Planning & Packing
Our planning takes place when we’re wrenching under a vehicle, driving to a river, or sitting at some seedy bar. In any case, we don’t write anything down. The preference is instead to have the exact same conversation 47 times in the six months preceding the trip's start date.
“I did some research on that wilderness area you were talking about…I read it has the highest concentration of grizzlies in the lower 48. You know that, right?”
We were planning a trip to Montana. For Joe and I, that usually means a volley of naming off every town, river, and point of interest we’ve ever heard of, then trying to talk out a logical path that connects each waypoint. In short, it’s a exercise in cramming a two month vacation into 12 days.
“So, on day one we’ll leave at two or three in the morning and drive straight through to Bozeman. We can stay at the Bozeman Inn to shower and rest so we don’t have to worry about finding a camp spot on the first day”
“Sounds good, and then maybe float a section of one of the rivers close to town, then swing down to Ennis and stay in that little hole in the wall fisherman’s lodge?”
“Right on, sounds good. From there we could swing up in an arc towards Missoula, aiming to get up to Whitefish by mid-week. I really want to spend a few days backpacking in the Bob Marshall wilderness, too.”
“Cool, what about the Big Hole? Or is it the Big Horn?”
“It’s both, both are in Montana. They’re out of the way, though. Maybe we can hit them on the way back down.
“Got it, let’s go to Glacier National Park while we’re up there.”
“Do you think we have time for that?”
::Stares Back::
“Ok, yea, let’s do Glacier, too.”
“I also want to spend two or three days fishing in Yellowstone National Park…”
“In September?...it's the high season. Too many damn people. Don’t you want to go back in October like we did last time? Well, shit, I have two weddings in October. Ok, we’ll try it, too. “
It’s like that.
An efficient logistician sits in front of Google Maps with a calendar and an itinerary to work out the details. Our planning takes place when we’re wrenching under a vehicle, driving to a river, or sitting at some seedy bar. In any case, we don’t write anything down. The preference is instead to have the exact same conversation 47 times in the six months preceding the trip's start date. By the time the journey happens we have a pretty solid understanding of what area we’ll be in on any given day, but we have no imposed accountability to stick to the original plan. We like it that way.
My grandfather was the opposite. He was an engineer. He liked lists and made plans. He stuck to them. My cousin has the packing lists and menus from our annual Tellico trip dating back to the early sixties. Over the years each list looks pretty much the same, give or take a few pairs of underwear or socks. Of course, the essentials are the fishing gear, gas cans, camp kitchen, and sportsman’s grill. The list is thorough, yet uncomplicated; a hallmark of any proficient outdoorsmen. Perhaps the best entry is in the dead middle of the page from the ‘02 list. It reads, “...flashlight & batt, pistol, glasses, teeth…”
Teeth.
It’s not just the idea of leaving the dentures at home that makes me chuckle. It’s the placement within the list. The teeth are line item 15 of 55; not important enough to be top 5, also not an afterthought he scribbled in at the last second.
No, I think he was up early one morning having a cup of joe, humming to himself while the joy of prepping for a fishing trip started to take hold. He was running through the mental list he’d scribbled out so many times before and something triggered him to write “teeth” down.
I tend to pack for a trip by envisioning where I’ll be and what I’ll be needing. For instance, I’ll pick up my sleeping bag and think, well, this thing is useless without a sleeping pad and a tent. When I’m laying there I’ll probably benefit from a headlamp, too. So then I gather all four items and toss them in the pile. For cooking it’s similar. I’ll gaze at all the food on the counter and do a mental checklist of the things I need to turn it from cooler-fare into fine cuisine. Alright, for the coffee I’ll need the percolator, propane, lighter, and a coffee cup. For these fajitas I’ll need the cast iron, aluminum foil, salt & pepper, and tongs. And so on.
The gist is that I tend to surround myself with all my gear and engage in a pseudo-meditative state of realizing my needs. Maybe Grandpa did the same. Maybe he was ticking off items on his mental checklist and whispering to himself, “...flashlight & batt, pistol, glasses…,” and in his excitement was lost in a streamside reverie. The chatter of the river. The luminescent green canopy. A quick underhand toss placing a rooster tail perfectly along a swirling seam line. All the while taking small sips of coffee and sucking his teeth.
Hm, he thought. Teeth.
My approach to packing in the early season is always a bit ridiculous. I have trunks, garages, and closest full of trinkets that have caught my fancy over the years: headlamp light diffusers, trekking poles that slide, trekking poles that snap, chairs that fold up to the size of a Nalgene, tiny stoves, big stoves, and waterproof covers to cover items that are already waterproof themselves. You get the point. There are many one-use wonders in the galaxy of outdoors marketing. I’m a sucker for quite a few of them.
By mid-to-late camping season I have the packing process down. I’ve whittled the excess of gadgets, creature comfort items, and redundant accessories that I’ve acquired over the years. I don’t need to spend hours debating on what is going in my vehicle. Most of it is strewn around the garage in the place I left it to dry out a few days prior. The frivolities made their way back to storage months ago. I simply gather everything that’s around my truck, throw it in the bed, gaze at it, and ask myself, Can I eat? Can I sleep? Can I fish?
No matter whether you’re a list maker, a visioneer, or a “grab everything you see in the closet and hope for the best” packer, there is a moment we all have in common. It’s the commitment of slamming the tailgate, closing the hatch, or shutting the door, followed promptly by the quip, “Alrighty, I think that’s everything.”
It’s a statement, an agreement between outdoors partners that means there will be no further discussion about what we may or may not need. What it implies is, Let’s get the hell on the road before we think of something else.
