The Ordeal

Subtitle: "We may not know where we are, or what we're doing, but at least
we're still alive!"

Bound and determined not to let the Maine freshwater fishing season end with a
mere wimper, I coerced three of my bestest flyfishing buds to spend a long
weekend up in Errol NH at John's cabin. The plan was to hit the Rapid a couple
of times before the weekend crowds arrived, fish the Androscoggin River below
the Errol dam to fill in an afternoon, and then float the Connecticut River up
near Colebrook.

As a prelude to the main events I spent Tuesday and Wednesday up at my place
near Franconia, fishing a couple of my favorite trout ponds using my 12'
Katahdin. Had good weather and a fine time catching rainbows at the first pond
and brookies at the second, all on small dry flies.

Wednesday afternoon I loaded up one of our 16' canoes - this one an ancient
Lincoln - and headed over to Gillead, Maine to fish the Andy with Dave, where
the Wild River meets the Andy. The Wild lived up to its name, dumping about 50
times its average flow, the result of the huge rains we had a couple of days
earlier. I caught one fish, Dave caught a few, nothing to write home about.

We spent the night at the Gilead camp of a Stratus coworker, with Paul finally
rolling in after midnite.

Thursday Dave and Paul headed north directly to the Rapid. I ferried the
groceries and tasty beverages up to John's cabin in Errol before heading over
to join them on the river. We all caught fish, including some good size salmon
and one 22" brookie that I wrestled out of Second Current at the end of a BH
pheasant tail.

[Side story: a guy had shown up at trail's end, and saw me hook and land that
brookie. Then he proceeded to wade across the river, straight out towards me,
finally stopping in exactly the spot I had been working with aforementioned
success.

So I yelled over: "Hey! You saw me catch that fish, and you saw me hook it
right where you're now standing! What's the deal?"

Which received a blank look...

OK, fine, Paul and Dave were disappearing up river and I wanted to join up
with them, so I waved over and said "Fine. It's all yours." and started
fishing upstream through Second Current.

I get up to the top of 2nd, walk the full length of the wing dam, and was
about to wade across the river in front of Hartwell's, when I turned around
and noticed the interloper was right behind me! Too weird - I had my own
personal Flyfishing Stalker! I shouldda told him if he took one more step I'd
have to charge him for guide services.]

Anyway....I caught up to Paul and Dave and we fished up to Middledam, where we
wrangled with salmon using microscopic flies to imitate the chironomids coming
through the dam. Lots of stupid fun, and I managed not to fall off the dam
this time.

We headed to the camp and met up with John, had a dinner that couldn't be
beat, sampled some tasty wine, downed a bunch of ale, had a great time and
generally made a lot of noise before falling into our beds.

Friday morning we're off and running to Lower Dam, figuring the traffic
shouldn't be bad, but after swamping our way down the trail we arrive to find
the river full of fishing folk. They had us surrounded. We picked around the
best we could. I caught one of the most colorful brookies I've ever seen, but
I think that was the only fish we caught that morning.

We bailed out at noon, reconnoitered at the camp for some lunch and beverage,
then headed out to the Andy to fish below the Gage House pool. We were all
catching lots of fish. I had the whole north side of the river to myself, and
fished about a 1/4 mile of it. Before the evening was done I had a caught a
Full House: many dozen small salmon, a handful of brookies including a couple
of beauts, one foot-long rainbow, one 10" brown, and one big fat chub. Not too
shabby ;-)

Back to camp, drank some more wine, ate 'til we couldn't eat no more, nursed a
few beers, discussed the plans for drifting the Connecticut from Colebrook
down to the remnants of the Lyman Dam in Tinkerville, then racked out for the
evening.



Which brings us to....The Ordeal.

Saturday morning we're up and out, having loaded up two of the four trucks
with gear, my 16' Lincoln, and one of John's aluminum dinghies. We headed over
to Colebrook, dropped one of the trucks at the takeout, and found a
precipitous launch point at the Columbia covered bridge. We managed to get
everyone loaded and on the water without event, although I did notice that
between Dave (a genuine Big Fella, goes about 300 pounds) and myself (another
220 pounds - this week) we were putting some major flex into the canoe.

