Sharphooks
Well-Known Member
Got the permanent walking papers from the girlfriend two weeks ago. Not really the way I wanted to go into the holiday season.......So I asked myself---do I stay in town and feel crappy about my love life, or do I pack up the camper with my trusty Avon inflatables, the bundle of rods, the satchel of reels, and go take a long fishing trip instead?
I'd been studying the HUGE fluctuations in water level on that river this year---I almost decided to go somewhere else the CFS were so high----not used to seeing big stacks of driftwood on every beach
Made fly fishing tough----lots of water speed, really narrowed down the places I could fish. And then there was the puppy: first trip there with her, and she'd never seen trains before. She went nuts when they went past us, going into what can best be described as a catatonic state: she'd freeze and start shivering like she had a case of DT's. Surely, after thirty or forty trains went past she'd get used to them and calm down? NOT.
She has a deathly fear of them she'll probably carry to her grave.
Here's her worst nightmare come true:
I decided to bring the inflatables to keep her away from the highway. Probably not very smart doing Class IV rapids with an 8 Hp Yamaha but it made for interesting river transit.
Here's the look she gave me as if asking: "you're going to run these rapids with me in the THAT boat??
My daughter is named after these rapids. Hard to see from this angle but the wave trains are 4 to 5 feet high in places.
The inflatable found us a few places that we wouldn't otherwise have been able to get to. When you see rocks like this out in ANY river that swims steel, fasten the seat belt
This is what made all that commotion:
It was sad seeing the bruise on the head of such a bruiser of a fish----that sore probably doesn't bode well for when he gets on the spawning beds in the spring and he's opened up to fungal infections
After watching him swim away I absolutely knew that such a stunner of a buck specimen would SURELY have a lady friend waiting for him out in the same pocket I'd just hooked him. And if convictions are gristle and bone, the conviction I had that I was going to get her on the next cast was so strong it would’ve taken a chain saw to cut it in half. In fact, I've done the "buck/doe in two casts" thing on this river at least a dozen times over the years, so that explains the strength of my conviction.
I went back to the boat, got out my 7 weight rod with a 3" Brass Faced Perfect on it, stood in exactly the same place as I'd stood when I hooked the buck, made the same cast, and sure enough, the line jerked out of my hand and I stepped once again onto the third rail:
She was a beauty, brighter then you typically see for this time of the year
This trip wasn't supposed to be just about fish or just about escaping the debilitating effects ex-girlfriends have on our psychic health. There was some other strong emotional stuff going on---last December had been the last fishing trip I’d taken with a Sheltie who died this past spring on my kitchen floor. It had been my 12 th consecutive year going to that river with her---I'd taken her every December since she'd been a puppy. Not having her this year was an arrow in my heart
I had to wipe a tear away when I stood on the same bluff with the new puppy as I'd stood with the dead Sheltie last December
I feel like we take our lives in our hands every time we climb off the face of that bluff down to the water. There are places where you hang by your fingernails and your teeth to keep from tumbling down the steep face.
But it’s always worth the effort: as soon as I got to the beach with the new puppy I saw a fish rise----paydirt---it took on the first cast
I didn't think it would happen that fast but wow, another big Christmas buck!
It's always tough for me to leave this place. I have two daughters named after sections of the river. It's always been an emotional place for me to go back to for many reasons. The abuse its suffered over the years has caused lots of controversy: incidental catch of its fish in the commercial fisheries downstream, farmers sucking water out of her spawning tributaries under the rubric of Water Rights, mining interests sniffing around, debris from the trains that run both her flanks flung into just about every stretch of her. And nobody can even begin to guess the future of the fish that spawn in her tributaries.
I'm hoping my children will be able to see the progeny of the fish I caught this trip, and their children after them, but I'm not so sure that's in the cards
But man oh man, it's a lovely river and more then any other river I know, it deserves as much tender mercies as we can give her
I'd been studying the HUGE fluctuations in water level on that river this year---I almost decided to go somewhere else the CFS were so high----not used to seeing big stacks of driftwood on every beach
Made fly fishing tough----lots of water speed, really narrowed down the places I could fish. And then there was the puppy: first trip there with her, and she'd never seen trains before. She went nuts when they went past us, going into what can best be described as a catatonic state: she'd freeze and start shivering like she had a case of DT's. Surely, after thirty or forty trains went past she'd get used to them and calm down? NOT.
She has a deathly fear of them she'll probably carry to her grave.
Here's her worst nightmare come true:
I decided to bring the inflatables to keep her away from the highway. Probably not very smart doing Class IV rapids with an 8 Hp Yamaha but it made for interesting river transit.
Here's the look she gave me as if asking: "you're going to run these rapids with me in the THAT boat??
My daughter is named after these rapids. Hard to see from this angle but the wave trains are 4 to 5 feet high in places.
The inflatable found us a few places that we wouldn't otherwise have been able to get to. When you see rocks like this out in ANY river that swims steel, fasten the seat belt
This is what made all that commotion:
It was sad seeing the bruise on the head of such a bruiser of a fish----that sore probably doesn't bode well for when he gets on the spawning beds in the spring and he's opened up to fungal infections
After watching him swim away I absolutely knew that such a stunner of a buck specimen would SURELY have a lady friend waiting for him out in the same pocket I'd just hooked him. And if convictions are gristle and bone, the conviction I had that I was going to get her on the next cast was so strong it would’ve taken a chain saw to cut it in half. In fact, I've done the "buck/doe in two casts" thing on this river at least a dozen times over the years, so that explains the strength of my conviction.
I went back to the boat, got out my 7 weight rod with a 3" Brass Faced Perfect on it, stood in exactly the same place as I'd stood when I hooked the buck, made the same cast, and sure enough, the line jerked out of my hand and I stepped once again onto the third rail:
She was a beauty, brighter then you typically see for this time of the year
This trip wasn't supposed to be just about fish or just about escaping the debilitating effects ex-girlfriends have on our psychic health. There was some other strong emotional stuff going on---last December had been the last fishing trip I’d taken with a Sheltie who died this past spring on my kitchen floor. It had been my 12 th consecutive year going to that river with her---I'd taken her every December since she'd been a puppy. Not having her this year was an arrow in my heart
I had to wipe a tear away when I stood on the same bluff with the new puppy as I'd stood with the dead Sheltie last December
I feel like we take our lives in our hands every time we climb off the face of that bluff down to the water. There are places where you hang by your fingernails and your teeth to keep from tumbling down the steep face.
But it’s always worth the effort: as soon as I got to the beach with the new puppy I saw a fish rise----paydirt---it took on the first cast
I didn't think it would happen that fast but wow, another big Christmas buck!
It's always tough for me to leave this place. I have two daughters named after sections of the river. It's always been an emotional place for me to go back to for many reasons. The abuse its suffered over the years has caused lots of controversy: incidental catch of its fish in the commercial fisheries downstream, farmers sucking water out of her spawning tributaries under the rubric of Water Rights, mining interests sniffing around, debris from the trains that run both her flanks flung into just about every stretch of her. And nobody can even begin to guess the future of the fish that spawn in her tributaries.
I'm hoping my children will be able to see the progeny of the fish I caught this trip, and their children after them, but I'm not so sure that's in the cards
But man oh man, it's a lovely river and more then any other river I know, it deserves as much tender mercies as we can give her
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