May 2010 Newsletter
Jim Casada
Web site:
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com
1250 Yorkdale Drive
E-mail: jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com
Rock Hill, SC 29730-7638
803-329-4354
May: A Month of Memories, Magic, and
Marvels
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If you really
pushed me to make a decision on my favorite month of the year,
May would have to be my choice. There’s a lot to recommend
October, and I love the gobbler turkeys and blooming wildflowers
of April. But when all things are considered, May holds the most
for me in equal portions of memories, magic and marvelous
experiences. It was the month when I caught my first trout (and,
a year later, my first limit of trout), it was the month when I
killed my finest ever wild turkey, and May has been the setting
for grand camping trips without number.
Mind you, as
these words are being written May in its 2010 version, at least
at the start, includes a bit of misery. I’m at my father’s home
in the Smokies where I grew up, and last night it rained
somewhere between three and four inches. I got out and drove
around in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park a bit today.
Streams are rolling, black with dirt and well out of their
banks. It will be at least three days, and likely more, before
they are even wadeable.
Nonetheless, I
have other options. One is getting ready for Troutfest in
Townsend, Tennessee on May 15-16. I’ve never attended but will
be there speaking and operating a booth offering my books as
well as some items from Sporting Classics magazine. If
you are a trout fisherman and live anywhere reasonably close, I
would urge you to attend. From all I can ascertain it is
something to tickle the fancy of every serious trout fisherman,
and I look forward to seeing old acquaintances and angling icons
such as Lefty Kreh and Joe Humphreys. Speaking of icons, I’ll
also be seeing another one a few weeks later when the annual
Southeastern Conclave of the Federation of Fly Fishers holds its
event at Unicoi State Park near Helen, Georgia on June 4 and 5.
Gary Borger, with whom I spent three delightful weeks in South
Africa some two decades ago (Lee and Joan Wulff were also part
of the group), will be there. Again, it’s an event to put on
your calendar should the place you live or your personal
wanderings happen to make the events convenient.
For me, over
the course of my life, May has been first and foremost a month
for fishing. It’s a time when the full moon brings bedding bream
activity to an annual peak, and if you’ve never hooked two
hump-backed male bream simultaneously on a popper-and-dropper
rig, you still have some fun ahead of you in life. They will
make a lightweight fly rod bend in a most satisfying way, and if
you manage to land a bunch of them bream fillets make some
mighty fine table fare. |
This Month’s
Special Offering
Although I had harbored a secret desire to
write on the outdoors from the time I was a teenager, my first
breakthrough came with an article which was a direct outgrowth of my
academic specialty. I wrote both my M. A. thesis and my doctoral
dissertation on aspects of African exploration, and anyone familiar with
the subject realizes that most of the explorers were also keen hunters.
One such individual was Frederick Courteney
Selous, who set out for the South African interior, alone, while still
in his teens. His life’s saga is an amazing one, and my first published
article was a profile of him for Sporting Classics magazine. The
article drew great reader response, and soon I was a regular contributor
and a masthead presence with the publication. In time I became a
columnist (I still write the Books column) and the publication’s Editor
at Large.
I have done a bunch of work connected with
the magazine over the years including writing Introductions to a whole
batch of books in the Premier Classics series in the 1980s and 1990s,
serving on the Advisory Board for that series, contributing many feature
articles, and perhaps most significantly, editing or co-editing a number
of books published by the magazine. The most recent of these is
Classic O’Connor, and it is available
online for $35 plus $5 shipping.
But this month’s special offering takes us
back to Fred Selous. Eventually my interest in him and study of his
career led to the publication of two anthologies bringing together his
forgotten writings along with profiles of him by contemporaries. Both
were published by Safari Press. The first of the pair, Africa’s
Greatest Hunter, has long been out of print although I still harbor
hopes the publisher will bring it back.
However, I do have a good stock of the
second work, Frederick C. Selous: A Hunting Legend. This hardback
normally sells for $35 but this month’s special will send it your way
for $22.50 postpaid. Orders by check only.
Payment should be sent to me c/o 1250
Yorkdale Drive, Rock Hill, SC 29730, and you can call or e-mail to
reserve books if you wish (jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com
or 803-329-4354). |
Most of my May
angling, however, has focused on trout. Indeed, later today I plan to
head out to the Nantahala River, a world-class trout stream and a rare
example of a tailwater you can actually wade when the water is “On”
(i.e., the power plant upstream is generating). It will just be a matter
of whether or not it is clear enough, after heavy rains over the
weekend, to make fly fishing worthwhile.
I would actually
prefer to sample and savor one of the many freestone streams nearby here
in the Smokies, but I suspect all of them are bursting at the seams and
pretty well unfishable. Still, I have memories of days in May aplenty to
warm the cockles of my heart. I don’t need any of the anarchical
craziness associated with May Day (in nearby Asheville, which has gone
from being a great mountain town to a sort of San Francisco East,
anarchists ran rampant three days ago), although I suspect if got some
of those loonies out in the natural world they might actually discover
that life has purpose.
Never mind such bad
thoughts though; May provides good ones in great abundance. For example,
fishing in Indian Creek, a small stream which was home to one of the
great old mountain characters, Mark Cathey. I never knew “Uncle Mark,”
as he came to be known, but my father knew him well. A man who lived to
fish and hunt, Cathey spent an idyllic life in the woods and waters of
the Great Smokies, and there are tales aplenty about him. An entire
chapter in a recently reprinted book for which I furnished an
Introduction, Jim Gasque’s classic Hunting and Fishing in the Great
Smokies, is devoted to Cathey. Incidentally, I have copies of the
book available for $20 postpaid (just call 803-329-4354 or send me an
e-mail at jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com).