Anyway....

The wind was blowing like a bastid, straight upstream, strong enough to blow
us back upstream if we didn't keep our paddles in the river. John and Paul, in
the dinghy, were working even harder to make headway. Gulp.

We got about a mile downstream without major event, pulled over and
wade-fished the first good looking water since the put-in, and decided to have
a snack before moving on. This was the only place anyone caught a fish: I
caught a mid-teens salmon on an elkhair caddis.

The next six or seven miles of our trip consisted of paddling against the wind
where we could paddle, and walking the boats where we could not. I'm guessing
the mix was 50/50 paddling vs walking on the slippery bowling balls that cover
the river bottom. I think we all rediscovered our ankles and shins (I know
mine are still cranky).

There were a few places where we were able to wade and fish, but primarily
there was the struggle to make distance against the gale, and get off the
river before dark. Even in the "deep" parts, every once in a while we'd clank
off a submerged rock - Dave called them "stoppers" or "scrapers". We missed
nearly all of the former, but boy did we whack on a whole ****load of the
latter.

Eventually, between paddling and dragging, we got downstream to where I
thought I recognized as a slough about a quarter mile above the old dam,
though John didn't think we were that far down river. The river was thin, wide
and swift through this section. I was beat, and I'm sure Dave was too, which
led us (me) to make a fateful decision: to ride the river down instead of
walking the canoe.

Well, we banged and clanked off all kinds of "scrapers" all the way down this
run, to where we were a few hundred feet above the dam. Problem was you can't
see the fricken dam works from upstream - pretty much all but the very
foundations are long gone - and from above it just looks like more riffle
water. But there's a pretty good drop when you get there.

And we got there.

We had started on the river-right side, but the only "survivable" chute
through the dam works was on the far river-left side, and was all of about ten
feet wide. We paddled like madmen and got Oh So Close! to making it to that
chute, but when we hit the dam we were five feet too far right, and over the
dam went the canoe with Dave at the bow and me hanging on in the stern.

In an instant, Dave rode our canoe-turned-U-Boat under the waves, popping up a
second later, only to be pinned between the canoe and the dam. Meanwhile I had
been flung up and right out of the stern when Dave rode the bow over the dam,
but amazingly I landed on my feet, then got slammed into the canoe by the
current.

So there we are, with a ****load of Connecticut River pouring on and over us,
Dave struggling to avoid a watery grave, me struggling to get the canoe off of
Dave. Stuff that couldn't be lashed down was floating away, stuff that fell
off or out of pockets was sinking, and we were twenty feet from shore.

After a couple dozen seconds Dave was able to squirm free, and I grabbed the
anchor line and waded toward the beach, pulling the canoe along. We grabbed
what we could rescue and flopped it all on the beach.

While we waited for John and Paul to arrive, we took stock of the damage: John
was totally soaked, lost his prescription sunglasses and a couple of boxes of
flies - including one box that was freshly filled with around 200 nymphs he
tied last winter - and he'd taken a good shot just above a knee. I had barely
gotten wet, had lost my second best paddle, one Bean boot, one throw cushion,
my favorite flyrod had a shattered butt, and the ancient Lincoln had now
become a winter repair project, with four good crunch marks at the water
line...and the feeling we'd just paid one heck of a Stupidity Tax.

I was waiting for Dave to say "Let's do that again!"

So...We got the salvage loaded up and trucked back to camp, drank some wine,
had a great meal, all the while Dave, John, and Paul were trying to avoid
discussing the Disaster At The Dam in deference to me. Good guys, but not
really necessary.