The caveat, of course, is that an hour or so down the road one of you remembers what was left behind.
A quick stop at a smalltown discount outfitter or gas station turns into a three-quarter hour detour. This is why I have so many sub-par camping trinkets. Those little pit stop inconveniences turn into landmark memories in the years to come. You’ll be lost in a seemingly unfamiliar mountain road or prairie that connects one fishing spot to another, then look up and see a familiar sign.
“Hey, lookee there. Remember last time we came through here and you forgot your [fill in the blank]. Man, you were pissed.”
You chuckle, then start running through a mental checklist to make sure that’s not still the case.
Cowboy Coffee
Gulls calling in the distance. A heavy breeze entering the room through rattling screen windows. The smell of the sea. A slight rind of salt covering everything. Argue about whether there is a better way to wake up and you’ll find me stone deaf.
Our family beach house sold well before I reached double digits in age, but I remember those mornings distinctly. The front porch faced east toward the shoreline. The bedroom my cousin and I shared was knotted pine, floor to ceiling. It glowed in the mornings as the sun tried to push past the blinds, yet there was enough darkness to keep me snoozing past sunrise. That was back when I could sleep through the night.
Always the last one to wake up, I’d reluctantly peel my eyes open and yawn. Toes curling under the sheets, I’d notice the grit of Carolina sand spread everywhere in the bed. I’d sit up and realize that I was missing out. Daniel had woken up long before and joined the adults in the kitchen. I could hear faint murmurs and laughing spells as my dad, my aunts and uncles, grandparents, and a family friend of two welcomed the day at the kitchen table.
I’d slink out of bed hoping I wasn’t too late. The table, already cleared of plates and food, would be littered with half drunk cups of coffee, most smeared with lipstick. There may be a few sequined cigarette cases laying next to a half eaten piece of pie. I wasn’t worried about food, though. Granny always saved me a plate or cooked up something special. No, it was the brown stuff I was after.
They’d say, “Gu’mornin’! D’ja sleep good?” Then a hair tussle and a kiss on the cheek. And I’d say, “Yes, ma’am! Can I have some cowboy coffee?” They’d’ sneak a glance over to my dad. He’d give a half smile and a nod. Someone would grab a cup and start filling.
You might be asking yourself, who in their right mind would give a six-year-old coffee? Well, it wasn’t really coffee, per say. It was 95% milk, enough sugar to put a Starbucks concoction to shame, and just a splash of the brown stuff. Enough to give it a light toffee hue. It was an affirmation that I was loved; that I was family. It was a model to think on--that adulthood was hard but had it’s rewards.
As I entered the room each morning I could tell a conversation ended upon my appearance. Something heavier preceded me. The stories of the Bob So-And-So’s that had recently died. The stories of my grandfather’s father paving the first road out to this beach house using leftover shingles, back before there were any other rooftops visible from the porch. A recounting of life and reconciliation of what it all means.The sea will do that to a heart. A little fart like me walking into the kitchen and asking for a cup of cowboy coffee will put an end to that sort of talk. There’s only so much explaining one wants to do before lunch.
Every now and then I’d sneak a sip of the full strength. My aunts drank it black. Adulthood tasted bad.
Cowboy coffee was the preface to a life narrative; a sort of preamble that says there are a mix of flavors to be had. It can be sweet, but the bitter core of existence is quite shocking unless you learn to ease into it. Cowboy coffee came and went throughout the years. I can only remember it being allowed twice when I was back home in Georgia; once in a cup with a heart shaped handle, and once in a muted moss green cup covered in stenciled elephants. Years later I glanced down at that same green cup and realized all those piles of pachyderms and tangles of curious trunks were more than artistic expression. The elephants were having an orgy. Same cup, different story. That’s growing up, I guess.
My transition out of cowboy coffee was to camp coffee, in the hills of Tennessee next to North River. I was still the last one to rise. I hadn’t learned to appreciate the chill of a mountain morning yet. I’d lay in my sleeping bag listening to the crunching gravel sound of men moving about camp; to the early hiss and poof of the lantern being lit and the scorching drone of a Coleman stove doing it’s work to heat up the percolator. As the water roils and eventually boils, the percolator dances back and forth on the uneven steel grates. It creates a metallic melody to beckon in the morning. This sound is one of the great comforts of my life.
There isn’t much talking done at this time of day. Each knows their job and duty in getting the camp moving. Eventually the clattering of wood and utensils dies down. The stove is turned off. All that’s left are more steps on gravel and the crackle of morning fire. I can hear someone settle into a chair and lean over to warm their hands. I can hear someone walk down toward the stream. Someone farts. I giggle and go back to sleep.
Hours later…“Jonathan, come on out, son. Breakfast is ready.”
I’m sweating in my sleeping bag. The day has gotten on. The sun is out and it’s burning a hole through the tent. I emerge and see that the fire is almost out. There are a few charred scraps of paper plates and a tangle of wilted plastic fork tips on the edge of the pit. I grab the last of the bacon and eggs, maybe a biscuit.
“There’s some coffee left if you want some.”
I could be 9 or 11. Age is blurry when you’re in the woods. As a child, you think you’re a man. As a man, you revel in simplicities and memories of childhood. They merge as one.
I am holding a small styrofoam cup in my left and a nearly empty percolator in my right.
“How much should I put in?”
My dad looks over and shrugs, “However much you want.”
