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

A quiet video report from Lincoln co. Wisco

This by George Cleveland, insect overlord of the wisfly forum.

TR| last sunday APR19

We somehow drove through rain to get to , you know, Greater Iowa, no rain all day, and then drove through rain all the way back, go figure.

Some Landscapes :





Nick_K sneaking up on those trout...




Some Fish:
first one of the day...


second one of the day ..


wherein I lose track ...


One of the better ones, two views...



Some clear clear water


The afternoon dry, a fly I call the Jumjil.
size 18 peacock body, cdc underwing, sparse elk overwing.



Good they are, Jumjils...




some closeups ...











Spring is here, the snakes are out ...


and then Lunch, tragedy averted...


The pull tab came off of the tin of sardines, so the Opinel knife and Austrian de-barbing pliers came into use. Stick chopsticks as utensils, cheese, green onion, and mustard snad, and a couple of Pilsners.

Why did king oscar get rid of the key?

Angler Access law signed in Montana

By way of FF in Yellowstone flog

.. Governor Brian Schweitzer signed HB 190 into law. It's a short and simple law. Every fly fisher in Montana should read it and abide by it.

read the rest here

Fall cast and blast II

Day 2 results much similar to Day 1. Grouse flushed with none accidently flying into the direction that the birdshot was flying. The day was warm and the dog got a work out. Here he is lying down on the ground drinking from his bowl refusing to make eye contact with me because he is so disappointed in one half of the team.


As usual the cast portion of the day went much better.





With no grouses to bring home I took a couple of trout for the old man back at the cabin.


There are essential vitamins and nutrients in fresh caught brook trout that are very beneficial for 86 yr olds.

Fall cast and blast

under the "time to close the U.P. cabin" category I did the late night north woods run after work Tuesday. Headed out Weds morning with the dog and the shotguns, left the camera at home, and the hunting was good but the shooting was bad, which is our traditional family way. Spent the afternoon on stream.



a rock ledge in the cedar swamp off of the river, with a free flowing seep, and seep where it goes into the main channel.



some of the locals trouts.

Reflections on the Water: The Metaphysics, Sport and Literature of Fly Fishing

D'ARCY EGAN

THE PLAIN DEALER

Steve Schoenwald of Hinckley receives some fly fishing tips at Wade Lagoon from Case Western Reserve University Professor John Orlock. Orlock is teaching a class on the sport - and art - of fly fishing.

To understand the great lit erature spawned by the sport of fly fishing - books written as long as 500 years ago - pick up a fly rod and learn to cast and catch fish.

So says Case Western Reserve University Professor John Orlock.

Orlock is teaching freshmen the art of fly fishing and quite a bit more this fall with his course "Reflections on the Water: The Metaphysics, Sport and Literature of Fly Fishing."

On Thursday morning, Orlock had a dozen young men and women waving fly rods and casting a small fluff of orange yarn into the still waters of Wade Lagoon, dappling the reflection of the nearby Cleveland Museum of Art.

"The course is an examination of fly fishing with an integration of academic skills, providing an introduction to outdoor life," said Orlock, who, not surprisingly, is an avid fly fisherman. "Fly fishing, like no other sport, has been responsible for a proliferation of great literature."

A part of the college's SAGES (Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship) undergraduate program, the course has been a collaborative effort, said Orlock. Molly Berger and Peter Whiting, deans of the College of Arts and Sciences, encouraged Orlock. So did steelhead trout fisherman Bill Siebenschuh, chairman of CWRU's English Department, as well as college librarian Bill Klaspy.

Klaspy, also a fly fisherman, is guiding the students through a wealth of literature on the sport.

Ray McCready, president of Orvis - a leading maker of fly tackle - donated rods and reels. The equipment prompted Orlock to offer the course twice each year.

Orlock pointed to Stephanie Jackson, a student from Moon Township, Pa.

"On Monday, she couldn't make a cast," he said. "Now, she's showing a lot of skill."

A great help, said Orlock, was a session this week with George Vosmik, a local master of fly casting and fly tying who has taught hundreds of people the art of fly fishing over the years.

A smiling Xi Chen of Solon, who had never fished before, was adeptly making roll casts.

"It's my favorite class," said Tyler Smith of North Ridgeville. "Maybe because it gets us out of the classroom. But it has been fun, learning to fly fish and reading a lot of great books."

