Truly the Work of a Heretic

Just want to tell you I've managed, by my reading about the publishing industry, to keep hope alive for the trout book redone as how-to with experience to support the advice. The hybrid book described in the post linked to below has no hope for a commercial publisher. It's neither how-to nor memoir; it's both, and yet it even functions more like a collection of essays, rather than a memoir, which by definition has a story arc. Some might say my book does have a story arc--it's just not well-defined as chronological. It is that way by design, though I am certain further revision yet would improve on the structure.

I remain proud of the book as is. It's in safekeeping. When I do work on a memoir inspired by it, I will be creating something different. I love how the trout book uniquely combines how-to with profound spiritual disclosure. How it shows that fishing for stocked trout--with a spinning rod--can lead to the very heart of Western Civilization's value. That's what the book does. And stockers and a spinning rod!? Truly the work of a heretic! 

Which makes it exciting for me. I know. You might not give a shit.

A word about the previous post linked to. Where I write that the majority who would not read the book rules out the few who would, I'm on loose ground. They don't really rule it out. They simply would have no interest and since a publisher couldn't profit, it is of course entirely reasonable he doesn't publish it. No, and the real situation is the book's value. Not its worthlessness. What this means is that if I want badly enough the few who would read it to do so, then I have to pay the price of self-publication. 

Also, further reading reveals that self-publication with an ISBN shouldn't negatively affect subsequent publication attempts. So my rather snide remark about money making it a publisher's business to marginalize me for low sales of a self-published book seems erroneous, and besides, the remark almost comes off as a sneer at money as such. I believe money well-earned is never evil. Of course it isn't. It's nothing more than a measure of value.

Book Post 

The Wrong Way to Hold a Fish

Ever since Andy Still criticized me for holding the bass in the photo that way, I've always held them either straight up and down, or have supported the body underneath by my other hand. It's really best to support the fish with two hands; even when held straight--lipping a bass, for instance--the strain might cause the fish damage.

But to bend the neck--no, don't do that. Think of the strain of all that body weight on the neck. Will a fish survive it? Maybe not.

In any event, the bass photographed probably died, because it was a bleeder. I did release it, hoping the bleeding would stop. 

Saffin Pond

Three Fall Rainbow Trout

Mark uses a centerpin rod and reel, allowing his float to navigate into pockets and around boulders, sometimes floating a hundred feet or more downstream of where he stands. He keeps the reel set on freespool until a trout comes to the net, when he engages the clicker.  When he moves on to position elsewhere on the river, he engages the bear claw, which locks the reel so the rig doesn't come loose as he walks. Free-spooling a slip float is the technique, fingers ready to immediately hold the reel in place so the hook gets set.

He caught two trout on Blue Goo egg sacks he bought while fishing the Oswego River in New York recently. He also ties his own sacks. Sometimes he uses a single salmon egg, a nighcrawler, a pink Gulp worm, or a plastic bead. A third trout for him today came on a single pink Mike's Atlas Shrimp egg. All three were about 14, maybe 15 inches long. The rig is identical to a steelhead rig. A half dozen or so split shots trail down the line in descending order by weight. A plastic bead sits underneath the float, one at the top between the float and a stopper. He buys the beads at Michael's. Much less expensive than at tackle shops or online.

I fly cast a black and a copper woolly bugger, catching nothing and getting no hits.

I got to see some more of New Jersey, traveling roads familiar to me elsewhere, but not where I drove today. I had made a left where I was supposed to go right, putting more than 10 extra miles on my odometer, but now I've seen countryside I might never have seen. It's not a good thing to take too much for granted.  The river is always there, but the fox we saw was an event not quite like any other involving a fox we'll see.

Mark told me about a tree in the river no longer there, too. It created an eddy and bowled out the bottom a bit. The river's always becoming a new version of itself.  

