Taste of Summer

An 11:30 a.m. low tide and 50-degree air temp helped form my decision. The plan was to rake local quahogs for a Sunday feast of stuffed clams and clams casino. After having success at this particular spot in September, confidence was high that I would find hard shells where I left them. That morning I layered up like it was a winter steelhead trip and waded into the 41-degree Long Island Sound. 

The tool for this is a long-handled rake with steel tines protruding from a wire basket on its business end. When the tines come in contact a clam, there is a distinct feel and sound that helps differentiate between a quahog and say a rock or empty shell. Let me cut to the chase and admit that I didn't hear any good sounds while raking that morning. I tried out deep, in shallow, and even on an exposed flat at dead low tide. For more than an hour, I moved all over the place and used muscles I didn't know I had, yet never zeroed in on where the bivalves were burrowed. 

One thing I learned is that I still have a lot to learn when it comes to clamming. Perhaps they were in water deeper than I could wade. Or maybe the clams were buried deeper in the sand and mud than the rake could reach. This is not a heavily pressured area, so I know it hasn't been picked over. Wherever they were, it wasn't where they were just a few months ago.

On to plan B. 

There was just enough time to call an audible. My wife and daughters were coming to meet me and friends at the beach for lunch. I reached them before they left the house and requested another tool for a different kind of clamming. Soft shells, affectionately known by many as "steamers", are also found in this general vicinity, but in a precise area buried under a specific substrate. 

While the quahogs here live in soft sand and mud in open water, the steamers prefer life under a rocky bar that extends perpendicular to the beach. Getting at them requires a short-handled tool, like a garden claw or trowel. Instead of wading and raking in water, this method consists of kneeling and digging on dry land during the low tide window. My tactic is to throw a heavy rock on the bar to see where the soft shells spit sea water from their siphons. In the summer, one toss of a softball-sized rock could unleash several clues on where to pinpoint digging efforts. On this day, nothing. Zip. Nada. 

Instead of calling it quits, I dug a trench where they'd normally be and, sure enough, I found one about six inches down. It was a slow slog, but I kept at it and they came in small bunches of two or three every couple minutes. It was hard work for an appetizer, but I was pot committed (pun intended). The take home count was around 50 steamers, which is a perfect quantity for our family of four. Everyone was happy for a taste of summer; broth, butter and all. 

While I didn't come home empty handed, I did strike out on my original plan. Winter clamming for quahogs is something I'd really like to focus on. It goes to show, no matter how much time we spend on the water, there will always be so much more to learn. 

Winter Nights

On cold, dark nights during winter—after work, dinner, dishes, bath and bedtime—now and again I descend to the basement. Down the stairs, past the finished area strewn with toys, through a door and into a slice of cellar left untouched. It’s unheated, dimly lit, and all mine. A shrine to my hobbies, almost every inch of the room is covered with something outdoors-related. A cement-floor sanctuary to unwind, tinker, and prepare for trips and seasons to come.

A simple workbench is the heart of the room. Above it a pegboard adorned with dozens of wooden plugs and plastic lures—some more worn than others, but each tell a story. They hang upside down by their rear hook in two neat rows; organized first by type, then by color. Some nights I’ll swap out old, rusty hooks for fresh ones or take random lures off the wall and inspect them like a kid does his army men. It’s reassuring in a way to handle artificial lures in winter while thinking of tides I’ll cast them come summer. Some nights I’ll hover over the bench and snell hooks or tie leaders and tuck them in individual baggies. Better to do it now than rushing before a fishing trip.

Next to the workbench is an old, fold-out wooden desk. It’s been furnished into a fly-tying station with a daylight lamp, making it the brightest spot in the room when it’s on. The desktop has open cigar boxes stuffed with various spools of thread, wire, and lead. It’s flanked by plastic organizers on either side with drawers chockfull of tying materials. Oftentimes I’ll sit at the vise, usually with a bourbon, or lately tequila, and fill voids in my fly boxes of proven patterns that I lost too many of. While tying this winter, instead of listening to playlists, I’ve been enthralled with an audiobook, Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary, by Joe Jackson. It’s a fascinating biography of the Sioux healer and holy man, and a sad reminder of some dark times in our nation’s history.  

