Read Online All Fishermen Are Liars by John Gierach - Free Book Online
Authors: John Gierach
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the river as Roy points out, in excruciating detail, how insect drift lines, currents and holding water came together into specific feeding lanes, with special emphasis on the quiet, bank-hugging seams you could easily miss.
This is knowledge accumulated over decades spent watching more and fishing less, and although I’ve fished this place myself off and on for thirty years, I’m learning things I hadn’t yet figured out. So I listen attentively, but it takes the better part of an hour, fish are feeding the whole time and I begin to get a little twitchy. I’m not a fish hog either, and I do aspire to the enlightened vantage point that would let me watch trout rise without wanting to cast to them. Still, my internal voice keeps saying, “Dude, get a hook in the water!”
When the tour is finally over, I wade into the shelving riffle above the Camp Pool and tie on a Morgan’s Midge. I’ve clipped the wings off all the ones I have left, but I’ve provisionally left the hackles on because, although I now know better, I still like all the little bells and whistles. I pick my fish and land eight or nine real nice ones before the hatch peters out. I don’t know if Roy is watching or not, but I suspect this is a number he’d consider appropriate.
6
NEW WATER
Like most of the trout streams in my life, I first saw this one from the window of a moving car. We were at right angles to each other at a narrow bridge, going our separate ways. It was just a sidelong glance: not much more than a fisherman at the wheel registering flowing water off his left shoulder.
Farther along, the road turned to roughly parallel the stream and there were longer glimpses through the trees and then full views. In this stretch it was mostly riffles with uniform cobble bottoms anddarker slots at the bends where fish would hold. I followed it downstream as it took on small tributaries with unremarkable names like Willow, Spruce, Moose, Buck, Bear, and Boulder creeks and grew from a creek itself to a good-sized stream and finally to a proper little river.
This was a stream I’d heard of in passing. It was said to be no more than ordinary cutthroat trout water, and with bigger, more fashionable rivers in the neighborhood, it wasn’t crowded. I remember seeing a few fly fishers, but they didn’t look like the fancy kind. Most wore ditch boots and no vests. One guy was wading wet in blue jeans. With a Stetson pulled down to shade his eyes, he looked like a sleepy cowpoke in a Charles Russell painting. But although this was a good time of year to fish and the stream was clear and at a nice flow, there were miles of open water and dozens of pull-offs where no cars were parked.
At a crossroads at the bottom of the canyon, I stopped to get gas and coffee and, being endlessly curious about the headwaters of trout streams, I traced the stream backward on a map. It flowed in from the west, where it crossed contour lines and gathered the shorter blue lines of a few smaller creeks. It ran under the road at the bridge, where I first saw it and then made a dogleg to the north against a ridge. Upstream of the bridge, the stream drained part of one mountain range; downstream it drained part of another. Altogether it was an area of something like thirteen hundred square miles. So many roads in the West are built along streams and rivers that you can begin to picture the place as wetter than it really is, but you get a clearer sense of the preciousness of water when you stop to think how little of it has run off that much land.
As with all mountain streams, this one seemed isolated high up in its own watershed. It took a conscious act of will to imagine it going on to join a larger river, which joined a larger one yet and so on for well over a thousand river miles to the coast. Before dams and head gates, you could have floated a pinecone all the way from here tothe Pacific. Once upon a time, steelhead migrated from the coast to within less than a hundred
This is knowledge accumulated over decades spent watching more and fishing less, and although I’ve fished this place myself off and on for thirty years, I’m learning things I hadn’t yet figured out. So I listen attentively, but it takes the better part of an hour, fish are feeding the whole time and I begin to get a little twitchy. I’m not a fish hog either, and I do aspire to the enlightened vantage point that would let me watch trout rise without wanting to cast to them. Still, my internal voice keeps saying, “Dude, get a hook in the water!”
When the tour is finally over, I wade into the shelving riffle above the Camp Pool and tie on a Morgan’s Midge. I’ve clipped the wings off all the ones I have left, but I’ve provisionally left the hackles on because, although I now know better, I still like all the little bells and whistles. I pick my fish and land eight or nine real nice ones before the hatch peters out. I don’t know if Roy is watching or not, but I suspect this is a number he’d consider appropriate.
6
NEW WATER
Like most of the trout streams in my life, I first saw this one from the window of a moving car. We were at right angles to each other at a narrow bridge, going our separate ways. It was just a sidelong glance: not much more than a fisherman at the wheel registering flowing water off his left shoulder.
Farther along, the road turned to roughly parallel the stream and there were longer glimpses through the trees and then full views. In this stretch it was mostly riffles with uniform cobble bottoms anddarker slots at the bends where fish would hold. I followed it downstream as it took on small tributaries with unremarkable names like Willow, Spruce, Moose, Buck, Bear, and Boulder creeks and grew from a creek itself to a good-sized stream and finally to a proper little river.
This was a stream I’d heard of in passing. It was said to be no more than ordinary cutthroat trout water, and with bigger, more fashionable rivers in the neighborhood, it wasn’t crowded. I remember seeing a few fly fishers, but they didn’t look like the fancy kind. Most wore ditch boots and no vests. One guy was wading wet in blue jeans. With a Stetson pulled down to shade his eyes, he looked like a sleepy cowpoke in a Charles Russell painting. But although this was a good time of year to fish and the stream was clear and at a nice flow, there were miles of open water and dozens of pull-offs where no cars were parked.
At a crossroads at the bottom of the canyon, I stopped to get gas and coffee and, being endlessly curious about the headwaters of trout streams, I traced the stream backward on a map. It flowed in from the west, where it crossed contour lines and gathered the shorter blue lines of a few smaller creeks. It ran under the road at the bridge, where I first saw it and then made a dogleg to the north against a ridge. Upstream of the bridge, the stream drained part of one mountain range; downstream it drained part of another. Altogether it was an area of something like thirteen hundred square miles. So many roads in the West are built along streams and rivers that you can begin to picture the place as wetter than it really is, but you get a clearer sense of the preciousness of water when you stop to think how little of it has run off that much land.
As with all mountain streams, this one seemed isolated high up in its own watershed. It took a conscious act of will to imagine it going on to join a larger river, which joined a larger one yet and so on for well over a thousand river miles to the coast. Before dams and head gates, you could have floated a pinecone all the way from here tothe Pacific. Once upon a time, steelhead migrated from the coast to within less than a hundred
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