Tag Soup

Tag soup.  I can't eat elk meat this fall, so I'll just cook up my tag.

What in the world does elk hunting have to do with tenkara?  Well, the unsung other half of Tenkara Tracks is devoted to lightweight (bordering on ultralight) backpacking, and THAT has everything to do with how I hunt elk.

I headed out alone into the Stomping Grounds last Friday morning, knowing that eventually I might be joined by my good friend, Eric Lynn, and his son, Levi.  I carried my life, and my rifle, on my back in a prototype ultralight pack made for me a number of years ago by Patrick Smith, my rambling partner on many an adventure.

There's nothing flat about my elk hunting country.  It's either up or down.  It's uphill all the way in, from a trailhead at 9,200' up to the highest glassing perch at timberline, which at this latitude is nearly 12,000 feet above sea level.

I spent Friday burning my legs and lungs, reaching camp shortly before supper time.  On the way I bumped a cow moose, with her calf in tow, hidden in the willows. 

The sun drops quickly, and so does the mercury in the thermometer at this elevation.  It was pitch black when I heard Eric and Levi nearing my tiny camp.  An experienced mountain hunter, Eric had led his teenage son through four miles of off-trail alpine wilderness in the dark to find me.

The next day proved to be both beautiful and elkless.  We positioned ourselves high so we could glass, but there were no elk.  Taking of advantage of my time in the wilderness, I got caught up on writing.  This was actually the highlight of my weekend, as my field notes have been neglected for several weeks.

With an absence of elk, we concentrated on knocking down a couple of snowshoe hares in the vicinity of camp.  I connected in the dark timber northwest of camp, and then Eric and I teamed up for a short bunny hunt a bit later.  With two snowshoes in hand, we settled in for an evening of living off the land and fire watching.

Dining on snowshoe hare legs, deep in the Colorado wilderness.  Living life at its fullest!

The next morning was devoted to bushwhacking our way down off the high country, after a warm morning in camp.

Getting ready to head down the mountain...



Why I Tie

It's been said by the best authority that you only need one fly...ever.  And it's also been said that to tie or fish anything more than that, you're likely doing it much more for yourself than you are for the trout.  Perhaps there's more truth in that than most of us would like to admit. 

However, I submit that there are other worthwhile reasons to tie, and to tie a bunch of patterns.  Sure, I tie (and fish) way more than one pattern.  And a lot of that is done for purely selfish reasons like my need for peace and quiet, the relaxation that only a fly vise or a reloading press can provide, or the fun that comes from adding funky twists to established fish-catchers.  But the one very rewarding thing that has come from my fly tying is that I also tie for my friends. 

I have a tight knot of friends who have been with me through thick and thin.  They've backpacked, skied, hunted, frozen, burned, fished, and rambled with me all over the Colorado Rockies. On occasion, I have entrusted them with with my own children in the backcountry. They would give me the shirts off their backs, and I would do the same for them.  So, until the time comes to do just that, I'll be content to send them a handful of my flies from time to time. 

 

Lite-Brite Sakasa Kebari

I made an online comment this evening about how I had spent some time this afternoon tying up what I had previously called my "Summer Kebari", while our youngest daughter, Libby, played with her Lite-Brite on the floor next to my tying table.  The Lite-Brite just happens to have been invented by my friend and author, Reg Darling's, father-in-law Burt Meyer.

After my online comment, TJ Ferreria, who works for Tenkara USA, replied that I should call my fly the "Lite-Brite Kebari".  After a little chuckle, I realized that TJ was making perfect sense!  Is my fly light?  YES!  Is it bright?  YES!  Not to mention that here's our little girl, sitting on the bedroom floor next to me, playing with Mr. Meyer's invention (the same toy I played with over 40 years ago), his daughter married to my friend Reg, whos writing has entertained, inspired, and captured me for a number of years.

Good grief!  Sometimes this old world and its happenings are simply amazing! 

The Lite-Brite Sakasa Kebari!

Writing About What I Write About

Driving across the high elevation shortgrass prairie of northwestern Fremont County today with Jason Klass, we wiggled our way into a conversation about the content of our respective blogs, both of which are based on tenkara.  The talk centered around what we write in our blogs, and why.  As for Tenkara Tracks, I've purposely chosen to write more about how tenkara feels, rather than provide how-to instruction on fly tying, casting, reading water, or any of the zillion other things that I could provide instruction for.  There are plenty of websites and blogs devoted to that, and they're doing a fine job for the most part.  I would much rather write about my tenkara experiences.  How it feels to hike down from a high lake in the pouring rain and pounding hail, hoping you don't get struck by lightning.  How it feels to have an ever-so-slight breeze behind you as you cast upstream, watching kebaris land on the water as they only can with that faint breeze.  How it feels to anticipate what that fish will look like, in the moment between when it takes your fly and your first glimpse of it, your only indication that it's a really big one being it's quivering pull on the tip of your rod.  Yes, I'll still throw in a gear review now and then, but look for more of my experiences in the backcountry, and less how-to.  Now, I have a whole day of fishing to think through, and it sure was a grand day in the canyons.  More on that soon!  

The Marrow of the World

Photo by Chris Harvey

…"the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world," and by God, I was right. Keep your nose in the wind and your eye along the skyline.”

--Del Gue, Jeremiah Johnson (the film) 

Marrow.  Deep in your bones, that place in your body that keeps you immune to the things that will harm you.  The marrow of the world.  That place in the world that keeps you immune to the things that will harm you.  It’s home, a place of protection and peace.  Mine is a 74,401-acre expanse of granite, tundra, golden aspens, subalpine fir, bristlecone pine, pocket water, high lakes, brutal storms, sunshine, brookies, cutthroats, grouse, snowshoes hares, and microscopic wildflowers.  Bighorn sheep and mountain goats bounce on the talus above timberline, and elk, moose, and mule deer range between the krummholz and the bottom of the creek canyons.  Black bears, coyotes, and mountain lions work the shadows and the night.  I’ve been coming here since before it was even federally designated as wilderness, in the summer of 1978 when my parents dropped me off, alone, on one end and two days later I showed up back at home.  It was handy, because the southern boundary was only two miles from our home. That first solo trip across this place set the stage for over three decades of hunting, angling, and rambling in my own little piece of the Colorado Rockies, and what I’ve come to claim as my own “marrow of the world”.

We each have our own marrow. This just happens to be mine.  Each of us have those special places where we recharge our batteries, challenge heart, lung, and muscle, and breathe deep.  It may be a desert canyon, a snowfield of unbroken powder, or the quiet corner of a city park.  Wherever your marrow may be, please seek it out often, get your head and heart back on track, and fill your soul with peace and strength.  Those are all things my own marrow has given me since before I could shave.  It’s a magnet, a force that pulls me back home often.

Here’s hoping you find your marrow and visit it as frequently as you can.  It can be a place of peace and introspection.  It can be home.  Go there, fill up, and come back each time a different and stronger person.

Zen and the Sprit of the Nanopool

During the summer, I had a chance to take my tenkara rod, and guide others, to a wide variety of Colorado high country water.  I fished ripping, reddish-brown freestones blown full of summer rain, in which the only places a trout could survive were the leeward side of boulders in the deep recesses of nooks and crannies out of harm’s way.  I fished relatively big (on the tenkara scale) tailwaters, so deep and fast I could barely shuffle my 130-pound body halfway across without being torn off the bottom and deposited in the next larger river forty miles downstream.  And I fished slow, meandering sections of meadow water, working the cutbanks and oxbows with hoppers.  But the greatest joys of my summer were seeking out the tiniest blue lines on the map and on the ground, and putting dry flies on pools no bigger around than a skillet.  I call them nanopools.  The fact that tenkara makes fishing these spots not only possible, but productive, made it all that much better.

What is a nanopool?  Well, they come in all shapes and sizes, but most of them are so small they usually only hold one fish.   They occur on only the smallest streams.  Streams that you can easily spit across and ones you really don’t need even hip waders for.  Late in the summer they shrink even more, as the snowfields on the peaks melt and evaporate their way into nonexistence.

Trout holding in nanopools are feisty and will smack just about any dry fly you put in front of them.  They will hold at the far end of the plunge pool, and the edges of the pools where they can feed but remain hidden.  If you catch one, you’d better move on because he was the only one. 

 Luckily, small mountain streams are dotted with nanopools and you can spend a while day fishing just a half-mile of water, letting the spirit of the nanopool take you away as you lose all sense of time.

Seek out these tiny streams and pools, and you’ll be as addicted to them as I am.  Be ready to spend most of your time on your knees or hiding behind boulders.  The water is so clear and shallow that you must use all the stealthy skills in your quiver to remain unseen.

Tiny places in an immense landscape…what’s not to love!

Time to Think

One aspect of the simplicity of tenkara is that it gives you more time to think.  Less gear means more time to tune into the alpine aquatic world around you.  Less does indeed mean more.  I realized this once again while picking apart pocket water on the East Fork of the Cimarron River in southwest Colorado, scouting some water I'll guide clients on in early July.  Quality time spent on streamside inspections of adult Yellow Sallies squirming their way from under round stones.  Spending mesmerized moments with stonefly shucks on wet boulders.  This tri-forked river is alive with stoneflies, and I'm darned lucky to be here.