the far side of the world

Brother Charles is working on a water project in Kununurra, the far north of western Australia.

I like to imagine if I dug straight down from my back yard, starting from one of the potholes the dog has inflicted on the lawn in his boredom, we would come out somewhere in that vicinity.



There the sun is shining. We could then go fishing together, perhaps for these cute baby barramundi.

Or, we could find sun and solitude on Willies Creek.

With luck the queenfish and oxeye tarpon might be around.

Here on the far side of the world I had to take a day's leave or lose it, so went up to the inlet of the reservoir. There are persistent rumors of a run of both trout and walleye in the spring up there, but I've never seen either in twenty springs of trying.

Didn't find a run as such, still got one hook-jawed 21", as big as I've ever caught in this drainage. Fishing a 7-wt with 3x leader hopefully for walleye, he still ran me around quite a bit.

 
Then the snow came pelting down again. I left to get the oil changed, a haircut, and made a dentist appointment to deal with my broken molar. Will this mad gay whirl ever cease ?

The Idyll of the Carp

The Idyll of the Carp
by Henry Austin Dobson

(The scene is in a garden - where you please,
so that it lie in France, and have withal
Its gray-stoned pond beneath the arching trees,
And Triton huge, with moss for coronal.
A Princess,- feeding fish. To her Denise.)

The Princess~~
These, Denise, are my Suitors!

Denise~
Where?

The Princess~~
These fish.
I feed them daily here at morn and night
With crumbs of favour, - scraps of graciousness,
Not meant, indeed, to mean the thing they wish,
But serving just to edge an appetite.
( Throwing bread. )
Make haste, Messieurs! Make haste, then! Hurry.
See, -
See how they swim! Would you not say, confess,
Some crowd of Courtiers in the audience hall,
When the King comes?

Denise~
You're jesting!

The Princess~
Not at all.
Watch but the great one yonder! There's the Duke; -
Those gill-marks mean his Order of St. Luke;
Those old skin-stains his boasted quarterings.
Look what a swirl and roll of tide he brings;
Have you not marked him thus, with crest in air,
Breathing disdain, descend the palace-stair?
You surely have, Denise.

Denise~
I think I have.
But there's another, older and more grave, -
The one that wears the round patch on the throat,
And swims with such slow fins. Is he of note?

The Princess~
Why, that's my good chambellan - with his seal.
A kind old man! - he carves me orange-peel
In quaint devices at refection-hours,
Equips my sweet-pouch, brings me morning flowers,
Or chirrups madrigals with old, sweet words,
Such as men loved when people wooed like birds
And spoke the true note first. No suitor he,
Yet loves me too, - though in a graybeard's key.

Denise~
Look, Madam, look! - a fish without a stain!
O speckless, fleckless fish! Who is it, pray,
That bears him so discreetly?

The Princess~
Fontenay.
You know him not? My prince of shining locks!
My pearl! - my Phoenix! - my pomander-box!
He loves not Me, alas! The man's too vain!
He loves his doublet better than my suit, -
His graces than my favours. Still his sash
Sits not amiss, and he can touch the lute
Not wholly out of tune -

Denise~
Ai! what a splash!
Who is it comes with such a sudden dash
Plump i' the midst, and leaps the others clear?

The Princess~
Ho! for a trumpet! Let the bells be rung!
Baron of Sans-terre , Lord of Pres-en-Cieux ,
Vidame of Vol-au-Vent - " et aultres lieux! "
Bah! How I hate his Gasconading tongue!
Why, that's my bragging Bravo-Musketeer -
My carpet cut-throat, valiant by a scar
Got in a brawl that stands for Spanish war: -
His very life's a splash!

Denise~
I'd rather wear
E'en such a patched and melancholy air,
As his, - that motley one, - who keeps the wall,
And hugs his own lean thoughts for carnival.

The Princess~
My frankest wooer! Thus his love he tells
To mournful moving of his cap and bells.
He loves me (so he saith) as Slaves the Free, -
As Cowards War, - as young Maids Constancy.
Item , he loves me as the Hawk the Dove;
He loves me as the Inquisition Thought; -

Denise~
" He loves? - he loves?" Why all this loving's naught!

The Princess~
And " Naught (quoth Jacquot) makes the sum of Love!"

Denise~
The cynic knave! How call you this one here? -
This small shy-looking fish, that hovers near,
And circles, like a cat around a cage,
To snatch the surplus.

The Princess~
Cherubin, the page.
'Tis but a child, yet with that roguish smile,
And those sly looks, the child will make hearts ache
Not five years hence, I prophesy. Meanwhile,
He lives to plague the swans upon the lake,
To steal my comfits, and the monkey's cake.

Denise~
And these - that swim aside - who may these be?

The Princess~

Those - are two gentlemen of Picardy,
Equal in blood, - of equal bravery: -
Moreuil and Montcornet. They hunt in pair;
I mete them morsels with an equal care,
Lest they should eat each other, - or eat Me.

Denise~
And that - and that - and that?

The Princess~
I name them not.
Those are the crowd who merely think their lot
The lighter by my land.

Denise~
And is there none
More prized than most? There surely must be one, -
A Carp of carps!