I was quietly wondering when the string of bad luck I've been having was going
to end (just the "high" points: my S4 was damaged, and repaired on my $$$; my
black lab has terminal cancer, very expensive to fight to keep him for who
knows how many more weeks or months; I sprained my back big time trying to lug
very nearly dead 100 pound dog to the hospital, spent a week recovering; a
skylight decided to become an expensive to repair sieve; the top of a tree
broke off in a storm, made like a Lawn Dart, and with an entire acre+ to land
on, managed to hit the D-box in my septic system, destroying it, more $$$; my
company had to cancel the project I'd killed myself to get within a week of
ordering prototypes, a collosal senior management f@ckup; there's more, but
you don't wanna hear it all...)

Right about then, John noticed I'd parked a half-glass of wine where I had
been sitting, so he brought it over to the kitchen table where I had moved
with my laptop up and running. A couple of minutes later I managed to bump the
glass, dumping the wine onto the laptop.

Sigh....

We field-stripped the laptop, got it all cleaned up, and thankfully it came
back to life intact. A break, a glimmer of a turn-around? Who knows...

So that's the whole deal, and the epic story thereof.
We definitely ended the northern season with a bang!
Well, that and a few cracks.

If nothing else, like all good Ordeals, it ought to make for "not your usual
trip report"...

/daytripper (Wait'll *next* year! ;-)

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 21:26:57 GMT, daytripper
wrote:

[snip]

/daytripper (Wait'll *next* year! ;-)

Sounds like fun. g Going to make it to NC now that your project's
canceled?
--
Charlie...

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 17:35:50 -0400, Charlie Choc
wrote:

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 21:26:57 GMT, daytripper
wrote:

[snip]

/daytripper (Wait'll *next* year! ;-)

Sounds like fun. g

It had its moments ;-)

Going to make it to NC now that your project's canceled?

Old project was killed on September 1.
New project was started on September 2, with pretty much no slippage in the
schedule (guess that's how management earns their big bucks).
I busted my ass and burned the candle on both ends *and* the middle to get the
first-pass design done in three weeks so I could take the last week of
September off.

So I'm not going to be able to make it to NC this year...

/daytripper
(You guys will just have to come up with your own Ordeal without me ;-)

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 22:22:23 GMT, daytripper
wrote:

So I'm not going to be able to make it to NC this year...

Bummer. I actually got called on to do some consulting last week. It
was nice to pick up a few bucks, but I'm not going to let it interfere
with my leisure. g

/daytripper
(You guys will just have to come up with your own Ordeal without me ;-)

I'm sure that will be arranged.
--
Charlie...

very, very entertaining, on so many levels... thanks!

jeff

daytripper wrote:

Subtitle: "We may not know where we are, or what we're doing, but at least
we're still alive!"

Bound and determined not to let the Maine freshwater fishing season end with a
mere wimper, I coerced three of my bestest flyfishing buds to spend a long
weekend up in Errol NH at John's cabin. The plan was to hit the Rapid a couple
of times before the weekend crowds arrived, fish the Androscoggin River below
the Errol dam to fill in an afternoon, and then float the Connecticut River up
near Colebrook.

As a prelude to the main events I spent Tuesday and Wednesday up at my place
near Franconia, fishing a couple of my favorite trout ponds using my 12'
Katahdin. Had good weather and a fine time catching rainbows at the first pond
and brookies at the second, all on small dry flies.

Wednesday afternoon I loaded up one of our 16' canoes - this one an ancient
Lincoln - and headed over to Gillead, Maine to fish the Andy with Dave, where
the Wild River meets the Andy. The Wild lived up to its name, dumping about 50
times its average flow, the result of the huge rains we had a couple of days
earlier. I caught one fish, Dave caught a few, nothing to write home about.

We spent the night at the Gilead camp of a Stratus coworker, with Paul finally
rolling in after midnite.

Thursday Dave and Paul headed north directly to the Rapid. I ferried the
groceries and tasty beverages up to John's cabin in Errol before heading over
to join them on the river. We all caught fish, including some good size salmon
and one 22" brookie that I wrestled out of Second Current at the end of a BH
pheasant tail.

[Side story: a guy had shown up at trail's end, and saw me hook and land that
brookie. Then he proceeded to wade across the river, straight out towards me,
finally stopping in exactly the spot I had been working with aforementioned
success.

