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Another sweetly beautiful, calm day off yesterday
when I found some Wild Native, and where some Wild Native found me.
Trailered a small jonboat to Suisun, my Suisun Marsh, and splashed her
on crimson-glass brackish waters where fog sailed the surface. Zoomed
her little purring engine over to Peytonia under the cool, absolutely
stone-still autumn air. To evade cyprinids' acute senses of vibration
and hearing, I was stealthy, silent, myself a stone-still human statue
while my rods fished, and my rods fished well. Many silvery splittail,
a native, a pure, unalloyed California native, came to my hand at
large, deep tidal-creek confluences. And the splitties weren't alone -
the Marsh Wrens, the Song Sparrows, even Common Yellowthroats, all
flitted and fluttered around my watercraft, at ease with my
assimilation into their habitat. I saw not another human for the entire
five hours I was out there.
It was some little voyage: the boat worked
perfect, the rods were perfect, the cool, calm, stunning autumn of
Suisun Marsh - man, what a theater - and the star of the show, a truly
wild, native fish.
That was California fishing.