One trout two trout three trout four ...

Is it just me, or has the ethos of fly fishing slipped a bit, towards what you might call counting coup?

Now I should emphasize, you don't see this everywhere.  The better magazines have contributors whose stories bring us the wider experience; the scent of the flowers, the flow of the water, the beat of the heart. 

But on the web .. 'tons of hookups' - 'stuck some hawgs' - 'we ripped some lips on the Nevada side' - 'a hundred fish'.  And that was just the ones that were spelt correctly.  Now I don't want to pontificate here. Pope I'm not, and I might deserve being reminded of that, if it weren't for my own gradual conversion, so to speak.  It took fifteen years.

(Can we do one of those late 70's wobbly video dissolves here, that would be good)

So you walk into the doctor's office and say ..
"Doc, I'm obsessed with fly fishing, what do you prescribe?"   and she (I live in San Francisco, opposite sex doctor/patient relationships are allowed here, and she just got married, darn it) says ..
"Go fishing"
So I did.

That was 1996, six whole months, twenty thousand miles and two thousand trout.  And if you ever thought you wanted to be a fishing guide, I can confirm that when flyfishing starts to become work, it may be time to stop.  I nearly did, as the late fall snow closed in on my tent in Montana and I had trouble staying warm.

But here's what rescued me; a little sunshine, and the Metolius River in Oregon.  Did I catch twenty fish, or even anything exceptional?  No, I did not, but just enough bugs hatched to make the fishing interesting, very challenging and thoroughly absorbing.  And there's the rub; if you're counting trout, you're not thinking.  Or looking; at the bugs or the river or the glory of the trout's beauty.  Three or four nice trout was plenty, as it should be.

But hey, I know, I'm a pompous self-identified expert, and you may not be.  So I do bow to your desparate need to catch as many trout as possible, because I have certainly been there.  But if you are new to flyfishing and you're already fishing small streams, as indeed you should be (they'll teach you all you really need to know; about sneaking up on trout, not spooking them, then casting to them and again, not spooking them.)  Well, then you know that you can catch a bunch of eight-inch trout;  and have you ever felt a tiny bit guilty, unhooking the latest one, that's hooked a little too far down the throat?

Like most recovering addicts should, I can advise, but I won't criticize.  I'll just offer this; look for the one 12 incher among the 8 inchers.  He, or she, is out there somewhere, and the journey is its own reward.   But you've heard my self-imposed bag limit, now go out there and make one of your own. 

And sure, you can let me know I'm full of <bleep>  ... just click 'comment' & type in 'Post a Comment'.

Blue Lake, snowshoe style

Hey the last time I tried this - hiking in over snowbanks - it worked great and I caught some big brook trout a few feet from shore, though that was a different lake.  But I've been paddling this tube around Upper Blue Lake for an hour or so, scanning the overhanging mounds of snow beween the willow bushes on shore, probing with a big Bird's Nest to imitate a dragonfly nymph, and I still haven't found the inlet stream.

When I started out, the camp host told me some nice cutthroats had been caught near the inflow stream, and though I had checked that a stream was shown entering on the west shore in the De Lorme atlas, I must have failed to remember exactly how far round the lake it was!  Finally I change to a black woolly bugger and count the Type 3 sinking line down really deep.  As I'm paddling through the depths at the mouth of this bay I miss a tug, then land a planted rainbow.  He goes back, and on we go. 

Whiskeytown, Meth Addicts and Hexagenia Mayflies

This strange, water-rich year in California, it's hard to find anywhere to fish. There's hardly a river that isn't bank high, roaring, churning silty water 'going to waste' as the old water barons and politicians might have said.  But in the uplands near the coast, forest duff is soaking up the extra snow-melt that will sustain juvenile salmon and steelhead through a hot summer, in the pools and runs between the ferns and coltsfoot of a little tributary.  Good fishing for migratory fish in two or three years may be our reward for a trout season that's two months late already.

Many lakes I might fish are still frozen, or at least their roads are switchbacks over unmelted snowbanks, passable only to intrepid jeep drivers who enjoy proving they can winch themselves anywhere, even if it does take them five hours to get there.  I will tackle these near ski-able roads soon with a pair of hiking boots, but for this trip, it's a lower-elevation reservoir that's destination.  We're going camping at Whiskeytown Lake, a big, attractive lake close to the Central Valley heat of Redding, which is often the second hottest place in the state after Death Valley.  It's a long drive, made less dull by the chance to try and identify almost twenty peaks with snow still on them in late June, rather than waiting the usual two hours for the twin volcano shapes of Lassen and Shasta to appear, wearing their garlands of snow. Then, not long after you turn off I-5, you're there, at a Federal Recreation Area. 

We pull off at the excellent visitor center and enjoy the wildflower plantings and the cool of the indoor exhibits and map displays. The rangers are really helpful, and guide us to the best waterfalls to hike and see - three small streams feed the lake and all three have spectacular falls this year.  Outside again, I find a sign listing the many sport fish in the lake. 'Rainbows and brown trout. - Huh!'  I resist the temptation to add 'Who knew', for the wife knew, she knows that I knew, and I know that... never mind, you get the picture: It's a family camping trip, right?