So I yelled over: "Hey! You saw me catch that fish, and you saw me hook it
right where you're now standing! What's the deal?"

Which received a blank look...

OK, fine, Paul and Dave were disappearing up river and I wanted to join up
with them, so I waved over and said "Fine. It's all yours." and started
fishing upstream through Second Current.

I get up to the top of 2nd, walk the full length of the wing dam, and was
about to wade across the river in front of Hartwell's, when I turned around
and noticed the interloper was right behind me! Too weird - I had my own
personal Flyfishing Stalker! I shouldda told him if he took one more step I'd
have to charge him for guide services.]

Anyway....I caught up to Paul and Dave and we fished up to Middledam, where we
wrangled with salmon using microscopic flies to imitate the chironomids coming
through the dam. Lots of stupid fun, and I managed not to fall off the dam
this time.

We headed to the camp and met up with John, had a dinner that couldn't be
beat, sampled some tasty wine, downed a bunch of ale, had a great time and
generally made a lot of noise before falling into our beds.

Friday morning we're off and running to Lower Dam, figuring the traffic
shouldn't be bad, but after swamping our way down the trail we arrive to find
the river full of fishing folk. They had us surrounded. We picked around the
best we could. I caught one of the most colorful brookies I've ever seen, but
I think that was the only fish we caught that morning.

We bailed out at noon, reconnoitered at the camp for some lunch and beverage,
then headed out to the Andy to fish below the Gage House pool. We were all
catching lots of fish. I had the whole north side of the river to myself, and
fished about a 1/4 mile of it. Before the evening was done I had a caught a
Full House: many dozen small salmon, a handful of brookies including a couple
of beauts, one foot-long rainbow, one 10" brown, and one big fat chub. Not too
shabby ;-)

Back to camp, drank some more wine, ate 'til we couldn't eat no more, nursed a
few beers, discussed the plans for drifting the Connecticut from Colebrook
down to the remnants of the Lyman Dam in Tinkerville, then racked out for the
evening.



Which brings us to....The Ordeal.

Saturday morning we're up and out, having loaded up two of the four trucks
with gear, my 16' Lincoln, and one of John's aluminum dinghies. We headed over
to Colebrook, dropped one of the trucks at the takeout, and found a
precipitous launch point at the Columbia covered bridge. We managed to get
everyone loaded and on the water without event, although I did notice that
between Dave (a genuine Big Fella, goes about 300 pounds) and myself (another
220 pounds - this week) we were putting some major flex into the canoe.

Anyway....

The wind was blowing like a bastid, straight upstream, strong enough to blow
us back upstream if we didn't keep our paddles in the river. John and Paul, in
the dinghy, were working even harder to make headway. Gulp.

We got about a mile downstream without major event, pulled over and
wade-fished the first good looking water since the put-in, and decided to have
a snack before moving on. This was the only place anyone caught a fish: I
caught a mid-teens salmon on an elkhair caddis.

The next six or seven miles of our trip consisted of paddling against the wind
where we could paddle, and walking the boats where we could not. I'm guessing
the mix was 50/50 paddling vs walking on the slippery bowling balls that cover
the river bottom. I think we all rediscovered our ankles and shins (I know
mine are still cranky).

There were a few places where we were able to wade and fish, but primarily
there was the struggle to make distance against the gale, and get off the
river before dark. Even in the "deep" parts, every once in a while we'd clank
off a submerged rock - Dave called them "stoppers" or "scrapers". We missed
nearly all of the former, but boy did we whack on a whole ****load of the
latter.

Eventually, between paddling and dragging, we got downstream to where I
thought I recognized as a slough about a quarter mile above the old dam,
though John didn't think we were that far down river. The river was thin, wide
and swift through this section. I was beat, and I'm sure Dave was too, which
led us (me) to make a fateful decision: to ride the river down instead of
walking the canoe.

Well, we banged and clanked off all kinds of "scrapers" all the way down this
run, to where we were a few hundred feet above the dam. Problem was you can't
see the fricken dam works from upstream - pretty much all but the very
foundations are long gone - and from above it just looks like more riffle
water. But there's a pretty good drop when you get there.

