At some points in your life, a little reflection is needed. Here’s why it should happen on a river.
The next step's a doozie.
The day before trout season opened in 1999, I ditched the Silicon Valley and moved to a tiny mountain town with its own trout river. I spent a chunk of that trout opener just sitting on the bank and watching the river go by, wondering just what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
Then, on the first day of the new millenium (1/1/2000), I fly fished Baum Lake (not much was open in the winter back then) – despite doing some things the prior evening that I did not discuss with local religious leaders.
Due to the hangover, I don’t remember a lot about that trip, but I do remember catching a fair number of Baum’s stockies on a BWO dry, which is a pretty good way to start your next 1000 years. At that point, I had no idea just what the hell I was getting myself into.
Today, I’m packing for Ethiopia, making yesterday’s trip to a small, never-fished-by-me stream – my last as a childless angler.
A couple times after I moved to Dunsmuir, I toyed with the idea of becoming a trout bum/writer/largely single guy, but never did quite pull the trigger. And frankly, I’m happy about that.
I greatly admire people like John Gierach, a man who decided to fly fish for a living and then made it happen (and does so without the posturing, false bravado, and suspiciously compensatory behavior that marks so many who take that route).
Still, admiring someone doesn’t necessarily mean following in their footsteps, and while I’m aware my new adventure represents a right turn from an earlier, more carefree existence, it’s not The End of An Era or anything remotely that dramatic.
Still, it is a moment that demands a little bank sitting, wondering just what the hell I’m getting myself into this time.
Fly fishing trips will do that to you. They force the rest of the world to recede, yet still invite you to ponder the imponderables – a neat trick for any sport.
I’m also aware that when I start thinking too deeply in the above vein, maybe it’s time to simply go fishing.
Which I did.
The Schedule = The Fishery
Due to the madness that has become life, I haven’t fished much lately, and yes, I badly needed to go despite a schedule suggesting zero tolerance for fun.
That’s why – the day before I left to start my pretty-much-around-the-world trip – I ran to a nearby small stream I’d found by accident earlier in the year, but hadn’t fly fished.
Small, pretty and almost certainly unfished.
The Wonderdog sure remembered our previous trip, and his first act – after marking every tree near the truck – was to spot the rings of a rising trout in a pool at the bottom of a small gorge.
I’d seen those rings too, but I didn’t gallump down the hill at speed and plunge headlong into the pool after the trout.
Naturally, he caught nothing, but quickly got over the disappointment after finding the bones of a recently deceased deer.
Thus, the key differences between fly fishermen and retrievers are revealed (stealth and a gag reflex).
Sure he's happy - he smells like dead deer.
I knew in advance there would be no big trout, and there was a chance there would be no trout at all.
That’s inherent in any fly fishing trip (especially one already severely constrained by distance and time), but the thought was a little punishing this time.
I hadn’t fished recently, and because this was something of a turning point in my life, I needed a trout to make the occasion. Any sized trout.
Needed one.
Just one…
Thanks. I needed that.
Deep breath.
With all the uncertainty ahead, it’s nice to know that dogs still roll in dead things, undiverted streams still flow during droughts, trout still eat dries, and fly fishermen can get their heads screwed on straight through the simple act of catching fish.
A portrait of the fly fisher as a newly young man
Working my way upstream was a challenge in stealth, casting, and yes, Wonderdog management, but I managed to land another half-dozen little trout, the biggest of which might have gone seven inches.
I didn’t care of course – this year I’ve been on a small stream jag which pretty much guarantees a dearth of “Slab of the Month” entries.
It also guarantees a slower-paced fishing experience, one which invites some odd photographic experiments, including those which find your tiny point-and-shoot camera half submerged in the water:
Why not experiment with your camera?
Or even fully submerged and looking up, trying to approximate what a handsome, local, small-stream fly fisherman might look to a trout:
Is this what trout see right before they're unhooked and released?
An hour after I started, I was finished.
Deadlines called, bags needed to be packed, people needed to be met, and I ended my last outing as a childless fly fisherman wondering if my daughter would find the same peace on small streams filled with tiny, largely ignored trout.
She’ll see plenty of running water (I’ll see to that), but will she ever find her way to a stream in the middle of a busy day, turning over stones, watching for telltale shadows on the stream bottom, rolling her eyes as her dog plunges into a fishy looking pool, and desperately wanting just one single trout – confirmation the world isn’t tilting wholly off its axis?
Cleary, the future is filled with little certainty. And a lot of possibility.
What trout see?
See you on the Stream, Tom Chandler.
Winter fishing on the Upper Sacramento hasn’t been stellar, but with the snowpack far below normal and no real storms in sight, we’re looking a drought right in the eye.
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