The Master's Lucky Day

On the whole, my fishin blog is as self-referencing, self-congratulating, and self-centered as any blog in the business -- but I'm trying to change. I vow now that at least half this post will be about someone else's good fortune, and the other half will be about my bad. Because we all know that success or failure in fishing is just dumb luck, right?

The Bay Area Migration Master has been mentioned before in these pages. To the degree that anyone can predict where the striped bass are at any point in time, to the extent that most or all of the fish are actually in a synchronized migration, Jim's guesses are generally way above average. Some people say that in Spring, the fish will be moving up into the spawning rivers, and that you won't find them in the bay or delta. This is not 100% right. In winter, the mass of the fish are supposed to be in the delta, but you might go out in the muddy cold waters of the bay in February and hook the biggest old Moe you ever saw, so that's not strictly true either.

I think Jim scores high because he generally does not generalize so broadly. He uses his knowledge of specific areas of the bay or delta, checks water quality and wind forecasts, and then lends an ear to any reports that might come along. For instance, we had been thinking about paddling on the delta this Saturday, when a text message came to Jim's phone:

"There are no fish in the delta."

Since this paradoxically plain and cryptic message came from a trusted source who fished the dawn patrol that day, we decided to pay heed. Most people who fish the delta probably know that particularly fishless feeling that smells like skunk and feels like a bad case of lockjaw. Sometimes the delta will deal you an awful hand.

So we went to another of Jim's favorite spots on the bay, and guess what -- Snap On!!! Jim stuck a small one within five minutes. When this happens, you troll with much greater optimism. He hit another one and it was two to zero (but who's counting?) until I managed a decent one on a hair-raiser jig. Encouraged by this, I tied some feathers on the end of the fat line and gave that a go, while Jim extended his lead:



I think it was already four to one when I got a really good strike, with the rod dipping way down. I turned around and saw a really large splash about ten feet out from the beach before -- Snap Off! -- my line went slack. Just my luck, the rusty old treble hook on the end of my plug came back with only two points left. (Note: replacing hooks after salting them down daily in Baja may even be better at improving your luck than wearing lucky hats).

Jim didn't see me hook either of these fish, and I wonder if he thought I was making things up. Conversely, I was right on hand when he hooked the fish of the day. There's a big difference between a 20 inch and a 24 inch striper -- two plus pounds, according to this source. You could also tell the difference by the way this one dragged Jim into the beach:


With all this, Jim's first day out in a while was a damn good one. Very lucky! And I was glad for him. However, when he decided he'd had his fill after a few hours, I still wanted to stay and keep looking for my own luck. I waved him goodbye as he headed back to the beach, and since the wind was starting to lay down, I got out the fat line again. Just maybe some fly flinging could get me attached to a fine two foot fish, I was thinking . . .

Whipping out some line on my very first cast, I heard a little "plunk" next to the boat, and looked down to see the detached spool of my fly reel sinking rapidly into the drink. A desperate left-hand grab almost capsized me, but did not come up with the spool. It was on the bottom of 7 feet of pea-green water, and my line started to billow in the current. Oh my. I felt dumb as a frozen hake doing it, but there was no remedy other than to just pull my end of the line up into the cockpit and hope to a) recover all the line and then haul up the spool by the spool knot, or b) have it hit a tangle in the backing or something, and come up a bit sooner. The latter, though, would require luck. So forget it.

Has anyone else ever hauled 100 feet of nylon backing with their bare hands? It is an idiot's chore of true enormity. The backing tangled up around the line which tangled up around my legs, and I had to keep correcting the boat's position to stay near the sunken spool, which sometimes tangled backing around the paddle, which tangled it around my arms. Boy was I glad Jim had gone around the point and was not there to witness this. Finally I got the spool to rise up to the surface. Then, after twenty minutes of untangling and cutting loops of backing, I paddled for home, a beaten, unlucky man for sure.

Or was it really so bad? I had some fun with my buddy the Migration Master, watched him boat a couple of fine fish, and at least did not get completely skunked on a beautiful breezy Saturday. What's more, when I got back to my truck, I found a fourteen-dollar topwater lure under my windshield wiper. "Hey, where'd that come from?" Just coincidence that Jim and I had been comparing topwater lures earlier in the day? Either way, it felt like good luck to find it there.

Memo: Ad Hoc Meeting at the Businessman's Club

I felt I had made a friend and experienced some unexpected, amusing things, which is a big part of why I like to go around the world and Colusa county fishing in the first place.

