Bashô:  On Buddha’s birthday a spotted fawn is born
just like that

Akira Kurosawa: ¿Which are the most important things for men?
Clean air and fresh water

Yasuhiro Hamano: Here in Tokyo blue sky for “Little Spring Day”,
good day to tie flies for Patagonia summer.

Kumiko: Recipe for Kimuko´s sauce

1 of soy sauce
1 of sesame oil
1/3 of honey1 spoon of grated garlic
1  spoon of shiben toban san
Mix the soy sauce and the honey,
warm, then add the rest.

Kumiko is Hamano san´s wife, and she cooked for us during our five days at their house in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I was invited to fish with him and Ricardo, my partner, joined us. Hospitality is a word too short to express how they treated us.

Japan is somehow part of my tradition, its culture, its thinking, its architecture, the Zen, the poetry, the literature, the films of Kurosawa, the gardening, the Bonsai, its strong tradition of make things just good.

Kumiko and Hamano san are part of that.

Let´s see, Kumikos sauce, its was just perfect (as every meal she did), and the knowledge of that was not transmitted in an exact recipe, it was not 125 ml of this and 234 ml of the other. Kumiko´s recipe is only one step to the sauce. If you do not cook, if you have not educated your tongue, you will not be able to do it. Likewise, you need to be ready to fail sometimes, and throw away something you cannot eat.

Tenkara. One day, talking about vanishing things, Jim (Repine) instructed me on Japan´s tradition of fly fishing. In the first chapter of Jim´s book, Pacific Rim Fly Fishing, The Unrepentant  Predator, he describes a hypothetical moment in which a Japanese purist with a long bamboo rod gets his fish of the day with an imitation of one small fly, fished dry with a dead drift and thereby secured nourishment for that day.

Tenkara started in Japan 500 hundred years ago, evolving independently from England, so the opportunity of learning from a man which had the luck, the intelligence and the courage to be fed by both traditions is invaluable.

Hamano san and I had never talked about Tenkara, until the second day when Hamano san went fishing with his Tenkara rod. And I saw him fishing.

See the photo. He is fishing, just fishing. He is a predator after his fish of the day.

The Tenkara rod is approx 3.5 meters long and the line about the same length, so you fish just there, three meters from you.

With the new materials, technology and casting techniques it is possible to cast a far longer distance and, more importantly, to manage the drift and the presentation of the fly accurately. Consequence: we lost the fish that lie just there were we wade, as we are always anxious to fish the opposite bank. We approach the water noisily and abruptly. But if you fish with a Tenkara rod, in transparent water, you have to approach the fish as Hamano is doing, and as I learned.

The last day of our stay he gave me his Tenkara rod and line as a present, tied the line and made a couple of casts, that was all. As Kumiko did at the evening of that unforgettable last day, giving me as a present a bottle of  shiben toban san, expecting I would learn on my own. If you are not a fly fisherman, if you have not educated your spirit to desire things well done, then you are not ready to fish a Tenkara rod, as such purist did in the past.

You may say that such image is just fantasy, the dreams of an old man. And somehow they may be are. But I believe that it draws a path to follow, a direction to move. As for me, I believe that perfect moments really do exist, and we had and will have some of those. The tragedy is to fail to realize at those unique moments that we are in fact living them.

We fished the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.
Magnificent places. The Grand Teton imposes its presence all the time. At dawn the light of the sun burns the peak of the mountains which shine brightly through the clear and thin air. While at dusk they become a powerful and menacing darkness. In the still hours the lakes are transparent mirrors hosting the mountains in its deep waters. Some of those perfect moments are given to us through the experience of beauty.

“Literature does not make anything except  keeping  record of our encounters with beauty” Kawabata

Yellowstone is a sacred place. It has been the first National Park of the world, and I am full of gratitude to the sensibility of those men who in 1872 promoted and set a major conservation precedent.

The second was Banff in Canada and the third was Nahuel Huapi in Argentina. The third in Argentina was Los Alerces National Park, created to protect the last refuge of the Alerce, the Lahuan, the Grandfather as the native people called these 3000 years old trees. Lets share the effort of the National Park Institutions all around the world to preserve these sacred environments.

