek about 4 miles to the confluence of Jonas and Forney Creek. It's a neat hike which goes past some old logging camps and early white settlements. I spent the mid-day with a bat I named Stunt Pilot Buck Jones. I seriously think it had rabies. I also spent about 2 hours fishing up Jonas Creek which was extremely brushy. It was tough making my way upstream. But the little fish were hungry and I missed a lot of strikes. I think mainly because they were so little they couldn't get the hook in their mouth. But also probably because I'm slow.

Daniel showed up sometime in the afternoon and we fished a bit I think but not too long. He had stopped to see Sean on his way up and Sean told him about the steaks so lo and behold he packed some in too. That was cool. So we cooked steaks (on a grill this time) and shot the shit about his new life as a PhD student at Clemson studying fisheries biology. He told me some cool stuff about Shad and fish ladders.

The next morning we headed down the creek a couple hundred yards to a big, deep pool I found the day before and fished around it for a couple hours with no exciting results except that I lost 4 rechargeable batteries out of my camera in the creek. They went deep down under some rocks and I couldn't retrieve them. Nothing like pollutin' to make you feel good about yourself.

We decided the fishing in the Smokies sucked and that we'd head down to Panthertown where I knew the fishing would be better. The hike out was on the longish side for a fishing hike, ~7 miles, and the first bit was pretty uphill and the last bit was pretty down hill. The worst part was that Daniel had to hike the whole thing the day before going the other way. But we did run across Silas the Horse Wrangler.

We were seated on the trail after the long uphill having a drink and a snack and we hear something loud coming around the corner. I yell "HEY BEAR! HEY BEAR!" Thinking it might be a bear running down the trail at us. It turns out if was a dude on a horse with a pack horse in tow. He laughed at me. He says, "You thought I was a bear? That shit don't work man. The Park Service tell you that's what you're supposed to do. But it don't work."

He had long gray hair and long gray handlebar mustache. The rest of his face was very freshly shorn however. He wore denim overalls and no shirt. His small but obvious gut hung out. He was quite good on the horse though. There were trees across the trail ahead. He noted that the trail crews were lazy and that he knew because his brother worked 'em. He rode his horses down into the hollow and up the steep side around the trees and back onto the trail. He might have been Eustace Conway for all I know. I'm just going to call him Silas the Horse Wrangler.

Daniel and his serious vehicle.

Act II sometime soon.

on my way

2007-03-09T11:13:00.000-05:00

I haven't slept well in a week. I've been too busy. I've been too excited. For Spring Break! Show me your titties baby! Panama City Beach! WOOOOOOOO! Just kidding. I'm going to North Cackalack. I'm going to the Smokies. To Forney Creek. For a week. With Daniel Hanks. And Dr. Séan O'Connell. I'll be in the woods for one whole week and it will be incredible. The forecast is good, highs near 70. That probably means good insect hatches. Blue Winged Olives, Quill Gordons, Blue Quills even. Many a trout will be deceived. And that's not all. I kick the whole thing off tonight with a visit to the opening day of Gravity Head 2007: Gravity Madness, March isn't just about basketball anymore!, at, of course, Rich O's in New Albany. Where I will sample many high gravity beers and after hours of tedious deliberation with myself, will select a favorite of which I will purchase a growler. I will then pack that growler into the woods on Saturday night and Dr. Séan O'Connell and I will drink it down and cook steaks on sticks over a fire.

See you in a week. I will return with pictures a plenty and hopefully zero Rattlesnake bites.

the session #1: stouts

2007-03-02T20:44:00.000-05:00

Stout: the beer that means something. That's my motto at any rate. And it's a damn fine motto if you ask me. We all search for meaning in this life and when it's found you should make it clear to the world, OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE. Shout it out from the top of your lungs: I LOVE BURNT BARLEY BABY.

Searching for good craft beer in the Midwest is kind of like playing a giant game of Capture the Flag. Sure, there's good craft beer to be found, but you're not exactly walking on roads paved with golden malt, verdant hops and crystal clear spring water. The roads are paved with corn. Literally. One hundred bushels crushed for every linear mile. It's a kind of earth-friendly filler. We power our cars with it. We make our roads with it. Hell, I wash my hair with it every other day, gives it that wholesome Midwestern shine.

But look long enough and hard enough and you can find the flag. Soar through the cornfield with eyes peeled wide. Hark! A settlement! Perhaps their victualers brew a strong and dark drink, roasted and toasted to keep our bodies strong. OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE I scream from the top of my lungs. I've found some stouts and I drank them down and here I will of them write about.

Dr. Stan Hieronymus thought it was a good idea to have a beer blogging carnival and I couldn't agree more. So this is my little piece of participation. Click the pictures for grand versions.

UPLAND BREWING COMPANY (Bloomington IN)
Chocolate Stout

The head fades quickly and a sharp, shiny, metallic scent wafts up to slice at my nose. Dry, grainy, chocolate malt asserts itself and I feel cheated. Plastic chocolate pinches my mouth and lingers unwelcome.