Chub

NJ Trout

Walpack Inn & Justin Lerner

Finally got a Sunday off after weeks holding down the fort while my supervisor is out after back surgery. Trish and I headed north, after I felt a little annoyed at her getting ready at what I believed was a late hour. (Did I express my disgruntlement? No, no, no. Not a word.) As it turned out, we arrived about 45 minutes before our table reservation, so we bought hard apple cider and sat on the lawn to enjoy Justin Lerner's performance.

Many of you probably know Justin Lerner from his FB posts of amazing catches. I did get to meet him when he took a break. 

I've felt so interested in shots of him with big browns, I asked him, "What's the biggest wild brown you've caught in New Jersey?"

He said he caught a 26-inch brown, adding that you can't tell for certain. I quickly agreed, but I really didn't know if maybe there's a sure way to tell the difference. He said the fins of his big one were clean. I had heard before that often you can tell it's a club fish by damaged fins.

The Walpack Inn is really only about an hour-and-a-half from Bedminster, when we take the road from Blairstown over to Millbrook. Go to Old Mine Road from Route 80's last exit, and it's surely two hours.

It's our favorite restaurant. Has a real sportsmen's feel about it.

On the way home, a bobcat ran across the road in front of our car.

 

Justin Lerner is Playing at Walpack Inn Tomorrow

 I really should have thought of posting this a week ago. I guess it's better late than never.

Justin Lerner, the legendary angler some of us see on Facebook with his great catches, is also an artist. (But he seems to be plenty of an artist as an angler.) He plays guitar and has two albums out: 18th Avenue and The Dividing Line. His performances--solo and with his band--range from small bars to stadiums. 

The Walpack Inn is located in Delaware Watergap National Recreation Area in Sussex County. It's a great restaurant. If any of you are interested at the last minute, there may still be time for you to make reservations.

Mustad Bronze

Could have bought 100 #10 treble hooks from Amazon for three dollars more, but they are corrosion resistant, so I bought 25 #10 bronze Mustad trebles. Sometimes a fish takes the hook deep, and bronze hooks rust out. Corrosion resistant? Obviously seems less likely they would.

Many would say I shouldn't use trebles for bait. They block food passage if caught in the gut. I shouldn't even use single-prong. Only circle hooks. Anything but a little treble complicates a live herring's freedom in the water. Single-prong hooks turn inward on the herring's eye, while a treble mounts on its head like a crown. I'm not altogether sold on the idea that little treble hooks block food passage, particularly in the case of larger fish, but I hate it when a fish I intend to release gets hooked deeply. Even if it's a yellow perch. 

I set the hook as quickly as I get to the rod and tighten the line.

Got these hooks on my 60th birthday today. I was thinking I may never use them. Bottom fishing live herring doesn't interest me as much as it used to. But suddenly it occurred to me that sometime in the future, my son and I might get that next chance to do it, which we talked about the last time, October 2016, when he was a senior in high school. 

Maybe the little square pack of hooks will wait for him on a shelf.

(He just now phoned as I proofread.)

Lake Hopatcong Conversation

This is the 13th year I've fished Hopatcong in the fall. I especially looked forward to fishing with Jorge, because I knew I could discuss my book with him, but yesterday as closing time came at the supermarket, I felt those primal desires for big fish all of us feel.

But not all of us want to read the kind of book mine as it is at present, the version I've already put on external drives for future safe keeping, while also keeping a copy I'll divide into various essays for literary magazines and material for a possible memoir I may write 10 years from now. The remainder is how-to, especially for microlight salmon-egging stocked trout. The way I seamlessly connect how-to together with material from my life at the shore--when I treaded clams for a living while studying hundreds of books of literature, philosophy, mysticism, and psychology, when I documented innumerable spiritual experiences in many dozens of notebooks--the way I do it clearly seems to work because it shows, especially while I'm stuck in the working class with like associates at the supermarket who also fish stockers, the likes of us not as privileged as traveling fly anglers...it shows how the fishing keeps me connected to the spirituality I achieved during my shore adventure. Best of all, it gives the reader something to believe in, if he will go deep into his own experience. 