Time to add Grant county, WA. You know you're getting close when you start seeing the signs. On route 17 South toward hatchery road:

"HITCHHIKING NOT PROHIBITED"

Isn't there something warm and friendly (if odd) about explicitly pointing that out? Then, when you get on the gravel hatchery road, they let you know that you are getting warmer:

"PRIMITIVE ROAD"

Sure enough, the road leads to a primitive place full of primitive men. Rolling into the parking lot at Rocky Ford Creek, I learned a new nickname for my fishing buddy Mike. His pals Pete and Scott greeted him with a shout of, "HAIRY MIKE! How the $%#@ are ya! How's the ^@&!n@?"

"I got married last year."

"Oh, sorry about that . . ."

Mike's friends were not the type of guys to hold anything back. They were men with beards, waders, and large furry streamers tied on large-diameter tippet. But to make sure I got the point, Scott offered, two minutes after meeting me, to show me his (#%<, so that "I would understand the reason why." I declined. I think I understood why already.

Within an hour the four of us were lined up on a small 25-yard long run that must have held 200 fish milling in brisk water two feet deep. The trout were big, beautiful, and often aggressive, chasing down furry streamers as well as sipping in small scuds and mayfly nymphs. Lots of catching was going on; four primitive men were having primitive fun. An open 12-pack of PBR marked the center of the tribal territory, and loud conversations in harsh language warned the faint of heart to make an ample detour. For the first time ever, I was having fun fishing in a lineup.


If you know Rocky Ford Creek, then you know that very few of these fish were native, and that a lot of them were probably big fat hatchery brood stock let loose in the creek. Much of the creek is slow and clear and fairly tough fishing (we took one fish in a big, aquarium-like pool by the bridge) but certain sections are a bit more forgiving (like the one where we took about three dozen). Were we disappointed that the trout weren't highly evolved, pure bred natives? Oog say, "no $%#@! way."


For Mike and me it was a welcome change to be hooking so many trout. The day before, we took the trouble to arrange a shuttle, set up and rig up my inflatable two-man kayak, and float several miles down a very lovely stretch of the Yakima river --very scenic, but for us, not very fishy. One decent fish on a wooly bugger, one dink that ate a skwala stonefly dry, and two shake-and-snap offs. A lot of work for few fish, but someone's gotta do it.



Anyway, the fun down in Grant County does not end when you're off the water. Put away your tackle, shower up (or don't) and hie thee down to the Businessman's Club. Mike and Pete were long-standing members of this venerable institution, as proven by Pete's year 2000 membership card. Mike had a card too, and seemed envious that Pete's had the term "Businessmans" spelled correctly on it. We knocked on the door. A small aperture swung out on the side, and the barman stuck his head out. To Pete's request for special permission to renew his membership and bring in guests, he replied with a question: "How long has it been since you were last here?"

I guess it figures that a club for businessmen would slow down somewhat in the current economic climate. The large space had a dozen or so tables with only one or two other parties present on this Saturday night. The gambling table for a game called 4-5-6, at which Pete reportedly excels even though he has no idea of the rules, was shut down and empty. But the pool table was still working, and the Coors was still lite. We settled in for a good evening of hanging out and listening to Scott's hunting stories.

I won't even bother to tell how, after a while, a rather tightly wound young fellow in a tight ball cap tried to goad us into hostilities with Grant County. He ended up being ushered out the back door (a site of some considerable suspicious activity throughout the evening), and meanwhile a couple of cowboy-hat club members came over to meet us, share a round, and make up for any perceived lack of hospitality. Soon, a well-preserved rancher named Huey was making us feel nice and welcome by calling us "gunts."

"What are them, Pete, Wranglers or Levis yer wearin'?"
"Uh, these are kind of, uh, combination shorts and pants made of ripstop ny-"
"GUNT PANTS! Oh, boy. Darlin', come on over here and lookit this fella . . ."

(Note: the word gunt may be a vulgar term in some urban/suburban hip hop settings, but we believe Huey had an entirely different vulgar definition for it.)

Pete responded by giving Huey the affectionate name of "D!%#head, and we all got along fine. Scott, who introduced himself as "Santos" so that he could enjoy listening to the ranchers pronounce it, argued with Huey about what constitutes a world-class whitetail and mule deer. Huey had some good stories, and so did "SAN-TOSE." In addition to pictures of fresh kills, both had some pretty good pictures of pretty gals on their cell phones, too. We found that, though we hailed from very different places and did very different things for a living, there was more common ground than uncommon. And in the end, I felt I had made some friends and experienced some unexpected, amusing things, which is a big part of why I like to go around the world and Grant county fishing in the first place.