BARLEY ISLAND BREWING COMPANY (Noblesville, IN)
Black Majic Java Stout

"I won a silver medal at the GABF this year in the 'coffee flavored' category, naaa naa na."

"You're an idiot. You don't know how to spell magic."

"It's a clever play on words. And it's trademarked."

"You are made of too much coffee. At first you appear to be rather viscous. But you're not. It's all lies. You've always been a lier. It all started at the hotel in Key West. You weren't going to the store to buy limes. You were doing unspeakable things for a fix in the alley behind the Lazy Gecko. More or less in plain view. People staring in disbelief. WHY DIDN'T I END IT THEN? You're not a bad beer, you just need to beef up a little bit. Fill out in the hips. In the butt. A little bit of body and a dash of residual sugar would go a long way in combating your acrid java ways."

"I don't even know who you are."

BELL'S BREWERY (Comstock, MI)
Kalamazoo Stout

Dear Kalamazoo Stout,

You smell like the wedding cake of King Edward the VIII. Delicate yet sumptuous. Creamy yet nimble. I wade through your waters in ecstasy. I dream of taking you away on a romantic trip to Pennsylvania Dutch Country where we can lay nestled in each other's arms until daybreak.

With love,
Matthew Daniel Dunn, Esq.

FOUNDERS BREWING COMPANY (Grand Rapids, MI)
Black Rye

This is definitely not your father's stout. Mainly because I'm not sure it's a stout at all. But I bet you father would enjoy the way the spicy spicy spicy nose slaps you around like a stripper's tits. That sweet stripper smell. Mysterious yet comforting. Picante! Again, unfortunately, much like our friend Black Majic (sic), Black Rye needs to put on an extra pound or two. She kicks so much game that she needs a little bit of junk in the trunk to give her a solid foundation. To kick all that game.

NEW HOLLAND BREWING COMPANY (New Holland, MI)
The Poet Oatmeal Stout

Not very stout
Sweetish nose about
to shellac my tongue.

It smells like candy to me- too smooth
Ryan thinks Carafa malts are the culprit.

TWO BROTHERS BREWING COMPANY (Warrenville, IL)
Northwind Imperial Stout

Fruity. Diacetyl I dare to conjecture? Do you contain anise? Licorice? You are strange.

Ryan, Brian, Yaniv, the Stinks... without you, none of this would have been possible.

blueberry compote and fireworks: a biannual meeting

2007-02-21T11:26:00.000-05:00

I drove to the center of our country today. At 99 miles an hour. Chewing tobacco is primarily a driving hobby for me. Keeps me awake. Keeps me sane as I throttle through frozen corn fields and truck stops. Dodging woodchucks and the cop's drop and Midwestern transvestite hookers who walk balding in high heels along access roads fighting 30mph wind gusts and the gas station attendants who tell me: "She...he...it, whatever. It walked in here, used the bathroom, and walked back out. Got no damn idea what the hell the story is. We called 911." These are good Christian people who also chew tobacco and hunt deer and wear camouflage jackets.

On the long straight trip from the Kansas City International Airport (with daily flights to Paris) we met the Fireworks Magnate, an honest to goodness Tycoon-Robber Barron who completely looked the part except for the jeans and sweatshirt. Told us we were buying the wrong stuff, the kid's stuff. We were wary of the pitch but soon came to realize he spoke the truth. Owned 52 stores in 10 states. Worth $43 million. That is if we could believe the huge hag of a Midwestern slut who checked us out and gave us $10 in fireworks for free as she copped Ian's knob and jerked on Ryan's chain. I stayed out of it. You can get worts through that kind of contact.

We arrived at the house and played with the kids for a couple hours. Taught them how to gamble some and then Brooke took our money in a cutthroat game of Uno. She has a strong poker face. Bailey refused to play with us. She's kind of snooty. But she did show us her Cinderella (?) magnet things which was cool because Cinderella looks pretty hot in her skivvies.

The Missouri State Wrestling Championship was a nemesis far too young and sinewy for us to challenge, particularly in a blizzard, so we ended up driving around for a while in the snow. We'd head to the the Flat Branch Brewpub and gorged ourselves. Purchased four growlers of brewed-fresh beer and sat awkwardly as Mike Pell heckled our waiter: "That group there, they're gonna to skip out on the check. That's what they do. That's how they make their living. They travel around the middle parts of our fair nation buying growlers and obscene dinners then they dash out the door like so much fart in the wind and you're stuck holding the bag for a cool $200."

"Sir, you're going to have to keep your voice down or I'm going to cut you off."

"Cut me off! CUT ME OFF! I'm a doctor you son of a bitch, this is prescription!"

"Regardless sir, you'll have to take your seat now or I'll call the manager."

"Mike, dude, sit down, you're creating a scence."

"You wanna scene, I'll give you a scene!"

