The Painted Trout

News from Blue Ribbon Flies

2011-08-15T08:20:00.003-04:00

About once a week I get an email from Craig Matthews and "The Gang at Blue Ribbon Flies" out in West Yellowstone, Montana. It is a newsletter that I signed up to receive about a year ago. First off, before I go into any of my own horn-tooting, I need to say that this is one of the best written regulars I get to read -- that includes blogs, magazines, forums, etc. The writers (John Juracek and Craig Matthews, plus some unnamed others, no doubt) do indeed know how to make sentences -- a true rarity these days. And sentences that make sense, besides! You can get a sense of it from their blog.
The newsletter is more of a treat, if you ask me. Not only will you be greatly entertained, but enlightened, engaged and, well, not insulted with bad grammar and syntax. The photographs are always stunning, the news is newsy, the information is handy if not essential, and after a regular dose of this newsletter, you will begin to feel very much as though you are part of that wonderful West Montana scene all year round. I would add some pictures here from the newsletter, but I'm not sure if I can do that without permission and/or the right know-how technically.

Which brings me to the reason for writing this blog, my own moment to shamelessly self-promote. On Friday I got an email from my midwest rep, Rich Stekete, who also gets the newsletter. I hadn't had a chance to read it yet since I was preparing for an outdoor show, but Rich had to point out to me that The Painted Trout was again being mentioned in the newsletter. He attached a document of the snippet featuring us, and I'm going to try to attach it to this blog.... Just click anywhere in the image to see a full-sized version.

Rich wrote "This major "ink" is outstanding!" Thanks, Rich!

Commission Days 5,6,7 & 8

2011-08-05T08:48:00.007-04:00

I've been so busy since working on this project that I haven't had time to write about the final and intense last week of work. Here it is in pictures and I will post an update with text and more pictures. in a few days.

In the meantime, however, I got an email from the gentleman in New York who commissioned this piece. Here's what he wrote:

Olive explores the Chaos

Hi Lauren,
The silk got here yesterday. It's absolutely amazing, way way beyond my expectations. The details in the leaves and birds is absolutely gorgeous. Thanks so much for taking on this project. I just dropped it off at the tailor and will keep you posted as to the progress & end result of the blazer. Thanks again, it's wonderful!!

Filing system for silk screens

Organized by Species of Tree, Bird, Fish, etc.

Ready to print!

First stage: the main grouse motifs

My assistant hand-applies resist to the grouse images

Leaf motifs are added

There are a lot of wings to resist...

Painted grouse showing resist marks, painted leaf, and other elements.

Screening the final "top" design element, a faint scrub grass allover pattern.

The full finished effect before steaming (setting the dye).

Close-up of grass over-print before steaming.

Close-up of grass over-print before steaming; resist lines in grouse tail in lower left.

Rolling the finished silk for steaming.

Lucky Pot and her Happy Food

One down, one to go: silk rolled in muslin, wrapped in kraft paper.

So many things can go wrong...

My trusty stove-top steamer with Lucky Pot on top.

One full length of steamed, rinsed and ironed silk.

Ready to send -- say goodbye!

Commission - Days 3 & 4

2011-07-16T09:02:00.000-04:00

Day 3.

Early Friday, before going to set up the booth at Art in the Garden, I rinsed both pieces of "real" silk for this commission, in order to get the discharge paste off the fabric. Then, of course, they each needed to be wrapped in towels and ironed, one at a time.

That was really all I had time for.

Day 4 (Sunday)

Art in the Garden

After unloading the truck from all the stuff carted to the Art in the Garden show, I was able to get downstairs and mix up a fresh batch of print paste.

Print Paste

This is made from sodium alginate, a natural ingredient derived from seaweed (I'm told). It allows you to silkscreen colors by holding them in a paint-like consistency.
Like many "potions" and solutions in dyeing, it has a shelf-life; it can go bad, become soupy, or dry out, depending on atmospheric conditions and whether or not the Dye Gods are on your side that day.

Then I stretched the test piece onto my print table and began printing the images that would need hand painting. This was the part that I was really testing: how this thicker silk would respond to my dye paste and my dye painting. Would the paste penetrate the cloth fully? Would the colors I painted in bleed out of their lines? Would the silk itself take up the dye the way I expected?

After waiting for all the images to dry, I painted in a leaf -- very very carefully. Success.

Next up was the question of how the silk would take up my resist material -- this is often called "gutta" or what some people think of as "batik," although it is neither. It does operate the same way, however, which is by resisting the dye painted along side or over it. In this case, we needed to increase the detail and interest of each grouse by allowing some of the bird to NOT receive color. The white barring on the feathers, for instance. The material is applied with a small squeeze bottle, and I'm not very good at this because years ago I ruined my right hand grading papers at the University of Michigan. 70 hours a week writing on freshman comp papers did it in, and now I have to be careful how much I use or over-use the hand...Nevertheless, I managed to resist a few birds and let it dry for the rest of the day. I needed a break; though I love working in the studio on a Sunday because I get to listen to great jazz on WEMU, I needed to give myself some time off. More tomorrow!

Big Commission Day Two

2011-07-08T21:26:00.000-04:00

Day Two.
Rise and shine early, Miss Girl, 'cause you've got a lot to do and it's all gotta be timed just right.

First thing: rinse (again, and again, and then yet again), the silk yardage that had spent the night in the dyepot.

Then blot each one dry with towels, one at a time, and iron each one, one at a time. This had to be done in one, shall we say, sweep. As mentioned in Day One, you have to iron silk while it's still damp for best results.

At 9am, Marietta Van Buhler, a photographer and one of our participating artists at Art on the Farm, came over to help me with some Facebook chores that I couldn't get my brain around. Wow, was she helpful! So not only a very gifted artist, she's kind of a techie, too. Now you can see postings from The Painted Trout FB page on our website, and also postings from Art on the Farm's FB page on THAT website. Immediately following that I had an appointment in Ann Arbor with a dear friend who was visiting. She is owner of Chocolate in Chelsea, the best chocolate on the planet, no kidding. We talked business like a couple of rabid animals, it's been so long since we had good chin wag. Lots of ideas shooting around. The other people at the table didn't stand a chance!

Then back to the house where I jumped into my "studio clothes" which really comprise the bulk of my wardrobe anyway. They were still a little wet from the morning's rinsing and ironing. I tend to wipe my hands on my butt, since it's always the nearest thing at hand.

The "real" pieces of silk were indeed lighter than the test piece, which by the way didn't end up being too dark after all. Nevertheless, I am very happy with the hue of the real silk. Here they are:


Real silk, test scarf, test piece and scarf above.

The colors don't really translate very well on my monitor, but you get the idea. The "real" silk is the piece on the lower left, a test scarf is in the middle and the test silk is on the right.

Next up was the discharge print layer. If you look closely at the grouse scarf above and also by mousing over the image on our website, you'll see under the darker print, there are pale yellow leaves. That's achieved by taking away some of the dye with a silkscreen print using discharge paste. It's a major step, but it's always worth it since it yields a much more interesting and complex pattern on the cloth.

To achieve this, first I have to mix up a batch of the stuff, which requires a certain amount of print paste (which I had made up ahead of time), and two chemicals that when combined make the "go juice" of the operation. They have a life, however, and it's short. Unless you use it in 3 days, it loses its "go" and you are not going to get the results you want; in other words, little if any dye will be lifted from the cloth.

I estimated the amount I would need for the test piece as well as the real pieces, and mixed it all up. It's never a bad idea to let such things sit for a little while so that all the ingredients fully dissolve, so while that was happening, I taped the test piece to my printing table. It's not too different than stretching a canvas in that you want it taut and without any big moving areas of cloth. You want to be able to print and not have the silk lift up when you lift the silkscreen off the fabric, but you also don't want to use up stupid amounts of tape for what is, after all, just test piece. Plus, this is my nice new table cover and I don't want a whole lot of tape residue to have to contend with.

I had prepared the silkscreen the day before and in short order I was at work printing the pattern across the fabric, closely imitating the rhythm of the prints on the underlying layer of the original grouse scarf. As soon as the print was semi-dry, I removed the tape.

Because the basement is, well, the basement, it's cool and semi-humid. I do use a dehumidifier but turn it off when I am working so I can hear Diane Rehm and other NPR stuff. The print was not drying fast enough for my impatient little soul, so I brought it upstairs to my office which, as mentioned in Day One, is not unlike a sauna, but a dry one.

While that was drying, I cleaned off the print table (a must between EVERY use of the table, otherwise disaster will surely befall the project), then hand-dried the table with a towel, and just to be safe, gave it a blast with a hair dryer. Then I got to work taping down the first piece of real silk. For this cloth, I elected to use a sister print to the one used in the test piece and the grouse scarf. Same type of leaf, but the print itself is slightly larger and more interesting, with more directionality and variety in the shapes and sizes of the leaves. The work went quickly.

By now the text piece had dried sufficiently and that meant I needed to fire up the iron again, as the only thing that activates the "go" is heat and steam. One has to be careful not to scorch the fabric while at the same time allowing the steam to do its thing. Interestingly, the color turned to a pale mauve, which I hadn't expected, but since I did switch reds when I dyed the real silk, I knew the results would be different.

Then I rinsed (and rinsed and rinsed) this test piece to get the paste out of the cloth, which would also yield a little brighter underlying color. This part is tricky, too, since you have to keep the fabric moving at all times and increase the water temperature in steps in order to prevent ghost printing of the discharge paste. Then roll in a towel again and iron dry.

By now the first real piece of silk was dry enough to take off the print table, which I did, followed by another scrubbing down of the table surface (also to prevent ghost printing and other terrible outcomes). Then I taped the second piece down, printed it, and went up the stairs to fire up the iron to discharge the first piece. I was happy to find that the color under the activated paste was a creamy pale yellow.

Well, that was it for the day. I had to pack the truck for a show I would be setting up for the next day and this was a good place to stop anyway. I would do the rinsing of the two pieces (and ironing, of course) tomorrow.

I realize some of this may be confusing when not boring, so if anyone has any questions, please feel free to send me an email at lauren@paintedtrout.com or post below this blog entry.

Commission Day One

2011-07-07T22:05:00.002-04:00

Day One. (It's a long one, so bear with me).
I've spent most of the day in the basement dyeing silk for a long-anticipated commission work featuring over 2 yards of hand-dyed hand-painted silk for a certain gentleman in New York who somehow found me on the internet and wanted me to copy one of my scarves but in a sizable quantity so he can have it sewn into the lining of a jacket he is having made for him. Yes, a long sentence, that. Here is a picture of the scarf he found online (it is also posted on my website paintedtrout.com), where you can mouse over the image for close-up viewing of all the wonderful details.