A collection of fishing rods stretches the entire length of another wall. A few of them are long, one-piece surfcasting rods, so it’s helpful to have a full walk-out door at the head of the room with easy access to my truck—a far cry from the situation when living on the third-floor of my in-laws for two years (the cooking was top-shelf, but getting a 10 footer up two flights at 2 a.m. took practice). Most of the rods have reels attached and rigged from the last time they saw action. Near the door on the floor is a large Jet Sled laden with stickers and packed to the gills with ice fishing gear. It has a hole in one of the back corners, but I haven’t sprung for a plastic welding kit to fix it. The ice gear hasn’t seen much activity this winter, but I’m not packing it away just yet. Eventually it will hang in the rafters out of sight until next November, when optimism is once again renewed for a proper hardwater season.

On the opposite wall are two metal shelving racks full of tackle boxes, plug bags, storage bins, camping equipment, and a cache of artifacts I’ve found at ancient Native American campsites and villages around the area. Much of it is debitage, sharp-edged waste material left behind when indigenous people knapped stone such as flint or quartz into tools. But some of the pieces are broken or unfinished projectile points and scrapers that weren’t quite good enough to make their way upstairs into my shadowbox table with the showpiece stuff. There are nights I’ll just go through this pile of flakes and chipped stone, sorting and studying them, and thinking how cool it is that someone else held them thousands of years ago. 

Yet another section of the room is taken up by a bait freezer, buckets, nets, walking sticks, coolers, and a clothing rack on wheels from which hangs fly fishing packs, waders, wetsuits, and a myriad of bibs and jackets. In the corner, from the ceiling, hangs my fishing bike; an old beater that is spray-painted black and customized with two rod-holders, basket, and rear rack. It doesn’t get used as much as it could, but the bike is ready to spring to life for a Canal trip or a ninja mission to a private stretch of shoreline.

The room is not big by any means, yet its space is certainly maximized. Not much bare wall space is left—some of the last of it used for a framed photograph of my largest bluefish, caught and released on a September night 14 years ago. The plug that fooled that fish, a white Atom 40, is wired to the frame below the picture, full of teeth mark battle scars. On nails in the concrete block hang lanterns, chaffed leaders, and antique cookware, and sprinkled around the room are retired flies or lures, fishing keepsakes from a time gone by.

In spring, summer, and fall, there are plenty of nights I run down to the basement only to grab gear and go—I won’t think twice about tinkering with tackle or tying flies. But in winter, when the cold is numbing and wind is honking, on occasion I get the urge to spend hours in the place carved out for the things I love to do. Whether it’s a garage, trophy room, attic, tying room, or mancave, every outdoorsman has a special spot they store the things they are passionate about. I’m fortunate for mine.

Two Days In January

What's In A Name?

Tip-ups, tilts, traps—whatever you call them—are a standard piece of equipment for ice anglers. They come in an array of shapes and sizes for different situations and styles of fishing. My go-to traps are Heritage Lakers. Each one is handmade in Maine from white ash. They can be cumbersome when lugging around a full set of six traps, but they are dependable and can take a beating. 

Most of mine are more than ten years old now. Their components are a bit tired—the flags don’t snap to attention like they used to—but they get the job done and I love them like old friends. I’ve spent many a night over a work bench tinkering with them or swapping out leaders. Each one of their bright orange flags has a name written on it. Maybe it is habit or superstition perhaps, but I’ve been naming my tip-ups ever since I got into ice fishing. Here are the stories behind their names. 

The first Heritage Laker that I ever purchased was from Kittery Trading Post and I named it Old Faithful. Wish I could say it's named after the famous Yellowstone geyser, but I haven’t made it there yet. It’s just a reliable piece of gear and usually the first trap out of my sled any given outing. It has fished classic waters from Sebago Lake to Lake George and if this tip-up could talk, it would have some cool stories to tell.

It is family lore that my eldest brother was almost named Tecumseh after the famous Shawnee warrior and chief. My dad ended up losing that battle to my mom and Gavin he became. I’ve always been big into Native American culture and history and enjoy looking for their long lost artifacts. Naming one of my traps Tecumseh was a nod of respect to the people that fished and hunted these lands before us.

I fell in love with this name after seeing the classic Wes Anderson film 'The Royal Tenenbaums.' A couple scenes in the movie show Richie Tenenbaum practicing falconry on a New York City rooftop. His badass bird was a Saker Falcon named Mordecai. That’s it. 