And this is where I have to start making choices. I know how the men take it--mostly coffee, a splash of cream and a little sugar. It’s terrible, but if I pour too little of the brown stuff then I’m still a child sipping his cowboy coffee by the fire. I gamble and try some blend in the middle. It’s terrible. I take a few sips off the top and frown. The cup doesn’t fit in my chair’s cup holder, so I stare at it and swirl slowly until the drink goes cold. The men are standing around stoically now, not impatient, but with that very specific countenance that says, alright, we’re done here, it’s time to go fishing.
My dad walks over to the firepit and snuffs out the last flame. He glances over to my cup, then up at me.
“No good, huh?”
I sneer and shrug my shoulders.
“Dump it out. Let’s go catch some trout.”
So I do. No judgement. I close the door to his Cherokee and he cranks the engine. He hands me an ice cold Dr. Pepper and gives me a wink. We go fishing.
Proportions are important in life. Ultimate satisfaction is that moment when you have a piping cup of perfectly balanced coffee in your hand, but you’re not sure how it got there. You know you made it. You know you poured it. You didn’t consciously make an effort.
But I had barely begun that journey. I didn’t know how a percolator worked yet. I didn’t know the curious little device circulated water up a spout and continuously cycled it through the grounds. I didn’t know coffee grounds came in different sizes or qualities. Most importantly, I didn’t know that by waking up as late as I did I was only left with the dregs, the muddy stew at the bottom of the pot caused by grounds slipping through the porous basket above countless times while I slept the day away. No matter what blend of coffee, cream, and sugar I chose, my coffee would still taste like an old boot. I didn’t know yet that a man can learn to appreciate the taste of an old boot.
Caffeine addiction didn’t come until much later, when a teenage version of myself tried their best to look thoughtful journaling at coffee shops. Five dollars a day on gourmet coffee was a substantial chunk of my net income, but I experimented as frequently as possible with things like double shots of syrup and zebra striped mochaccinos. I’m not necessarily proud of that. I’m not ashamed, either.
Somewhere in the middle of all that self-discovery I found myself sitting indian style in a little glade about a hundred yards upstream of Jack’s River Falls, in the north Georgia mountains. It was my first backpacking trip. We picked the dead of winter when reports said the temps would drop into the negative digits. They did, and I spent the night debating the value of adventure over death. As the mercury rose to roughly five degrees on that first morning, I sat by our fledgling fire with my blue coffee cup and sipped my first taste of luxurious, silky, sweet black coffee. To save weight I had left the accoutrements at home. It was the first time I’d ever enjoyed coffee in its basic form. It was a good cup. It was good to be alive.
To be honest, it was just piping hot Folgers instant coffee that tasted like an old boot, but it was what my soul needed to usher in the day. I’d found space to appreciate the utility of the drink rather than just the taste. Nearly freezing to death will do that to a heart.
I surveyed the array of miniature titanium this-and-that’s I had acquired to do all my cooking and eating with. It was comforting to know I had spent three to four hundred dollars on lightweight cookware to heat up my oatmeal. That’s before I realized the Quakers Oatmeal single packs were wax-lined and held water on their own. No dish ware necessary.
To my right, Joe had mounted a full-size stole-from-his-mamas-kitchen frying pan atop a Coleman burner. He was frying eggs, mountain bread, and stirring some grits on the side. He brought butter. After finishing my oatmeal I still had a half cup of coffee left.
“Do you want some cream and sugar?,” Joe asked.
I nodded. He tossed me a stuff sack filled with spices, sweet-n-low, sugar in the raw, and pure cane sugar. There was a mini bottle of flavored creamer. I picked my proportions and fixed up my coffee. It was better. Then he grabbed my small titanium bowl and dumped in some grits, eggs, and topped it with a slice of buttered bread.
The day before, as we hiked in, I watched that frying pan swing back and forth on his backpack thinking, This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. I had done all the research. I had a working memory of all the weights and specs of that season’s primo backpacking gear. This guy is carrying 20lbs more than he needs to. But as I sat there with my coffee rejoicing in the simplicities of survival, I couldn’t help but think that my own methodology might need some tweaking.
In my late 20s I did have a spurt where I convinced myself I liked my coffee black. That lasted until the moment a friend topped off my cup and added creamer unknowingly. I took a sip and thought, this is better. That’s how it is now; straight coffee and a splash of cream. Sugar is a luxury I save for the woods.
Today I sit here in my robe with a lukewarm cup watching a Colorado sunrise. Snow is on the ground. It’s the end of February, technically still high winter in the Rockies, but with spring only a month away I know alpine camping season is right around the corner. It can’t come soon enough, and I am noodling out a few ideas on how I can make my coffee more efficiently. Percolators don’t work as well at elevation.
Just a year ago when Joe still lived with me, we’d wake up early on the weekends and wordlessly shuffle around the kitchen attending to our own coffee production methods. He uses an old electric percolator, I, an overly complicated pour-over method. I buy small batch local stuff. He loves his Folgers. When the two aromas mix it smells like a barnyard. After the brews finish we’d bundle up in down jackets and fingerless wool gloves, shuffle to the back door, and step out into the sub-freezing air to enjoy the morning. There’s something about numb fingers and hot breath over a steaming cup of coffee that draws an instant connection to the mountains, the woods, a crackling fire. Each sip induces a reverie. The memories of mornings spent atop cliffs or under the bows of rustling trees are always accompanied by something hot clenched between my gloved fingers. The coffee cools quickly in that kind of weather, but I can never wait long enough. I always burn my tongue. I will suffer the cold for that connection any day.