The first thing I did before starting out was check my supplier to see if they had our particular silk in stock -- that would be in case I screwed up this first part of the project and might have to reorder and start again.

We needed 15mm silk because 10mm was probably not strong enough to endure the rigors of life as a jacket lining. Not sure what kind of jacket, of course (I suppose I can ask him, the gentleman from New York), but I reckon he will be wanting to wear the garment and that means a robust life of putting on and taking off (and showing off, one hopes), and one wants one's garments to not rip unduly because of flimsy fabric.

The next thing I did was tear the 4 meter long 54" wide fabric into the two pieces I would be dyeing and printing, with a third smaller piece that I would be using as a test piece for not only color but printing and hand-dyeing. That part (the ripping) was easy, though I do tend to fret over my estimates of shrinkage.

The Dye Rack

Not sure how much technical stuff to put in here, so I'll just say quickly that since we wanted to approximate the colors on the grouse scarf, I knew to use the same kind of dye. It is a type of dye with superior washfastness and lightfastness, and I made up a fresh batch of each color I would need to get this odd peachy gold. I knew I wouldn't be able to match it exactly, but at least I had a basis for getting near. This is one of the downers of doing commission work: you can never exactly replicate what someone has seen in your non-commission work. Or at least I can't. There are some artists, and many fiber artists at that, who write down everything they do, including formulas for every project and effect. I can do that, but why? Or to be more honest, I used to be able to know how to do that, but now can't bother.

The Farm-auction $4 sink

Soaking the silk

Scale for weighing dye n' stuff

First up was dyeing the "test piece," but not before washing all the silk in a process known as "scouring," which basically means soaking in specific type of soap and washing soda in a super-hot bath for at least 30 minutes.
Yeah, but that would mean I'd have to clean out the sink to make way for the soaking bins. I got the sink at a farm auction for $4.00 and it's been a faithful friend ever since. But I digress.

While the silk sat in the scouring water, I made up the the dye bath, which meant I had to measure the chemicals into the water according to the (dry) weight of the fabric, and measure in the dyestock solution that I had just made up. Only problem is, I forgot to weigh the fabric before soaking it. Ah, but being a person who uses a scale quite often (for postage, as well as chemicals and dye), I had a good idea what the pieces weighed, so I went ahead with little concern, knowing that there were greater things to fear.

Checking the pH

Here is where I can fast-forward to the result. After many hours of dyeing the test piece (it takes easily 3 hours to fully dye the size I was working with) as well as two other silk scarves, using variations in the color formula (combinations of violet, two yellows, a certain type of red), I had dyed the silk too dark. Midway through the process I realized that the result would be almost brown, not warm gold, as I had planned. I had overestimated the weight of the fabric and underestimated the strike rate of certain colors in my formula. Complicated, I know. Never mind. It was a good lesson, for while I was making my mistakes, I was learning from them. I knew now I could "build" color on the silk even in the pot as it was dyeing, and that I could correct the color as long as I could control pH and temperature. I came away from that part of the day confident about color.

BUT I also knew I would be in new terrain when it came time to dye the "real" pieces. Not only were they each considerably larger than my test piece, there were two of them. This meant that I needed my hugest pot, an old canning basin that I was not at all confident would accommodate the yardage. You can't crowd silk and expect to get an even color -- one more thing I hadn't thought about when I agreed to the job. Yikes! What else was in store?

The old table

A new cover

Staple guns young and old.

Once the fabric has been "cooked" (meaning held at a certain high temperature for an hour), you need to let it cool down, not just in order to handle it but to allow the final bits of dye to set. So while that was happening, I got to work re-covering my print table. Nothing elaborate, just the need to clean off the table to begin with, then carry down the new roll of covering and find the staple guns. The cover has been great for the past 6 years or so, but I'm not going to embark on such a project and leave anything to chance, like stray deposits of tape adhesive, weird stubborn paint stains that mysteriously decide to come lose after years of being indelible, or forgotten irregularities in the surface texture.

The other thing I did while waiting for fabric to cool was get the first silk screen ready. No picture for that, but I did take a break to go cuddle the cat.

Okay, now back to dyeing. At around 2 pm, I lower the "real" silk into the pot, piece by piece...
It isn't until 8 pm that the dyebath reaches the goal temperature of 185 degrees F. Along the way I am adjusting and adjusting the color, monitoring the temperature, tracking and compensating the pH, and most of all, stirring and moving and repositioning the huge swaths of steaming dripping silk. Good thing the basement is about 20 degrees cooler than my office. It's one of those awful sweltering summer days and every time I come up from the basement I am about ready to pass out from the heat.

In between tending the dyebath, I make my move to rinse out the "test" pieces and iron them while they are still damp. The best way to manage silk, as long as we're on the subject, is to wash in cool water with a mild soap – a few swishes with an Ivory soap bar is just the thing – rinse well, then roll in a towel. Unroll and iron immediately on a hot setting such as cotton or linen. Do this while it's still damp, or your creases and wrinkles will set permanently Do not fear silk! It's an incredibly strong material and can withstand high heat from an iron.

Only me withstanding the heat from the iron is another matter.

My ironing board (the good one, mind you; there are several throughout the house), is at the top of the basement in what I call my "old office." Not air conditioned, is what I'm saying. It took a while to iron out these pieces (the main test piece plus the smaller silks I had added for color testing), mainly because the weight of the silk was so heavy. The test piece took about 15 minutes to iron dry, though the other pieces went quickly. It was interesting to compare colors among the various silks as compared to the original grouse scarf...

Scarf, test silk, and Grouse scarf...

By 9:30-10:00 the dyeing was complete. I had been working for 14 1/2 hours, not counting cuddling the cat, and while I didn't like the idea of leaving the silk in the dye pot after it had adequately cooled, there was nothing I could do. I mean nothing. It was only with great coaxing that I got my bones up the stairs and into bed.

It's Opener!

2011-05-09T16:15:00.000-04:00

    10:00 am
    Yipee, I'm going fishing!
    It's May 8th, a week after "Opener" here in Michigan, and I haven't cast a line over water since last season (not counting casting pools at fly fishing shows, mind you). Last weekend, the official Michigan Fishing Opener, was painful, I'll admit. While all my friends were heading up north, cars and trucks packed with gear and good thoughts, I stayed home and worked. My heart went with them, and the sense of fishing urgency was intense in my blood just thinking about the smell of the rivers in northern Michigan in spring after a long winter.

   But hey, it's really not such a Cindarella scenario. I enjoy the work, and besides, the price of gasoline has been enough to keep me close to home for all but the most critical errands and commitments.

   So where am I going today, you ask? Why across the street, to Spring Valley Trout Farm. No need for gasoline today; I'll just dust off the spinning rod my husband gave me last year for laughs, scratch out a few shrimp from the ice embedded in the freezer, and stroll on over there some time after lunch.

   Now if I were hungry for trout, I'd leave the shrimp at home and use woolly buggers, but what's great about Spring Valley Trout Farm is the catfish. Really. I'm talking melt-in-your-mouth. We have been jonesing for that catfish all winter, but had to wait until now; the first weekend in May is their "Opener."

   So don't go getting any ideas that fishing over there is a consolation prize. For someone who works 18 hour days, anything that gets me out of the studio-slash-office is welcomed. That's One. For Two: we like our neighbors, Jim and Jeanne Kaercher, who own the trout farm, and their kids, so it's always a nice, though quick, visit. Three: like I say, that catfish -- yummmME! Four? It's fishing.

    I spent the better part of the day weeding in the gardens and getting dirty, working up a catfish sized appetite.

   5:00 pm
   Today I had to go alone -- a first. My husband was entertaining friends from the cozy environs of his studio garage, none of whom would be staying for dinner. My thoughts were to just skip it and go with Jack later in the week (the trout farm is closed Monday-Tuesday), but Jack, see, had been jonesing, like I said. I had to go bring home the vittles for my man.

   It was a pretty slow day as far as the crowd went. No crowd, truth be told. It being Mother's Day explained things, no doubt. I got my bucket of water and strolled past the trout pond right over to our favorite bank on our favorite catfish pond. I rigged up the shrimp and threw (cast? can you really call that casting?) the hook and weight rig out over the water. (Jack had given me a quick refresher course in casting a spinning rod; I'm really bad at it.) I then did all the stuff he coached me in with regard to letting it sink, taking in line, setting the lock etc.

A couple who arrived at the same time as I had and who had never fished there before strolled over to the trout pond with their little kid in tow. Other people were collecting their buckets, poles, coolers and whatnot and leaving for the day. It was a lovely afternoon and the sun was hot on my face, also a first for the season. The new-cut grass smelled good. I leaned against the pond's perimeter fence, balancing the fishing pole along the top rung, and I thought of what my shrink likes to remind me about: being as opposed to doing.

   Then suddenly out there at about one o'clock, a rise. It was heartbreaking, really. I cast over there, purely out of habit. But these are catfish, for God's sake!

   The couple who had been at the trout pond now strolled over to the catfish pond where I was, but a good distance away. They carried the 14 foot bamboo poles the farm supplied, each complete with five jillion pound test, a hook the size of my shoe, and a red-and-white bobber three feet from the end. Their little kid toddled along with them, wearing his life vest.

   I cast again and set the shrimp on the bottom, shifted my weight and watched the kid.

   You know where I'm going with this.

   The couple with the kid caught a fish in pretty short order. It was fun to watch their delight and surprise. I reeled in and cast again. Soon they caught another fish. I mean we're not talking rocket science here. We're not even remotely in the realm of finesse. We're pulling up bottom feeders with worms. Or trying to with shrimp. But I remained happy for their fun. Really. Happy. Fun.

   I had never gone this long at the farm without catching a fish -- hell, without so much as a nibble! I mean it was the second day of the open season. There had to be hundreds - hundreds! - of catfish trolling around on the floor of that pond.

   Then the couple caught their third fish, swinging it out over the grass with a massive backstroke, before dangling it into their bucket.

   Well.

   It was really more a matter of dinner, though. It was NOT about catching fish. NOT. Catfish was what we had planned on. It was about DINNER. I didn't want to disappoint Jack, see. I didn't want to go hungry. Plus, the trout farm was about to close for the day and I didn't want to be asked to leave. Asked to leave: the poor neighbor dressed in rags who had walked over.