And we got there.

We had started on the river-right side, but the only "survivable" chute
through the dam works was on the far river-left side, and was all of about ten
feet wide. We paddled like madmen and got Oh So Close! to making it to that
chute, but when we hit the dam we were five feet too far right, and over the
dam went the canoe with Dave at the bow and me hanging on in the stern.

In an instant, Dave rode our canoe-turned-U-Boat under the waves, popping up a
second later, only to be pinned between the canoe and the dam. Meanwhile I had
been flung up and right out of the stern when Dave rode the bow over the dam,
but amazingly I landed on my feet, then got slammed into the canoe by the
current.

So there we are, with a ****load of Connecticut River pouring on and over us,
Dave struggling to avoid a watery grave, me struggling to get the canoe off of
Dave. Stuff that couldn't be lashed down was floating away, stuff that fell
off or out of pockets was sinking, and we were twenty feet from shore.

After a couple dozen seconds Dave was able to squirm free, and I grabbed the
anchor line and waded toward the beach, pulling the canoe along. We grabbed
what we could rescue and flopped it all on the beach.

While we waited for John and Paul to arrive, we took stock of the damage: John
was totally soaked, lost his prescription sunglasses and a couple of boxes of
flies - including one box that was freshly filled with around 200 nymphs he
tied last winter - and he'd taken a good shot just above a knee. I had barely
gotten wet, had lost my second best paddle, one Bean boot, one throw cushion,
my favorite flyrod had a shattered butt, and the ancient Lincoln had now
become a winter repair project, with four good crunch marks at the water
line...and the feeling we'd just paid one heck of a Stupidity Tax.

I was waiting for Dave to say "Let's do that again!"

So...We got the salvage loaded up and trucked back to camp, drank some wine,
had a great meal, all the while Dave, John, and Paul were trying to avoid
discussing the Disaster At The Dam in deference to me. Good guys, but not
really necessary.

I was quietly wondering when the string of bad luck I've been having was going
to end (just the "high" points: my S4 was damaged, and repaired on my $$$; my
black lab has terminal cancer, very expensive to fight to keep him for who
knows how many more weeks or months; I sprained my back big time trying to lug
very nearly dead 100 pound dog to the hospital, spent a week recovering; a
skylight decided to become an expensive to repair sieve; the top of a tree
broke off in a storm, made like a Lawn Dart, and with an entire acre+ to land
on, managed to hit the D-box in my septic system, destroying it, more $$$; my
company had to cancel the project I'd killed myself to get within a week of
ordering prototypes, a collosal senior management f@ckup; there's more, but
you don't wanna hear it all...)

Right about then, John noticed I'd parked a half-glass of wine where I had
been sitting, so he brought it over to the kitchen table where I had moved
with my laptop up and running. A couple of minutes later I managed to bump the
glass, dumping the wine onto the laptop.

Sigh....

We field-stripped the laptop, got it all cleaned up, and thankfully it came
back to life intact. A break, a glimmer of a turn-around? Who knows...

So that's the whole deal, and the epic story thereof.
We definitely ended the northern season with a bang!
Well, that and a few cracks.

If nothing else, like all good Ordeals, it ought to make for "not your usual
trip report"...

/daytripper (Wait'll *next* year! ;-)

"daytripper" wrote in message
...
In an instant, Dave rode our canoe-turned-U-Boat under the waves, popping
up a
second later, only to be pinned between the canoe and the dam. Meanwhile I
had
been flung up and right out of the stern when Dave rode the bow over the
dam,
but amazingly I landed on my feet, then got slammed into the canoe by the
current.

Holy sheet tripman. I'm glad you all got out of that alive and relatively
uninjured. I'm sorrier there's no pictures.

daytripper wrote:
Subtitle: "We may not know where we are, or what we're doing, but at least
we're still alive!"
...
We paddled like madmen and got Oh So Close! to making it to that
chute, but when we hit the dam we were five feet too far right, and over the
dam went the canoe with Dave at the bow and me hanging on in the stern.

