Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Two Weekends in June

Recent pics ...

Sun on the hill on the other side of coulee.


A river pic - that is bank work that is one year old.




No big fish, but lots of these small stream fish


We we're at the farm so there were chores to be done.


Grif had to be penned up separate and was not happy about it.


Three of the girls were in heat and it wasn't puppy time.


The orphaned calf had to be fed.


Tractors had to be ridden


Next day we fished a stream that had had 4 inches of rain a couple of days before.


Hot steamy and foggy.




















This brown trout lip jewelry is a swap fly.


Sunday, June 14, 2009

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

This is still not enough to make me a brownliner -

Over here they call it squirrelfish. This particular presetation is called "Chrysanthemum Fish". It is cross-cut into small diagonal sections, and then deep fried hard. Surprisingly, there are no bones to speak of and the sauce is a sweet and sour variation local to northwest China.





But it is still carp to me.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Troutenfreude ©

As those of you following this blog probably know, I am currently out of the country. If from these most recent posts it appears I have spent a good portion of the last week flying from place to place in China, you would be accurate.

It is a most unfortunate time to be out of the upper midwest, where I fish. The streams heading north from Chicago now have a cascading set of fly fishing opportunities, starting in the U.P. where the march browns are on, Northern Wisconsin where the sulfers are in full swing, Brown drakes in the driftless, and at the southern end of the driftless and the most southern sand county streams the hex will be starting in the next week or so. Of course, Caddisflies can be found hatching through this region at any time. Even people who notoriously do not catch fish, can catch trout at this time of year. It might be said that this is the moment, the time, when if you are fly fisher, you look forward to it all year. The time when, as a trout fisher, it is all going on, all available, all ready to fished.

And I am on a business trip for two weeks in China.

Hence, troutenfreude ©; “Philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno defined troutenfreude © as “largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another fly fisher who is not catching trout which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate.”

Across the intertubes everyone is posting sparkling reports of hatches experienced and trout caught like the millions of stars illuminating the wilderness northern sky at night.
Fortunately there are dark spots.

My brother remained at the cabin for an additional two weeks after my nine year old and I left. He is not a flyfisher of any real ability, basically he can slap a streamer in a sort of crappy roll cast and do the quartering down and across streamer drift. He was taken to one of my favorite locations by my cousin, which I haven’t been able to get to yet this year. This particular river is at the lower end of a large central UP watershed. It was irritating to me that he had the time to go, and I did not.





Despite there being trout jumping and flopping all over the place he caught no fish.
It seemed only right to me.

You there on that famous Pierce county stream seeing trout dimpling everywhere on the Darth Vader hatch with no results; hahahahaha.

Up there in Lincoln County, went out for sn evening hatch but the cold snap only had 3 drakes on the water and no fish ? serves you right.

There I've done it.


troutenfreude © copyright 2009 – Harlan Wallach – all rights reserved

Thursday, June 4, 2009

in Urumqi

at the airport in Urumqi. A sandstorm in Dunhuang prevented landing.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

bej->xia

Hainan Airlines HU7237

on the tarmac

quarantine officers on board. All passengers are being examined on the plane.

Monday, June 1, 2009

on board the long leg

Air Canada has nice airplanes. There are many chinese getting on board the plane with masks on. You'd think there was a SARS epidemic on or something.

on the plane.

in the rain..

no plane so far

We we're supposed to have already boarded this plane to Toronto. Kind of difficult, with no plane at the gate. Oh well.

on my way to the airport

5:30 am. Traffic is clear considering the rain storm.