Category: The River

Indian Slough• Lost and Found• Pelicans • A Fish

5 October, 2009 • Indian Slough

At the entrance of Indian Slough, on a tall weathered old trunk of wood perched a large white bird. How odd, I thought, an egret way up there. But I was going fishing, and I passed it by without taking out the camera. All morning long, and through the afternoon, I cast to the weeds of Truesdale Lake hoping for a bass, cast after cast, after cast, but nothing–nothing except little birds fluttering in the distance. As I made my way back through the slough toward home, I dragged behind me a large sucker minnow hooked through the lips with the hook of an old Prescott spinner when BANG! A Northern Pike. And the bird on top the old tree was replaced by a sea gull.

My list, toward the end of this first abbreviated fishing season shows, I think, the easiest fish to catch top the list, and that the degree of difficulty increases with each entry. Not that it is ever easy. I expect it will become harder.

14 October, 2009 • Lost and Found

Along Point No Point the fishermen cast toward shore. Today I went ashore and combed the beach. Along with various feathers and two large mussel specimens (Pyganodon grandis), I found a small piece of oblong plastic painted like a little blue and yellow fish with two rusted hooks hanging from it’s side: a lure lost by someone who knew what they were doing.

16 October, 2009 • Pelicans

On October 14 I estimated that there were 200-300 of them at Point Au Sable. Today, along with Sir Mickaelous and Cindyrella, it was reckoned that the number was closer to 1,000. Birds must be coming in from other places, perhaps to join the flock for a flight to Mexico. Pelicans continue to be the central point of ornithological interest. They are large, interesting, relatively easy to approach, and famous, of course, for the pouches they carry beneath their beaks. With long, thick, black-tipped wings, short stubby orange legs, and bodies like water balloons, the physics involved in getting it all airborne is facinating.

For a fish to get into the book, I have to catch one. For a mussel to get in, both shells of an individual must be collected. For a bird, I need an interesting photograph.

19 October, 2009 • A Fish & Some Casting in Cyberspace

Today mine was one of a half dozen boats along Point No Point. The frustration of three friutless hours of casting my prized found lure was heightened with each fish caught by the other fishermen, and there were many. Finally, at 2 pm, a strike. To my surprise, the fish was not the expected Small Mouth Bass, but instead a Walleye Pike. Later, in cyberspace, I learned that casting a deep diving crank bait (like the one I found) into the water is a common method of catching Walleyes. I also learned the identity of the found lure. It is

Cotton Cordell’s C. C. Shad number CD1279.

2 Frogs, 2 Crayfish, & 2 Night Crawlers • An Old Notebook • Point No Point • Dreary Island, a Game Fish, & Rumination on the Point of Wood Engraving

23 September, 2009 • 2 Frogs, 2 Crayfish, & 2 Night Crawlers

There is nothing about a bird that has not been noted, and thought about. I assume the man in the distant boat knows what he is doing. As I drag this night crawler across the bottom of Lake Pepin from Point No Point to the mouth of the Rush River, I clearly do not. I wonder about the ceaseless motion of the water’s surface: the constant shifting of reflections whose seemingly random and abstract nature cannot be so. There must be a specific set of physical causes for each and every movement. The problem of rendering such vast, unfathomable possiblilities as the surface of the lake is interesting.

I watch the birds: the ever-present seagulls, and some smaller, faster birds working the air just above the water. Surely food cannot always be what moves them. There is sex of course, but not now, in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the afternoon. Out here all becomes significant: a fly, a leaf, a feather, myself. I wonder about these butterflies, one by one, making the three-mile flight across Lake Pepin from Wisconsin to Minnesota. Perhaps they are in training for the trip to Mexico. Perhaps they are on their way, but why cross the river?

Early this morning, as I motored up river from Stockholm toward Maiden Rock, pelicans were scattered across the lake. Now, five hours later, they have gathered into two flocks, one up river from the mouth of the Rush, and the other down. I am close enough to see that the flock downriver is milling about, seemingly in a similar, spiraling kind of pattern that they follow as they ride the currents of each other’s wings in flight. But in the water there is much splashing and seemingly awkward movement, unlike the measured discipline of flying in formation. Sex? Perhaps group sex, but it seems unlikely that sex would be the object this time of year.