   Then there was the idea of going through the main building in order to leave the place, nothing in my bucket, and talk - talk! - to the nice kid who had let me in. Got skunked! I'd have to say, jollying it up.
Better luck next time!

   But that's exactly what I did. Got skunked! I sang, putting down my empty bucket. The kid laughed casually and hacked off the head of one of that couple's catfish, then noted that I had been using shrimp. That mighta been it, he said. Really? I asked. Sure, he said, jerking his head in the direction of the happy couple while he gutted their fish, I mean everyone else has been catching lots of fish all day using the worms.

   Everyone. Lots of. All day.

   Hmmm, I said. And then I walked home.

Waiting for me were my husband and his friend, who had decided to take up oil painting while I was across the street. The only thing for me to do was practice fly casting and admire the work I had done in the gardens. Then, lo! I came upon a rare and precious twin treat awaiting me in the apple orchard, a treat that helped me forget about the ne'er-to-be-caught catfish. Morels and asparagus! Quite literally only a few feet apart, no less!

In short order they got themselves cooked up in a little butter and sat smiling at me from a happy little plate. The first of the season, also.

Next week I get another set of firsts for the season: 1) to go up north and 2) fish for real, and also 3) float a river (yet to be determined). In the meantime, the nice thing about asparagus and morels is that they keep on giving for several weeks. Long enough to forget all about catfish.

Lesson Two: Murderous Heat

2010-07-07T09:50:00.000-04:00

Jim called today to see if I were up for a casting lesson this afternoon. Reason being I guess because of the temperature. It's been so murderous hot today, he might've been thinking I would decline. Delicate skin, perhaps. Fear of heat rash. Too many freckles as it is.
But no.
I'm in, I said. Be there or be square.
Just before I left the house, the radio said it was 92 degrees F. The radio also said to drink plenty of fluids, avoiding alcohol, and to wear as few clothes as possible. A condition of oxymoronity if ever I've heard one.

I donned as few clothes as possible and sallied forth, knowing that we would bake quickly on the open lawn of the municipal park in Adrian. I brought water and soda pop.

Other than two days in which my husband and I went fishing, I had been a good little student and practiced faithfully every day, reducing all energy, just as Jim had tutored, until I was casting as slow as a heroin addict.

Perfect weather for it, too.

No vehicles were in the park when I arrived. The park had a post-apocolyptic feel to it. Ah, but life will out, won't it? When I reached into my truck to get my hat, there was a little visitor sitting exactly where a souvenir fly might be pinned: a Raisin River hexagenia. Something had swept him into the open window and there he sat, alive but stunned by the heat, on my Tilley broad-brimmed hat. He was breathing heavily, dressed in as few clothes as possible. Demurely, he allowed me to take some photographs for this blog, and I said I would protect his anonymity and not publish his name. I understood when he declined my offer of some Diet Coke, though I never got an explanation for why he only glanced at the water. But he seemed to trust me, because he stayed on my hat for a long time and even came out to observe my casting on the lawn.

By now my fellow students, Doug and Cole, had arrived, and Jim himself was setting up his rod. The heat was without mercy, but for some reason everyone seemed to be wearing the usual amount of clothes.

There was no need to warm up, of course. I began casting, showing off my somnambulate new strokes, and presently Jim shuffled over and drawled something by way of a greeting and then, I think, a question about whether I had had a chance to practice. The question felt insulting -- couldn't he see that I had been practicing? Couldn't he tell by the slo-mo false casts that lazily curtsied over the burnt grass of the outfield? I tried to bristle with irritation, but the damp heat made it look more like a stomach cramp.

With no other alternatives, I reverted to what I do best: complain about myself. The problem was this, I explained: I've got my cast all nice and languid, see? Nice loops, everything looking jake. Then when I re-introduce the haul, everything gets f**ked. The line collapses, the cadence gets lost, and the loop opens up like the jaws of a Baleen Whale. See?

He saw.

I can't seem to square the lazy-ass casting stroke with the hurry-up haul stroke. Weren't the cast and the haul supposed to mirror each other? I'm confused, I whined in my best east-coast girl whine.

Yes, they mirror each other, he coached patiently, but not necessarily in speed, just in size, in length. It will take – and here we both paused for emphasis – it will take practice.

Practice.

We nodded in the glare of the sun. Nothing new under it, that's for sure. Practice. I think that might've been when the hex few away.

"Well, what about this, then," I broke in, moving to the next grievance. "Here I am false casting away, shooting line, everything's working, and then on the 5th cast or so, with no warning, no explanation, for no reason whatsoever, mysteriously, my haul hand is carrying slack line on the back cast!" I showed him by recreating the indecent pose, gasping at such a calamity.

Jim wagged his Jim head. "Well, nothing happens for no reason whatsoever," he said. "You've got enough line out, but your rod isn't loading, I would say. It's probably because you're not stopping. By your fifth cast you're probably thinking about other things besides stopping. Right? Because stopping abruptly loads the rod. Make sure you're stopping the rod."

Okay, I thought. That I can do.

"The other thing you're doing," he went on in spite of my contentment, "is you're tending to raise your arm up at the top of your backcast. Remember the straight path for the rod tip, right?"

"Ah, well, I think I was stabbing the sky," I offered, referring to a Lefty Kreh proscription that we had talked about the previous week.

"Okay, well, forget stabbing the sky and just stop the rod straight up."

He went away and I worked on these things: keeping that weird new upward lift out of the backcast stroke (before it got too ingrained in muscle memory), and stopping the rod. In the meantime, I was mindful of that haul as the sun beat down hard on the back of my bare knees and sweat gathered between my shoulder blades. God, it's like talking to your neurotic sister, watching a toddler handle a kitten, calculating collatoralized debt obligations, and recalling a recipe for ravioli made from scratch all at the same time while putting on mascara without a mirror as you're driving a stick-shift to work in rush-hour traffic. With no air conditioning on and wearing no clothes at all as big trucks pass on both sides.

This isn't a nightmare, I reminded myself, it's a hobby.

"But there are some other things you can do, too," Jim's voice sounded, rousing me from my darkening thoughts. Several minutes had elapsed. He approached from the direction of Cole, who was casting on even browner grass. I blinked and wiped my eyes with a bandanna. Jim then began to demonstrate the notion of moving the upper arm, shoulder, and upper torso. I had been a little too limited to my lower arm, he said, demonstrating the difference. He imitated Joan Wulff's elongations, Lefty's colossal reaches, and then my own measly swipes. It was good to see. Jim said that if I incorporated more of my body into the cast, perhaps my wrist soreness, weakness, and repeated injuries would abate.
Naturally, I liked all this, not just because it might address the frequent pain in my hand and wrist, but because it was, well, a little like dancing. I used to swing dance, and even teach it, so movement is fun to explore for me. I don't care how silly I look, either, thank god, or I would never leave the house.

A few other tidbits and helpful hints were exchanged among the four of us, thoroughly drenched, spent, thirsty, and wilted, as we wound down the session. I made them pose for these shots. The guy in the blue hat is Jim, our teacher. Yellow hat is Doug, young dude is Cole, his son (maybe son-in-law, I'll check).

Next time I'm bringing water and snacks, I claimed. It would just be a nice thing to do, I thought. Jim's giving his time to us, purely out of some kind of sickness and devotion. The least I can do is water him down and bring a cookie or something. There will be more things in store, of course, but I haven't the ability to focus on what those would be right now, what with all the other things I have to keep in my head as I retrain myself to cast decently.

Learning & Casting

2010-07-05T10:51:00.000-04:00

Recently I made the decision to take the test administered by FFF to become a certified casting instructor.
The jargon is mixed. I've heard "go out to test," "go out for the CI," "test for the CI," and every variation thereof. I can't tell you what's the cool way to say it, being clearly the most uncool caster ever to hold a rod, but I can tell you that it's no simple process. Emphasis on process.

Between making the decision and taking the test – meaning the performance part of the test, where you have to demonstrate casts – is a whole mess of work. I know this because I made the same decision about 5 years ago and never could get behind it because of the work involved. I only wanted to test because I knew that one way to get good – really good – at something is to teach it. So I wanted more teaching. In order to do more teaching, I thought I should be a better caster -- and so on and so forth. All of that did work, to some degree. I improved my cast, I got more teaching chances by volunteering for various schools, clinics, retreats, and demonstrations. My first teacher (see Practicing Spring blog post), John Breslin of Flyfish Ireland, had said to me way back when that I should volunteer to help teach, or just help in any way, at local classes and events. I think that's about when I started to volunteer at Reeling and Healing Midwest retreats, and I also helped out a little at a clinic or two put on by Flygirls of Michigan. I went to clinics and social gatherings with my local TU Chapter. Through these events, I met some really great teachers (Cathy Sero, Rich Knowles, John Waters, Jim Craig), and was able to improve my own technique for teaching and casting. I got up more nerve to ask bigger names if they could give me a "private lesson" in the hours before a flyfishing expo's opening time. Lori Ann Murphy was particularly helpful at the now defunct Memphis Flyfishing Show. It snowballed, in other words. And along the way to becoming a better caster, I found that I really do love teaching it. How much more fun it is, and rewarding too, when teaching people something they want to learn, as opposed to surly, self-important, spoiled, lazy college students who can't imagine they don't have all the answers already. But I digress.

I promised myself this would NOT be a long insufferable blog entry, so I am going to cut to the chase right here and say the following: I asked Jim Craig, Certified Instructor, guide, and fellow instructor at the Trout Unlimited Flyfishing School(TUFFS.ORG) if he would coach me as I prepare for the test. He lives closer to me (about an hour's ride) than anyone else I know who's available, plus we have similar demented visions of the world and laugh at the same things. This is almost more important.

Last Monday night Jim rounded up a couple of other casters who want help and we all met up at a municipal park in Adrian (Michigan). The wind was up, but we were undaunted. I was using my TFO TiCr rod 7wt rod that is faster than what I'm used to (Bamboo and an older Winston graphite), but lighter than what I had been using (and injuring myself on). There's a Scientific Anglers' "Expert Distance" line on it. These are the limits on the equipment you can use when you're testing: 9 foot rod, 7 weight line. You cannot change the equipment during the test, either. If it's a windy day, cope. Since I plan to test next summer, it may very well be windy, so I figured I should work with the stiffer, faster rod, though I've also received advice to use an overlined 6-weight rod. We'll see. I'll probably write another blog on this issue alone.

