Petes Birthday

Friday night was over cast and I keep hoping to catch more Green Drakes on the water. It's not the kind of thing you can really expect, but the life of a fisherman is based less on expectations than it is on hope- so I guess that's a fancy way of saying that I didn't much care if its unlikely or not, I wanted the possibility of more "hot, trout-on-fly action"
And it was Petes Birthday- Pete's my Father-in-Law, A standup guy- and he's been busy with "real life" stuff for a year- the house, and death in the family and that kind of thing...without much chance to get out.
I called Saturday morning and I was surprised when he could get out- I expected more busy-ness...
We were on the water at "Chokecherry Creek"( we don't use real names here- a guy could get killed for that...)- a favorite haunt of mine. It had Drakes- some years they even hatch- and for a small stream it has some surprisingly good fish- in water that is anything but boring, there's a good mix of riffles, bend pools overhangs, and undercut banks, being on the edge of the Colorado plateau doesn't hurt either- nice red rock/alpine surroundings....
Pete hooked into a strong little brookie almost immediately- a relief because I figure he deserved to catch fish- and the first is always the lynch-pin- after you've brought one to hand all the rest is gravy.
It took me a bit to get into a fish - I had some kind of problem with my tippet and every time I'd get caught up in the ever-present willows I'd pop the tippet off the tiny loop a the end of the furled leader that I like- this usually never happens, I've often gone weeks without changing tippets because of the dampening effect of the furled leader...But today?...today I couldn't make it work- I wasn't frustrated, but I could have gotten there if let my self up the wrong train of thought, I got some good hits, but I missed some strikes too- I hooked up a couple of times and lost fish, and after Pete had had a couple of fish to hand I finally did too...which sounds more-what...? maybe, more"desperate" than it was- It was my home water and I was having tackle issues, but was still in good company, in a pretty place making contact with the fish so it wasn't like there was anything grim about it- I just wanted to hook up and hadn't done so...
Pete hooked up while I was tying knots at one point and I heard a loud splash- a big fish, and as I looked over Pete said "That was a good fish.." and it had to have been - the noise and sight of it throwing the hook wasn't consistent with the behavior of little brookies... ominous, yeah?...
I finally did have an honest fish- and a good fight, as it was a pretty nice brown who had been around long enough to try to take me into the willow roots a couple of different times- and ran down stream with the current, saving energy- and putting extra strain on that tippet that I wasn't very confident in at this point..I also stepped into a hole that was at least 3 feet deep during the fight(because that's what happens in these situations...) I had the fish netted and photographed within 3 minutes from the take, though- It's still a small stream trout - even if it was an honest 16 incher. I catch a couple of browns or cutts this big or bigger each year on this stream , but they aren't so common as to be unremarkable- a damn fine fish....
We continued fishing for a little bit but Pete had birthday stuff to do so we split before the evening hatch- which reminds me that the only insects we saw most of the day were sporadic and sparse, Pale Morning Duns- not even the usual caddis and midge swarms that you can usually count on on this stream...
Happy Birthday Pete!

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Boulder Mountain Follies- pt.1

