Ice Ice Baby

March is here, and the march on the rivers is on. A little pre-maturely, in my case, as I am mostly motivated to stay close to home these days and most nearby tributaries are all but choked with ice.

It's ironic, really, because after last Wednesday's rains I expected more spring-like conditions. And although I travelled far and wee I found nothing that could be described as "mud-luscious" and only one tributary had any significant ice-free stretch of water.



There were a couple of fish rolling in one of the sections of open water I found, but neither roe, nor pinkie, nor woolly bugger tickled their fancy. Either because of the frigid water or ample fishing pressure, belied by the numerous footprints in the riverside snow (most with toes pointing into the water), I went fishless.

Then the cell phone rang.

Samuel's air-siren shrieks were audible before I could even say "hello," clearly signalling the reason for the call. Yes, Laura's sanity is more important than any tangible success on the river: my fishing day was over.

Nonetheless, as ever, the simple exercise of stalking a river, looking for open water and fish; and then finally drifting a float for an hour or so, left me feeling refreshed and renewed. My blood pressure has tangibly improved; and the powerful benefit of reconnecting with the simple, primal occupation of the predatory "I," still inhabits my very cells.



My prophetic soul mentioned in my last post that hours on the river would now be more precious than ever, and it has proven true. Maybe in a week, maybe in two; whenever the merciless grip of this latest deep freeze is loosened by the soft urgings of Spring, I will venture out again.

Please stay tuned for the next update!

p.-

Special Needs

I have always seen fishing for steelhead as one of my special needs. It may become even more so, now, precisely because I will likely get to do it less than ever; I will have to resign myself to watching 'perfect' days, flash into view and then forever out of sight.

One of my sons, Isaac, has been enrolled in an early intervention program for children with autism. And although the doctors and therapists don't yet offer to solidify their opinion with an official diagnosis, because he's too young (13 months) they all agree that the telltale signs are present. But to Laura and I, who see him every day, and every day watch his brother perform all the feats of a normal child, this announcement is "as the footsteps of doom," foreseen and yet long feared.

I can't offer even the barest smattering of what goes through a parent's mind and heart, when this kind of news is delivered. Because no matter how anticipated it was, we are suddenly bereft of our denial. My first thoughts were only for Isaac, that this is like a death; the person we hoped he would become, has been somehow removed from his future. And despite the therapies (physio, floor play etc), wich are already showing results, his lot in life will never be easy and there may be much that he may never understand, that we lucky ones take for granted. Having a sweetheart, scoring a goal, skipping a stone over the surface of a lake, wading through a shallow run in May-time. My fears no doubt only make this worse, because Isaac is going to be Isaac no matter what, and all of us (Samuel included) are still engaged in learning who that will be. For example, Bill Gates is said to be mildly autistic (Asperger's Syndrome) although he has never formally been diagnosed. Who knows?

Not knowing is possibly the most difficult part. Perhaps (at the extreme risk of being perceived as sexist: Men are from Mars) by virtue of being male, I know that no matter how hard things get, and how exhausting, I will have my temporary single-minded testosteronic escapes; watching a Leafs game, fishing in the early morning, sunday night rec-league hockey. But I see no such escape for Laura; who is at the base of everything to do with Isaac, and for whom he reaches out night after night, when he wakes up howling - for what reason, we don't always know. She doesn't want a spa day, or new clothes. No flowers for valentines, no gifts; all she wants for all the world is that her little boy be alright. I see her thrust her entire being into this enterprise, and I marvel that she hasn't crumbled under the weight of it. All I can do is attend to her needs to the best of my limited abilities, like a doctor at the uneasy dreamer's bedside, wiping the brow and now and then enticing a small sip of clear water; but the fight is going on inside, her own solitary side of the fight.

But enough of all this joyful talk!

Enter Stacey's blog "The Willowjak Boys" which was referred to us by the friend of a friend (if Stacey is reading this, Nicole told Gillian who told us :). It's a beautiful and informative blog, which tells the story of their family but also contains helpful information and, my favourite so far, an extremely touching, wonderful, awe-inspiring clip about Rick and Dick Hoyt. The video is about a father and son, who enter marathons and triathlons together. The son is paraplegic from birth, and so his dad tows him, and pushes him along; all because at one point the son had expressed that taking part in this sort of activity made him feel free. You can tell by his expression, in the video, that this is true. You can read about it here. Thanks to Stacey for digging it all up and posting it on her blog!

p.-

New Stuff

Well, I haven't fished much recently. This is because I'm half paying dues and half helping Laura to deal with a childcare crisis that'd cropped up. Laura is about to go back to work, but the daycare with which we had originally signed up made - in our opinion - a very unethical decision & we decided to back out. Yet another complication of having kids, doubled with twins! The paying dues half is the easy part, really. It's actually tough on the heart strings to leave your kids for too long, when they're at this age :).

