Water Reportage

All Time Precious Cargo

Species: Music Man/CarpDate: SeptemberLocation: I-5 Corridor


I take the railroad crossings, short spans of dirt road and other bumps as slow and careful as possible. I’ve got precious cargo in the back of the truck. Mid-to-late 70’s cargo. It is beautiful and for some reason smells like Febreze or some other air freshener. After evening Facebook marketplace messages and phone call agreements I meet Chuck in a snazzy church. He tells me all about it and how to use it but I kinda black out for a bit out of sheer excitement. It’s a big purchase and something I’d had my eye on for a while, a vintage Music Man guitar amplifier. Might have taken the Lord’s name in vain, out loud, as we took turns riffing with the volume cranked in the church. Whoops. Maybe Chuck didn’t hear.

It’s got four power tubes, JJ el84s. Solid state preamp, but it has the phase inverter tube, which is a good thing. Two original 12-inch Eminence Alnico speakers. Reverb and tremolo in one channel and pure cleans in the other. For its age it is in great shape and sounds oh so sweet. My very first tube amp—really going to piss off the neighbors.

Above: Jason Rolfe leads the way to a handful of bruiser carp, some of which managed to break off, some of which buried themselves deep in the weeds. Either way, it made for a good day.

As if that wasn’t enough to make for an awesome day, it got better. Happy-carp better. I named a new zone, Tom Broke-off, after the number of fish that—you guessed it—get broke off there. The fish were numerous and large, and even with dirty water conditions (which made it hard to tell which side their mouth was on) and a bunch of salad (which made landing them tough), I fed enough to be quite content. I would have been happy simply to see a few fish.

Sometimes it all comes together: a few sweet notes in the freshened air, a fish lazily inhaling your fly, or used gear transactions. All-time precious cargo, all-time precious day.

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