Mountain pursuits change. Gear is upgraded. Sleeping on the ground gets more difficult each year. I’ve spent a lot of mornings now convincing myself to unzip the sleeping bag and stick that first leg out into the cold. Often I think the whole reason I camp is to chase the surge of dopamine I get when I flick a lighter and induce a small explosion under the percolator. A whole lifestyle can be boiled down to a single brief moment of joy. The first sip of coffee on a cold mountain morning will do that to a heart.
There’s Magic in the Hills, Ya’ll
Gods reside atop the highest peaks. Zeus reigned from Mt Olympus. Meru and its five spires are the center of the spiritual universe in the East. Moses traveled up Mt Sinai to meet God, then returned with the ten commandments.
Further down the mountain mythical beasts of all kinds are known to roam: the bigfoot and the yeti, the mothman, witches, coonbears, and the misted spirits of Appalachia. Mountain lore and local flavor color these characters differently. The witness accounts are too numerous to deny, yet photographic evidence is sparse and muddled. I’ll say this—there’s magic in the hills, ya’ll. I can prove it.
This is a true story.
March 16th, 2019 landed on a Saturday. This is significant for two reasons. First, St. Patrick’s Day was on Sunday. The good people of Denver never waste an opportunity for parades or hungover brunches. In order to facilitate the latter, our annual St. Paddy’s Day extravaganza was held a day early. Second, I was two weeks into catching trout on the fly. I snagged my first brown on March 2. The following weekend I doubled my number and caught two more. After three trout I was no longer just obsessed, I was manic. Can I get four in a day? National holiday, be damned—I’m going fishing.
Mckenzie wistfully refers to that spring as when, “we just kind of lost Jonathan for a while.” Friday after work I’d come home, rig up my rods, make some tuna salad, pack the cooler, eat, and then get to bed as early as I could. I’d wake up at 4:30 or five in the morning and head toward the stream. Sunday I’d repeat. Weekdays included working, driving home, then researching knots or sight fishing or rod action or whatever. And so on.
But sometimes you have to consider others, too. Though our friend group ran deep and was protective enough, the thought of my significant other bopping around our grungy little corner of South Broadway amongst the shenanigans and revelry was somewhat unsettling. She will be irritated at me for saying that. Had I mentioned the same to her back then, she’d have replied, “Go fishing, I don’t need no man!”
And she’s right. She once broke the jaw of a guy who deserved it.
But I also like a good green beer, so I applied Solomon’s logic and sawed the day in half. Surely I could pull off an early rise, have a productive day on the river, and be back in the city in time to either celebrate my catch or sink into the drunkard binging that sometimes happens on the days you get skunked. Win-win.
In most public facing articles about fishing the author does everything they can to obfuscate their location. We all want a good fishing buddy or two on the river with us, but by god, that’s it. Finger nails have to be coming out of their sockets in order for a good fishing location to get disclosed. I won’t be selective on information here, though. One reason is that Deckers is no secret. If I’m honest it’s my least favorite place to fish in the front range. The main motive I have to mention it by name is because I want to know what being is responsible for what I’m about to tell you. I want to document where I was, when I was, and what happened to me in the off chance someone reads this, reposts it, and lets the internet do its trick. I firmly believe the mythical beasts I mentioned earlier are shapeshifters. That is to say...maybe human during the day and scary-me-doodle at night, or vice-versa. Either way, if they take a human form it means they surely have a cell phone, internet, and may eventually be in a position to reach out to me later.
As I say, there’s magic in the hills, ya’ll. Here’s what happened that day…
I was standing ankle deep in the South Platte River around 7am. This is the famed gold medal stretch of Deckers at a very obvious hole where Brush Creek meets the Platte, about two major river bends before you get to the town proper (a restaurant, a liquor shop, a fly shop). If you’re not at this particular fishing hole early it will be occupied by the time the sun comes up.
For two straight seasons every time I drove past that stretch the same guy would be there. His name is Typewriter Richard. Nice guy, but no joke, if I noticed his SUV at 8:30 in the morning then I’d surely also see it on the way back out at 4pm parked in the same spot. He’d be standing there in the same run, wearing his Russian hat, roll casting a standard rocky mountain nymph rig over and over again. He’d start at the tail of the run, work through the pool, finish at the head, then ride the carriage return back to the tail, repeat. Typewriter Richard.
So there I am standing in the run where I caught my first fish a few weeks earlier. The sun just started tipping the peaks to the east. The river glowed. It steamed as the sun’s rays hit the icy flows before me.
Serene is what it was; also very cold, somewhere in the teens. Seeing as how I was first in line for a prime fishing hole and Typewriter Richard wasn’t anywhere in sight, I focused on my hot coffee for a few minutes. A bald eagle flew twenty feet in front of me and a muskrat dove into a pool across the currents. My coffee went cold. It was time to fish.
I always have a wee bit of anxiety during the first hour of fishing. In terms of hooking up with the first fish of the day, like, how long is it going to take? Especially in the early days you can’t help but think, Am I doing this right? And that can be a problem, because instead of being mentally ready to catch a fish you’re more focused on whether or not you can catch a fish, which is thoroughly deflating.
So, again, it was time to fish. I can’t remember for how long, but after a handful of drifts and sequential Am I doing this right?s, I was stopped mid-sentence. My god, this rainbow was huge.
He fought like a monster; first by taking short five to ten foot runs, then bulldogging to the bottom, then running the other direction, repeat. This was my first freshwater fish fight and I was freaking out. I took a step forward to get a better angle on mini-Moby Dick, then somehow ended up elbow deep in the South Platte instead of ankle deep. I have no idea how I fell. Tripped on a stump, maybe? Stepped into a hole? Ice? No clue, but I was on my side in 16 inches of ice water and my rod was bent sideways between me and a boulder. The tip of the rod is going nuts because the damn trout is still hooked. So, up I stand. The fight is on.
