Fly Fishing The Troutless River

Tuesday Night

I grew up near a river. It wasn’t so close that I could stumble my way down to its’ banks as a diaper-clad toddler, but by ten or eleven it was within biking range, and it quickly became our favorite destination for adolescent adventures. It was a great place to go exploring, and perfect for dirt-biking. One time we even had a make-shift paleontological dig (I dug up something that looked like the jaw-bone of some sort of horse; that counts as a fossil, dammit). Catching crawdads could be a good time, until we got carried away one day and came home with three hundred of the little suckers. We thought we could keep them alive by putting them in a bucket of water. I still feel bad about that. It was a straight-up Crawdaw Holocaust.

About the only thing we never did down by the river was fish. Maybe we would have if it had been possible, but I did not grow up near the junction of great trout streams; I grew up in suburban Southern California. The river near my childhood home was the Santa Ana River; and (at least in my neck of the woods), it was a concrete lined wash that often had no water in it (the crawdads lived in a little trickle of water that ran alongside the wash). Just a bit downhill from my hometown of Costa Mesa, it flowed through Huntington Beach on its’ way to the Pacific Ocean, about three miles downstream. So, if you were thinking of drift boats, pine trees, and trout sipping mayflies, well, the reality looked more like the setting for the drag racing scene from Grease, or maybe the big chase sequence from Terminator II. No, I never fly fished as a child. In fact, I never fished at all, even though the ocean was just a few miles from our door. There was plenty for a kid to do though, so we never knew we were missing out on something.

All things considered, it seems odd that fly fishing became such an important part of my life. Very little would have had to happen differently for me to go through my entire life without ever picking up a rod. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In fact, let’s see if I can figure out how this all got started…

About a year after I graduated high school (that would make it 1990) my brother Chris and I were sharing an apartment in Costa Mesa. For those who have no idea where that is, it sits just inland of Newport Beach; and since most everyone knows where that is, I used to explain my hometown by telling people that if your feet aren’t actually in sand, then you’re probably in Costa Mesa rather than Newport Beach.

My oldest friend Clayton Nelson was still in town as well. Without intending to put too fine a point on it, we were bored. We all had college and part time jobs to keep us busy, that wasn’t the problem. Not that there’s anything new or different about young men being restless and longing for adventure, but I don’t think we had yet realized that that was what was going on, or how to find worthwhile outlets for our wanderlust. If someone had told me back then that fishing was just what I needed, well let’s just say I probably wouldn’t have taken them seriously.

It just so happened that we all had Tuesday nights off, and so the ritual of getting together on Tuesdays was born. It started out simply enough; killing time around our apartment watching old episodes of Star Trek and trying to decide what to do. I guess that still strikes me as odd, since none of us were Trekkies by any stretch of the imagination. I never liked the show as a kid, but for some reason we decided as young men that Kirk, Bones, and Spock were funny as all get out. I’m sure beer hand a hand in that, but anyway we would eventually decide on some place to grab a bite to eat and then find the nearest place to shoot a few games of pool before calling it a night. It wasn’t exactly a life of adventure.

After a few weeks of the same routine we were sitting in my apartment one Tuesday night trying to figure out where to go to eat. The usual place was Wahoo’s Fish Taco, a little place around the corner that was made out to look like a surfer’s beach hut and served food that was, well, hard to categorize. The called it a fusion of Brazilian, Asian, and Mexican. Whatever you want to call it, we liked it, and it had become our most common haunt; but Clay had something else in mind that night.

Let’s go to Ye Olde King’s Head. Clay suggested.

Ye Olde King’s Head was a British pub and restaurant near the beach in Santa Monica. As British pubs go, it felt like a pretty authentic place. We used to joke that the only ones there on any given night (besides ourselves) who didn’t sound like honest-to-God Englishmen were the Australians. We’d discovered the place the year before, and we’d had a good time trying to finish off king size orders of fish and chips (which consisted of two pieces of battered, deep-fried fish, each approximately the size of a regulation NFL football, along with a side of fries) while sitting under a portrait of Winston Churchill. The catch was that it was over fifty miles away and it would take an hour or so to get there, assuming we didn’t hit traffic (never a given in So Cal). None of us had been driving for more than a few years, and a road trip for no practical reason wasn’t something that we did. Well, not until that night anyway.

Are you serious? I replied, figuring he wasn’t.

Let’s go, Bro. Get off your butt. Clay said, somehow sensing he was onto something.

Between where we were sitting and Santa Monica there had to be a million places to eat. There was no logical reason to drive into L.A. just for fish and chips. Suddenly that seemed appealing.

Okay, let’s go I answered.

