You may recall that on my trip to Montana just a few weeks ago I met a guy named Gaper who had written a fishing book. Well in a fortuitous plot twist it turns out his publisher, Tosh Brown, lives right here in Austin Texas! Soon after I wrote my post about Gaper, a mutual friend connected me with Tosh.

Next thing you know we’re having coffee at Austin Java and brainstorming ways to spread the word about his new project. Cause it’s a good one. 

Tosh is a venerable outdoor photographer and author who recently launched a new company called Departure Publishing. I’ll spare you the traditional press-release speak and say bluntly: This Is Not Your Father’s Outdoor Book Publisher.

It’s no secret digital cameras and message boards have redefined the relationship between fly-fishing and media. A relationship that was once a predictable, stale marriage is now a torrid and tumultuous affair.

Tosh wants to harness this same edge and energy into the world of outdoor print. He plans to publish writers that speak to (and sometimes even shout at) the innovative, yet disenfranchised derelicts who embody the ever-warring extremes of idealism and cynicism within fly-fishing.

Uh, I think he’s talking to us.

Miles is his debut author. Miles Nolte (aka Gaper) was a fishing guide in Alaska who detailed his daily adventures in a bulletin board thread on The Drake website. The thread, titled AK Chronicles, became so popular that throngs of people were logging on daily to follow his journey. His book, The Alaska Chronicles, is based on the now infamous posts on The Drake and will be available Spring 2009.

It doesn’t get more grassroots than that. The guy didn’t even start with a blog. He posted a thread in a bulletin board. It’s like the field of dreams….if you post it they will come….and read it. And comment. And rant. And beg for more. Let’s just say when it comes to fly-fishing, Miles Nolte puts the cult in culture.

Support your fellow troutlaws who are trying to shake things up and bring you something fresh. Visit the Departure website to learn more about the backstory and sign up to win a FREE signed copy of the book. This book is bound (hardbound in fact) to cause a stir and you could have a free signed copy. Just click here to enter your name for the drawing.

No duplicate entries and dead relatives are not eligible. Good luck and CHEERS to Tosh & Miles for laying it all on the line in an effort to entertain and make a difference.

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I recruited Little Chick to the project so she could experience this patriotic service project. We started at the grocery, picked out our supplies and made a feast of cupcakes.

Then we went to the Veterans Affairs web site to find our spot. We decided on a Veterans Outpatient Clinic on the east side of town.

I will admit I was a little disappointed when we arrived because the parking lot was so empty. Oh well, I mused to Little Chick, “We must just be really early. Plus, even if there aren’t a number of veterans in the clinic today, the people who work here will appreciate the cupcakes too!”

Of course we had to snap a few pictures before heading in.

We marched boldly toward the entrance, excited to share our humble (albeit heartfelt & delicious) offering with our heroes. But when the electric doors wouldn’t slide open I took a closer look at the sign staring me in the face:

Oh. My. Freaking. Word. Are you kidding me???? But it wasn’t a joke. Sorry folks, clinic’s closed. Moose out front shoulda told ya.

I kinda felt like doing this.

But they don’t have a moose outside the clinic and Little Chick and I were laughing too hard to get too upset. I swear, does this sort of thing only happen to me?

Oh well. Determined to salvage the quest in some form or fashion, we delivered the cupcakes to our church where they are hosting a dinner this evening, so all was not lost.

HAPPY VETERANS DAY.

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Once again we had fun drinking Lone Stars and swapping fishing stories. Then The Meat Purveyors took the stage and wowed the crowd with some edgy cowpunk-style bluegrass that was out of sight.

You have to love a guy who plays the hell out of a mandolin and a Texas redfish…

A purveyor of meat and fish. Cheers to Pete.

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“Well, that’s not good,” he quipped.

I maintained my naively positive attitude and delved straight into the flyshop firedrill, preparing for a good long day on the water. Shuttle arranged and cooler stocked, we were barreling down the road – halfway to the put-in – when I remembered the rods. Damn.We forgot the freaking rods.

The sing-songy voice in my head took its first hit as we went back for the rods.

Once again on course, we pulled up to the Wolf Creek Bridge and my Pollyanna point of view took another nosedive. The sky was gray, the wind was howling, it was cold. I watched the wind have its way with the river, causing white-capped waves that looked like roughly whipped peaks of buttercream frosting on a cake.

“Good heavens,” I uttered meekly. “It looks like the ocean.” A small part of me wanted to flash my Girl Card and retreat back to the house to hunker down with a fire, some hot chocolate and a cheesy movie. Clearly others had flashed the same credentials because the parking lot was deserted and no one was on the water.

No, no, no. I pushed that notion from my mind and decided I was going to buck up, bundle up and conquer the day, monstrous winds and all. Despite a bleak outlook I sensed the river had an adventure in store for us.

