Slow Sunrise

Last Sunday, I spent the morning looking at the sunrise. It was nice. I almost forgot that I was actually there to fish, since I hardly saw anything bearing a resemblance to one of those. I did see a fly catcher, who decided my rod would make a lovely perch for a few minutes. He sat there taunting me "go ahead, take a pic, make my day..." But he flew off just as I pressed the "on" button on my camera. Punk.

I had a nice chat with one of the other guys who was there, like me, just to drown a few salmon eggs and wonder at the calmness of the lake. You rarely see it this calm, this time of year.

Finally, I decided to head back home. When you have twins, radar kicks in at around 2 1/2 year old. They're 2 years and 9 months now. I had a definite feeling that they were running wild.

It had been a nice morning, but devoid of fish. A wise man knows when to cut his losses...


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Lieber Zueri

view from the minster bridge @ zurich switzerland Copyright Toni_V

st.peterCopyright Toni_V
in my memories
sitting on
a buttress outside Sankt
Peterskirche on a damp evening
listening to Chopin
Nocturnes tinkling
down
from someone's open window
to mix their melancholy notes
with the cool drizzle my
City still surrounds
me and

Muesch halt echli uufpasse, mir fahred jetz wider ab!Copyright Toni_V

i can
summon the metallic
sound and bell
of the No.7 as it rumbles
through Wollishofen not
the new rubberized digital copies
but the masterpieces with
the wooden seats the polite
riders their quiet
watchfulness

window with a fine viewCopyrightToni_V

i can take a walk
over Muensterbrueck and sit
by the fountain wherefrom
only the medieval stone
work can be seen all
around where on
Sundays mostly
one hears only the murmur of Limmat
and the mournful bells
of Grossmuenster, Fraumuenster, and
all the others in the distance
tolling a constant peaceful
neverending echo of proclamation
and demure worship


münsterbrücke @ zurich switzerlandCopyright Toni_V

some days
i am Frederick’s alter ego
for his was exile from
his birthright
where i am exiled to
the bitter country
of my birth which
eats its own slowly
resolutely


zurich@2007-12-27
Copyright Toni_V

so far from the
beautiful communitas
of Zueri uuf die See
Zurich on the lake singing
to me like
a woman sings and
teaching me the fallacy of
inheritance – that where one was
born does not imply
who or what one
will love nor
how deep
the loss

Uto-Quai ZurichCopyrightToni_V

Oof! It took me much longer to write this than it looks. I had to recode a lot of this entry manually, and I switched images several times.

Speaking of which, I owe a great deal to Toni_V for giving me permission to use his images from his photostream on Flickr. I accidentally ran across his work when googling shots of Zurich for one of my friends, and I was deeply moved and inspired by it. The very artful use of colour in his photography is to me very similar to memory and dream; where is your happy place? what colour is it? Toni's presentation of the city through HDR photography, capturing hues that are not possible in the drabness of real life, evoke fable and myth - one almost feels that a knight or an 18th century noble will come turning round a corner.

I'm not sure I like my poem very much... but it's what came out when I saw these photos. Longing, I suppose, more than anything else; for a place that is not only far away but, to me, lost in time. To the Zurich I learned to know and love, I can never go back.

If you have time, go to Toni_V's photostream and check out his collections. There are some truly stunning pictures there.

... and by all means, click on the pictures above to see the full size versions. The thumbnails don't do them justice.

Toni...Ich danke dir wider viel mals!

p.-

Fun with the little ones

It's nice to finally have something to write about and have the time to write it (barely). Given our unusual child-rearing responsibilities, I guess Laura and I should stop imagining that we might some day have oodles of time in which to relax. Dream on! The more things change, the more they stay the same; so time is always at a premium.

Luckily, some things don't change that much - i.e. passion for fishing - otherwise this blog would already be in the dust. Nevertheless, I have to be more selective these days in how I spend my time, and it has certainly reduced the number of entries I will be able to post here. But spending a Saturday on a boat with my brother in-law, two of his daughters and my son Samuel, qualifies as time well spent. So that's what I did last week, and I'm glad to take a few moments to tell you about it.

