One of my main satisfactions in fishing is getting to know certain places until they are deeply familiar and very fond; you end up missing them when you are away too long, and feel a special warm anticipation when you are heading for them. Surely, I got a bit of that in the sweet old Pit River country, where I camped two nights and spent one whole day in the big tall trees and sweet open fields of wildflowers, bashing through brush that is now full of blooming dogwoods but will later be choked with blackberries. But I certainly noticed: the familiarity of the water itself -- the runs and riffles and pools where you expect to see a certain current speed and a certain depth and expect to hook a fish on a certain fly or presentation -- that is a BIG part of my sense of place. With these new flows, I had a feeling similar to the one I got when my ex-girlfriend went and got that eyebrow-folding surgery: "yah, rationally I know it's still you, but man -- something deep down inside thinks you are a whole different river now."
This is not to complain, though. While soaking in a 108 degree pool near Kosk Creek, it seemed like a pretty good idea to have made the drive and checked it all out.
Plus, I had my backups in place. The first move in this Trifecta-less trip north was a shad stop. Me and all the other out-of-towners are now locked out of access to the best spot on the Sacramento, but you don't stop Pit Boss that easy; he'll go through the bushes with a machete to drop his kayak in, slip down, and then paddle back on up against the current, using the shore eddy just like he saw all the natives down on the Rio San Juan do:
That is a quaint and lovely (though sweaty) feeling, to be paddling up a big river with the day's catch. Lunchtime the following day, there's some pig in the pan and I am happy as a proverbial pig in shit on the Pit:
I was hoping to share some of this shaddy goodness with fishing buddy Mike yesterday. Unfortunately, our shadventure ended up going something like this: rush like crazy to launch boat in time to fish, pick slow course upstream amid innumberable snags, hook a few fish in the few minutes we had in the best spot, and then -- then ruin the prop by running into a log on the way back down. We were probably lucky to get out of it with just a bunged up prop, but the mood was sombre. I felt bad for my buddy and his boat -- but, uh, not quite bad enough to not stick around here and have another go tonight from the yak.
The great thing about fishing buddies is that they DO understand these things. Yesterday, Mike was steaming up from the Bay Area with the boat in tow, and I was headed down from the Pit River country to meet him halfway. Being what I am, I had to stop and try for at least one trout in the Redding area. Hell, what is a trip north when you don't hook a single trout? It is SAD. Nymphing from shore on the lower Sac is hard work, but I figured with 60 minutes fervent effort I might fool one. Here's the summary report of that effort:
- Hook nice fish, unbutton it almost immediately when it jumps (curse, stomp, nearly cry thinking that you blew your one chance).
- Almost immediately hook another, and play it soft for ten minutes before it, too, unbuttons itself in the strong current (more crying).
- In a few minutes hook another (this is almost unheard of for midday nymph fishing) and finally, finally, get it in and take a picture:
By that moment I was already fifteen minutes behind schedule for meeting Mike, so I called him to see if he might just be delayed or something excellent like that. No luck that way; but when I told him the riffle was "On Fire," his reply was pretty much, "don't worry about meeting up on time; just fish on and we'll meet later." Now THERE'S a good pal. Someone who understands the true meaning of the code phrase, "On Fire" (it pretty much means you have lucked into conditions that you may never see again, I guess). Not wanting to abuse such good will, I hung out long enough to hook one more and headed one down for the Prop MisShadventure.
I'll protest again though: no complaints here. There's worse ways to spend a late Spring evening than driving boats around and not spotting submerged logs with a bottle of wine in one hand:
