As a teenager I had a habit of riding my bike down to the beach of my dying hometown in the dark, before the orange glow of streetlights faded with the break of dawn. This usually happened in early fall when the chinook started showing, often following a light rain that barely raised the creek flowing into the harbor.
Stan Beaulier’s pickup, towing a five-owner Clacka, idles by the Grand Motel’s parking lot, which is occupied by our ancient gang-of-four fly-gear fiddlers. A fine young guide, Stan wears sandals for shoe-demanding river bottoms and is frequently laughing while spouting common and Latin names of Wisconsin’s eleven native turtles, cardinal flowers, and five different redhorse species known only to McClane’s.
There was no doubt it was a steelhead. Until it wasn’t. The grab had been so jolting, the head shakes so violent, that no consideration was given to the fish being anything but a steelhead. Yet there at my feet, in six inches of water, lay a brown smallmouth of grotesque proportions. Pulsing and flexing, flaunting its outsized strength.
This was once one of my favorite spots in the Catskills. Paul and I used to fish it a lot before he moved to Montana. It’s a good place for Isonychias in the fall, and fishing a big dry in October in the East is something to be relished. I was last here more than…
At 37 feet long, 9,000 pounds, and three miles to the gallon, Clyde didn’t fit well in Berkeley, literally or figuratively. I passed an electric car with a bumper sticker that said, “Animals are just little people in fur coats,” and eased on toward the Sac.