One word: chaos. Or in other words, absolute, loveable, crazy, funny, giggly, fishie-thrashing, wormy-wiggley, goofy, loud, let me reel this in, let me reel that in, can you put on another worm, she did this, he did that, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, let's go tubing, let's go fishing (etc...) chaos! It was two adults vs. three kids, and I can't say that the two adults had the advantage at any point in time.

We all shared good luck, though: the fishing was incredibly easy, and the fisher-people were easily delighted by their success. Bluegill, Pumpkinseed, Largemouth Bass and Smallmouth Bass, all very little and very spunky, literally filled the boat. No need to anchor the boat, just drift with the gentle breeze & throw out a few lines rigged with jig & worm, on a lake that is roughly 22 feet at its deepest. The action rarely slowed down, but at one point I was lucky that it did.

Only one time during the whole day did my brother in-law and myself have the fishing all to ourselves. That blissful moment lasted barely two minutes when it was shattered by a heavy thump at the end of my line. It's been a long time since I fished with a closed reel on a 4.5 ft fiberglass rod, so I immediately understood that though it felt like a salmon, it was very likely not one. Not up here in the Kawarthas!

Once the kids realized that "papa" or "unco Paul" had something substantial at the end of his line, the atmosphere in the boat became positively tense and expectant. It was silence, blessed silence - and I had the big one on! ...Must be payback for all the fishing I missed this summer! I didn't have much doubt as to what it was, because it didn't really run or try to jump, although it was heavy and gave the little reel everything it could handle. It might have been a carp, but when I finally pulled it up to where we could see it, the white splash at the bottom of the tail, and the golden sheen on its side belied a Walleye. The biggest I've caught, actually.

The oohs and aahs from the children were a nice experience, after that. And when they saw the giant in the net, they all wanted to touch it. "Watch out for the teeth," I said. "Well, do we let it go or bring it home to Gramma?" The unanimous choice was that Gramma should get to enjoy one of her favourite meals: fresh, pan-fried Walleye! So a lesson ensued regarding how to kill a fish humanely, since we couldn't leave it on the stringer if we were going to be tubing later on. We laid the fish on ice, closed the cooler lid and chucked the tube in the water.

In the end, I was proud of my son, for liking the tube as much
as his older cousins and for getting over his squeemishness when it comes to touching the fishies. The little Largemouth Bass was a pretty good choice, too. It was a great way to spend what will go down as a memorable day for all of us. Samuel might be the only one with memory issues later on. He's not quite three yet... Do you remember anything from before you were three?


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Interlude

Ah the Steelhead seasons....

I have nothing to post right now, except I found this really neat function at http://www.photobucket.com ...

See? A small collection of fishies for your enjoyment!

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It got better :)

Little did I know, when I was writing yesterday's blog entry, that one of my wishes would come true today. I finally got to take one of my sons fishing!

Samuel was very good, only losing one of his boots in the river once, needing a ride on my back only twice, and generally following the river's activity with curiosity and his rambunctious 2 year-old attention span throughout.

His reaction to catching a 7 inch shaker was priceless & will certainly be one for my permanent memory bank. He also had quite a reaction when a large male, engaged in some territorial battle with a rival, darted from the cover of a logjam to swim right below us where we sat. Samuel wanted me to catch it, of course.

The camera died again, or I would have had better pics. But, regardless, I think he's on the right path :)

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Ontario Trout Opener 2008!

I like the trout opener. I don't always get oodles of fish, but I also almost never have to fish with the crowd. The weather is almost always good, mornings resonate with fresh birdsong, and rivers have a clean look to them that they only get this time of year.

The fish also have a special way about them. As beat-up as they often are by the ordeal of the spawn, they always give a good account of themselves once they start recovering in earnest. They leap more in April and May, and staggering downriver runs as well as electrifying changes in direction are commonplace.

As it turns out, this year's opener has proven rather ordinary. A long winter that seemed to promise a late spring warm-up was all but obliterated by nearly three weeks of bright sunshine in the 18 to 27 degree Celsius range. All the snow quickly melted under the pressure, and the rivers on the north shore of Lake Ontario dropped to levels close to what they had been last fall.

This meant that opening day was, for me, more of a social event than anything else. I spent it with my good friend Khalid (caption above) and my brother Dan. We didn't hook into very many fish, but we enjoyed eachother's company as well as making new acquaintances on the river. We ended the day by raiding our brother in-law's house, while he was away, and drinking some of his home brew. Thanks for the Weize, Richard - delicious as always :).

On Monday, while the boys were at daycare, I managed to get out for a few hours to inspect a local tributary. I managed a couple of decent fish - but still not that many. It's too bad I didn't have my camera with me, because a picture of the trucks lining the riverside is definitely warranted. I was astounded to see license plates from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Have they any idea what they're missing back home???

As for me, I was still waiting for my opener shangri-la.



And that came yesterday. The rain on Monday had a greater effect on one of my favourite rivers, than I'd expected. When I got there in the morning, the water clarity was perfect 16" to 18", high and moving at a good pace. Nor did I wait long before the action started. It would, as usual, subside a little during the late morning and early afternoon. But the blazing afternoon sun and clearing water conditions made the fish seek deeper, more shaded pools and runs, and I was able to put quite a few on the bank as a result. It's one of those things that happen this time of year.



The highlights of this year's opener were too many to count, but I can name a few. Fishing with Khalid and Dan after such a long hiatus, sharing cigars as we fished, beers at Richards, meeting up with my old friend Derrick (whom I hadn't seen in well over 10 years!), finding an old, salvageable shimano reel on the river bottom, seeing spring-time wild turkey for the first time, finding an 8 point deer rack close to the riverside, having large stretches of beautiful emerald water to myself, two fish in excess of 10lbs (and one over 12 easily), a 6lb or so fish that jumped no less than 7 times (one caught on film) and finally picking up two ecstatic twins at daycare at the end of the day.



It gets better: some day, I'll be fishing with one or both of them. Can't wait!



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Spring, News and Updates

One of the most avid of my faithful readers recently complained that I hadn't updated my blog in a while, so I guess I should. So far, this wonderfully late spring has been nothing but an anti-climax for your respectful Average Steelheader. Work, Chocolate-coloured water, East Winds, meddling (but well meaning) female relatives, rabid but cute 2 year-olds, ad infinitum ad nauseum, have all contributed to keeping my fish count low.

Sigh.

Speaking of the East Wind, it didn't stop my friend the Wallacio from padding his fish count with a lovely extreme-late-season brown trout, just before March turned into April. It was one of those inexplicable occasions where everything else seemed perfect. There were no crowds, the water was high and green, and we even had a few hook-ups in the morning. We knew that we would hook many more as soon as the slush cleared later in the morning. However, not only did we not land the few that we hooked into early, but by about mid morning a front passed through, the East wind picked up, and the fish turned off. The slush was gone, but so were the fish! This is the only "trip" I've had so far this spring, where more than half a day was dedicated to steelheading.



Oh it was a brutal one for me, especially since the highly touted "Siglon" line I was using, proved short-lived and unreliable. Toward the end of the day, I got fed up and simply peeled it all off my reel. I've never seen or used a wimpier line! I spooled it on last November and might have had it for a half dozen trips. That is far beneath the standard I had expected. So now I've spooled on some Raven. Let's see how it goes.... I wish I could find some Drennan Super Mono in Ontario!


I did have one short, freezing instant of glory on the Friday preceding the above re-telling. I stopped at the local watering hole for about 15 minutes. At least, I had intended it to take only 15 minutes, but some crazy fish decided to take my pink & purple "jiggy bugger" for its death ride. 10 minutes later an unphotographed 10lb hen lay glistening on the bank. I almost got frostbite unhooking her, but she swam away quickly for all that.

Wait, there is also the fact that I finally got to meet with Moosie, and I got to see my friend the Wallacio before his grand transformation. Transformed into what, you ask? Why, one of those most unpallatable beings, known for their soft-heartedness, worry, care-worn-ness and bleary eyes: a new dad.

Congratulations Wallacio! You're making a fine daddy already, I'm sure :).

p.-