What can I say? Sometimes it pays to harbor idealistic fantasies. We started the day with some nice browns on streamers. Pretty consistent action, to be honest.

All that casting and catching and reaching for the net warmed me up in no time, and I forgot about the blustery conditions. But as often happens, just as I was starting to get into a groove, the wheels came off. The wind shifted directions, kicked up several notches, and basically molested my cast. The more frustrated I got, the more I buggered it up and couldn’t get my bugger in the right spot. The Professor was coaching me and even though I understood what he was telling me conceptually, my cast was in a downward spiral and I was asking for the oars.

He wouldn’t let me bow out of the bow, but he did abandon some fishy-looking water in favor of the opposite bank. Smart guy. Now the wind was coming over my right shoulder and suddenly I was casting like a pro! Once we moved river left my second cast delivered this jewel:

At that point I did take the rower’s seat but struggled to hold the bank in the wind. Despite my tenuous control of the boat, The Professor managed to hook up with a slab of a rainbow:

The day just improved from here. We fished streamers until about four in the afternoon, when the fish began to rise to the occasion and we shifted to dry flies. The wind eased up, the beer started to flow and each fish felt like gravy on top of an already spectacular day. As the old Trout Shop saying goes…Adventure, Danger, Romance…and a Few Large Fish.

It was a quixotic trip on The Missouri to be sure.

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But for some reason this just keeps me in stitches. Those of you who got queasy from my post on The Cricketeer might want to put down your breakfast tacos. Or skip this post entirely.

So last week we enjoyed beers, burgers and laughs with Gaper, Spinner and Mike at The Melrose Bar in Montana. Just as the jukebox was in full swing and we were all feeling warm and jolly, it was time to leave. We traded hugs and fond farewells…and off we went. We wandered from the bar, musing about what a great day it had been, when The Professor noticed this vile frozen mess on his boat:

What is it????? I was both disgusted and horrified. It was pretty nasty. But for some reason I could not stop laughing! I mean, uncontrollable, adolescent, giddy, ridiculous laughter. Just when I stopped laughing and gained composure, I would think about it and fall right back into a pile of hysteria and giggles.

Someone vomited on the boat! Are you kidding me? I recalled some very very drunk guys who were at the bar when we arrived. They were pretty obnoxious, and I staunchly rebuffed their boisterous (and bad Kenny Chesney) song requests when I was at the jukebox. I deduced that they had staggered from the bar and thrown up in our boat as revenge.

At first, The Professor agreed with me. But he soon tired of my trippy laughter over the whole mess and offered a less disgusting theory. Perhaps I left my G2 unopened on the boat, it spilled, mixed with some dirt and froze in this uniquely vomit-like pattern. I don’t know…but whatever it is, some of it splattered into my wading boots.

What do you think? Keep it moderately appropriate, of course. But don your best Honkytonk CSI skills and help solve the mystery.

What is this ghoulish mess on the drift boat?

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It was a full-time job to monitor my Facebook Wall which filled up with messages from total strangers who were always “Partying At The Playboy Club in Vegas” or “Recovering From a Six-Day Bender.” Not to mention writing lecherous messages about me.

I had to take down my Facebook profile.

Sad really, because I grew up in a family that was pretty open and embraced the notion of befriending a stranger. On family roadtrips to Colorado my dad would inevitably pick up some hitchhiker. It was always exotic and terribly exciting to hear their story and blend lives for a short while.

Once, when we were living in London, my mother went to Russia with a friend and they brought home some graduate student who didn’t have a place to spend the holidays. I swear I think we hung a stocking for him on our mantle.

Where did those days go? A simpler time when hitchhiking was the safest form of social networking and travel brought real human characters into your life.

I will say, we had a taste of it in Montana last week. Through an organic chain of events, The Professor and I met up with fishing-guide writer, Gaper, and his buddy Spinner. They were tackling the same stretch on The Big Hole. Now I can’t keep track of all the personalities and screen names over on The Drake site, so it was well into our boat ramp banter when I learned that Gaper is in fact the much-ballyhooed author of the AK Chronicles.

Knock me over with a feather! An urban legend…the blogger that gets a book deal. That’s like the guy who shows up in LA to be a screenwriter or the doe-eyed optimist who arrives in Nashville to be a songwriter. I was terribly uncool and starstruck.

Gaper, however, was the epitome of cool, as was his buddy Spinner. They were a riot actually. When we met them at the end of the day at The Melrose Bar, they appeared to be multiplying, arriving with a third guy. Turns out the extra fisherman, Mike, had been fishing alone on the banks of The Big Hole so they loaded him in their boat as they floated by.

