Tangled: August wrap-up

Tangled: August wrap-up

The author spent a lot of time in August catching largemouth bass, primarily on subsurface flies.

Patrick L. Sullivan

I spent August at the old farmhouse on Mt. Riga. Most of the time it was just me. The cousins came and went weekends, and Mom pretty much stayed down at base.

Because I tend to drop things in the morning until I ship some coffee aboard, I took to making it the night before and putting it in one of those big Thermos jugs with a dispenser thingy. If you prime the jug ahead of time with boiling water it really works well. Coffee that goes in the jug at 9 p.m. is piping hot at 6 a.m. This is much better than stumbling around waiting for the ancient percolator to do its thing.

I was somewhat handicapped in the fishing department by two nagging injuries. My right bicep/tricep seems to be permanently sore, as if I decided to bench press 300 pounds all of a sudden, and my right knee hurts when I go up or down stairs, or the equivalent of stairs.

So I did not go out for extended sessions. I confined myself to about half of the lake, simply because I didn’t want to get way the hell out there and have an arm or knee problem.


The Housatonic River is chock full of brown trout, and soon it will be cool enough to target them.Patrick L. Sullivan

I caught numerous fat largemouth bass, and not quite as many and quite as fat smallmouth. Also some surprisingly large perch and two pickerel. No panfish at all, although they were certainly there. And no crappies for the third year in a row.

There was very little surface action. I generally brought two rods, Western and/or Tenkara, one rigged for surface and one for sinking. After I got bored heaving the heavy Bass Vampire around underwater, I’d switch and try a popper or gurgler and some such. Very occasionally it brought something to the surface, such as the time I chucked a big dragonfly pattern and a smallie boiled up from under a lily pad and caught it before it landed.

But for the most part the action was subsurface.

I did not keep anything this year. There is a lady on the mountain who loves any sort of fish and eats them right down to the eyeballs, and I like to indulge her if possible. But her schedule and mine never coincided to the point where a bass could go from net to cooler to kitchen in a matter of hours, and I am not going to try to refrigerate a lunker in our small propane fridge. It wouldn’t work very well and there would be no room for important dietary staples, such as the half dozen bottles of different kinds of mustard, all with less than an ounce remaining, that always accumulate in this setting, by federal law.

I began the month throwing pike flies with a 10 weight, experimenting with wire leaders and different types of short sinking heads, and so on.

But the arm got so sore I dialed down to a six weight Western rod and the lighter side of the fixed-line arsenal, and cheesed the heavy pike flies in favor of standard items such as size 6 conehead Woolies with rubber legs. (Always get the rubber legs.)

Various infirmities meant that the author only made one trip in August into "Snodgrass Gulch," a code name for a favorite brook trout stream.Patrick L. Sullivan

Lake angling was leavened a few times by brook trout hunting in the Riga brook and, more significantly, one trip into Snodgrass Gulch (not its real name).

The latter requires a pretty hefty hike and involves a lot of the motion that hurts the knee, so I was antsy about it.

But the knee didn’t trouble me much, which I attribute to pressing down on dirt instead of something hard like a wooden stair.

So all in all it was a decent month, a little subpar but by no means terrible or disappointing. I’d say the highlight was the improvement in the smallmouth population and the low point was the evening a storm blew up out of nowhere. I went from bobbing around peacefully in the gloaming to getting drenched as the air temperature dropped 15 degrees in as many minutes and fighting a nasty chop in a pontoon boat singularly ill-suited for the purpose.

Latest News

Fallen trees injure man, destroy fences at dog shelter

Two uprooted locust trees still lie in the yard in front of Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennels where they fell on a fence during a storm on Thursday, June 19.

Nathan Miller

AMENIA — Fallen trees, uprooted and splintered during a thunderstorm, injured a man, destroyed fences and damaged a dog kennel at the Animal Farm Foundation facilities in Bangall.

Isaias Nunez was cleaning along a road on the property with Marco Ortiz, another employee of the dog shelter, when the storm rolled in on the afternoon of Thursday, June 19.

Keep ReadingShow less
Siglio Press: Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature

Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.

Richard Kraft

Siglio Press is a small, independent publishing house based in Egremont, Massachusetts, known for producing “uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.” Founded and run by editor and publisher Lisa Pearson, Siglio has, since 2008, designed books that challenge conventions of both form and content.

A visit to Pearson’s airy studio suggests uncommon work, to be sure. Each of four very large tables were covered with what looked to be thousands of miniature squares of inkjet-printed, kaleidoscopically colored pieces of paper. Another table was covered with dozens of book/illustration-size, abstracted images of deer, made up of colored dots. For the enchanted and the mystified, Pearson kindly explained that these pieces were to be collaged together as artworks by the artist Richard Kraft (a frequent contributor to the Siglio Press and Pearson’s husband). The works would be accompanied by writings by two poets, Elizabeth Zuba and Monica Torre, in an as-yet-to-be-named book, inspired by a found copy of a worn French children’s book from the 1930s called “Robin de Bois” (Robin Hood).

Keep ReadingShow less
Cycling season: A roundup of our region’s rentals and where to ride them

Cyclists head south on the rail trail from Copake Falls.

Alec Linden

After a shaky start, summer has well and truly descended upon the Litchfield, Berkshire and Taconic hills, and there is no better way to get out and enjoy long-awaited good weather than on two wheels. Below, find a brief guide for those who feel the pull of the rail trail, but have yet to purchase their own ten-speed. Temporary rides are available in the tri-corner region, and their purveyors are eager to get residents of all ages, abilities and inclinations out into the open road (or bike path).

For those lucky enough to already possess their own bike, perhaps the routes described will inspire a new way to spend a Sunday afternoon. For more, visit millertonnews.com/tag/bike-route to check out two ride-guides from local cyclists that will appeal to enthusiasts of many levels looking for a varied trip through the region’s stunning summer scenery.

Keep ReadingShow less