Fall cast and blast

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



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



some of the locals trouts.

@shag

big bridge

green bay

mlwkee

heading north

on the Edens

so totally not your fly fish zen ...

Once it seemed, the NYTIMES had good outdoor writers. Now they print this trash.

"Unlike Matt and Arma, who had been fishing most of their lives, I was a rank novice with a decidedly ambivalent attitude. My sole previous experience consisted of a two-day course in freshwater fly fishing at an exclusive upstate resort that had left my head swimming with indigestible biological minutiae and my sought-after quarry swimming unscathed in their natural habitat."

I don't really care if this guy doesn't like fishing. But how about printing something by someone who "likes, uh, can write". I mean... "serendipitous" ? WTF ?

Executive Pursuits

Dinner, From Hook to Fork

By HARRY HURT III

Published: September 20, 2008

If I happen to die a happy man, it will be in no small part because of the serendipitous seafaring expedition I took with Arma and Matt on the afternoon of our feast at the American Hotel.

Your fly fish Zen

Trees, rocks, fish fly to nirvana too
20 Sep, 2008, 0000 hrs
IST,Vithal C Nadkarni, ECONOMIC TIMES Bureau

YASUHIRO: Hamano was three-years-old when his father took him on a fly-fishing expedition. In the secluded woods off Kyoto in the shadow of the Mist-Catcher Mountains, Hamano Sr enunciated his philosophy of ‘Nature-vision-concept’ to his wide-eyed son: One could not exist without the other.

You could not sustain a concept without vision, for example, which, in turn, needed Nature in order to be nurtured. Hamano Sr also introduced his son to the Zen-like mysteries of fly-fishing, and the intimate connection it bears to the environment ethic.

Years later, when he had made a mark as a multi-faceted savant in architecture, fashion, design, photography, as well as philosophy and active adventure sports Hamano Jr rediscovered the principles he’d learnt as a budding fly-fisherman.

“Every mountain stream has its resident rainbow trout with its own ecology,” he told us in Mumbai recently. “There could be as many as 700 sorts of insects in various forms floating around for you to use as potential bait to snare this wily fish,” he ruminated. “Which one to use and how, would be something that the wannabe angler has to negotiate between his hands, head and the all-encompassing field.

“Yet these very fishermen who are the most sensitive to these natural cycles have to ultimately transcend their fishing rods, and turn into guardians and sentries of the rivers and Nature herself,” he emphasised. This flows out of the philosophy of the Tendai Sect which is akin to concepts of ‘deep ecology’, and is rooted in the idea that Buddhahood, or the capacity to attain enlightenment, is intrinsic in all things.

“Masters like Kukai and Saicho, for example, preached that plants, trees, rocks and everything else in this world has the quality of Buddha and will eventually reach Nirvana. In other words, everything in this life is equal in Nature, and therefore fish and men are equal as well,” he explained.

He also narrated the story of birth of Zen when the Buddha wordlessly held up a flower in an assembly. Nobody except Old Kashyapa reacted: He alone smiled, as Buddha smiled back.

The Master’s gesture can be interpreted as an invocation to use your hands for creative activity, rather than the mind. The philosophy is reflected in his projects such as Tokyu Hands and Friends of Rivers. It also explains why the Crow Tribe chief Mickey Old Coyote named him ‘Travelling Wisdom’ in Montana.