Some Baby Boomers might be interested in the parallels the book lines up with lead singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison. I show how my book could never be the American Prayer it is--every chapter is headed by a quote from an American president--without Jim Morrison's album, An American Prayer., preceding it. I go a step further than to believe the album is really cynicism from the sewer.

But that's what the book seems to be--a prayer. As grounded in fact, experience, realism, and practicality as it is, who will come along for the adventure of its 156 pages? Many would say today that America needs a prayer, but many would seem to say so...and not really care. Besides, I wrote the book for the individual reader, for the man who will actually find on the pages something to believe. I know one of you would read it, but like Jim Morrison, who failed at taking his audience as far as he desired to go with them, my book also fails. By all I can gather, it is an utter impossibility to publish it in today's market. I have been reading heavily on the publishing business. The book is certainly worth keeping on solid state drives. In another 150 years, someone may come upon it and feel interested that Bruce Edward Litton actually wrote it during our dark time.

I may take Jorge's advice. Give readers the meat and potatoes. Write about how to do it. I do wonder why we do it, but right there, I seem to lose 99.9 percent or more of an audience, not because my sentences don't lead one into the next, but because the reader must choose to read them, not to mention connect the logic. Most people who fish stocked trout will not be so serious about the pursuit. Not even to appreciate a story about someone who is.

Or let's be blunt. They may be damn serious about fishin'--but not very bright. 

Even a meat and potatoes book on spinning for trout--it's especially about microlight spinning, the book is a specialty in either form--is likely to draw no interest from publishers. They seem to feel only fly fishermen are book readers, by and large. The rest of us dumb asses who use a spinning rod do read articles about spinning for trout, but by and large, we don't read books. Not any sort of books.

And since the publishing business is all about money, the very few who would gain by my book, they won't read it, because the majority who would never read it represent the lack of money needed to interest a publisher. They vote the better reader out, in effect. My writing mentor, Ed Minus, whose novel, Kite, was published by Penguin Press, told me, "Americans have an insatiable appetite for shit."

If you think I'm telling you about a form of censorship, get rid of that notion, because I could self-publish. It's just that I think the book as is wouldn't sell, so what's the use? I would do it for a very few, if I could afford it. Maybe I can. Electronically. I haven't got as far in my reading about the business yet. But here's how obsessed the publishing business is with money. By what I've gathered, I would have to purchase an ISBN. That means the sales would collect a track record. I have hope to write literary works that may indeed attract publishers. But if they look at my track record and see I published a book that sold 13 copies, I might be in trouble. Why is that their damn business? Well, money makes it their damn business.

Regardless of qualms felt after some three years of writing the book--I did take long hiatus's for other projects--only to save it for some distant future when I'm dead, I get out and fish. Jorge and I were on the lake before dawn, going forward with handheld running lights. As you can see in the photos, we caught some fish. None of them very big.

I'll finish this post by saying that as utterly ridiculous as it seems in an age that has utterly abandoned any spirituality, I believe in the reward of heaven. I can promise you I will suffer more bouts yet of the severe depression accompanying me, ever since I began reading on getting published. But was all of my sincere effort in writing the book in vain? You bet, I feel that. But I don't really think that.

I don't believe everyone achieves the reward of heaven. That doesn't make me elitist. I don't believe in the Elect. It makes me a realist. A favorite move of mine is Danial Kaluuya's Get Out. About "the dark place." A good reason to abandon "the real world" and go fishing.

Jorge and I enjoyed a bite that lasted about an hour-and-a-half. Several white perch took our large herring, some yellow perch did, too, but the two hybrid stripers were better, and I caught the same walleye twice. (See photo of the weird flare-up on its cheek.)

Here's the walleye I caught twice from 30 feet of water.

 

That lesion or whatever it is on its cheek is the proof.

We caught three crappies about a foot long each that took large herring 30 feet down.

After fog cleared (you can see sun on Jorge's face), the bite had died. We began jigging Binsky bladebaits.

Caught this rock bass with interesting coloration on a Binsky. We tried two long-edged drops jigging.

More Photos. Gobble 'em up.