Anyway, now that the daycare situation is mostly behind us, I look forward to getting a trip or two in before the iron door of Winter shuts up the rivers, and the cold ices up the guides more than I can stand.

Also, I've had a few minutes to update my Blog. First, I fooled around with some old pics & a new poem, and I came up with the entry below. If you don't like poetry, too bad. Second, I've added a slew of links to my Blog. They are all hanging out on the right hand side, ready to be clicked.

Here is a short description of the links I've added. If I've offended anyone with these descriptions, please leave me a comment & I'll make the required corrections!

• "Ron's Photo Blog", my cousin Ron's site, showcases highly professional pics of his three kids and assorted projects. If you need a wedding photographer, he's it!
• "November Rains" and "A Screaming Comes Across the Sky" are blogs created by two accomplices from the Sarnia area, who seem to like to visit northern locales for their regular chrome dosage. The blogs are written by Lambton and Trotsky, respectively. Lambton gives very accurate recounts of his trips, whereas Trotsky is very laid-back and novelistic in his approach.
• "My Life and Fishing in Western NY" is a student in - you guessed it - Western NY, and also an adept fly fisherman. His short, matter-of-fact reports are always appreciated, not to mention the fact that any fan of Grapes is a friend of mine!
• "Chrome on Chrome" is a beautifully written, poetic and stimulatingly photographic blog. I hope to meet up with it's principal author/contributor "Deju," just to compare notes - but also, hopefully, to fish.
• "The Itinerant Angler" another photoblog, whose photographs eloquently explain the presence of this Blog among my links.
• "Musings of a Mad Fisherman" Another author whose writing I thoroughly enjoy, punctuated here and there by a clever, gentle sense of humour. I'm always happy to see new entries on BCM's Blog!
  
• "Chasing Silver" Considering I quoted SD a while back, it's rude of me to have delayed the addition of his blog to my list of favourites. Maybe I can make it up to the author with a brewed offering when we finally 'hook up' on one of our local streams.

I hope you enjoy these Blogs as much as I do. If for some unlucky reason I don't post before the big day, have a Merry Christmas everyone!

p.- (and family)

Collage: "Come to me"

Come to me
for I wait
not and your leisure
cannot glean hope
from me that I
will be as you would



mine is the ice and the thaw
and the frozen lake
where the birds huddle
out of reach and mine is
the brawny river waking
to free its ice-bound sinews





all Bounty is mine to give
or repeal; will you take
the wild fish? the vaulting
magnetic scintillating creature
you so desire?
i care not







you are a ghost a
reflection in my face
a spark's flight soon
out of memory



but you will never forget me
you will never forget my
mornings and you will never forget
the fall filled with fire or
my baleful
red sunrise







Come to me then
and follow your gaze
into the deep green
of my eyes



and over lake
scapes beyond the reach
of your touch




for verily I
am within you I am
your beacon
I am your toil and your
resting place and I
am what you seek in
your solitary flight; but
which you will rarely
find and which you
will love
and lose, always.







p.-

Poem Written during a long (insignificant) Meeting

by november the
rain has lost all
its sweetness and the
warm leaf-smell of october
is a memory
shed by the wind sighing
a winter's breath over
frozen lips of
bark to trouble
arboreal dreaming

all the world has readied itself to die.
                      and yet
in the river
the pendulum already
has tapped the
glittering portent sleek
steelhead come
from the sea
waiting in cold flows
piously
for something unfathomable
that
the earth should be made
to move
that
the unconsuming flame
of sunlight again come
to outlast the moonlight and
that the trees
come to sigh and
weep over the streams
from love-loss for the shining
fish who have gone
back to the
lonely somnolent depths

Fishless in the Living Room

It's a strange luxury to be able to predict with absolute precision how many fish I will catch this weekend. For one thing, it has permitted me to write an entry before-hand, but it also sadly means that the cold beginning of December won't see this average steelheader on any riverside.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I needed to repay the prime female in my life, for some of her patience this fall. As I write this, she's out with the girls, laughing herself silly and anticipating something she hasn't experienced in a long, long time: a late rise from bed tomorrow morning. The boys are blissfully asleep, but I'm just waiting for Isaac's nightly protest over a wet diaper, while I write & prepare formula. I hope it's soon, because my morning won't be looking like the caption, above. It'll be looking like this.