Of course we went and had a good time. We got home way too late and made sure to vow not to be so stupid next week; but when the next Tuesday came, it was a different tune. Once again we were sitting around my old apartment trying to decide where to go to eat. We were aware that we all had things to do the next morning, and last week’s adventure had been paid for in exhaustion the next day. Still, beneath the tone of responsibility that we were trying to maintain there was a palpable desire in the room to one-up our previous week’s effort. As we were kicking around names of pricey seafood joints in Newport Beach without any real enthusiasm for the idea, Clay lobbed the next grenade into mix:

Let’s go to Big Bear. He stated as if it was just around the corner.

Big Bear meant a little town near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest. It was a popular area to visit among skiers since it was only one hundred miles away; a two hour drive to the east. Clay had been there a number of times. Chris and I weren’t skiers and had never been, but we still knew it was a very long way to go for dinner.

Are you serious? I asked in a moment of déjà vu.

We’re going. Clay replied as if my question had sealed the matter.

The three of us made the two hour drive. Starting at our apartment just a mile or so from the beach in southern California, we drove until we were in the snow covered mountains of ski country. In addition to the silliness of driving so far without actually knowing if we would find a place to eat when we got there, we had also gotten a late start, and ended up rolling into Big Bear around eleven, and were nigh on starving by then. The only place we found open was a little hole-in-the-wall that was called (at the time anyway) Joe’s Alpine Café.

Maybe the kitchen staff, who were probably thinking they were just about done for the night, were a little confused when the order came in for six dinners for our party of three, but I must say that both the fried chicken and the prime rib were surprisingly good. And we put it away like Shaggy and Scooby on a good day, if I do say so myself.

We got home after two in the morning, and we all had class the next day, and so the parts of ourselves that were attempting to bloom into responsible adults probably experienced some regret, once again. But another part experienced something of an epiphany, whether we realized it at the time or not. There was something inherently satisfying about going way farther than necessary for no particular reason.

We would end up discussing how we were going to top the trip to Big Bear in subsequent weeks. Someone brought up San Francisco, but that would have required plane tickets. We either weren’t so crazy as to hop on a plane to San Francisco for no better reason than to get dinner and fly home the same night, or we were just too broke to even consider such a thing. It appeared that we had limited out on what a group of broke college students could do to turn a weeknight dinner into a makeshift adventure. Maybe that’s why our little tradition faded away, or maybe it was just because peoples’ schedules changed, or some such thing. It wasn’t all that long before Clay moved out to Tucson to finish school at the University of Arizona. But the seed had been planted.

Fast forward a few years to 1993. We were all now living in Tucson and attending the University of Arizona. By that time I had been out fishing a few times and was starting to really get into the idea. I hadn’t yet picked up a fly rod; that would come later in the year. It was June, and Clay and I were talking about taking a quick trip to the White Mountains to get in a little early season trout fishing, and some camping as well. We both had three days available. To maximize our fishing time we were planning to leave for our trip after I got off of work and drive at night. That would be a pretty aggressive effort, seeing as how I was working at a fine dining restaurant and typically got off of work late. With a four hour drive to our destination, we could easily be looking at arriving in the early morning hours and getting only a little or maybe even no sleep at all.

As the time for our trip approached, perhaps a week away, I got a call from Clay.

I was thinking that we should just go to Lee’s Ferry. Clay suggested.

How far away is that? I asked, having never been there.

It’s about a six and a half hour drive; four hundred miles. The fishing will be worth it. Clay assured me.

This sounds kind of crazy; kind of stupid, too. Okay, let’s do it. I answered.

This was beginning to sound like a suicide mission, but the fishing at Lee’s Ferry was supposed to be fantastic. All we had to do was get through the drive the first night and then it would be a couple of days of nothing but fishing and relaxing beside a camp fire. We made all of our preparations over the next few days, then, only a day before our trip was to begin, I got another phone call.

Let’s go to Colorado. Said Clay, as if it was no big deal.

Are you serious? I asked.

The words hung in the air for a moment, bringing to mind our Tuesday night adventures from a couple of years earlier. Somehow we both understood that this response meant that we had to do whatever had been suggested, regardless of how ridiculous the suggestion might be.

Let’s go fish the San Miguel. You’re going to love this place, Dealer. Clay offered, trying to convince me that it was a good idea, but knowing that it didn’t really matter.

The nickname Dealer, in case you were wondering, was one that went back to our high school days, and any one of our little group might be likely to use it on any other. Rest assured, it had nothing to do with drugs. Anyway, the San Miguel was a small stream near Telluride that Clay had fished on a two week trip through the Rocky Mountains the year before with his former dorm-mate, Jeff Garza. It was six hundred miles away. If we drove straight through without stopping it would take us ten and a half hours. This was just plain nuts, and there was no way it could possibly be worth it.