He runs. I reel. He’s getting closer. At four feet away I get all jittery because this nonsense has gone on way too long, so I step forward to get into netting territory. This time I step into a hole and fall the other direction. Now my right side is in the water and my rod is totally submerged. A LOT of water has splashed up on the inside of my sunglasses. I’m blind. I can’t see much other than haze and the prismatic effect of sunlight refracting through water droplets, but no shit, this fish is still hooked. The fight is on.
Back on my feet, I’m focused. I’ve regained tension on the line and have this goliath’s head breaching the surface. His mouth agape, the hook jaw is spread and he’s rolling like an alligator. He is tiring. He’s close now.
I triumphantly engage in the fly-fisherman’s bow, where the legs squat just slightly and the knees are pointing away from each other. The rod arm is held back as far as it can go, while the rod is bent in a perfect arch, like a rainbow leading toward the pot-o-gold reward that is sliding slowly toward the net.
The fish is a foot from my net, then inches. His head slides over the rim of the wooden frame. Simultaneously the size 20 blood midge pops out of his lip and the released tension of the line sends me lurching backwards, one more time, into the South Platte river. I’m only now realizing that my non-waterproof hip pack is totally submerged and contains my dslr camera, my lunch, and my phone. My fish is gone and my pride is water-logged. What luck.
This was like the time Amber broke up with me in the sixth grade. Total heartbreaker. Surely this can’t happen to me. This was the type of grief I hadn’t learned to deal with yet. The kind that makes you stare at nothing for a while with an ambient ringing that you can’t hear, but you can feel sure enough, until you finally look up and think, How long have I been here?
That was the first fish I lost that day. Fifteen minutes later I got another one on the line; same place, smaller fish. My eyes were wide with excitement at the chance of redemption, but this one popped off the hook after a few head shakes. Then there was a long lull with no action.
I moved up to the head of the run where a three foot wide chute runs next to a boulder. It spills over some rocks to form a decent pool bookended by some back-flowing eddies that are tough to get a good drift through. If you cast in the middle and get the flies deep, there are big fish to be had. I did just that, and sure enough I hooked one. I never saw it. It had to be a rainbow because this thing peeled 40 feet of line from my reel in a few seconds. I made an attempt to slow it down with my line hand, but finesse wasn’t a learned skill yet. The line snapped and shot back at me, a tangled mess of wind knots and frayed ambition.
Three fish lost. This is where things get interesting. Pay attention to the specifics.
I’m pissed, just to the point of shaking. I’m waist deep and have a tangled disaster at the end of my line. I turn and walk out roughly twelve feet to a hedge of bank-side scrub brush that is a little taller than me. It’s persistent along the area where I’m fishing. There’s no good way to access the road above without walking a good twenty or thirty feet in either direction to find the footpath. I set my rod on the ground and lean it against the brush so I can change out all the components in my leader, tippet, and flies. This takes about fifteen minutes, during which time my back is facing the river. I can see clearly in all directions. No cars are passing by.
Once re-rigging is complete I turn and march with intent back to the stream. Mentally refreshed, I’ve decided I can’t let the morning’s misfortune dictate the remainder of my day. The sun had almost reached mid-sky. Time was short. I needed a change in luck. Fishing from the bank seemed too noncommittal. I needed to be in the river to get back into the good graces of the trout. Mid-thigh felt far enough, about eight feet in, a perfect casting distance to the tail of the run.
I cast, drift, and set. There’s a nice little she-brown on the end of my line who comes to net without much of a fuss. I released her at 11:39am.
I feel better. I couldn’t very well walk into a St. Patrick’s Day celebration and answer, “No Luck,” when someone asks if I caught anything that morning. “I got one,” followed by a wink is a much better response, especially with a green beer in your hand. My luck had changed.
I square back up in the river and start to make sequential drifts. Twenty four minutes later I have another fish on the line, but the fly breaks off. Silent again, I’m wondering whether or not I should just start to head back. Clearly short-lived, my luck has run out.
In those days I tethered my landing net to a hip pack with a short bungee cord. It stayed tucked between my lumbar and waistband most of the time, but on occasion my arm would knock it out during a cast and the net would float in the current below me. When I’m focused on fishing it may float there unnoticed for 30 minutes before I look back and return it to my side.
But right now my net isn’t just floating in the river downstream of me. It’s dragging. Black mesh is swirling back and forth and is pulled under sporadically by something in the bucket of the net. I tugged the cord in and grabbed the handle. A stick, maybe?
No friends, it’s a beer.
I have run through this countless times in my head. My net was tucked in at my side while I was re-rigging. Plus, I was far enough on to the bank to have noticed dead weight dragging in the sand behind me. I faced the road and had a clear view of everything to my front and sides. I walked into the river and remained eight to ten feet out in hip deep water for roughly 30 minutes. When an angler fishes a long run in a thin section of river they don’t stand in the fast current. They stand in the medium to slow water and fish the seam next to the fast current. Effectively this means a stray upstream beer could not have plunked into the water, swirled in behind me, and washed over into the rim of my net. No, from where I was standing the beer would have bobbed haplessly and slowly to my position. My eyes were upstream the whole time. The water inlet from the chute I described earlier is only a few feet wide. I would have seen it. This beer did not come from the water above.