Jim got on me right away about my speed. I was too fast, he said. My job was to slow, slow, s..l..o..w down the cast. Quit worrying about hitting the grass behind me. Just ssslllooowww it down. No hurry, no rush.

I worked on that while he went off to work with the others. No, he said, when he came back later. I could go even slower. See? (He demonstrated). It looked like casting in molasses, but boy was it pretty.

I got to work again, pretending I was casting under water.

The next time he came back he didn't say anything. I guess I'll have to figure that out as we go along. He did, however, look at my haul. Too much haul, too big. Shorter and closer, was what he wanted to see. Again, making everything more economical, using less energy. The haul hand was to move only a short distance, kind of like swatting away a fly, and stay close to the rod hand.

This is quite a challenge for someone who at 5'3" on a proud day feels she has to muscle through life in order to get anything done on par with normal-sized folk.

But as far as slowness, I've been working on this every day since last Monday with the exception of the days I actually fished. (My hand was sore from heaving streamers at bass and it was murderous hot out, so I gave myself a rest.)

Tomorrow we meet again, and I'm sure I'll have more to say about how much work I have in front of me.

A Night on the North Branch - PART TWO

2010-06-28T11:21:00.002-04:00

As I say, the weather had a fixed moodiness to it: shifting winds, fugitive and low cloud, a warm temperature, but threatening to turn chilly. The irises increased in number as I neared the river through the high arching grass. I suspected that over the last week only deer had crossed this ground, and later I saw a patch where they had lain during the night, flattening the grass into loose swirls.

On the river I began catching fish immediately. I caught them in shallow runs, fast riffles, and deep reaches along structure. I caught them at the end of a grass-covered sandbar, in the slow foam eddies behind a downed tree, out in the open and deep in the shade. The fish took the fly on the surface and submerged, dead drift and on the swing. They were all brook trout, siblings every one, it seemed. None over 10 inches. They all, to a man, wanted a mahogany fly. So mahogany I gave them.

I don't count the number of fish I catch unless I'm having a bad day. This isn't policy, really, just something I've noticed. I guess that's the negaholic in me, the enthusiastic pessimist. I remember the failures, the absences. But in the presence of abundance, I lose my head. This might account for my lifelong problem with mathematics. In any case, today I never had a notion what the number was. I was in heaven, though, I can tell you that.

With the water-proof camera my husband gave me this past Christmas I quickly photographed fish who were particularly pretty or seemed heftier relative to the ones I had been catching in the minutes previous. I am nervous photographing fish, especially when I am alone, because I don't want to stress them; I'm nervous about their stress even without a camera in hand. But there was one particularly beautiful log laying in shallow water with a growth of forget-me-nots in the crook of its arm and moss along its length, and I had it in mind that I would stage a shot there next time I got a nice trout. The moment came with a rise in slack water fully across the stream, and I was able to net the fish on the way over to the log. But in my darned two-handedness, I managed to splash water around myself and the emerging camera, so while the pose was just right, the shot was ruined by water on the lens. The dear brook trout lay indignantly in the blasted flowers, seeming to know it was a waste of time.

After that I stopped photographing altogether and got down to the business of catching even more fish. There was beginning an eerie drop in temperature not of the air but of the wind, and I wondered how much longer the fishing might be good. For a while everything continued as it had, with trout eagerly taking anything mahogany I might throw at them. But inevitably, a lull in the action arrived, and I took the opportunity to return to my truck, change rods, drink water, and rustle up a snack.

When I got back to my truck and checked my phone, the time was 7pm. Funny, I hadn't noticed three and a half hours going by. I put away the bamboo, set up my beloved Winston and set up a rig of flashlights to wear. Then I began to scrounge for old candy or crackers – something, anything, to eat. Cough drops, chewing gum, stale anything. (I have been known to devour half a granola bar that had lived the winter in my fishing vest). I had just hit upon a stash of Soy protein bars when voices suddenly came across the yard, nearing. It was Bob, the handsome and merry clergyman who had so uniquely welcomed me earlier (See Part One).

"We were wondering if we could impose upon you for a huge favor," he said apologetically as he approached the truck. "We don't want to intrude on your time, by any means, but we don't know anyone else who can help."

I froze and smiled by way of an answer, perhaps out of habit. I'm surprised I didn't curtsy.

"We were wondering if you might take a few minutes to come in and tell the group about your passion, to share with them what you told us earlier, and maybe more. We found your love of fishing so interesting and the things you said so inspiring...Just a few minutes, but only when it's convenient for you."

I told him I would be happy to oblige, but that I would not be ready or able to until perhaps after dark. I didn't know if he understood how late that was, and I myself didn't have a good fix on when dark came, just roughly around or after 10pm. He didn't seem bothered by the hour, just that it didn't get in the way of what he called my passion.

For the evening's fishing, I went downstream from where I had been earlier, along a stretch I had fished the year before but without the results that the upper area had yielded. It was a short walk from the house to the beginning of the water I wanted to cover. The air had indeed turned colder now, though winds had not increased. It was impossible to know when sunset would be since the sky was so gray. No fish wanted a single mahogany anything. Only one seemed interested in anything at all, and a caddis at that. Very little was happening. The most exciting moment came when hysterical cries of a bird turned my attention just in time to see a hawk fly away with a fledgling just snatched from its nest. I continued fishing downstream slowly, my eye on the water and to the sky, waiting for emergers or spinners.

The only thing to do during all this nothingness was practice casting. Ah, but casting and fishing are two very different things, and I quickly became distracted by my frustration at not seeing any rises or any bugs. I did, however, notice two identical rocks sitting along the end of a half-submerged log. How odd, I thought. Perfect twin rocks. I waded closer. How uncanny! Each had a bulbous pearl-gray bulk, with a smaller rust brown shape that sat like a pillow on top. What in the ---? Then it hit me. These were ducks. Two identical, oblivious, miraculous, sleeping, wonderful ducks. Then, as if on cue, they raised their heads and swiveled them front as if to show me I was right.

I crept closer so I could photograph them, and they seemed to tolerate me well. They were mergansers, I could tell that much, though they looked to be the same gender. At about 15 feet distance, they slipped quietly off the log and floated away on the strong central current.

Then I heard a rise. Then another. There was nothing on the water that I could see in the faded steel-dark light. But when I looked up there were dozens of enormous mayflies hanging, dropping, lifting and hanging in the air just two feet above me. They had two long tails and what appeared to be a matching set of antennae, equally long, protruding from their heads. These had to be isonychia if for no other reason than process of elimination. I quickly tied on a spinner pattern, though nothing in my boxes came close to the dimensions of what I was looking at unless I selected a hexagenia pattern. Nevertheless, even though very few flies were falling to the water near me, I was able to raise and land some fish, nothing enormous. I heard none of those rises that sound like bowling balls hitting the water. Meanwhile, above me the X-shaped flies were so numerous as to form a fishnet across the sky.
Any minute now, the big guys would start feeding and I was shaking with excitement. I stood still to listen, eyes boggling to collect light and detail, any sign of disturbance on the water. A resounding silence filled the next few minutes. It was nearly dark now. Then, in the sky, suddenly nothing. It was over before it had begun.

I got out of the water and headed back to the truck, keeping an ear cocked to the river, alert for gulps. For some reason I decided to re-enter the water where I had started that evening, seeing as there was good structure up there and hoping that perhaps I had been premature to leave the river when I did.
While standing there listening, rod under my arm, I presently heard male voices. Clergy, I thought, come out to enjoy the night, or get luggage from their cars, or settle into the few tents I had seen pitched on the yard. But then I recognized one of the voices, and turning, saw an AuSable River boat rounding the bend that ran in front of the house. "Hullo!" I called. Their talking stopped. "Hello!" came back, presently. "Who are you?" I shouted, pretty certain of the answer anyway. "We're fishing!" was the reply. "No," I said, "I mean, who are you? What are your names?" "I'm Bear," came the reply, "And I'm with Dennis." "Hi, Bear! I thought that was you. This is Lauren. Lauren Kingsley."
And in the next moment they were beside me in that elongation of a beautiful hand-crafted boat, holding in the water thanks to the chain-anchor that Bear wielded. With Bear (Jeff "Bear" Andrews) was the inimitable Dennis Potter for a guide's night out. Or I should say tyers' night out. Bear guides for Fuller's NBOC and ties flies at a host of venues, and Dennis is a renowned fly-tyer and designer.
Bear introduced me as "The Painted Trout" to Dennis, whom I knew of, and had met, but couldn't claim real acquaintanceship with. He recognized me, and at the mention of my company nodded more assuredly. They had been floating all evening and were due to take out in about 10 minutes' float downstream.

They then began to tell me their most compelling story of the night. Not far upstream from where I had spent the afternoon catching those innumerable brook trout, is a beaver house in the river. There Dennis hooked a brook trout of about 8-10 inches. He had no longer set the hook when bam! came an angry brown trout taking the brookie broadside! For several minutes Dennis had two fish on one hook, fighting hard because of the strength and size of the brown. It looked as if they would net the event, but at the last second, inches from the boat, the brown let go and they only landed the brook. Telling me this, the two of them were like a couple of kids just home from the circus: dazzled and high. Well, the high part might have come from the cooler in their boat, but never mind.

Bear and I chatted about nothing in particular for another moment while Dennis sat staring into space reliving the vision of those two fish. We agreed that there would be no more good bugs or fish tonight. If I wanted to raise a big one, however, he told me, put on a mouse or big streamer and fish the structure at the bend right in front of the house. I thanked him for the tip as they shoved off and said I would, but I was lying.

It wasn't so much that I was tired, but I was satisfied. It had been a good day's fishing, and I had renewed myself with solitude and the unending wildlife. Bob came out to meet me at my truck. I said I would be ready when I'd gotten out of my waders and put things away, but he raised his hand in protest. "No, no!" he exclaimed. "We want you in your outfit! We want the authentic experience!" I pointed out the wet waders, the dripping net, the muddy boots. He shook his head and waved it all away. "Come as you are!"

Once inside with my rod broken down, I stood at the entry to a large living room where a group of men and women sat in a circle facing a large screen. One of the guests was giving some kind of presentation which they were eager to interrupt to get a gander of this strange breed of woman, an angler. Bob introduced me by recounting a little of our earlier conversation and asked me to describe all that I was carrying and wearing. I took out my fly boxes and passed them around while describing a little about the rest of my gear and liberally sprinkling in glowing mentions of the Trout Unlimited Flyfishing School where I had been teaching that past weekend (they loved that I taught). They wanted to know where I fished, how I had learned, and how long I had been so "in love" with it. Their fascination made me seem completely and utterly exotic to them, as if they lived entirely apart from any intersection with outdoor life, certainly sports of any kind. Yet when I got to the part about the wilderness being my own, well, I called it "cathedral," every one of them nodded strongly and murmured recognition.