Thank heavens they did because Mike brought a whole different layer to the story. He is a young golfer who played one British amateur and two US amateurs, including nailing a hole-in-one at Eastlake. Initial pass as a professional golfer didn’t pay the bills so he is headed to southern California to be a caddy. While working his way across the country toward that tour of duty, he was living out of his car in Montana, fishing out his final weeks of freedom.

Our boat ramp socializing continued over on The Missouri as well. I ran into my summertime buddy, fly tier Bob Lay, and he and The Professor became fast friends. On a particularly windy day we ran into Bob in Craig. Too windy for him to fish in his little one-man craft so we convinced him to join our float. Such fun! Stories galore and dry fly fishing til dark.

Granted hitchhiking is probably not as safe as it was back in the 70s, but the characters that come in and out of my life on the boat ramps of Montana are priceless. Facebook can’t compete with that.

That said, apparently in the past six months everyone I know has joined Facebook. The other day I was chatting with one of my best friends from high school. She was laughing that our upcoming reunion would be so boring since everyone was already up to speed on Facebook. What? She gave me her username and password to log onto her profile. Sure enough, there were all my friends, yucking it up, sharing pictures of their kids, swapping tales. It did look pretty fun. Damn.

But I’m holding firm in my Facebook boycott. I can always thumb a ride on her profile when I need to take a little spin and catch up with old friends. I’m sticking with blogs and boat ramps to meet the new ones.

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Ooh la la, I am having a mad love affair with The Big Hole River!

I fell hard for this eerie, dreamy stream last summer. It was my first time to fish on the Big Hole and my first time to fish with The Professor. Both adventures were delightfully successful, so I was thrilled to launch our fall excursion there as well.

Oh, I’ve got it bad for the Big Hole alright….majestic mountain views, swift moving current, tea-colored water. A canyon that wraps you up then presents you to a gorgeous valley as if introducing a visitor from a foreign land. And let’s not overlook the remote Montana dive bars — or the aggressive trout that are just as native and just as wild.

The one thing I’ve learned on The Big Hole is that I have much to learn about fishing.

That’s where The Professor comes in. He’s not really a professor mind you. It’s just another tongue-in-cheek nickname, although I can’t take credit for this one. His three nephews dubbed him The Professor since he taught each one of them, as they came up through the ranks, to fish for trout on a flyrod. Casting, rowing, flies, knots, boat etiquette, netting techniques. He passed on everything he’s picked up over the years.

These days his nephews are well into their twenties and fishing on their own. The Professor needed a new project and graciously took me under wing. Of course there are many people who deserve credit for teaching me to fish and teaching me to love to fish – namely my parents. But in the spirit of continuous improvement, The Professor has taken a keen interest in fishing with me.

Plus, we have a hell of a good time together on the water.

Last week was no exception. At first The Professor was startled to learn that I had very little experience streamer fishing. (Here we go again with the assumptions!) But he dug deep into his gear bag for a hearty dose of patience and an irresistible streamer pattern. With each cast, I threw out that big ole streamer and a little dash of hope. Whoa! There is nothing quite like seeing those fish follow that streamer, sometimes all the way to the boat. I’m happy to report that in its never-ending quest for dominance, my passion won out over my inexperience on this particular day.

The brown trout on this river are a different breed. First of all, the colors are exquisite. The yellowy-green is electric and intoxicating. And the red dots are magnificent. I have to say, this fish was particularly bejeweled.

The other thing I’ve learned from some trout that have mocked me on The Big Hole is that, once hooked, they behave differently than they do on The Missouri. Most of the big Missouri browns will hunker down before a dash downstream. As long as you stay focused and don’t horse them, you can often lure them to the net with the mind control of a snake charmer. But twice now I have broken off some big Big Hole trout that laughed at me over their undoubtedly hefty shoulders as they sped upstream in heavy current faster than I could mutter “3X Say What?”

Our second day on the Big Hole offered slightly less action. We started out of the gate early and were hopeful, but things slowed down as we drifted through the canyon. 

No worries though because The Professor put me on the sticks and coached me on my rowing. Since I learned to row on the Missouri, it was a new challenge to these navigate faster waters and hidden rocks.

I couldn’t just cruise along, telling stories and watching him fish, I had to look downstream and pay attention to where we were going….constantly. And I heard “C’mon now, you better dig in and pull us away from this rock!” quite a number of times. I’m still not sure how to power stroke when you’re in shallow water. But that’s okay, much to learn in the rower’s seat, and I love it.

As our second day on the Big Hole neared its end, The Professor reminded me of yet another important lesson: perseverance. We’d been fishless for awhile, and my mind was drifting to the heater in the truck and a burger at the bar in Melrose. But The Professor, who is not one to go easy on me, made me fish out the last half mile with a sense of urgency. Thank goodness he did because we ended the day just above the takeout with this Big Hole calling card.