Five feet below me a protruding rock sat dry and inviting. There in the South Platte it served as my barstool. Water rushed over my knees and my feet swirled aimlessly in the current. My rod lay across my lap. Hunched over and grinning I cracked the beer, took a sip, then held it high in salute and appreciation. I scanned the banks, the brush, and the bushes for a wave or acknowledgement of any kind. Emptiness called back. The meandering country road above was silent. It was just me and the fish and the bald eagles.
I took the picture above as proof that on March 16th, 2019 at 12:06pm a stream side Leprechaun did, in fact, take pity on a poor, dejected, Scotch-Irish lad who thought his luck had run out. The little man tossed in a brew and some luck to brighten the day. Magic is what it was. I’m an observant wretch; there is no other explanation. The beer was not there when I entered the water. The beer did not wash into my net. It was placed gingerly and discreetly by a rascal that is wily, stealthy, and mischievous.
We all like to believe there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I can’t speak to that. I didn’t land any rainbows that day. I can attest that there’s at least one good beer at the end of a brown trout. I gulped down the suds and poured the last sip back into the river beside me. It felt appropriate.
Twelve minutes later I landed another brown. Admiring my catch, I quickly noticed the pitted flesh on his side—talon marks, the result of what was surely a horrendous escape from my bald eagle friend. It made me realize I wasn’t the only one with a bit of luck. We both had our lives and the river. I watched him dart back to the depths, then turned and made my way home.
Winter Rorschach
There are two things I like to ignore when I go to the river: fishing reports and weather reports.
Fishing reports tell me what kind of day I’m going to have before I have it. They’re always wrong.
Weather reports tell me what kind of day I’m going to have before I have it. They’re not always wrong.
As it goes, it was a tough day fishing in early winter, just after Christmas 2019…
The gauge in my truck shows negative eight Fahrenheit as I arrive. The canyon is empty despite being one of Colorado’s most popular tailwaters. The other fisherfolk must not have ignored the weather report. Just a few casts into the morning my guides are freezing up. I try to pull some more line off the reel, but it’s frozen solid. Ten minutes in I land a rainbow, my only trout in hand that day.
I last another seven hours on the river. At two points I nearly scream out in pain. I’m forgetting to cycle my hands in and out of my pockets where I keep my hand warmers. My fingers have gone completely numb. As I revive my digits the needles start to manifest, then itching and searing pain. I can’t tell whether my fingers are in boiling water or about to drop off from frostbite. This is a cold hell.
A while later I’m by a dreamy pool; one with a dark trench formed by the hydraulic pressures of the boulder above it. Easing into position, I take a step forward and become unstuck. For a moment I am floating, but gravity takes back over. My feet are wheeling in the air as my left shoulder comes down hard on the ice. That carpet of white I saw is a wintery façade. The blue ice beneath is now exposed and I’m laying there in the middle of a streamside rorschach pattern, arms and legs splayed like a crash test dummy. Thankfully my rod isn’t broken. I’m sure the fishing hole is ruined, but I’m already here.
A few casts can’t hurt.
I sling the rig, make a drift, and catch my point fly on a sheet of ice at the edge of the bank. The water is too deep for a wade retrieve. Making it to the edge of the slippery slab is questionable. I'm reluctant to risk the blue ice again. It’s only about six feet away from me, but I decide to break off my fly. My arm still hurts.
This is winter fly fishing.
It’s an experiment in chance, tenacity, and skill. Those who venture into a river with sub-freezing temperatures have the tenacity. It’s an innate drive. I won’t make blanket statements about our motivations or our psyche.
For a new angler winter is fly fishing purgatory. Chance and skill are the respective angels and demons that determine the day's fate. Are the fish feeding? Am I doing this right? Cover more water, or wait on one of these fish to get hungry? When the rod bending tactics from fall yield nothing more than a frozen line and numb toes, self doubt becomes your cold companion.
Why do we fish on days like this? There is no answer. We can only say what happened.
Earlier that morning I stood roughly twelve feet below my first target for the day. Two runs converge in front of a small boulder, then roll around the sides and form a holding pool with a strong back current. It’s about four feet wide and two feet deep, perfectly clear with moderate structure. It’s the local tailwater trout lounge. I can see at least ten rainbows. They’re holding in what looks like a defensive formation. Each fish is angled so the troupe has all views covered. They’re facing downstream, looking straight at me.
Great. No chance at catching these.
I’m telling myself I was careless. I should have known better. The hole looked great from the bank. I should have started another fifteen feet downriver, gotten low, and made an angled upstream cast into the small seam that runs to the left of the boulder. My rig would have caught the inward sweeping current and drifted in front of them, I’d be undetected.
Now I’m noticing even the shallow water next to me has fish in it. How did I not see them on the way in? To my right, not six feet away, a silvery-blue shape is holding mid-column and perpendicular to the river flow, in a pocket behind a submerged boulder. It’s another fish looking straight at me.
A few casts can’t hurt.
I might as well get some practice swings in knowing there are fish around. The rig plops into the current just to the left of the boulder. It swings through the pool and across the cone of vision for the whole gang. Not one trout is buying it. Come back when you’ve had more practice, sucka.
I’m annoyed at myself and these fish. The rig rolls through the water like the holy man at a conference for blind atheists. No looks. No interest.
The indicator and trailing train of nymphs is nearly back to my position, swinging slightly out of seam. I’m about to pick up the line to recast when the silvery-blue shape to my right makes a courteous fin flip out of his lie and casually eats the nymph at the end of the line, three feet away and looking directly into my eyes. Well, maybe not right into my eyes. But he knew I was there. Fish in hand.