Now that I had left a nice puddle on the slate floor, it was time to go. They thanked me with a fond round of applause, and one gentleman even suggested I appear in his church by way of a homily. I said I'd be delighted and gave Bob my card when we returned to my truck. He had no card of his own, but said warmly, "Come see me at Chateau Chantal next time you come to Traverse City." I didn't ask what that was, though it sounded like a winery, and once again agreed that I would. It's very hard to say no to nuns or priests, even if they have retired, or left the clergy, or gotten married. Once a Catholic school girl, always a a Catholic school girl, I guess.

It had been quite the full day, I reflected as I drove through the dark night. Fishing had only been half of it. It would be impossible to describe my encounter with the amazing 50th Anniversary celebrants, but I thought I would give it a try in a short blog entry. Like I said, in the face of abundance, I lose my head.

A Night on the North Branch - PART ONE

2010-06-20T19:55:00.003-04:00

After this year's Michigan Trout Unlimited Flyfishing School, I went across the state to the North Branch of the AuSable River to fish. It was great to see my pal Judy Fuller, who runs Fuller's North Branch Outing Club in Lovells, and whose son is the head guide, shop keep, and Captain of a saltwater boat down in Florida. It's a great Bed and Breakfast: completely quiet, remarkably true to the history and tradition of such a latitude and locale, and just plain cozy as can be.

On Sunday night after the school, I was completely beat and in fact had been fighting the tendency to fall asleep at the wheel on the drive across from Traverse City. I love teaching at the school, taking my students out fishing, and generally running around with a thousand things on my mind, but when it's over each day, I'm good for nothing. So after three days of this by Sunday night I might as well have been in a coma. Ahh, but it was a pleasant evening and the bugs looked promising; anglers were reporting good hatches of BWOs, sulphurs, and isonychia, and among the guests was a general watchfulness for brown drakes and hexagenia. So I fought the urge to go to bed early (it stays light until almost 10pm here at this time of year), and fished a small stretch not far from the B&B. But I wasn't very alert and didn't catch many fish and really didn't have the stamina to wait for whatever spinner fall might come with darkness, so I heaved myself out of the river, through the woods, to the truck, and finally, filthy, to bed. I had bought the book "Predicting the Bite" from Dave Leonard's shop earlier that day, but could only read and re-read the first sentence six times before I lost consciousness. Usually it takes about 20 times.

In the morning after breakfast, I hemmed and hawed about whether to drive home or stay another night. Judy and I worked out a barter for one of the nights, and I decided to stay. I design and create printed hand towels for the bathrooms in the Inn and she was due for some replacements and additions to the collection. No problem. Now I had to decide where to fish later that day.

The year before I was granted a rare pleasure of access to some private water not very far from Lovells, and I decided to drive down there and ask permission if I could fish it again. I'm the world's worst salesman and hate asking for things - intangibles, tangibles, you name it - but I felt myself to be fairly non-threatening, and if I reminded the property owners that they had let me fish there the year before, I didn't think they'd be very likely to send me packing. My biggest concern was what to do if no one was home. What's the etiquette? I asked Judy Fuller. Do you leave a note? If so, where -- on their door or on my windshield? Judy shrugged and said she didn't know because she didn't know the people in question, but her guess was to not even drive onto the property if I didn't see any cars. That sounded about right to me when I thought about it and I was ready to accept the results. The North Branch is a big enough river, bigger on a Monday night, and I had had enough fun for the week if I didn't get on any water at all.

Three or four cars were at the house when I pulled in and when I knocked at the door a very happy-looking gentlemen came to the door beaming. I explained who I was and what I wanted while he nodded enthusiastically and smiled directly into my face. He was tall and fit, somewhere his 60s, I guessed, and wore a sparkling white shirt that brought out the color in his cheeks. Everything about him was open and welcoming and healthy. "Well, I don't live here," he announced, gesturing with abundance, "but if it's okay with [owner's names], it's okay with me!" At that moment another car pulled up and we both went out to the driveway. He introduced himself as Bob and I told him my name again. "We're having a little reunion here this weekend," explained Bob as we crossed the yard, and I was immediately struck with panic about being invited to something. "It's our 50th," he added. I stopped and turned: "Congratulations!" I said, and meant it. "It's wonderful, really," said Bob, as the guests began to unload suitcases from their car. "Some of us aren't here any more -- God bless their souls -- but several of us haven't seen each other in all that time -- in 50 years!" I told him he was very lucky and wished him a happy reunion. I then added that I would be back later on that afternoon, that he shouldn't worry about me since I knew the property and the river, was an experienced angler, and would not be bringing anyone with me. He seemed completely unconcerned, which I read as distraction due to the arriving guests.

At around 3pm, I returned to the property. There were now about 10 cars in the driveway. I had decided to fish with my beloved little bamboo rod that my friend made for me, and assembled everything I thought I would need for the afternoon, figuring I would come back to the truck later to change rods, get a snack, and generally prepare for night-time fishing. When I looked up from getting dressed into my waders, Bob and about 3 other guests were waiting for me at the side of my truck.
"Tell us what you're doing!" said Bob after he introduced me around. He seemed excited to be sharing me with these people and perhaps vice verse. The way they were looking at my outfit, you would have thought I was an eskimo astronaut. I explained that I would be fly fishing, but their expressions of bafflement were unchanged. Perhaps I should go into the difference between flyfishing and "regular" fishing, but just then one of them, a friendly looking woman, pounced forward, peering intently into my eyes. "Tell us, please, what it is about it that speaks to your soul! We would really like to know." She was wringing her hands but smiling. Next to her was another man whom she said was her husband, and he was equally intent. "What is important for you in doing it? What drives you to seek it?" she asked, and her husband nodded in agreement, as did Bob, who was standing beside me.

"Well, for one thing, there's the quiet and the solitude," I began, because that's what I had on my mind. They waited for more. "There's the sound of the water, and the birds, and the wind in the trees." They seemed to know this already, too. "There's the sky and the weather and the woods." Nodding all around, hands clasped as if in suspense. "And the bugs," I said. "Bugs?" the husband said. "Oh, yes, all kinds of bugs," I said. "Well, yes, all kinds of bugs, of course!" said the wife to all of us. We were in agreement for a moment, and I then I added, "But then there's the fish." "Oh, yes," whispered the woman. "Yes!" said the men, hushed. "There's that electric moment when you hook a fish," I said. They leaned forward, and I became brave. "It's like nothing else in the world. In that instant when it strikes - sudden and wild..." I felt myself accelerating. "When you bring one in -- and you must do this quickly -- you're lifting a magnificent wild small alien creature -- a creature from another world, really -- out from the dark water into the light where you look at each other for one split moment of pure connection and shock and –." I stopped myself. They didn't care that I was headed off into the clouds. "And mystery."
Whereupon their shoulders fell and their faces relaxed. They had arrived at the truth, a truth they must have suspected from the start. A truth they saw in everything, it seemed.
"It's spiritual," said the woman.
"A sacrament," said her husband.
"God," said Bob.
"A prayer," I added, stating the obvious in full understanding that it was safe to say such things, and had been all along. But they had already stepped back and were laughing up at the trees and it was then that they told me the anniversary they were celebrating was 50 years in the clergy. I stuttered something in half-congratulations, half surprise, but mostly recognition, after all. Who else would ask such questions? Who else would hear such answers?
50 years before this group had been ordained in the Catholic clergy, Bob explained, and the couple before me had met afterwards, fallen in love, and then left to marry. "It's nature!" they were saying to each other standing in a patch of sunlight beside my truck. "Precisely," I said, and then told on myself yet further by revealing I had been raised by the nuns at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Connecticut. 13 years of Catholic school.
And we all understood exactly.
They began to wander toward the house. "Happy fishing then!" called Bob. "Good luck!" said the others. "Thanks!" I replied, and I closed the back of the truck and didn't lock it. In a moment I had crossed the yard and descended a wooden stairway to the start of a path carpeted in lightly trod switchgrass with blue flag irises ready to greet me 'round the first bend. The river was a glossy ribbon looped randomly in a field of Michigan June green. There was a moody breeze and low cloud -- a perfect day for it. And catch fish I did...

Unlimited Trout Unlimited or: Guys in Ties

2010-03-29T08:34:00.000-04:00

'Tis the season -- the banquet season. I've been filling orders for TU Chapters in Maine, Michigan, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and Ohio. My sales rep, Rich Steketee, sent me this photo from the banquet held by Schrems West Michigan TU banquet that was held, I think, March 27th. This is the Board and Banquet Committee. Painted Trout neckties are worn by three of these smartly dressed handsome guys. They are all smiling because the banquet was a roaring success. These other pictures of pathological schmoozing also illustrate the value of a Painted Trout tie in effective fund-raising. Ours are the blue ties in theses shots.

FFF Visits from Toledo

2010-03-27T09:08:00.006-04:00

March 25, Thurs: This morning I am frantically getting my studio-office space ready for a couple of visitors from the Toledo chapter of FFF (Federation of Flyfishers) called "North Branch Boys." Yesterday afternoon at around 3pm they called and asked if they could come up and "shop" for their banquet which is either this weekend or next.
Sure, I said, as my eyes darted around the room in utter panic. What time can I expect you?
How about 11am, they said.
Great fine.

Never mind that my 13 year old intern arrives midday tomorrow and I usually spend the morning getting the day's activities ready. Never mind that I'm smack dab in the middle of doing the taxes and all my flat surfaces are covered with statements and spreadsheets. Never mind that I'm perpetually hosting the construction of a quilt to be made then auctioned for a fund raiser, and what is not covered in statements and spreadsheets is piled with little bits of goddamn fabric. Never mind that I haven't unpacked since the Midwest Flyfishing Expo.
But this is nobody's fault but mine. Because even on a good day when nothing else is going on, you can't be sure to find a path through the room.
Great, fine, I said. Times are tough for the business, and North Branch Boys needs stuff for its auction and raffles. It's a win win. Except for the mess.
So now I had less than a few scant hours to get the place uncluttered (where I can find stuff again, no less), and clean, and put out my products in a neat orderly, merchandisy kinda way. While vacuuming, I listen for the phone in case the NB Boys get lost, and in case my friend who is coming over this morning to help with the quilt (did I forget to mention that?) needs to tell me she will be late, which she doesn't need to do since I know she will be.
I've package-taped clean the cat-hair off the cheap black office chair where she sleeps just to spite me, and now I'm dusting and wondering if I should put some make-up on so as not to scare the visitors.