I love them, all three; but I admit to the deep temptation to sample tomorrow's high waters here in the east. And Sunday's clearing flows... And there's an itch at the core of all the bones of my right arm, as though even the marrow is asking "where's the rod? when's the next cast?"

Oh, but "papa" can bide his time. Not just for next weekend, by which point the debt will be paid; but I have two sons. Most likely, they won't be shopping for skirts with mommy at any point in the future.

This is good, I say to myself as I fill the bottles for tomorrow morning's hyena's feast. This is very good indeed (insert evil laugh here).

p.-

North by South-East

When the float went down, I wasn't looking. I'd been checking out the crowd back on shore, to see if anyone was catching anything. It had only been for a second or two, just a glance over my shoulder, but it was apparently enough time for some creature of the depths to engulf the spawn sac at the end of my line.

I was standing out in Lake Ontario, almost up to my waist, letting my float hitch a ride to the horizon, out on the current of a nearby tributary. When I saw that my float was gone, I thought of setting the hook; too late. The fish did it for me, nearly wrenching the rod, reel and all, from my hand. It gave a few powerful head thrusts, turned and sped straight at me, turned again; so violently that the tippet snapped and the line sagged gently. Fish off!

I was somewhat disappointed, but it was still early, and the experience injected some warmth back into my freezing bones. The lake was almost perfectly still, like a giant mirror beneath the overcast sky. And as I gazed eastward, I could have quoted Forrest Gump: there was no telling where the lake ended and the sky began.

It was the kind of day, shortly after a rain, where the rivers would all still be up, but the near total absence of wind would provide an opportunity - finally! - for me to try out my favourite technique: float fishing the lake itself, by drifing my offerings out on the long, strong and clear plumes of rivermouths.

I know this is often done on many Georgian Bay tributaries, but fishermen on eastern Lake Ontario seem to tend, rather to make a distinction: float fishing = river; still fishing off bottom = lake. That I often choose to try float fishing = lake, sometimes earns me some derisive looks... But there is nothing much more exciting than seeing your float vanish beneath the lake's surface. Especially in the fall, when the fish are positively electric, have little to no fear and are extremely ravenous. There is never any hesitation to the strike of a steelhead, out in the lake. They hit pitilessly and with deadly precision. And the bend of the rod, following a successful hookup is exhilirating beyond belief.

Not that hooking these beautiful fish in rivers is any less exciting, because rivers offer challenges all their own, but there is (to me, anyway) a certain mystique about incurring the manifestation of such vibrant life, just under a horizon so seemingly endless and often very cold, barren and unforgiving.

The weekend actually started up north, on a Georgian Bay tributary, where Mike and I took advantage of clearing flows to locate migrating steelhead. That was Saturday, and there was no action at the lake at all, by the time we got there. All the drama took place up the rivers, where the crowds were. But despite the fishing pressure, we both managed a good number of fish, including the specimen below. The most exciting battle for me was given by a large 10lb hen who fought me nearly all the way down a long, straight run, turned swiftly up-current, and snapped my line in mid air as she leapt up and away from me. There's no shame in losing a fight like that, and such virtuosity makes one appreciate the fish even more.

I just mentioned that there were crowds, and it was quite true everywhere I went - whether north, or south east from there. It's the sort of thing that happens when news has gotten around, of a couple of good weeks in a row; and it's an unfortunate part of drifting out into the lake, that you really don't have much flexibility if there's someone fishing in the spot where you'd like to be standing.

So, needless to say, despite the extreme availability of fish, I was eventually forced to catch far less than I could have. First of all, I had neglected to adequately insulate my breathables and had to make a shivering dash to the car to get my fleece; and in the meantime two fellows arrived, saw the spot empty and installed themselves. Finders keepers, I guess. If this had been a Monday, for example, I could have gone to get a coffee at Tim Horton's, read the latest news on the Toronto Maple Leafs, filled up the car & chatted with the attendant, and the spot would have been free upon my return - but this was Sunday, on Lake Ontario, not far from Toronto. Oh well. I guess I don't own the lake!



Nevertheless, the quality and power of the fish that I did manage to hook or land, was more than consolation enough. Not only that, but I met up with the fellow I always inevitably find at any one of my favourite rivermouths. We chatted as usual, got to introduce eachother, finally, and he very amicably gave me a chance to get a decent release shot of the fish in the very first caption, at the beginning of this entry.

So, things didn't turn out so badly after all. Now, I need to reward Laura for all her patience in the last few weeks, having had quite a few opportunities to tangle with steelhead while she kept watch over the twins. They're almost 11 months old now... I may not write for a while - or if I do, it will be deplorably philosophical or poetic.

Sorry!

p.-