All right, I’m in. I responded, as I was obligated to at that point. Of course you realize that we’ll probably die trying to pull this off… I added.

We can do this, Dealer.

There was still time to adjust our plan. We didn’t have the internet, of course, so Clay went down to Triple A and got a trip-tick, which detailed the fastest route. The day of the trip arrived, and I touched base with Clay before heading off to work that afternoon. The brain fever hadn’t passed, he still wanted to go to Colorado, and we were all set.

As luck would have it, it was not an early night. It was busy at the restaurant, which meant that I had a roll of cash in my pocket to cover expenses, but it was one in the morning before we got on the road. I can’t remember how much discussion there was about coming to our senses, but either way, we didn’t. We headed north, putting our faith in strong coffee and Metallica.

Our journey took us past Lee’s Ferry, and we also blew right past the San Juan River.

I’ve heard that there are trout in there. Clay mentioned as we crossed the San Juan around the four corners region.

We might as well have been crossing over the Santa Ana for all of the attention we gave to one of the Southwest’s greatest trout streams.

Cool. By the way, can you see dancing babies on the road ahead? I replied.

No... can’t say that I do. No dancing babies.

I figured it was just me. Since I’m hallucinating, you should probably take over driving.

It was afternoon of the next day by the time we were nearing our destination. At the very least, the scenery didn’t disappoint. It was exactly how a kid from California expected Colorado to look; mountain peaks so high and jagged they didn’t seem quite real, with plenty of snow clinging to the tallest; and forests of evergreens and aspens in every direction.

We rolled into Clay’s secret camping spot on the river exhausted, but in good spirits. We had made it, and now we would have our reward.

There was a wall of heavy brush between us and the river and the first thing I wanted to do was to get a look at the water. I walked down to the stream while Clay began to unload the truck. It was June in the high country of Colorado. The newly warm weather was having a predictable effect on the local rivers; one that we, as total neophytes, had not considered.

We have a problem. I said as I walked back into the camp site. It’s chocolate milk down there, and it’s running hard.

You’re kidding. Clay responded.

We walked back down to the river and stared for a few minutes.

Maybe it’s still fishable... Someone offered, knowing it wasn’t.

I think we’re out of luck.

There was nothing we could do. The San Miguel was unfishable. Trying to wade the normally small river would result in being quickly swept downstream by the high, muddy flow. We had no choice but to do the one thing we should have done before embarking on this little quest; we had to ask someone for advice. We got back on the road and went looking for any place we could find that looked like there might be someone inside who could point us toward a body of water that held fish. When we finally found such a place the answer we got was predictable.

Every river around here is going to be blown out. You could try some of the lakes. There is a nice little spot not too far away that you can fish from shore and camp where there probably won’t be anyone else around. It’s called Beaver Lake. The store clerk told us.

We got directions and thanked him for his help. It was late afternoon by then, but we were determined to find a spot and catch some fish before it got dark. That was all we had left. It would be a long night in camp with nothing to think about except our own stupidity otherwise.

We found the rather ingloriously named Beaver Lake and set up camp as quickly as we could. In our haste to get set up and get to fishing, I didn’t immediately notice what a pretty little spot it was; nicely secluded, uncrowded, and with one hell of a view. The campground was set in among a patch of spruce trees, and the lake was surrounded by a small meadow, with the mountains of the Uncompahgre National Forest in the background. The sounds of the Cimarron River flowing nearby completed the package, though we didn’t try to fish it.

It was just starting to get dark as we walked down to the lake to try to get a few trout for dinner. We had left at one in the morning the previous night, and here we were just starting to fish as the sun was going down. Clay and I began working the shoreline, moving in opposite directions, hoping to put casts in front of as many fish as possible. Clay had an old fly rod that he got from his grandfather, I was using the only fishing rod I owned at the time, a cheap medium-action spinning rod and reel that I used for everything. I was casting lures, primarily my old standby, the Mepps Aglia Gold.

Rings of rising trout disturbed the otherwise calm surface of the lake as dusk descended. I launched my lure out into the thick of things and retrieved it back, hoping for a tug. Again, then again, and then came a good solid grab. I reared back on it like I was setting a 5/0 hook on a fifteen pound largemouth, then reeled it in as quickly as I could. No time to enjoy the battle, or even, it seemed, to pay much attention to the fish. Unceremoniously wacking my prize over the head, I tossed him in some grass next to me and went back to fishing as quickly as I could. We needed several to make dinner for two.

Night fell within a