The dog is a bit perplexed at all the cleaning. He's used to a house where the bird droppings (we have an African Grey parrot) are part of the architecture. When I sit at my desk, he's used to laying at my feet amid food wrappers and paper clips. This morning, however, he knows that company's coming. Why else would I clean up? Like his father (my husband), Mason's favorite activities are sleeping, playing, and eating. Cleaning not so much. They are both suckers for company and like nothing more than welcoming people who will play. All visitors are playmates, you see. I'm just the nasty, sour playground monitor in their eyes (well, in a lot of people's eyes). But I'm good today for one thing: having visitors.

All surfaces now clear of stuff, I unpack the coasters, jewelry and ornaments and arrange them by the window so the light will show them off. Then I set out the hand-made wooden presentation fly boxes, and the really sweet lightweight nets that people fall in love with if they actually handle them (hard to do through a website). On the big table in the center of the room I arrange T-shirts, bandanas, pocket squares, mugs, soap, aprons, tiles, CDs, and tea-towels (a new addition not on the website yet).
My new men's batik print shirts, the pajamas and boxer shorts are hung from the top of the window frame -- not very prominent, since the TU folks said they were interested in shopping for women.
Around the corner on the garment rack are the scarves and shawls. I hope this does it, and that they don't look around too closely.
The important thing when hosting anything is confidence, right? No one should see your embarrassment. You want to evoke a picture of Martha Stewart orderliness, a Pottery Barn catalog life. You want to erase not just the mess, but the shame about the mess. Because if they really knew the chaos that ruled here, they'd run away over the horizon with their hands in the air.

Oh, boy, I just heard a car pull in. Now Mason has stood up and is preparing to announce their arrival with his nice loud insistent bark. I dusted all the surfaces (well, almost) but couldn't find the top of my desk, so they will have to just accept the situation on that score. Now if only I could.

(Photo on right: Representatives of "North Branch Boys", the Toledo Chapter of FFF. From left to right: Joan Van Gunten, Treasurer, and Jan and Dave Shearer.)

One Down: Indiana-on-the Fly

2010-01-10T15:16:00.024-05:00

One show down and 5 to go.
But don't hold me to that.
Certainly not after this weekend. Friday morning I left the house at about 8am and had icy road conditions for the first 2-3 hours of the trip to Indianapolis. Unspeakably cold unloading the truck. It took me the usual Forever to set up my booth at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, and we only had until 5pm to do so. The whole time I kept looking to see if my friends Ron Barch and Carl Hueter of Wanigas Rod Company had arrived yet. This was going to be the debut show for the venture and I knew it meant a lot to Carl to have his booth up and looking as great as he had described it to me. But at 5 o'clock they still had not shown. I was more than a little worried, seeing as there'd been such bad driving around Michigan the day before and coming down that morning. I even thought of calling his house, or Ron's house, but I didn't want to scare their wives.

Or sound like a ninny, which is what I would have ended up doing if I had called. Seems they just got a late start and arrived just too late to bother setting up, so they went straight to the hotel.

I learned all this later on at the cocktail party/reception being put on by Patti Beasley, organizer of the show, at a nearby pub called "Smee's Place." When I walked in, there at the first table were Carl, Ron, and their wives, Vicky and Carol. Just a small dance of joy did I do at seeing that they were all okay. I got myself a drink and some hors d'ouvres and then we all settled in for some good gossip.

Next day I got up at the crack of ungodly and got to the Fairgrounds by around 7am to finish setting up the products in my booth. That's when I started having to count all the things I'd forgotten, chief among them business cards and brochures, arguably the most important items to have at such a time - maybe even more important than the products themselves (more on this later).

Carl and Ron and Vicky and Carol were over by the Wanigas Rod Company booth setting up, helping, or just being nearby offering vibes of help. I went over to say hello and see this magnificent booth that was only barely up but was, ka-pow, every bit as gorgeous as Carl had led me to believe. A hotly sought-after architect in Southeast Michigan, Carl designed and had the booth custom made in every way -- from the graphics to the display mechanisms to the very carpet pad. Something to envy -- and I say this not as a beat-up artist with a slap-dash, half-assed, oft-forgotten selling booth. No, I say this as a person with a highly developed (though sore, the way muscles get sore when developed quickly and with no training) sense of style. The Wanigas Rod Company booth is really, well, classy. Inviting, informative, smart, clean, and very very upscale. I can't wait for more people to see it.

Which, alas, brings me back to the topic of products. Or I should say to the topic of Sales. In only its third year, Indiana-on-the-Fly is a young show, a customer (retail) Flyfishing and Wing-shooting show, they say, though this year the wingshooting vendors seemed pretty scarce.

I had missed the first year because of flu, but last year it was good for me, with sales in the "Yeah-I'd-do-this-show-again" category. This year there were even more vendors and tyers, and while the space was the same, it was laid out better. Lots of really good fly-tyers were there, and vendors from good quality establishments as far as rod companies, guide services, lodges, and outfitters. Oh, and artists, like the inimitable Dave Ruimveld, his booth pictured below and at the top of this blog entry. It was not overly saturated with non-profits, the way some regional or local sporting shows can get. Everything looked promising as I walked around the space early that day. There were plenty of volunteers and really no lack of ameneties, though most of us were cold for most of the day. That, and a sort of unappealing high-school rock-n-roll cover band that was way too loud were the only negatives regarding the mechanics of the show itself.

But you can't do anything about the weather, and that, in the end, is what most of the locals were saying was to blame for a poor turn-out. It was snowing lightly all morning, evidently. "They're wimps here in Indianapolis," said one volunteer who shall go unnamed. "The slightest thing and they stay put." Seemed so. And what people were there, few were buying. I think most of the public had come to browse destinations, guide services, and the fly tyers. Not too many rods seemed to have been sold, at least from where I sat watching people walk past carrying rod-tubes (or not). Having said that, though, I was told by the guys over at Mystic Rods said they had sold "quite a few."

I spent a good part of the day creating makeshift business cards using my perverse cartooning bone (that's where most people's funny bone is located), and some paper and a sharpie. Well, that's not true. I only made about 8 of them before getting too bored even for that. As the day dragged on, I kept returning to the thought that a disappointing one-day show does not offer much in the way of consolation -- unless you count the fact that it's a one-day show.

Eventually, 5 o'clock neared and Vicky and Carol appeared in my booth like a couple of angels and immediately commenced to help me put product away and haul it out to my truck. Engines of industry and graciousness, those two. Midwestly fastidious to the core, they put stuff away better than I could have ever even wanted to, much less managed to, in all my years doing shows. I can not thank them enough, for next to emptying the dishwasher, tearing down after a lousy show has got to be one of the loneliest feelings on earth.

We all met up at Smee's Place again for drinks and dinner, and shared in congratulating Wanigas Rods on its Coming Out To Society event. Carl was hopeful about the responses he received throughout the day, and Ron echoed that big things were in store, which I fully believe. I'll do a separate blog on Wanigas as soon as I'm able. In the meantime, I'll be busy making scarves to take to Somerset.

New Year's Resolutions

2010-01-05T21:06:00.003-05:00

Well, it's already 5 days into the new year and only now can I get started on my resolution: to blog more. Actually, that's only one resolution -- the other is to not bite off more than I can chew.

Already things are getting busy. Next weekend is the Indiana-on-the-Fly show, and I'll be driving down on Friday, white knuckling it all the way as the next storm front approaches me in my little truck loaded with all The Painted Trout's inventory in the world.

Less than two weeks later I leave to drive east to Somerset, NJ for The Flyfishing Show. Truck loaded just about the same. Who wants to drive Route 80 across Pennsylvania in January? I made it the last two years but, lawdy, I don't want to push my luck. One year Jack and I were driving east to visit my family in New England and we hit a patch of ice coming around a curve on an incline. Needless to see we felt lucky to be alive after having cleared that truck we were passing when the skid started. We got off at the next exit (Clarion) and found ourselves in an honest-to-god flophouse in some town about 5 miles north of the highway. It was the stuff of a Fellini movie-cum-fever dream, with a little bit of Vegas thrown in. But like I say, we were happy to be alive.

Then, on Feb 5, I'll drive to Cincinnati for the Buckeye United Flyfisher's Show (aka Greater Cincinnati Fly Fishing Show) on Feb. 6. Not too fond of driving through another nortorious snow belt.

Then a nice break until the Midwest Fly Fishing Expo in March. That's here in Michigan -- close to home AND one of the best shows in the country -- by all accounts. That's where I met a lot of the characters who appear in this blog and elsewhere (Ron, Chuck, Carl, Kelly - a few more).

In April I hope to make it to the Virginia Flyfishing and Wine Tasting Festival in Waynesboro -- and perhaps along the way retrace some Harry Middleton footsteps. That's a really fun show in a really pretty setting. Great people and great food.
One week later there's a chance I'll be a vendor at the International Women Fly Fishers Festival in Charleston, SC. Hope I still have some inventory left. Or not.

Then it's May. I had big plans to make a road trip out to Wyoming/Montana/Idaho, but there's a little family business that might instead have me in Cape Cod.

Is that biting off a lot?

Okay, but is it more than I can chew?

Stay tuned.

Finding Treasures

2009-07-15T17:58:00.015-04:00

You'll never guess what I found the other day while cleaning up.

See, about twice a month we have events here at the farm, and that means that around once a month we have to clean up (we try to schedule the events back-to-back so as to maximize the labor element). That means not just the dog shit in the yard and the newspapers on the kitchen floor, it means the upstairs bathroom, guest room (actually, we just call it that; it's really the Fishing Room, where I rest – throw? – my gear in between trips), as well as the hallway, and a glimpse-worth's view of our own bedroom, should anyone be silly enough to open doors while "exploring" the house.

It's easy to procrastinate about the top of the stairs in particular. This is a zone between our bedroom and my bathroom and where onto the bookshelf I toss loose change and hairpins, receipts and lipstick, and onto the floor goes anything larger.

Today I was going to keep it simple so as not to get too discouraged by the task. Just find the floor to the landing, I bargained with myself. Then you can go back to work (meaning my studio).