The Princess~
Ah me! - he will not come!
He swims at large, - looks shyly on, - is dumb.
Sometimes, indeed, I think he fain would nibble,
But while he stays with doubts and fears to quibble,
Some gilded fop, or mincing courtier-fribble,
Slips smartly in, - and gets the proffered crumb.
He should have all my crumbs - if he'd but ask;
Nay, an he would, it were no hopeless task
To gain a something more. But though he's brave,
He's far too proud to be a dangling slave;
And then - he's modest! So ... he will not come!
**

By the end we are certainly not hearing about fish anymore. I wonder about the accuracy of the sentiments, given this is a man writing in a woman's voice.  The carp of carps aside, I know nothing of suitors, having neither been among nor entertained them: still having squandered many hours in contemplation upon river and pond banks, all of these other characters among carp are perfectly familiar. The poem is an excellent piece of piscatorial observation.

Mr Dobson was surely a fisherman. Here's a fragment from An Autumn Idyll.

Hist! That's a pike. Look - nose against the river,
Gaunt as a wolf - the sly old privateer !
Enter a gudgeon. Snap, - a gulp, a shiver;
Exit the gudgeon. Let us anchor here.

The carp of carps among fish does indeed look shyly on in modesty, never coming forward to be caught. Last year I landed this immense fish.

While bringing it in, I thought I had finally hooked the carp of carps. Once upon the beach, unhooked and released, it became obvious that no caught fish is ever the carp of carps - by definition he is only ever the dim glimpse of a broad golden side, the colours of a tail at the surface seen for a moment and remembered forever, burning in memory. 

1984 trout from the kloofs

 
I was reminded of this set of photos by a post on Feathers and Fluoro - happy to see the stream is as yet unspoiled. Go there to see their pictures from 2014. Here are mine from 1984. If memory serves my brother and I were in Cape Town on vacation, which necessarily involved a couple of fishing trips. 

The first was to a reservoir high above Ceres. The water was low calm and clear, which gives one to think, as shown in the picture. Those scrubby bushes sticking out the water are proteas, providing shelter and refuge to the trout.

In those days we used to kill and eat the fish. It's a lot simpler ethically than catch-and-release, but of course unsustainable. I'm nearly sure I caught at least one of these fish that Charles is holding, which would have been a good trip for me.

We packed up some rudimentary supplies in grotty old haversacks and took to the hills. Short shorts were de rigeur in South Africa for manly men like us - good for breathability but not so much for sunburns. At this point we had not yet reached the swims, but I had fallen in at least once.

The first swim, a long dark pool below cliffs. The bag goes into a pack liner, thereby becoming a floatation device. There are fourteen or fifteen swims, though we only went up four or so. On another trip Charles dropped in to the canyon by going over a neighbouring peak, and came down the stream through all the swims. He neglected to obtain the required permit. About half-way down a mountaineering club trip overtook the fishermen: he was upbraided for their permitlessness by a pretty redhaired girl wearing nothing but a backpack.

It's surprisingly hard to swim while embracing a large green plastic bag.

Once above the swim, fishing improves noticeably, pretty plump brown trout to 14" in the clearest of waters. This one was released.

Other smaller fish became lunch by the stream, in that brilliant Cape light.

By the evening I'd fallen in multiple times. Here is a still life with fly boxes and other wet gear, and some toes. That rod is an 8' 5wt Fenwick HMG graphite, the best fly rod I have ever cast. Now it languishes in Perth surrounded by saltwater fishing that requires much heavier rods: like Borges' dagger in a drawer, dreaming of its bloody past.

 

The firepit for the evening takes less than a minute to construct. There are baboons in these kloofs, and their predator leopards. Sometimes in the dark there are green eyes at the edge of the light, embedded in shadows. The memory of golden Cape cobras swimming downstream past our wading legs, gives us unquiet dreams, sleeping as we are on the rocks. Snakes like warmth and we have the warmest bodies in this ravine. The water flows cold and companionable in the dark, its rills chuckling and purling around us.

Coming out of the mountains onto the Cape Flats there was a rare colourful sunset over the freeway. I did not know it then but that was the last time I would ever get above the first swim.

gonna be a long walk home

So the torture report is out, just about as bad as it could be. As any competent intelligence analyst could and did say, we know three things for sure about torture:
1. “Torture is a difficult and deceptive thing for the strong will resist and the weak will say anything to end the pain."
Ulpian, AD 200.
2. as a consequence of 1, most information extracted from the tortured is false. Since all this information will have to be verified again using standard intelligence procedures, the information is worse than useless.
3. as a consequence of 2, we conclude:
"the object of torture is torture."
Orwell, 1984.
 
Talk about your un-American activities..
The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. 
"We translated our ignorance, our anxiety, our guilt, into their pain."
"In our own cities, the suspect is no longer a citizen but a rightless subject."

Bruce Springsteen, 2007 -
our flag flying
over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone.
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't.
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home.