That’s the thing about winter fly fishing. It’s unpredictable. Trout behavior is sporadic and irregular. Sure, the eaters are most likely to be in deep slow water trying to conserve energy. Can you count on it? No.
Take an already frustrating hobby, remove any notion of simplicity, kick physical dexterity out of the window, and then question your own motivations.
Truth be told, only two simple self realizations keep me out there in these conditions:
There are more fish to catch
There is more to learn
Don’t get me wrong, I read fishing reports and weather reports before I go fishing. Actually, I read them everyday. On Mondays I do a thorough review of at least 15 rivers within a four hour drive of my house; as if I don’t have a Monday through Friday office job. Or maybe it’s just in case the guy at the gas station inquires as to the water levels on the Blue River. Be prepared.
I read the reports, but I ignore the implications they may have on where to fish and how to approach the day. There is nothing better than walking out into the water with the expectation that something amazing could happen. A fish may just swim up and shake your hand.
Rocks to Rivers
I read an article this week about a guide who took a personal float day and managed to land a record breaking Snake River cutthroat measuring in at 31 inches. A 30 inch or bigger trout is typically said to be a product of 10,000 casts. In his case, the guide mentioned it was more like 10 million. Conditions were hot and it was a miserably slow float. I imagine self doubt and inevitability were sinking in, then, WHAM!--the trophy strikes. I bet it was spectacular.
That got me thinking about my first trout on the fly. It was a cartoonish little brown in the 10 - 12” inch range. It had a slightly blue iridescent gill plate and an array of widely spaced spots that extended all the way down to its tail.
Truth is, when I finally slid that average sized Salmo trutta into my net, I cried.
Here it is.
I wasn’t exactly bawling beside the stream that morning, but I was choked up, eyes moist, mouth pinched at the sides. I straightened up, muttered a few honest prayers of thankfulness to the river gods, and snapped the picture above. I was elated, not just because of my close encounter with an honest-to-God Colorado brown trout, but because months of pain, depression, anxiety, and effort had finally culminated in success. Dejection turned to relief, and I was on a new path.
I had better back up a bit.
I don’t remember catching my first trout. It was surely a rainbow stocker I snagged with a rooster tail on the banks of the Tellico River in eastern Tennessee. An improbable stroke of luck, at best I reckon my 1/8oz spinner finally dodged enough tree branches and river weeds to entice a fish. I’m sure I was giddy. In my family catching a trout out of the Tellico is a right of passage. It’s manhood. No doubt my dad was coaching me and beaming with pride, “That’a boy! Keep his head upstream...reel ‘em in steady...let ‘em run if he wants.”
Back then I never caught many fish, but my heroes did. My dad and my older cousin competed to see who would “limit out” each day. My grandfather ran camp and chuckled at them. He was the wise old sage that knew all the secrets of the stream. Our fishing trips I’m sure are much alike those of other anglers. We say we go to fish, but in truth we are chasing the lore of our family traditions, old and new. The trout is the symbol of that journey.
The early days. Dad and Daniel.
I was most likely back at camp chugging Dr. Pepper and plowing through a bag of gummy worms. If I caught one fish I considered my job met for the week.
While these finicky fish have remained the embodiment of our kinsfolk, trout fishing wasn’t always a major focus (to me). Growing up I dabbled in a bit of everything; art, photography, athletics, politics and so forth. I’ve always been a hobbyist. Whatever the schtick, I immerse myself in it and commit. Sophomore year of college I found rock climbing, which turned into an obsession for nearly fifteen years. I don’t think I ever came close to qualifying as a dirtbag. I never quit my job to pilgrimage to the Yosemite Valley. I never spent a full season at the Red, kicking around at Miguel’s and soliciting beta to conquer The Motherlode. But, I did focus all my physical and mental goals in progressing in the practice of anti-gravity. Climbing was my identity; a constant across many stages of life.
It was December 18th, 2018. I was in prime shape. I was gliding through bouldery “V-hard” problems and sticking moves I considered above my ability. That night I breezed through a difficult crux and then cranked underhand on a good sized block. Only two easy moves to top out. My right hand was an inch from the final hold when something in my left arm snapped. I fell off the wall and landed on the crash pad below, dazed. Two weeks later I’m sitting in the DTC Surgery Center prepping to have my bicep reattached. During the procedure they also found my labrum was shredded. In the long term both would heal.
Recovery time is eight to nine months before any substantial physical activity is possible. Now, this is no Aron Ralston situation. I didn’t have to squander under a rock, drinking my own urine for five days before chopping off my arm and hiking out through the desert. I’m thankful for that. Climbing is inherently dangerous. People get hurt. I’m one of them.
That doesn’t mean my injury wasn’t life changing, though. My job requires me to be stationary. I’m in a chair for nearly nine hours a day during the week, and I cherish any time I have to be active. Take that away and I start fraying at the edges. Life post-surgery was hazy. I was doped up on oxycodone. I hated the meds and was disgusted at the notion I use any saved up PTO on such unjust circumstances, so I went back to work and did my best to adjust.
There was a lot of pain. It hurt to move. It hurt to sleep. It hurt to laugh. I was a faberge egg. The boredom was worse. Anxiety permeated my mental space. I smiled through the pain and told folks I was healing nicely, and yes, it’s a bummer but I’ll get through it. Only, I still wasn’t sure how. I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself. A few weeks later the sling and bandages came off. My arm was a mashed potato horror show. Still swollen and colored like fading sunset, my arm could barely support the weight of a cup of coffee.