The course reading assignments include:

Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It," which became a popular movie credited with rejuvenating the sport.

"Uncommon Waters: Women Write About Fishing," edited by Holly Morris.

And, of course, the ever-popular "A Treatyse of Fysshynge Wyth an Angle." The book, penned by Dame Julianna Berner in 1496, was the first on sport fishing.

"There is such emotion in fly-fishing literature," said Penny Tucker of Stanton, Tenn., co-instructor of the course, as she collected rods and reels at the end of the class. "It was hard not to tear up at the end of 'A River Runs Through It.' "

A burning question is whether a sport can be considered art.

Orlock has the credentials to make such a determination. The former head of the theater department at CWRU, he was awarded the Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Chair in the Humanities in 2000. He's also a playwright, whose works have been featured at such major theaters as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Play House and the Focus Theatre of Dublin, Ireland, among others.

"Fly fishing is like dance," said Orlock. He points out that the great fly fisher Joan Wulff was a dancer before she took up and excelled at the sport.

"I thoroughly enjoy fly fishing, and fly fishing literature," said Orlock. "Introducing both to students has been a terrific experience. I believe it is an introduction for them into a new and wonderful world."

from:

http://www.cleveland.com/sports/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1221295087284330.xml&coll=2

Any U.P.er can tell you ...

In today's Wall Street Journal a story about Hemingway and his yarn about the "big Two-hearted River"...

"The narrative begins with Nick Adams, Hemingway's protagonist and alter-ego, having just gotten off the train in Seney, a town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He hikes into the wilderness and fishes for trout. The problem is that the Two-Hearted River lies about 20 miles north of Seney and flows into Lake Superior. On foot, it's virtually impossible to get there with Nick's apparent speed. The Fox River -- a perfectly good stream for brook trout -- runs right through the town, on its way to Lake Michigan.



Hemingway visited Seney with a couple of friends in 1919. Wouldn't he have just fished the Fox?"

This was settled long ago, in the 1960's in fact by a real fishing writer, one of the greats, and one of the U.P.'s own sons. Read the chapter about this topic in Robert Traver's ( née John Voelker) book "Trout Magic". Some other good stuff in there as well.

Austria - yes that's right Austria

Report posted July 31 - but fished in Austria June26/27...

Burned a ton of miles and decided to get the kids some Old Europe culture.

This was the Fishing Hutte we spent a night in.
outside:

inside:

The back yard of the utte:


We hiked up the side of the valley to get a close look at one of the waterfalls coming down from the ice fields.





This valley is above the Krimml wasser falle - highest in Europe.

The kids at the top of the valley.



and there was trout:




The Krimml Achental is 14KM long, ending in a glacier at the head of the valley that is coming down off of Großglockner the highest montain in Austria. ( I think ). The fishing access is all controlled by the Braurup Hotel family, apparently they have been contolling it for the last 400 years or so. They issue daily permits to the 200KM of prime waters that they control, at 25 euros a day. The 14KM of the Krimml above the falls is in a preserve, that limits the rods to 10 a day, fly only, complete C&R. There were two other fisherman there for the two days I was there, I did not see them any near I was fishing, but I ran into them in one of the two "restaurants" that are up there. Basically old alpine farmhouses and the families that live in them sell beer, and homemade weinerschnitzel and milk and cheese made from the 8 or 9 cows they graze, and have on the farm, and I swear that the cream and cheese soup tasted like the wildflowers they were grazing on.



It was blazing sun while we were there with occasional rainclouds blowing through. So - by midmorning the river itself would be up in high runoff mode. I couldn't cross the river to get to this pool and big back eddy, but some monster trout were steadily rising to a grey and sulfer hatch beyond my ability to cast and mend and float a dry into this. These trout laughed and mocked me all afternoon.



The high water did bring up all the small feeders flowing in from all the waterfalls though and the trout did take refuge in these.



These were fishes that came from these feeders on dries of various types.
















The second day in the evening I fished a different stream. Thom the guide at the shop at the Braurup sent me to it. I don't know what it was called. It looked like this.



Got a few from this stream - including the biggest fish of my two Austrian fishing days.



Had one on this stream at the base of a plunge pool that I never saw. It just broke me off after about 30 seconds.