It was deceptively difficult. In the space of about 4 feet of hallway floor (not counting the shelf, in other words), I unearthed quite a bit, including but not limited to: a stack of folded towels, 4 Weekend sections of the Wall Street Journal, 2 old souvenir wallets, a flashlight, earrings, a loose fly (rubber-legged ant, intact), probably $6 in loose change, the vacuum cleaner, 3 pairs of shoes, a box of .22 caliber cartridges, name tags from shows I'd done in January, garment tags for the silk scarves I make, two, possibly three marriages worth of earplugs, and socks galore.

But the thing that held me up was a pocketbook that I'd carried all winter and well into springtime. A dark blue messenger-bag sort of thing that was dowdy and fashionable at the same time -- or was for the week that messenger bags were fashionable. I brought it over to the bed and tried to dump it out.
Don't you love it when you find money in a coat pocket or squirreled away in some cargo pants?
Me, too. And I'm not above siphoning old candy from the bottom of such places either. I mean, what do you take me for, some kind of mad spendthrift?

In today's excavation I was awash in rubber bands and shreds of tissue, with a hash of unrecognizable melted candy slowing me down. Then, clunk, out fell an unexpected shape, a sort of envelope of paper napkin wrapped around several pencil-shaped items that weighed a lot more than pencils. Lo, the wrap unfolded, and there to my delight lay a selection of dental instruments! And now I remembered that my hygienist, Sally, had given them to me at my last cleaning. I mean she was going to throw them away, can you believe it? Hell, I said, Sally, give 'em here! I'm a tyer of flies! Such tiny instruments might come in handy!

Sally was happy to oblige, remarking that she will try to save more for my next visit.

Needless to say I haven't tied any flies lately, but boy, when I do, I'll be prepared. Especially now that trico season is beginning. I mean how else do you separate bunched wings on a size 22 spinner?
They're fascinating instruments - deadly and precise, rife with the sheen and sex-appeal of genuine gear. I just hope I remember where I put them when I start tying flies again.

Joy of Cane

2009-07-08T22:22:00.021-04:00

I'm way too late in getting this posted, so I apologize to all you thousands whom I've kept waiting, biting your nails over when the new bamboo rod would arrive. (See post immediately prior).

About a week after that last entry, one day the UPS van pulled up. It was a Tuesday, I believe. The UPS guy and I are on a first name basis. Around here it gets kinda quiet at times. Most days it's just me working in the studio wearing my usual rubber gloves, rubber apron, gas mask and goggles, while out on the lawn the dog is laying around waiting for someone to drive up with a biscuit. That would be the FedEx guy, the US Mail lady, my husband, and of course the UPS guy, Brian. It's always a pleasure for my dog to hear that diesel engine, and he announces his excitement in very clear and repetitive terms. If I hear the noise and I can get away, I like to greet the arrival, since it means, well, human contact. So on this Monday I was able to do just that. Brian threw a biscuit to Mason as I approached the truck and in the next moment I got a glimpse of what he was delivering.

To say that I lept into the air and clapped my rubber-gloved hands would be an understatement. I howled and danced while pointing to an elongated cardboard box: "You know what this is?" I sang. "It's a bamboo fly rod!!"
"Really?" said Brian in his polite tone that I often take for evidence of his supreme tolerance of nut jobs.
"No, you don't understand!" I said, wringing my rubber apron for emphasis. "My friend made this rod for me. He made it. For me!"
"Oh, okay. That's cool." He nodded and handed me the box.
"You have no idea how cool." I said, receiving it into my arms like the infant Jesus. "No idea."
Brian checked boxes on his electronic tablet and threw Mason another treat.
"You've got some great friends, then, huh?"
"You bet," I may have said. It's hard to remember this part. We probably said goodbye, have a nice day, or some such. Next thing I know I was back in the house and opening the box at the kitchen table with a utility knife.
It was all going very slowly, though. I wanted to savor the experience.
Inside the box was a lovely polished stainless steel rod tube with a brass screw cap. Inside the tube was a crisp new twill rod bag, and inside the bag was the rod. The rod.

Just that previous Friday, about 4 days before, I had gone fishing with its maker. We'd arranged to meet in Grayling and fish a certain tract of river on private land that he had access to (his is a charmed life of gaining such charmed accesses -- but more on that another time). Down at the river he explained that the rod he was using was "sort of the big brother" of the rod he was making for me.
"Well, in that case, may I try it out?" I asked politely. Mind you, I'd known this guy for a while, but it was mostly via phone and email, with maybe a once-a-year social at a flyshow. Not only had I never fished with him so far, I had never, as I mentioned in my last post, really -- I mean really -- cast a split cane bamboo rod. But here I was, about to be the lucky recipient of I don't know how many man-hours of artful labor and design -- and while itching to try it out, I didn't know how to explain that bamboo qua bamboo might all be lost on me. Maybe, so my fear went, I was too dull witted and oafish a caster to appreciate the virtues of cane. But how do you tell that to a guy who has been working for months on such a project? "Gee, I sure do 'preciate your hard work, but maybe I oughta stick with fiberglass."
Casting the "older brother" in front of its maker would surely expose me for the rube and fraud that I was. But that kind of truth could not, I knew, be held in for long, so I figured I might as well be out with it. Give it here. Step aside. Let me show you how oafs do things.
Once on the water I cast stupidly, showing multiple baroque tailing loops all up and down the river. Yeah, I was nervous, but also I was surprised how it struck me as heavy. It was a 7 1/2 foot 5 weight, but was in my hand a little, well, more "wooden" than I had expected, especially in the butt. I moved the rod back and forth in the manner of someone casting a fly rod, but it was hard for me to understand what I should be doing: getting used to the weight, improving the loops, getting the timing right, waiting to feel the load - or all of the above? Because hovering above my interest in "feeling" the cane, I wanted not to look like a crappy caster in front of my friend.
"May be," he said from the bank, "It's a thing to get used to without someone watching."
"Hmmm," I agreed, concentrating to no avail.
I false cast more, eventually offering that I was probably having a hard time "getting used to" the difference between it and my 9' 5 weight Winston OM6.
Graciously my friend allowed as much, and presently we were each in possession of the rods we had come with.
That didn't stop me from badgering him on the subject, however. By which I mean gently interrogating to determine if there was a chance in hell I might have what it takes to appreciate viscerally (as opposed to theoretically) the qualities of a cane fly rod. In the end I guess I came away with no more information in my head than before, but a lot more in my vocabulary. More importantly, we had a nice afternoon fishing.
So when I slid those two pieces out from the twill pockets of the slender rod bag, I was ready.
My friend had told me about impregnating the rod instead of using several coats of varnish. He'd told me about the color of the silk for the wraps. He'd send a picture of the reel seat and handle in the making.
And here it was, in my hands...in person.

I ran upstairs to my "fishing closet" and got out a couple of reels that I thought would have a 4 wt. line on them. It didn't matter how dopey the reels were, how old the lines; I just wanted to cast the thing. "...I strung up two choices," I wrote in an email later that night. "And cast happily out on the lawn. It's beautiful in my hands -- I love the timing, and the feel--as in, I can feel it load and that feel agrees with me and my style of casting. It's just wonderful. "
For a longer time than usual that evening, I stayed outside casting on my lawn, all alone, no one watching. It was a cross between a first date and a sacrament. Because it really was everything you read about: the rod knew my mind before I knew it myself. It was forgiving and steady and soft and lovely. Just like the holiest of evenings out on the river.
In the weeks since it's arrival, I've fished with it twice. Caught a lovely 10 inch brown up on the North Branch one evening with another friend and bamboo-nut looking on. Then the other night again, caught a few browns almost exactly where I tried out the big brother version. It was a magnificent evening and a great date with a wonderful rod. I feel as though this is going to lapse into poetry, so I'm going to stop writing.

A Bamboo Virgin

2009-04-14T11:38:00.021-04:00

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine on the phone when the subject of bamboo rods came up. I don't remember what got us on the subject, since I am not a rod maker, but it's most likely we were gossiping about people we know who are rod makers. Wait -- I remember now: I was telling my friend that his name had come up over lunch with two other friends, one of whom is a rod maker, Ron Barch. (To the right, photo of Ron entertaining some fans in his booth at the Midwest Flyfishing Expo in March) Ron had been singing praises about how nice a guy my friend on the phone was. (It sure is a small flyfishing world, ain't it?) My friend then revealed that he, too, makes bamboo rods. This came as a surprise since all the bamboo rod makers I know do it as a business, not on the side for fun.

Either that or they do it as a religion, which I was just learning about through two books given to me by Ron at lunch. (In addition to being a builder of hugely sought-after bamboo fly rods, Ron is also publisher and owner of Alder Creek Publishing. ) The books, written by Kathy Scott, are about - you guessed it - split cane bamboo-rods and the people who make them ) "Caneiacs" I've read they call themselves. My job was to read the books and decide if I wanted to sell them through my online business, The Painted Trout. (More on this in a later blog.) At the time of this telephone conversation, I may have only finished one (Moose on the Water, Bamboo on the Bench) and had started on the second (Changing Planes). At any rate, what I was learning was that the business of making, creating, crafting, building - forging - a bamboo flyrod was astonishingly complex, difficult, arduous, painstaking, but above all artful. Oh, did I mention, frightening? I was learning that the decisions, incisions, revisions (there's scant room for such), calculations, permutations, ministrations and divinations are simply words to describe the practically spiritual ordeal of making such a work of art. I'd always known it was a delicate business, but now I knew why rod making could consume a person's passions.

I told my friend about a guy from Wisconsin who built split-cane rods, one of which I cast at the Great Waters Flyfishing Expo in Schaumberg, Illinois last year. This guy had a school for people who wanted to learn to make a rod. At the time this idea seemed intriguing (after all, I am a createaholic), but I knew I would probably never have the time. His rods were for sale and available to try out in the casting area. Gingerly, I took one, though after a few casts I grew nervous around the flycasters who were trying to elbow their way to a casting spot far too close for comfort, so I quickly returned the rod. Bamboo fly rods had always frightened me, the way tiny infants frighten me. I had always thought that such a precious thing as a home-made split cane bamboo rod, just like a home-made tiny infant, was way out of my league in both value and fragility. Neither my casting nor my fishing, nor indeed any aspect of me on the water, was any work of art or craftsmanship -- so who was I to fish with one?