There is nothing better than topping off a cold day of fishing with comfort food, draft beer, and a jukebox stocked with Merle Haggard. Add some red wine and it’s a veritable fly-fishing fairytale. It was a magical time on The Big Hole to be sure. Throwing streamers, flirting with The Professor, hooking up with beautiful browns. Proving once again that on a trout stream in Montana, dreams really do come true.

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Unfortunately my trusty guide made the faulty assumption that I had previous experience with a spinning rod. Now why in the world would he think a girl with a tongue-in-cheek, self-penned moniker like “Fly Fish Chick” would know how to handle a spinning rod? We were a full hour into our adventure (setting up on some fish) when we mutually discovered this minor breakdown in communication.

From the look on his face I thought he was going to turn that boat right round baby right round and head for home.

But hey, what I lack in skill I try and make up for with a positive attitude. And it was gorgeous out there! I was channeling my Inner Meat-Fishing-Mamacita, catching shrimp from the live well with my bare hands and hurling them out there best I could. So fun. And the fishing was much more strategic than I expected. Searching for birds hitting the water, using the tides to set up at just the right angle, picking the perfect shrimp (a big delicious feisty one!) when you know you’re really into some good fish.

The highlight for a first-time tourist like me was spotting a monster alligator. Of course I begged for a closer look so we buzzed up for a photo shoot. Suddenly I felt like I was the one bobbing inside a live well while the alligator was sizing me up. I made every effort not to come across as either delicious or feisty.

Once we interrupted his afternoon nap in the sunshine, that prehistoric lug submerged himself into the water with the unexpected grace and vertical control of a synchronized swimmer. Part dinosaur, part Esther Williams. It was wild. And we were outta there.

It was a wonderful day out on the water — despite the fact I ended up with zero fish to show for my big meat-fishing adventure. Unfortunately, I was decidedly inconsistent and awkward with a spinning rod. The most excitement we had was along the edge of this grassy spot. Shrimp were jumping everywhere and I had a few good shots and a few good bites. But I couldn’t set the hook. Yikes. Luckily, my trusty guide was super patient and quite skilled at the pep talks and ego-stroking.

By sharp contrast to my debut performance, about a week or so later Big R, Little R, and Little R’s friend proved that experience does pay off and that there is no such thing as beginner’s luck for me. They put me to shame in the very same grassy spot.

Well done boys! But now I want another shot. Truthfully I don’t think it was my ineptitude with a spinning rod that was holding me back. I think it was mental. My super-chill, fly-fishing, girlie-girl zen attitude simply didn’t work for this type of fishing. Next time, “Fly Fish Chick” is going to become “Bait Fish Chick”, and I am going hunt down those fish like a half-crazed vigilante.

Oh yeah baby, it is on! Wanted: Speckled Trout. Dead or Alive.

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Don’t copycat your own greatest hits.

I suppose it’s a life lesson for the rest of us non-musicians as well. No one likes the bore who merely relives their glory days from the past. A fair point to be sure, but what about nostalgia? What about warm memories? What about the feeling of playing that one song — that one song! – that always puts a smile on your face and takes you right back to a certain place in time?

Some long underwear triggered a trip down memory lane today. Even though it’s still hot enough in Texas to sport tank-tops & flip-flops, I am pulling out fleece jackets and heavy gloves for a trip to Montana next week. Last time I donned all this gear was in June, for my Smith River Float/Missouri trip. I have to admit, it’s hard not to look over my shoulder and smile at that adventure.

It’s only been a few months, but it already seems like ages ago! We had such a big time on that trip. Amazing how lounging around a campfire defies life phases and stages in order to melt away the world and bring everyone together. I mean is there anything more fun than a campfire and a guitar? Every night we would sing the same set of songs over and over, and every night we were delighted as if it were the first time we’d ever heard them.

Eventually, however, our little cover band of merrymakers decided we had to put our own spin on these venerable tunes. Around the fire on our last night we each took turns singing– impromptu — a custom verse of Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin’. Free, tree, three, see, glee. Fallin, ballin, haulin, callin, stallin. You’d be surprised how quickly you can morph into a bonafide Comedian/Lyricist when you’re in the hotseat and there are plenty of liquor drinks to go around. We laughed so hard we hurt ourselves.

Making up inane lyrics to well known songs….well it just never seems to get old, does it?

So as a quick distraction from doing my long underwear inventory, I’ve put together a musical montage of the June Smith trip. Reliving glory days? Perhaps. It was fairly glorious. And in the past. But it sure has me fired up about autumn in Montana. Bundling up in waders and gloves and gear. Crisp cold temperatures and big streamers and warm drinks. The melody may sound familiar, but as with any fishing adventure I’m sure this trip will have its own beat, it’s own rhythm, and its own lyrical memories.

I just can’t wait to hear the soundtrack.

In the meantime, enjoy this montage. Sing along if you know the words. If not, feel free to make up your own.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

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