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One of my
favorite Cathey stories, and you won’t find it in Gasque’s book,
involves a May trip to a famed backwoods cabin in the heart of
the Smokies known as the Bryson Place. It was when Raisin Bran
cereal had just come on the market and the occasion also
happened to coincide with Mark having just gotten dentures.
When the party
arrived at the Bryson Place Uncle Mark, as was his wont, headed
to nearby Deep Creek to catch a mess of fish for the group. He
performed admirably in that regard, being a master of the dry
fly which he “danced” (the only pattern he ever used was a Grey
Hackle Yellow). The six hearty souls dined wonderfully well on
fried trout, taters, ramps, and branch lettuce, and then enjoyed
a leisurely sharing of tales while imbibing ample quantities of
anti-snakebite medicine.
Uncle Mark was
the first to call it an evening, climbing into one of the top
bunks in the row which ranged all along one wall. His last act
before closing his eyes was to remove his new dentures and lay
them conveniently close atop an exposed two by four. Soon he was
snoring. Meanwhile another member of the party, Mack Gossett,
had also retired, and like Cathey he had dentures. These he duly
removed as well.
You can
probably guess what happened next. One of the still awake if
somewhat inebriated fishermen switched the two sets of teeth.
Next morning Mark got up and put Mack’s dentures in his mouth
while Mack did the same with Cathey’s plate. Amazingly, both of
them set down to breakfast using the other man’s dentures, and
for Cathey, it only got worse. |
Upcoming Schedule
May 14-16 –
Troutfest in Townsend, Tenn.,
where I'll fly the flag a bit for Sporting Classics magazine and hopefully sell a few books of
my own.
June 3-6 –
Federation of Fly
Fisher’s Southeast Conclave in Helen, Ga.
June 19-20 – Smoky Mountain Field School class on
fly fishing in the
Smokies. There are still openings in the class.
www.outreach.utk.edu/smoky.
June 26-27 – Speaking and hosting a display at the
Trout Festival in
Bluff City, Tenn.
Get more details here ...
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The man who had
brought the Raisin Bran cereal along said: “Mark, would you like to try
some of this here new bran cereal?” Cathey indicated he would and
proceeded to consume the entire bowl, but every second or third bite he
would turn away from the table and expectorate (for those of you who
didn’t take Thad DeHart’s 9th grade English class, that’s a
ten dollar word for spit). When he had finished, the man who had
provided the cereal asked: “Well, Uncle Mark, what do you think of that
new bran cereal?”
In his keen mountain
accent Cathey replied: “Weel, hit’s right tasty, but I reckon the rats
has been at it!” That image of mistaking raisins for rat pills tickles
my funny bone, although one has to ask why, given his misconception,
Uncle Mark kept eating. Whatever the case, his miseries didn’t end
there.
With the raisin bran
finished, along with what a fellow camper described as “two pounds of
bacon and a settin’ of eggs,” Cathey exited the sole door in the cabin,
with Mack Gossett close behind. Their mischievious companions, who had
somehow managed to keep straight faces throughout a breakfast which
Cathey and Gossett consumed with the other man’s dentures, followed them
outside. There they discovered the two on opposite sides of the building
and out of sight of one another. Each had his pocket knife in hand
trying to reshape ill-fitting dentures.
Stories and
experiences of this sort are part and parcel of backcountry camping, and
there are few things more satisfying that sitting around a flickering
fire which is just right for breaking the chill of a May evening (here
in the N. C. high country May nights can be cold—I woke up to 46 degrees
this morning and the weekend forecast calls for low 40s at night), with
a fine meal under your belt, sharing tales and telling of the day’s
experiences.
Most of all though I
love the solitude of a clear, tumbling mountain stream or the symphony
of a May dawn as I sit against an old oak, high atop a ridge, hoping to
hear a gobbler. In May the world is alive with a vibrancy that pulsates
to one’s very soul, and it doesn’t take a literary genius to appreciate
the truth inherent in the old English phrase, “the merry month of May.”
I hope yours will be joyous, whether it involves rising trout, bedding
bream, post-spawn crappie, strutting turkeys, wondrous wildflowers,
quiet woodland walks, a thriving garden, or maybe a combination of all
of these.
Since I’m at my Dad’s
right now, that means, among other things, that I am the chief (and
sole) cook and bottle washer. We may not consume five-star fare, but by
golly we eat pretty well. Here are two recipes which have graced this
week’s table.
SWISS STYLE OVEN VENISON STEAK
1 pound cubed venison
steak
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 14-ounce can tomatoes
½ cup chopped celery
½ cup chopped carrot
2 tablespoons chopped onion
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup shredded cheddar cheese
Cut meat into two
portions. Mix flour and salt; dredge meat and set aside remaining flour.
Brown the venison steaks and place them in an 11 x 7 baking dish. Blend
remaining flour with drippings in skillet. Add remaining ingredients
except cheese and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture boils. Pour
mixture over meat, cover, and bake in 350 degree oven for an hour or
until meat and veggies are tender. Sprinkle cheese on top and return to
oven for a few minutes to melt cheese.
SIMPLE WILD TURKEY TENDERS
Cut half of a wild
turkey breast into small pieces, being sure as you do so to remove all
silver skin. Cut across the grain. Next, using a meat hammer or the
bottom of the handle of a table knife, turn the turkey pieces into holy
turkey (in other words, pound the hell out of them).
Make an egg wash by
thoroughly whisking one large egg. Dip all of the turkey pieces in the
wash, then coat them with flour. Fry in olive oil (be sure it is piping
hot before you add the turkey) until golden brown. Turn the pieces
frequently during the browning process. Drain briefly on paper towels.
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