Hat Creek -Back in my Life

Windmills stand on Hatchet Mountain, as I drop down into the flat volcanic bowl that holds California's two largest spring creeks; Hat Creek and Fall River.  It's been fifteen years at least, since I last fished the public water on Hat Creek. But this strange, late, cold and water-rich spring, it's almost the only place to fish.

Previous years, I'd be tinkering on some small low-elevation mountain stream, chasing the elusive ten-inch brown among seven inch rainbows. I would dash in quickly, hike an hour away from imaginary crowds yet to arrive, catch a trout or two I could define as a trophy by my own standard and drive home, all in one day.

But time and abundance have slowed my step.  Today I need to be somewhere for a while, and why not this old acquaintance of a spring creek.  The salmon flies should be out, the giant, bumbling stoneflies with the hint of hot orange about their bodies.  Twenty year-old memories return; of their gentle touch as they crawled on me; of the big brown that ate the salmon fly I unwittingly knocked into the water, and the boil as he ate the foam-bodied artificial that I'd tied myself.