Butter Side Up - Preview

It's no secret that I've finally gotten around to playing with my Redington Butter Stick here in the Minnesota Driftless Area.  I've been teasing that I'd write more about it soon, because I had actually planned to do so by now.  Truth is, I'm still learning NOT to cast this fiberglass rod like a graphite stick.  I even resorted to some lawn casting at the campground last Saturday afternoon before I trekked downstream past sundown.  I need one more weekend with my mellow, yellow friend before I start telling stories about it.

One quick tale:  While I was lawn casting out in front of the Mobile Hotel®, our campsite neighbor popped up from his chair and watched me for a few casts.  He and his wife, both retired, recently decided to take up fly angling.  He watched me make several casts and then asked, "How do you get it to unroll like that at the end?"  I was simultaneously pleased and horrified... Talk about the blind leading the blind!

Trout Trek Part IV - Trout Therapy for Parkinson's Disease?

Before I conclude the Trout Trek 2016 series with the chronicles of Day 2 on the river, I wanted to note an interesting effect that an afternoon of catching big trout had on my normal Parkinson’s Disease symptoms.  I made this same trip on the same weekend the prior year.  Then, it was obvious that Parkinson’s Disease (PD) had progressed enough over the winter season that my already marginal fly casting “skills” were, well, fading.  I am right-hand dominant, and PD randomly (?) selected my right side as my “Parkinson’s Side.”  This simply means that my symptoms started on the right side (a tiny thumb twitch) and are generally more prominent, intense, and conspicuous than on my left.  So, I set about learning to fly cast with my left hand, which I wrote about extensively (see here, here, and here.)

Notice the bent right wrist, a recent symptom of increased muscle
tightness, caused by Parkinson's Disease (click photos to enlarge)

It took six months of effort, nasty self-criticism, and training from patient fishing guides, but my ability to cast with my left arm now far exceeds anything I could ever have done with my right.  I will grudgingly thank PD for this.  It made these two days of fishing in Montana much more enjoyable.  I could reach spots from the back of the boat that were out of reach from the front last year, mend better, and feel good about fishing rather than getting frustrated.  But something even more satisfying happened toward the end of the first day’s float trip down the Missouri River in Montana.

Opportunity Knocks Twice, Part III: I Am Not Lefthanded

Can you teach an old river new tricks?

Flathead River downstream of Columbia Falls, Montana

“Water follows the path of least resistance.”  If humans are mostly water, we should not be shocked to discover that our nature reflects our composition.  Our lives tend to run a fairly static course.  The course of each life’s riverbed wanders as we gush with early life, then settles into gorges, canyons, valleys, and channels that rarely deviate.  Only dramatic events tend to alter the flow. 

A 7.6 magnitude earthquake outside Yellowstone National Park dramatically changed part of the Madison River in 1959.  A landslide dam completely blocked the flow for a time.  Humans were left with a choice: leave the river, in the form a newborn lake, to it’s own devices or intervene.  Leaving nature to determine the future could have resulted in more drama downstream if the young dam breached and released a flood into the Madison River valley.  A spillway was built to allow the river to adapt to the new conditions, with less drama.

Something started tossing rocks into the waters of my life a few years ago.  Then boulders.  A thumb twitch was the first pebble that made noticeable riples in an otherwise calm stretch.  I’ll spare you the tedium of naming each rock in the pile of debris that’s harshed my mellow groove.  Suffice it to say that something dramatic continues to alter the course of my river.  One of the rocks is messing with my right side.  The Principle of Least Resistance dictates that I drift with it until it merges into something else.  I’ve stayed this course, and now I choose to dig a side channel instead.

We have met the Enemy, and they are Us

The fact that I'm writing again means that I'm suffering from a serious affliction.  Sadly, it affects far too many people, especially anglers who've sat through a long winter.  We suffer from an insidious illness that's been festering in the cold weather: hope.

I'm hoping for time on a cold, clear stream in the near future, in pursuit of trout.  I hope for many more such visits this spring, summer, and fall.  I have a brand new St Croix 3-weight fly rod that whispers to me at night like the One Ring:  The Precious wants to return to The Master.  (Yeah, I know I'm stretching the metaphor.)  Once I figure out how to have a few successful fly angling sessions in Southeastern Minnesota's "driftless region," I hope to bring my kids and wife along to share the experience with them.  We all have decent fly fishing outfits now, and I truly mean to take the time to fish while I can, before the parts of my brain that are in decay make it too difficult to fish anymore.  I will fish with my kids, teach them what I can, and demonstrate the patience and love my father showed to my 3 brothers and me.  With any luck, my wife will want to come along and join in the fun from time to time.  Someday, fishing "by proxy" through them may be the only fishing I can do.

I plan to write, as well.  I need to remind myself that perfection is the enemy of "good enough."  I don't need to write several pages at a time that might be worthy of publication in Field and Stream.  I just need to release the words, let them swim away, out into the wild.  (Wow.  I think I just make myself sick, a little...)  And I apparently need to suppress my inner critic.  Writing has always been a laborious and painful process for me, as I imagine it is for many/most writers.  I have friends who can produce long, elegant blog postings with a mere wave of their pinky finger.  I can't let admiration and envy be a barrier.  Just like I can't burn the candle at both ends for work anymore.

An example of a site I recently discovered and admire: Silk Lines and Paper Hulls.  The author, Gary Thompson, lives around Sheridan, Wyoming, and I'm seriously envious of him.  I miss Wyoming, even more so since I finally fished the tiny Tongue River on top of the Big Horn Mountains near Sheridan this past summer.  Gary also writes very well.  His most recent posting, Empty Pockets, talks of a day of settlement, looking back on the previous year and realizing you fell short of your expectations of yourself, letting far too many little things get in the way of living.  My time on the Tongue River, last summer, one short afternoon where I reeled in that gorgeous cutthroat trout and ran nose-to-snout with a young moose, was my one trout outing for the whole year.  My settlement shows a lot of red in the ledger.

I have stories I wish to tell.  Telling them in imperfect fragments will get results.  And I plan to make more fish stories this year.  Please, Inner Critic, do shut the hell up and stop telling me that this whole thing reads like a New Year's Resolution.  Perhaps a glass of Pinot Noir is in order...

Welcome aboard.  Enjoy the ride.

--Me and the Little Voices