Neil Young, in 1987 -
If Liberty was a little girl
Watching all the flags unfurl
Standing at the big parade
How would she like us now?
America, America
Where have we gone?
It's such a long walk home

Update 2020: Charlie Stross points us to,

Torture prevalent and portrayed as effective in popular movies, study finds. 60% of popular films (n=200), including those for children, have at least one torture scene, and the scenes are usually depicted as achieving the torturer’s goal.

“I did not appreciate how prevalent torture was actually going to be,” Delehanty said. “The thing that shook me and what led to the title of our research – ‘Wait, There’s Torture in Zootopia?: Examining the Prevalence of Torture in Popular Movies’ – was how many kids movies have torture scenes in them.”

Torture prevalent and portrayed as effective in popular movies, study finds. 60% of popular films (n=200), including those for children, have at least one torture scene, and the scenes are usually depicted as achieving the torturer’s goal: https://t.co/rJIxqsixab

— Charlie Stross (@cstross) March 6, 2020

first pheasant of the year

The bird jumped up behind me with a clatter of wings. Even with one good eye my shooting was poor at best. Now the left lens of my shooting glasses is deliberately blurred, to force the right eye to take a dominant role. With a vitreous detachment in the right eye, this leaves me with no good eye when hunting: better than shooting right-handed and left-eyed, still something less than optimal. I winged him with the second shot so he plumped down a couple hundred yards out in the water. Fortunately I have a good dog who is much better at hunting than me. Artie promptly took off for a long swim, whimpering slightly in the cold water, and perhaps also with the excitement of actually having a bird to fetch.

There was a brief fracas midwater as Artie negotiated a good grip on the bird. The pictures (thanks Ken) are cellphone, which can take beautiful portraits of still trout at close range in good light. The image quality of these doesn't do much to showcase your retina display, but it does have a quality almost like an oil painting when zoomed in, see below, which I find appealing. That's also closer to what comes in through my no good eyes than any pixel-perfect representation.

It is curious to look at these paintings of the gentry at their recreation, and feel a nostalgie for a culture and society to which I would not have been admitted. It is this I think, 

"perhaps the greatest escapism of all is to take refuge in the domesticity of the past, the home that history and literature become, avoiding the one moment of time in which we are not at home, yet have to live: the present. "

Sensible dog found a tooth-hold safely in the rear, away from beak and spurs. The bird looks outraged, "I demand to see the management !" but unluckily they are not taking complaints today. 

Artie glares at the bird, though his ire is misplaced. Next time he should just bite me on the leg instead.  

chimeras: or, carp on the fly

Last week I took the canoe out in the evening to try for walleye under the autumn moon. The walleye has the tapetum lucidum that lets them hunt nocturnally, and not coincidentally echoes the moonlight in the white glow of its eye. I like to see that shine from their handsome green bodies; also they are excellent eating, ahem. With an 18" minimum size limit, most of the fish in the lake are 17", one of which I caught, admired and released.

While waiting for dusk and night, poked around the flooded waterlands of the inlet, where carp fed happily under a low and setting sun. The one I hooked sewed me up, weaving the flyline through several different trees and bushes before shedding the hook.

This week I went back at lunchtime, hoping for better visibility. The visibility was excellent but the water temperature was 50 degrees and the shallows empty, a sort of watery desert. Several redhead ducks and a merganser pottered around, further out grebes and coots watched nervously as the stiff wind pushed the canoe along.

This reservoir is on the Central Flyway,  consequently fills up in spring and fall with travellers. Pelicans show up too. These are quite capable of eating large carp but that's all right, we none of us can live without killing.

I had used old topo maps to set GPS locations for the flooded roadbeds where walleye like to hang out in the day. The canoe was unmanageable in the stiff winds, then several bass boats roared up to the spot from different directions and I gave up. This is a phenomenon observed whenever fishing from a canoe in the vicinity of bass boats: as if they are thinking, anyone too poor to afford a boat must surely spend a lot of time fishing, hence knows all the sweet spots: would that it were true. Struggled back toward the beach battling wind and wave, a good core workout with jolts of adrenaline as the wind caught and lifted the boat at the top of the swells; but somewhat frustrated.

There were heavy swirls in the waves over weedbeds in the bay. Hopefully pitched the anchor nine feet deep, three feet of water and six feet of a weed water and mud slurry, believing with the fishes that
somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;

That water was a comfortable 57 degrees. There were carp noses sticking out the water and groups slowly cruising. The fast-sinking leech pattern tied on earlier for the flats was entirely inappropriate for the open deep water, but you fish for cruisers with the fly you have on, not the fly you wish you had. Tying on a different fly always takes just enough time for the cruisers to move out of casting range. These fish were moving downwind rather than up, oddly, their shapes illusive brown hints in the deep green water. I'm nearly sure several followed the fly down and took it invisibly. Working on that assumption, tried a very slow hand-twist retrieve on the next presentation, hoping the slight tension would be enough for a hookset.

Ha ! The fish ran out vigorously and swiftly some forty yards, then all went solid and dead, embedded in weed. It took some work but eventually freed the line. 

Back at the canoe he sounded and buried in the weed below. The rod could not budge that mess, so handlined him up. Here is that handsome burly fish.

Returned with thanks, as always. This is likely the last carp of the year - fare thee well under the winter ice.