When I told my friend on the phone that I had only once cast a bamboo rod, he quickly jumped in. "Well then," he said. "The next rod I make must be yours."
"Must be"? What? Are you serious?
Yes, he said. He explained that rod makers like to make rods, one and then another and then another, and that furthermore the rods they make belong with people who might like them, with people who will fish with them. After all, there are only so many bamboo rods a bamboo rod maker can keep for himself. It's a difficult craft to learn and to master, so it takes a lot of rod building to get good. It follows, therefore, that every rod must have a home.

Well, okay, I agreed, mostly humoring him. Not that he'd lie exactly; it was more like he had me mistaken for someone who was actually worthy. Such a mistake could only be called insanely nice, and I learned long ago from a very good shrink (there were only two) what to do when faced with an insane person: you humor him.

So from there I planned to avoid the subject for a while, thereby giving him an "out" into which he could toss a polite excuse that he'd forgotten the whole idea. Either that or into which he could escape under the protection of being, well, insane.
But no, in a follow-up email, he explained that it would be a 7 foot 4-5 weight and asked what kind of wood might I like in my reel seat. Now there's a question you don't get asked every day.
I went along with him and answered that walnut, cherry, and maple were nice; whatever "went with" the rest of the rod. I could play the game.
Then I let it slip. I said something in the same email that I felt "so very unworthy."
"Unworthy?!" he e-snapped back. "Nonsense, you are a child of the Universe, no less than the moon and the stars....You have a right to be here...Me, I'm thinkin' cherry maybe."

I shut up after that. But in a later phone conversation, I got to be grateful for real.
Golly, I said. Thank you. I'm honored.

On March 31, I got an email: "I glued up the butt section of your rod this past weekend and hope to plane and glue the tip this coming. Wish me luck - tips are tricky."

We exchanged progress and problem stories about our respective arts for a while. I was laboring over a disaster regarding the printing of a new design on three silk scarves.
"I understand setbacks very well," he e-plied. "On the last rod I built I glued up the tip section with one of the six strips turned enamel side in! Had to start over and develop a 'check' step so it doesn't happen again.
So many ways to screw up - so little time."
That was an understatement, I thought.

April 6: "Planed your tip section Saturday morning and it glued up beautifully. Pictures at 11:-- or soon."
"I await!" I e-gushed in reply. All that day I checked my email obsessively (well, more obsessively than normal, let's say), hoping for photos, but alas, none came. I didn't want to pester him, so I pretended to be patient.

Finally, photos came through this past Monday... which I've been peppering in through the text. Here are some more...

"I turned 5 reel seats for your rod until I was
satisfied with the character of the wood.

This past weekend I glued up the cork for your handle and turned it to shape on the lathe (I love that part ). I also attached the reel seat and began to fit the ferrules."

"Your rod is my eighth rod. I had Ron Barch over my shoulder on my first rod as well as a few books on the craft."

"We start with a 12 foot culm of Tonkin bamboo or cane 2" to 2.5" in diameter. The culm is cut in half and split into strips about 3/8th wide. The nodes are filed flat and the strips must be straightened with heat (ugh, it's the part I do not enjoy). From there the strips must be planed into 60 x 60 x 60 degree parallel strips and then to a specific tapered design [See sheet in photo at top of this blog]. That's the design of your rod. The strips are then glued together using a binder and hung to dry. When the excess glue is sanded off, if the section is not straight, heat and pressure are applied. Your rod sections came out straight as an arrow."

I haven't asked for an ETA, since part of me still thinks this could be an elaborate practical joke (not in character with my friend, true, but very in character with the other characters I know in this sport). And I only mention it now as a way to say "Don't Touch That Dial" -- I'll be right back with an update as soon as one comes in.

Practicing Spring

2009-03-25T19:53:00.019-04:00

One night last week I went out onto the lawn to practice casting, my first "outing" of the season.
Come springtime, I keep a rod strung up and ready so I can go out my office door pretty much any time I want, though I tend to wait till the end of the day. Tonight it was especially pretty, so I brought along my camera and went out through the side door instead, just to look at the light.
I'm fond of target casting -- picking a small object or fleck of light on the grass and aiming the cast so my glo-bug yarn/fly hits that spot. When you live on a farm --even a non-working place like ours -- there are a million places to hit. Our yard is pretty expansive and includes a few outbuildings, so I just saunter around anointing random objects with my yarn-fly: the lock to the fuel shed, the handle of a barn door, the lower tip of the moon-shaped window of the outhouse.
I use Mason, our dog, as a moving object and he doesn't care for it, though that doesn't stop him from following me around. And though he's good company, I know that too much practice can be a bad thing.

First time anyone ever really looked at my cast and gave me feedback was at the Great Waters Flyfishing Show in Minneapolis back in 2006. John Breslin, of Flyfish Ireland was sitting around with one or two other guys and a bottle of single malt something-or-other in the casting demo area after the show. I was on my way up to my hotel room when they lassoed me into taking a "free lesson."
I was pretty embarrassed and self-conscious. I'd only been flyfishing for about 15 years. Still, I'd never had anyone look at my cast after those beginning episodes of snarls-and-swearwords.
Someone nodded at a particular rod leaning against a table, so I took it in hand and walked to the casting zone. Those guys were well relaxed, but my throat was tight and my forehead damp. I'd never even seen a casting lesson. I started whipping out some line and put a length on the floor in front of me, waiting for some kind of signal. Silence.
I went to Catholic school, worked 15 years on Wall Street, and then taught college English; I knew what was coming. It wouldn't be laughter. It would be stiffled laughter.
What the hell had I agreed to? Not only had these guys the advantage of several decades of casting expertise, they'd had several rounds before I arrived. Well, never mind, I said to myself. It's not going to kill you. I reminded myself that at least I knew John Breslin, though not well. I'd seen him at a lot of the same flyfishing shows that I did. He was funny and kind and professional. Maybe I would get out of this alive.
"Just cast!" someone said with mock (I hoped) annoyance. So I did.
I can't remember what happened after that except that I got what was coming: a real casting lesson. Without stiffled laughter. They considered my backcast and forward cast, and considered each again. Turns out I suffered from "creep" (or at least that's the term I remember). I was bringing my backcast forward before starting my forward cast. As soon as they said it, and drew on the floor a diagram of its cause and effect, I understood completely and knew they were right because I could feel that I'd been doing that all along. For almost 15 years, probably. It had become, in the terms we used when we were learning how to swing dance, part of my muscle memory.
So whenever I get a chance, I try to get a lesson in somehow, just to counteract the bad influence of too much solo casting. For instance, once a year I get to join the Flygirls at a casting clinic that takes place near me. Those Saturdays are usually about 37 degrees with winds gusting to 20 mph, and I'm always at my worst - or am I? The instructor is patient with me and I'm grateful but I come away feeling I've not gotten one smidgeon better during that past year, despite all those hours on the lawn with the dog.
Another method is to beg and barter with celebrity anglers at shows for a "quick" lesson before the show opens. This works best if you can get him or her the night before during cocktail hour.
It's patchwork learning, I guess, but it's better than nothing.
And then there's technology. I remembered that night that my camera has a little video setting, so I asked my husband, Jack, to shoot me casting. Bad idea.
(Never mind the studio clothes, please).
Well, what I got back as far as information was pretty interesting -- though only to me, no doubt.
Suffice it to say, I still have some remnants of the dreaded "creep" but somehow have managed to work the tailing loops out of it.
But it was a lovely evening to be out there. Just as we were leaving, a Sandhill Crane flew overhead. These cranes practically live in our yard and surrounding fields in the warmer months, and we have been hearing them for a couple of weeks now. This one was the first I'd seen in person since last fall. It was a good omen. Maybe I would get better at casting this year...

Now that I am a member of the Michigan Flyfishing Club, I have a bevy of new friends (who don't generally see me in my studio attire), who have offered to help me out at the monthly meeting when members gather for such things. I can't wait. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I have a great lawn and great casting companions with which to work on my errant ways.

A Bandana for Our Vets

2009-03-22T15:49:00.012-04:00

Last week I finished at last a new bandana design that you should know about. Not because it's one of my marvelous creations (though I gotta say I'm pretty proud of it), but because it's for a really great cause: Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing - a great organization dedicated to bringing physical and emotional rehabilitation to disabled active duty military personnel and veterans through fly fishing and fly tying education and outings.
Is that great or what?
I can't remember how we met each other, this organization and I, but I suspect it was at a flyfishing show, though possibly just through the website for my online store The Painted Trout, which is how lots of people find me. Anyway, I got talking with Ken Morrow, then regional coordinator for the south, and I designed for him a bandana that he really liked. I got some printed up and, well, long story short, they sold like hotcakes wherever they showed up. But that took a while, due to my busy schedule and a bit of a disappointment (on my part) with the execution of the printing on the cloth itself. In the meantime I had the pleasure of meeting Ed Nicholson, President, who had a hankering for a different design. Would I be able to source a design with flyfishing knots on it, and put their logo on it? Answer: no. Another long story short, I ended up designing one from scratch. It took me about 10 days just to do the drawings. Then the layout - - I don't want to bore you, so let's just say it took a while. Here's a picture of my (at first) primitive layout system.

It was easier to just move elements around on a living space than doing it on a computer screen. Once I decided on the basics, it was a matter of aligning, sizing, and adjusting adjusting all day long. Then came the color question. Wonderful Sandy Pappaianni helped both Ed and I decide on colors for a relatively small number of bandanas to start out with. Here's what we've decided....what do you think?

Well, in either case, there you are. Sandy and Ed should have them by the end of the month. They plan on taking them to some important events on the PHWFF schedule.
If you're a vet or know one, or just want to learn about, volunteer, or help support this terrific and different mission, go to one of these events and find out more.
I can't do much more than sit around and design stuff, but when I do a flyfishing show, I make a point to find the guys from Project Healing Waters - who are always wonderfully warm and welcoming. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, at the Midwest Flyfishing Expo, I met these two characters...Eric Nelson, Midwest Regional Volunteer, and Peter Huthwaite, Program Lead for Michigan.

Have you ever seen a friendlier pair?
Eric Nelson, Volunteer, on the left, and Peter Huthwaite, Michigan Program Leader, on the right.
Back in January, I met another gentleman PHWFF volunteer at flyfishing shows, where I promptly lost his name and contact information...I believe he was from New England. At any rate, if you're the guy and you read this post, please contact me: lauren@paintedtrout.com. I'd love to thank you for your input and introductions.
Okay, well, I'll sign off now. Happy spring, everyone. Tight lines.
Lauren