Backcountry

The turning points in our lives are marked by moments we may or may not have seen coming, but cannot miss.

Some are big noisy affairs, some are quiet moments, yet they’re so deeply ingrained in our heads we can’t forget them.

Which is why on Sunday – when I found myself sitting on an old stump alongside a tiny stream, drinking water and scribbling in my notebook – I suddenly remembered I’d fished a half-mile further up this same stream a little less than one year ago – just before leaving for Ethiopia to pick up Little M.

Back then – with my world threatening to spin off its axis – I was simultaneously melancholy, excited and yes – scared shitless.

I desperately needed to catch a trout, and I happily did (several of them, actually), restoring a much-needed sliver of “normal” before things really started spinning.

Which, for a while, they did.

Adventure, But Micro

Life has settled a bit since then, which is why the whole affair wasn’t much in my mind last Sunday.

All I really wanted was a little adventure – but needed it to happen in a handful of hours.

In moments like that, we sometimes make decisions about what we really want instead of what we think we want, an odd reality that bears some examination (perhaps from a couch).

It might be a matter of lowered expectations driving a simple realization; we have little to lose (in this case, time), and with so little at stake, we throw the hail mary.

Which is how I found myself scrambling up a steep, rocky, crumbling streambank and disappearing up the mouth of a tiny, willow-packed tributary stream – something I’ve been threatening to do for years.

There’s a stretch of a small stream I’ve never fished, despite driving by it a couple hundred times over the last decade (typically on my way to “better” water).

Last year, I fished this same stream but farther up the watershed, and discovered better water than I expected – and slightly bigger trout.

Where it empties into a larger tributary – in full view of a road – the stream doesn’t look like much.

In fact, it looks like crap.

Which is why I’d written it off, while still wondering – as we all do – if it might just fall under the heading of “Undiscovered Treasure.”

For the first 100 feet, it didn’t.

Dense willow thickets clogged the streambed (despite their necessary place in the ecosystem, I have zero love for willows), the water was shallow, and lacked good holding depth.

The good news? All that soon passed.

The willows thinned a bit, and while grunting my way around yet another thicket and up a sheer rocky bank, I found myself face to face with a pretty little plunge pool – one deep enough to hold a decent trout.

Bingo.

At the moment, I remember being irritated about stumbling so close to the pool before seeing it, wondering if I’d spooked everything bigger than algae.

One way to find out.

On the second cast, a seven-inch trout thought it saw lunch, and my adventure was paid in full – with another good chunk of stream to fish before I ran into a dirt road, which I’d use to hike out.

Some days, the hail mary pays off.

The Reality

I’m not suggesting big trout and blanket hatches of monster bugs – the stuff of today’s rock & roll adventure fishing videos.

If they made a video about this adventure, you’d have to use elevator music for the soundtrack.

It’s the kind of place where a double-digit length trout would (and should) elicit a gasp from a small stream fly fisher.

It’s the kind of place – frankly – that doesn’t attract much in the way of attention these days.

Equally frankly, I’m pretty damn happy about that.

Better & Better

As I worked my way up the very steep, very narrow gorge, the pools grew a little bigger in size – as did the trout – but the real victory lay in finding myself on a stretch of water that probably hasn’t been fished in years.

No footprints. No garbage. No broken branches. No easy, sensuous casts. No big fish. And definitely no trail.

The biggest trout I caught were in the 10″-11″ range [gasp] – the product of three particularly stellar pools.

One pool looked, felt and fished exactly like a scaled-down model of a popular Upper Sacramento River spot.

Another felt so recognizably “Great Smoky Mountains National Park” that I took a picture to send back to Ian.

Near the top – where the road crosses the creek – signs of humanity became apparent; a couple pools had been “enlarged” by piled rock dams, a byproduct of swimmers looking for cool water during the summer heat waves.

No matter; I was a couple hours into the adventure, so I was tired and hot, and ready for a short writing break, which is when the memory of my last fly fishing trip as a non-dad popped up in my brain.

I sat and marveled at life for a bit, finished my notes and started hiking down the little-used dirt road, eventually running headlong into a jacked-up pickup driving up the road.

After hearing nothing but the click of grasshoppers and the buzz of dragonflies for hours, the loud Dodge diesel motor sounded like the end of the world, and the driver threatened to complete the analogy by waiting until he was 40 feet away and flicking the truck towards me for a second, suggesting he’s probably a real asshole in every other aspect of his life too.

Welcome back from your adventure, mo-fo.

Welcome back to civilization.

The Actual Fishing Report

I couldn’t tell you exactly how many I caught – I’m not focused enough to be a good counter – but I can say I got four in the 10″-11″ range [gasp]), and many smaller trout.

It’s even possible these trout retain almost their original native genetics (it seems unlikely this stream has ever been stocked), though extensive stocking just downstream of the tributary probably means I’m courting an illusion.

So be it.

After all, it’s my adventure, not Fish & Game’s.

Due to the density of the willows – and the need to climb more than a few rocks (where a long fly rod is a liability), I swore off my “never shorter than 8′” fly rod prohibition and fished a very soft 7′ 3wt Diamondglass fly rod.

It’s smooth and accurate – in other words, pure fun – and also not especially delicate, which is an overlooked quality in a stream like this.

I mostly fished the Underground’s standby dry fly – the Beetle Bug (think ‘Red Adams’), but a Hare’s Ear Parachute worked about as well (though it didn’t last all that long).

Despite the cool temperatures – highs were in the mid-60s – I waded wet, and because of the hump up the tiny canon, spent most of the time covered in sweat.

The water temperature was 58 degrees and I was wearing pretty much all synthetics, so a quick dip in a deep pool (after I fished it) sucked all the overheated bits right out (and in a single, breathtaking, shrinkage-packed moment).

Adventure, The Sequel

I wanted adventure and I got it, though it helps if you’re willing to redefine the word to mean what it needs to mean, especially given the size of the stream and the trout.

And yes, it’s hard not to see this little trip as completing some nice, neat circle. After all, a year ago, I sat on the bank just upstream, wondering what lay ahead.

A year later, I can see adventure’s still possible, especially since my adventures never really were of the “travel for 28 hours and get falling-down drunk” variety.

Fly fishing’s what we make of it, and if a pair of trips to the same small stream happen to bookend a year in the life of a new dad – with all that entails to the dad – then I’m willing to designate both trips as “memorable.”

At least before moving on to make more memorable trips.

See you at the turning points, Tom Chandler.