Hamano san with a big brown at Lewis River

We fished the Snake, Black Tail Spring Creek, Flat Creek, Hoback River, Lewis River … there are more places to fish than you can manage in a lifetime. I enjoyed the Hoback a lot, in fact we had the opportunity to repeat and we decided to fish it again. On route 191 and about 15 Km south from routes 191 and 89 junction there is a bridge over the Hoback. From 200 meters upstream to 500 meters downstream of the bridge you can find the perfect place for pocket water fishing. Big boulders are widespread in the current creating small pockets of water which can be fished only with a short drift. Behind the boulders a small eddy is created where the food coming from upstream is captured, drifting much slower than in the rapid waters. Some of the big fish are there, getting more food by making a lesser effort. The best way to fish them is to get close to the boulders wading from above and managing a short line which is cast again and again until you get a nice drift and finally learning how to cast for that individual pool. At each side of the boulder there is a line of fast bubbling water, where at a short distance downstream the fish actively rise to the floating insects. Fallen logs at the shore, deep channels in the rock bed … all wonderful water. Fish were not big, but many and on the other hand, the fish, the prey is not so important if you have such water for you.

I fished the Hoback with Hamano and Koichi.

Koichi lives in Tokyo but spends three months a year in Montana working as a guide and as a professional fly tier and designer. We used his flies, and the

Adams parachute. Although it was summer and terrestrials played a strong role, Pale Evening Duns and small caddies were hatching. Hook sizes from 16 to 20.

I love the Adams parachute, for me it is a top ten fly … and above all I love its white wings because I can see it all the time! I cannot fish a fly I can`t see and my 57 year old eyes are happy when I knot an Adams. Seeing the fly is extremely important in dry fly fishing and especially in pocket water because drifts are short and the moving water changes constantly. When you fish the eddies for instance, the drift is no longer than one meter as the water drives your fly to the adjacent lines of fast bubbling water. So you cast, watch a few seconds of drift and cast again, and again. So as you see your fly you ensure a better drift, and you try to have your fly in the water only when the drift is dead. You get more fish. Use flies you can see would be my advice, presentation and drift are more important than the fly itself.

Flat Creek is also difficult, technical water. The creek moves slowly and idle along the valley floor. Along the muddy and undercut banks the big fish hide, lazy waiting for food and rising now and then without noise. They have all the time they need in the transparent water to see the fly, judge it before it is gone, and the most usually deciding to reject it. In late evening Flat Creek  is a wonderful place.

Presentation and drift is even more important than in pocket water. I cast quartering upstream and let the fly drift dead close to the shore line, all the while feeding out line as the fly moved downstream. I did not succeed, but Hamano san got a nice and strong golden cutthroat.

And I saw a bear! And geese, elks, deer, a world of wild life in the forest.

I want to mention one other wonderful thing fly fishing gives us, friendship. And when being guests of Hamano and Kumiko san, one clearly feel that friendship and hospitality, and that they are more important than the fishing itself.

The only problem with a visit there is that you have to follow Hamano, who in his 68^th, year has more energy than the mortal people we others are!

We had the time to fish and the time to enjoy friendship. Minuro and Machi joined us three days after we arrived and fished and shared a lamb barbecue Ivon, Terry, Jessie and Melody made for us at Ivon`s house.

And as it always will be, Jim Repine was in our thoughts. One night Hamano and I walked under the stars to the Snake River shore and while I threw Kumiko`s flowers in the darkness of the night, Hamano poured some whiskey in the secret knowledge that Jim will enjoy it. We did not have Jameson as Jim would have liked best, but be sure he drank from the cup!

The Native People in the north of Argentina still have a high respect for the old and for those who passed away, and when they go to the cemetery they make a hole in the ground, above the place the head of the dead is buried and offer him coca leaves, tobacco and chicha. Life is hard, so death should be. And they give to the dead people something to make both life and death a little more easy.

We fishermen have our fishing, so I would like to have a new fly every now and then, to replace those which were lost in the bushes! That would make it easier. But that does not mean I will reject the wine and the tobacco!

Ryokan:  Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent

Hamano San                                                                               Alfredo (photo by Koichi).

Jackson Hole, August 2009.

For further information contact
alfredo@el-aura.net

Or Koichi Kawai
kaw_koichi@hotmail.com

Alfredo Zubiri is argentine and has been fly fishing for 34 years. He is the concessionaire owner of  Lago Verde Wilderness Resort’s in Los Alerces National Park- www.el-aura.net

Photos by Alfredo

Lets flow with the river (YH)