...On the weekend after The July Fourth holiday is deal for a scouting trip in to the southern Utah wilds, The region surrounding the Boulder Mountain area, near the towns of Torrey, Boulder, and Escalante haven't seen the kind of development and "tourism related" exploitation of, say- Moab or Aspen, but its still got its share of spandex and Goretex- not to mention the somewhat more homegrown, but still enthusiastic visitors of the hook and bullet persuasion (god bless'em...)...But that's all another story- I'm out the weekend after the holiday to avoid the crowds, on a recon mission for red rock trout. The drive down, fueled by the classic jackmormon speedball of nicotine and coffee, is uneventful and quick- the way I like it. No tickets, and no breakdowns- an accomplishment on a 15 year old truck that sports a last minute JB Weld radiator repair.The only things worth mentioning regarding the trip down were the notable lack of wildfire smoke on the horizon, and the Chuckwagon in Torrey had a sign proclaiming "Cell Phone Accessories Available Here!"...that I hadn't noticed before- Oh!, AND they PAVED the Burr Trail!...What the hell are my tax dollars for?...it's sacrilege...generations of idiots, desert rats and rednecks have been been wrecking cars on that lonely road and now its all over,any reasonable and sane person can now Rock the Casbah in air conditioned comfort, with four channel stereo in a spacious sedan- perhaps while sipping a cold Pepsi....On the up side they've apparently only paved the first 20 miles or so from Boulder so you can still die out there- you'll just be farther from town when you start having the Bugs Bunny style hallucinations that would indicate- If you are aware of your diminishing capacity, that your brain is melting into the orangey landscape, and your time is at hand...
...Not a happy thought, but this is: there's a well known little canyon there with some trout and I fished it for a few minutes- As I said this was an exploration - I had places to go, and fish to hook- if only to remind myself which ones are viable for further missions... And, I was reminded why I so seldom fish the red rock canyons...
You see, in the desert,the water is is concentrated, and the canyons are narrow, and they see little in the way of people (and their attending development)...the water concentrated in small space between the narrow walls causes lush growth, grass, willows, cottonwoods, sedges, rose( and her thorns of course- because Brett Micheals decreed it ...) so hiking in these places you can often move off from the stream a bit and 3, 5 or ten feel off the actual water there is good old sand or stone,to walk on, and sniff the juniper and verbena. When you fish these places though, you're gonna be right down in it, and trying to swing a rod to boot...In my case it was a 5 weight 8 and half footer- because, though I know better, I was lazy and didn't wanna rig up a smaller lighter stick. Between smacks from the willows and falls through decades deep rafts of deadwood and pricks from the roses, I caught a few brookies- on a little Humpy dry fly- maybe four. Enough to confirm my beliefs: The fish were there, they weren't (probably) going to be very big, and we had a predominance of the brook trout( which I do like a lot- they're good friends, and pretty things , but you do hope for Cutts in their native range. I'm not disappointed , but if you don't hope for things to be better-maybe "different" is a more succinct word, than you're used too, why would you do this kind of crap at all?.....) I had a few more stops to make though so I was on my way- eighty or so miles south...
The obvious guess would be Calf Creek- its right on that charmer of a road SR 12, and its easy access- but I know those trout well- brookies again- and the spookiest fish I've ever met...I'm familiar with them from the many times I've camped at the campground there and tried to catch a few of them- I've succeeded, but I miss twenty or thirty for every one I catch- for every cast , from the best concealment I can manage, would scare an entire pool, sometimes though one inattentive fish would be looking down as my lines shadow passed over her and she'd take the fly- pure random luck..and interesting, but the exercise is moot- the campground is closed for "renovation", and I'm not about to go negotiate fishing rights with a construction crew. I hit instead a couple of feeder creeks to the Escalante "River"- which itself isn't trout water, and though it might be fun to fish for a few other species-most of the rivers residents are endangered and I don't even know how to fish for them, even if it were legal or moral to do so...These feeder creeks come down from Boulder Mountain , but down in the lower desert country they aren't necessarily easily accessible. You either take the long road, hike up the Escalante Canyon to where the creeks feed in, or try your hand at overland access from Highway 12, possibly shorter but canyon country doesn't have many "shortcuts", most of the surface area of this desert is vertical rather than horizontal- Route 12 , the highway from where I start my walk is testament to that, in the section where I fill my water bag, and don the "Stones"
( hiking boots- for ankle support, rather than the usual sandals I wear for more well know desert jaunts..) is literally on top of a ridge that drops away at unscaleable angles on either side, for several hundred feet- not literally vertical, but may as well be...( there is no leeway for inattentive driving here, leave the roadway, and you are likely to leave your appendages- if not your life- the speed limit is a paltry 25 MPH- which might seem like overkill on the caution front- until you are here, and then that speed might seem a bit more like rash foolishness...)
The hike in to the first creek on the route was less than a mile by sight, and relatively uneventful, though I was careful to stay high in the canyon- "rimming" as the technique is called by my desert hiking friends, so as to NOT descend into any level of a canyon that you haven't firmly established that you can get out of, on the way back. People commonly find desert hiking easy until the descend into a canyon that SEEMS easy to get back out of- only to find that "slickrock" has it's name for a reason- most folks do get out- usually with nothing more than FAR more effort than they were wiling to expend, sometimes they require assistance, less frequently full on search and rescue assistance, some folks though, only come out in black bags with full length zippers- and then there are the truly privileged few who don't come out at all- they become desert legends like Brother Everett Ruess- whose remains had lain in peace for about 80 years until discovered last year..
...and having digressed again...I'll leave you with a minor- but literal cliff hanger- as I have to go make some early morning money tomorrow...cheers!
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