2 frogs + 2 crayfish + 2 night crawlers = 1 sheepshead

Suddenly, a leap.

Why do fish jump?
To see who has come.

In 1970, after a winter’s study of Outdoor Life magazines in the windowless basement bedroom, fishing season opened with 21 hours of futility. Over the next few years interest gave way to obsession, fishing led to poetry and, ultimately, the making of books.

Twenty-nine years have come and gone. I have become a collector of books, and other things. For Mayflies of the Driftless Region, a species had to be caught to get into the book. The same approach seems likely for The River: I plan to collect specimens of fish (among other things), photograph them, and turn them into wood engravings. As I look back over my first month on the river, I find the futility of having caught but three out of eighty possible species of fish frustrating, but also invigorating. I feel I’m going back, but with a slope more dramatic, as the banks of the Mississippi River carry far more water than those of the Red River of the North, and the water moves in a different direction.

15 September, 2009 • Point No Point

Late afternoon.
Point-No-Point
in the shadow of itself.
I pull in close.
Hidden from the sunset
I catch nothing.

What was John Little working on?
Catching fish.
Why do fish jump?
I wonder…

3 September, 2009 • Dreary Island, a Game Fish, & Rumination on the Point of Wood Engraving

While motoring toward home from Dreary Island an extraordinary thing happened. Suddenly, out in the middle of the Lake, the surface came alive with fish leaping after smaller fish. Sea gulls were diving and calling out. I stopped the motor, and, with the small white plug I had been urged to buy for just such a moment, I caught a white bass. It was vibrant, and lively, flopping around and making this photograph a hard-earned prize.

The process of clearing background from around an image in Photoshop is similar to clearing around an image engraved in wood. To get into the tight spaces one must start with a fine tool, and then gradually increase the size of the tool in order to clear out larger areas. The question arises, of course, as to the point of replicating an image in wood, by hand, when one has a fine photograph of the fish itself, and Photoshop: a good question.

While working on specimen images for Sylvæ, Ben and I adopted a policy of “raising” a voice, so long as we didn’t change that voice. This allowed us to push images in a direction of interest in order to make some aspect of the image more obvious. This begins to answer the question, but there is more. Blind obsession takes us to unexpected places, sometimes far beyond our expectations. The longer the period of time one allows oneself to continue down such a path, the further one is able to travel from the expected. Finally, when we are able to take something we see, and process it through our intellect, we are able to construct a system of replication that others find pleasure in discovering, and relating to.

With a live well finally installed, I was able to get out on the river three times in August: twice with buddy Bill Logan of the Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Our first day out, in rain with a strong north wind, was a true sea trial, and all systems tested positive, though the notion that I could stay dry under such conditions was clearly wrong. As we set out from Pepin bound for the mouth of the Chippewa, the boat lurched from crest to crest on the big waves. On the return voyage, at dusk, the bow of the boat banged recklessly into white caps as I struggled to maintain a level plain until I realized that slowing down was the best course. I am grateful to Bill for his calm reassurance on a day I would not have had the nerve to launch into alone.

The first fish was collected was a young carp weighting 1.666 pounds. I have been pleased with the output from the new camera. It will be interesting to work from such sharp photographs when it comes to cutting wood engravings of fish.

30 July 2009

Today the boat finally entered the river at the Sportsman Club landing in Pepin Wisconsin at two-thirty in the afternoon while white caps rolled across the water and billowing clouds leaned into a brisk north wind. The second-hand, under-the-floor gas tank installed over the winter was a worry: and the Evenrude E-tech motor fogged for the first time last November; and temporary plugs in the transom put there because a live well has yet to materialize; and the wind as we bobbed and rolled to the smack of the waves against the aluminum hull. It was time to begin, finally, for the boat, for me, and for my companion…