The joy of losing my sling faded quickly. I had to find some way to fill the time outside my working hours. Mid-January I sat sulking in my unmade bed wearing an old flannel shirt, socks, and underwear. I sipped a lukewarm IPA and tried to keep my attention on another low grade sitcom marathon streaming on Netflix. The mind doesn’t have much time to process in those five seconds they give you between episodes. Regardless, a memory popped into my head. It was a conversation with my cousin Daniel from a few years before.
We sat around the fire pit at North River, our base camp when fishing the Tellico.
When the trip ended I wouldn’t be returning to Atlanta, but instead swing north toward St. Louis and then west to Denver. I was leaving the South for good. As such, I was muttering a sentimental thought here and there about how I hated to think I can’t just drive to Tennessee anymore, and I wonder what things’ll be like next time we can all get back here again, and of course I’ll always make the trip back to snag a few more trout by the lip.
“Aw, well hell man, where you’re going is pretty much trout Mecca.”
“Huh?”
He took a drag of a Marlboro and swigged a Bud Light, “Shoot, there’s more good water out there than you can ever fish. Big boys, too. I’ve seen pictures of some fuckin’ huge trout. Not like the stockers here. Fly fishing is the big thing out there.”
“Huh.”
I filed that convo in the “good to know” folder of my brain. I knew my dad and grandfather used fly rods sometime way back, but I’d never seen it. We always used spin gear on the Tellico. If they didn’t fly fish I didn’t imagine there’s any reason I would need to, either. After that trip I joked a few times about how I should learn to fly fish so that I could get a head start on my retirement hobby.
It came much sooner than I expected.
I never finished my IPA. The brew was full-on hot, sitting by the fireplace, when I closed my laptop at 3 a.m., eyes bleary from five or six hours of googling. My search history showed pages with titles like, “Fly fishing 101”, “What is tippet?”, “Do fish bite in the wintertime?”, “What do I need to start fly fishing?”, and so on. The next day I found a guy on Craigslist who sold me two rods, two reels, a mesh vest, two spools of tippet, about 70 flies, some random tools, bobbers, nail clippers, and fly floatant, all for 75 bucks. The lot of gear smelled like pot, but it seemed in decent shape. I found boots and waders a few days later; used Simms gear with enough life left for a season or two. The previous owner was a little shorter than me and two times rounder. As a wind sock they could power a small sailboat. If I were to fall in the river and these things filled up with water, I’d be done for. Kaput. Like the Kraken was dragging me to a watery grave by my ankles. But they were the right price and I was on a budget.
January 20th, 2019 was my first day fly fishing. It was a balmy thirty-something degrees with a foot of snow on the ground. I spent the day using a thingamabobber and split shot rig like a rodeo lasso. I fashioned a crude dry fly leader and whipped it across the water like Indiana Jones. The idea of a dead drift hadn’t come up in my google searches yet. Actually, there was no drift at all. I plunked the flies in the water and immediately snatched them out. That’s how it’s done, right? I caught zero trout. Determined, I kept it up. I did more research and found Tom Rosenbauer’s podcast. Saturdays and Sundays were always the same; up at 5 a.m., streamside by 7:30, fish ‘til dark. I rounded out January and fished straight through February this way. No trout. I listened to a lot of Alan Jackson.
Day 1 on the fly.
Zero fish. Side arm casting. Waders tied in the back like a ponytail.
Winters in Colorado give you roughly nine hours of daylight. If we assume I fished hard on every trip, which I did, that totals to about 90 hours of me standing in waist deep water during the dead of a Colorado winter, waving a nine foot stick around and having nothing to show for it. Each day I ate a mound of tuna salad and drank a lot of beer. I chain smoked Parliaments to keep my fingers busy, each cloud of smoke a reverie to warmer times. I will write about the cold purgatory of winter fly fishing elsewhere. What I will say here is that hell is hot and often it seems like the more favorable option.
That finally brings us to March 2, 2019, when an unsuspecting spring trout was hungry enough to eat a size 22 midge right next to my feet. The drift was nearly at its end. My leader paused just so, like the Matrix glitched and respawned a fresh set of fish right there in my cold little run on the South Platte. I was lucky the eat came only three feet away. An unfamiliar jiggle at the end of the hookset meant I was, in fact, finally catching, not just fishing. I was frantic and likely would have bungled the whole thing had I fought the fish longer than fifteen seconds. But that was all the time it took.
An honest-to-god Colorado brown trout.
And that’s all the time it took me to transition, in spirit, to a level of acceptance I’d been fighting since I got hurt. The anxiety and depression I’d been suppressing wasn’t rooted in my arm healing. It was underpinned by the feeling that I was a sellout. I knew that even though my arm would get better, I had fundamentally changed. Years earlier I’d broken my ankle at the climbing gym. I’ve never walked the same since. Now I’d given an arm and shoulder to the sport. The thought I kept having and didn’t want to say to anyone was, “If I’m honest, I really don’t think climbing is worth it anymore. I’m tired of getting hurt”. For me that’s an identity shed and a life narrative lost.
But let’s not forget that at this moment I have my first brown in hand, who is terrified, peering up at a bearded buffoon who is beaming ear to ear, not because he caught a fish, but because he now has a purpose. Chasing trout.
I can’t say whether the journey began when I was a youngin’, slinging lures in east Tennessee, or if it was in the recovery room after my surgery. I once read that you should never assume you know enough to write about why something happened. Only write what happened. Well, I never climbed outside again. My wanderings now lead me toward creeks, rivers, and alpine lakes. And the trout continues as the symbol of growth.