It’s hard to nail down exactly what mojo means. Lucky comes close. Surfcasters often speak of mojo when referring to favorite battle-worn plugs. Tip-ups can have mojo too. This one lives up to its name and has been part of some of my largest fish through the ice. 

The winter solstice has been celebrated for eons. In the northern hemisphere, it’s the shortest period of daylight of the year. Each day afterward, until the summer solstice, we see the gradual lengthening of days. It’s not every year that there is fishable ice in Connecticut by the winter solstice, but it’s a good sign if there is. 

Sleeper is always the last tip-up I set. It’s purposely put a little out of the way—either at the end of my trap line or behind the shelter slightly out of sight. It’s the trap I want to set and forget and hope to see with a flag up when I remember to check it. More than once it’s been Sleeper that has saved the day out there for me. 

Chasing Esox

Tip-up fishing for northern pike can be summed up as hours of waiting for a few brief moments of chaos. While there wasn't much ice to fish on this past winter, we made the most of what we had. Here is our 2016-2017 hardwater season boiled down to five minutes. All Esox lucius in this video were caught and released in Connecticut waters.

Smarch

Editor's note: I think this post from my buddy Chad sums up the feelings of many anglers in the Northeast that are itching for spring. 

I didn’t even bother to change the calendar from February to March. Now six days in, and still looking at J Tomelleri’s Sockeye Salmon and its native range three thousand miles to the west of me, a pink blob running from Bearing Sea south along that long foreign coast. On this forlorn and barren coast I am socked in by three feet of snow still, and the winter lags like an illness taken deeply in the chest, frozen in deep, with roots that break apart the land in their freezing and half-thawing, make ruptures, refreeze.

It has been a hard winter here, the coldest ever month of February they say, and none can doubt it. Most water is utterly gone. All covered in snow and ice still. The winter creeping and creeping, freezing and refreezing until finally, a leak in the roof, ominous dark spot on the ceiling bearing a steady drip. 

I call a friend of a friend skilled and unemployed enough to do the job and in short order he has shoveled the roof clear of four foot of snow. This is work I could not do, having tried it weeks earlier to be unceremoniously dumped off the roof in a slide of ice and shit pinged off the rickety ladder and deposited rib down on the frozen porch. With life flashing before my eyes certainly a wise choice to pony up the cash to someone with the skills. Someone less top-heavy then I, Mike works the roof with the easy foot guise of a squirrel.  Deep gratitude I feel and the leak stops.

The sun is out on the weekend and it is time to go fishing. I do not care where and have little to no hope of catching a fish. This is how you know you fish, when you go anyway. A bluebird day, and though only just above freezing the change is inevitable and with good intentions I am convinced that the end is nigh of the cold hard season. 

The only option is a brown line that flows through a mill town. I can see it from the highway; it has open water and that is all that matters. There are no fish living there, I am convinced. If they do live though, I am sure they are too cold and sluggish to eat anything. Not essential. This is the Smarch season in Northeastern Connecticut. It is nearly the opposite of what fishing should be, wherein you value the day on not catching any fish. A good day is no fish at all, but out in the field no less.

You belly up to the bar afterwards and order up with your wind chapped face and your sore bone fingers. “How’d you make out?” the bar keep asks. You smile and shake your head slowly like you are in a beer commercial and just say in a grin “Phenomenal.”

So you enter the water in your leaky waders with a white mink Zonker and you practice. And you cast to all the likely spots, and work the visible bait in rhythmic urges downstream, quartering it against the places you would be if you were a fish and you were feeding. Quartering it where in a month or so there will be a fish feeding. An hour in you feel you are fishing well, and you slump down for a cold beer into the streamside snow.

It gives hope, the flowing water and the sun climbing high through the growing afternoon. The snow takes on that shine, the metallic luster that it gives off in its melting. The shadows of trees are blue on the snow and they cross over a tiny dark stonefly crawling on the snow.

The old timers down around Beaver Brook call them snow-flies and the hook keepers of their grey un-sanded blanks bear tiny black nymphs to imitate them. Forcing the issue through all this slow crept winter that bears down on the land, forcing the issue both the flies and us old timers. Hope flies away into the sunlight and I reach for the fly box.

Could you imagine catching even one? Probably not. But still.