Tarantula rain calls for Tenkara rods

We are in unequivocal bass mode at the moment, although the recent tarantula rain has brought up the flow of the little blue lines to the extent it might be worth a go.

What is tarantula rain, you ask?

Years ago, the checkout clerk at the old Grand Union in Millerton was performing a soliloquy while ringing up purchases. There was no other employee so all of us in line had no choice but to listen.

The gist was the clerk had attended some kind of motor sports event and a thunderstorm blew up suddenly, forcing a stampede. The woman was indignant that the management had not foreseen this and provided cover for the spectators to get out of what she called “the tarantula rain.”

I am 99% sure this was a malaprop and she meant “torrential.” But I retain a nagging suspicion that she was describing a supernatural spider event.

Skipping lightly over this incident of yore, the first couple of spins around the warm water lake where I am spending August yielded a pickerel, a couple of juvenile smallies, some juvenile largemouth, and one Mongo-type lunker.

I am pleased to say that the lunker was landed using a Tenkara rod, which means no reel and a great deal of uncertainty.

Tom Carter practiced his two-handed casting at the Trout Unlimited picnic Saturday, Aug. 3. Patrick L. Sullivan

On Saturday, Aug. 3, the Northwest Connecticut and Naugatuck-Pomperaug Trout Unlimited chapters, plus the Housatonic Fly Fishermen's Association, held a “Burgers and Bass” event at Housatonic Meadows State Park.

It was hard to get a head count as people kept drifting off to wet a line, but I’d say about 25 anglers turned up.

Jerry Jahn and Peter Chuang were on hand to teach us about casting two-handed rods. This was simultaneously enlightening and bewildering.

The enlightenment came from actually seeing it done, and realizing it’s not as difficult as one might imagine (or fear).

The bewilderment came when Jahn, in response to a simple question about the material used to link one piece of fly line to another, gave this reporter the fishing data equivalent of tarantula rain.

After a solid half hour of Knowledge I slithered away and ran a few streamers and poppers through the choppy water upstream of where the picnic was held. A couple of dinker smallmouth were willing to play a little, but it was one of those overcast, baking summer days when I can just feel the harmful UV rays bypassing the sunscreen and going to work on my cells.

So I cheesed it and headed back up to the bass lake, where everyone was settling in for another bout of thunderstorms, with a 1% chance of furry arachnids.