He flipped over the table like it was a child's toy. It knocked his wife clean out of her chair and onto the ground where his hot bowl of tortilla soup proceeded to scald her eyes and she screamed.

He picked up a chair and threw it through the side window and slipped out through the hole like so much fart in the wind.

During the commotion we took the opportunity to skip out on our check. As per the norm. Like so much fart in the wind.

Chris drives fast on the snow covered back roads. They're hilly and curvy and the speed limit's 45mph. He takes it all at a cool 60. He's got a Suburu, all wheel drive. No worries. Ryan drinks most of his growler on the ride home and my knees rub sore on the dashboard.

We gamble until four in the morning. Small stakes. I was down $20 until we started playing blackjack. Cedar the sad one-eyed-dog was good luck for me. I mounted a counterinsurgency. The growlers were gone so we started on the Boulevard Pale Ales and the Schlafly. I had a glass or two of the Evan Williams Single Barrel Bourbon and Ryan took a pull off the bottle.

The kids woke us up the next morning well before noon. Ryan said "Don't let me drink bourbon anymore and don't let me play blackjack drunk." So we made Belgian Waffles and a blueberry compote, eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes. We were, unfortunately, out of beer, so I had to take some bourbon as my digestive. It's a rough life.

We lit off fireworks and played more poker and then made a run to town for provisions. Went to Walmart and Ian took picutres of Fancy-Manhattan Ryan pushing the cart around. Ryan was ashamed. We bought a couple cases of beer and ping pong paddles, balls, and a net. All we had was the table. But if you're only going to have one thing for ping pong, the table should probably be it. We managed to get another meal at Flat Branch because none of the same people were working. We skipped out on that check too.

Snowy back roads and scary driving. We're back at the house. Ryan loses $5 to Ian in ping pong. Mike Pell and Dianna arrive and we play beer pong which I pretty much dominate. We play more poker. We play Oscar which I insist on calling Joachin Phoenix, or just Joachin for short. We light more fireworks. This is when we realize the Fireworks Magnate was right. We should have bought bigger fireworks. I eat some ice cream with the left over blueberry compote on it.

We are drunk. Again.

The next day we take it easy. I enjoy an egg sandwich on a blueberry bagel which is way better than it sounds. We gamble. Chris drinks several beers before 2pm. We decide we need some activity, dammit. Need to flex our muscles. We sneak into the athletic facility and Ian and I lift weights for an hour. That's fucking dedication yo. I haven't missed a workout in a month. Chris kills everyone in racquetball. I really suck at racquetball. We go home and make a massive pasta and sausage dinner and an inordinate amount of salad which no one touches. It was going to be good too: spring greens, cucumbers, red onions, avocado, and crushed pecans. But after you stuff your fat face with pasta and sausage, the salad isn't terribly appetizing.

We gamble until 2am as we finish the last case of beer.

The Mid-Missouri Distinguished Juniata College Alumni Biannual Meeting of Philosophy and Leisure was a success.

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space debris and my one deep breath

2007-02-07T22:43:00.000-05:00

Cramped and covered by whirling space debris, there is no escape. We’ve filled up this earth with crap and now our offal extends into the last frontier. There’s nowhere that’s open, there’s nowhere that’s free, there’s nowhere with wide open windows peering clearly into deep space. It’s cluttered up with junk and I’m claustrophobic and beginning to pant and sweat. Crouching down in a tiny closing box, my chest is tight. I can’t breathe.

I took a trip to Florida once, way out past Key West. The Dry Tortugas are a small group of small islands that sit in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles from the nearest electric light. I thought I was getting away from it all. I was but a speck upon a speck upon the deep blue sea, free to feel space all around me. At night we laid on the beach in the sand drinking scotch, the warm sub-tropical waters lapping at our feet. The dark was pure dark. Whole and encompassing. Complete to the horizon. Stars melted together in patches of pale yellow breaking up on the edges. Single brilliant pin pricks of light lived there. The milky way lay draped over it all like lace.

Drunk and sandy we watch the sky for signs of life. But all we see are satellites, streaking through the night.

A single pin prick rattled loose.

They tell us that the critical density of space debris has been reached. 10,000 so-called detectable objects are about to begin a spontaneous ramshackle game of busted billiards until all that’s left is a cloud of dust to envelop the earth. A busted old satellite and an astronaut’s wrench are going to collide in four days, a less than dramatic catalyst for the calamity. Well fuck that man. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. But there’s nowhere else to run. We’re covered in this shit like so much smog laying low on Los Angeles. But unlike the blessed city of angels we can’t just up and leave the cesspool behind, dashing for the Kern River Plateau at 100 miles per hour with a bottle of cold beer in one hand and a fly rod in the other. No. That’s not an option. All we can do is lay back and bask in the crap. There is no escape. Space debris surrounds us.

Laying there on the beach I thought I was free. My chest could finally expand to its full proportion and take in freedom wholeheartedly. But then one rattled loose. And another. They’re blocking my escape. They’re blocking my deep breath.