In an instant, Dave rode our canoe-turned-U-Boat under the waves, popping up a
second later, only to be pinned between the canoe and the dam. Meanwhile I had
been flung up and right out of the stern when Dave rode the bow over the dam,
but amazingly I landed on my feet, then got slammed into the canoe by the
current.

So there we are, ...

YIKES !! That's some deadly dangerous **** you're talking about there. A
canoeist died just last month on the river near here when they missed the
takeout and went over a dam about a mile downstream. Glad to hear everyone's
OK.

--
Ken Fortenberry

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 22:59:30 GMT, "Stan Gula"
wrote:

"daytripper" wrote in message
.. .
In an instant, Dave rode our canoe-turned-U-Boat under the waves, popping
up a
second later, only to be pinned between the canoe and the dam. Meanwhile I
had
been flung up and right out of the stern when Dave rode the bow over the
dam,
but amazingly I landed on my feet, then got slammed into the canoe by the
current.

Holy sheet tripman. I'm glad you all got out of that alive and relatively
uninjured. I'm sorrier there's no pictures.

There *may* be pictures of the aftermath, it just depends on whether Dave's
camera survived with the film load intact (otherwise, we can add that to the
casualty list).

I can tell you, if I had been an observer, I'd likely have shat myself
laughing, Dave's short struggle aside. I'm sure it looked that ridiculous,
especially given the many minutes of dramatic lead-in of us bobbing downwards
ever closer to our doom.

There could have been cut-shots galore of us, the dam, us, the dam, etc...

/daytripper (thankfully, there was no *live* coverage ;-)

"daytripper" wrote...
Subtitle: "We may not know where we are, or what we're doing, but at least
we're still alive!"
snip
It sounds like that "still alive" was almost not! When you said you went over
and then landed on your feet I thought for sure the next sentence was going to
be "back to the back surgeon" for you. That must have been MIGHTY scary at the
time, but it'll now make for good stories for years to come.
--
TL,
Tim
http://css.sbcma.com/timj

daytripper wrote in
:

Subtitle two (with a nod of respect to the "old days" of the DEC
notesfile and my partner in many ordeals, Muddie): If it's an ordeal we
must be getting better at it!

300lbs was spring weight, thanks to a diet that you all studiously helped
me avoid for 3 days I've shed 40+lbs, amazingly I lost weight this trip
despite the oreos, chips and salsa.

Trip took this well, as well as could be expected; I remember a previous
ordeal where I broke my favorite rod of all time and I was devastated for
weeks over it. I decided to call it a wrap after dinner and headed home
so I missed the wine in the laptop, apparently the final insult.

I'm home, with a stiff and very sore knee, minus my 'script sunglasses
and two fly boxes (full of painstakingly tied flies) and in retrospect
somewhat amused by the whole thing, a sort of cautionary tale for
children and/or future flyfishers. It pays to know something about the
route you plan to take. For a short moment, after I grabbed my second
breath of air, having surfaced briefly from under the canoe full of
water, as the canoe pushed me back under I had a flash of "this could be
bad, very bad" but I thrashed a bit (injuring the knee) and came out
behind the canoe. Dave shouts "What the f&%! are you doing?" as I swung
in the current like a streamer fly, hanging onto the canoe with one hand.
I replied "trying to get my **** together here". Chaos reigned for a
short time. Then we counted the cost.

The truth be told, we were pretty lucky, the drop over the old dam
footings wasn't all that much but our efforts to avoid it were for
naught. The damage to the canoe was heartbreaking, a very nice old
Lincoln, that had served us well during the day. It must have lots of
memories attached. The rod was even sadder, I had the opportunity to fish
it briefly last year and it was a beauty of a winston, light and
responsive.

I had a wonderful time; a good giggle at the Pirate's best Alfred E.
Newman shrug when he didn't have a clue who we were standing there waving
and yelling upstream at him, and the pleasure of some of the best company
a fisherman can ask for while fishing some prime New England waters.

Lets do it again

Flyfish :-)