It is a fact of life that plans change, and sometimes they change at the very last minute. This is abundantly true of fishing plans. The wind forecast suddenly worsens, and a paddle on the Delta doesn't look so good anymore. Some bullshit starts to happen at work, and you realize that you're not going to make it out the door on a Friday afternoon for a long weekend up north.
When these things happen, there's nothing to do but unload the truck. And as joyous and rich in anticipation as it can be to load the truck for a weekend -- in goes the cooler with a delicious Belgian beer in it, in goes the backpack with wading boots and waders -- it is correspondingly unpleasant to unload it. As the back of the truck empties, so empties your happy little bubble.
Today, several months into our lovely pandemic that has turned life upside down in so many ways, I have just finished the Mother of all Truck Unloads. Here’s what had to come back out:
- A large bear can packed with food and two sizeable double-ziploc-bagged flasks of single malt scotch. Really good scotch.
- A dry suit with newly (expensively) replaced neck and wrist gaskets. Also, new rain pants, a tarp, and a tent treated with DWR.
- Flies that aren’t much use in California: dahlberg divers, long black string leeches, mouse patterns.
- A nice fast foldable kayak.
That’s right, I was locked and loaded to go kayak fishing in Alaska. For a few years running I have been hooked on paddling for bass and walleye up in Canada, so I have neglected my favorite Alaskan stillwater fishing hole (a lake 234 square miles in size). Well OK, I’m locked out of Canada along with all the other masked and unmasked American patriots; but maybe I can get to Alaska!
Maybe. For a while there was a 14-day quarantine, and you weren’t allowed to leave the road system. Then, when that lifted, the 72-hour covid test result requirement was just too strict -- nobody could guarantee a test any tighter than 2 to 4 days out. Finally, the testing window expanded to five days, and my planning gears started turning hard and fast.
I’ll spare you the gory details except to say: I was screwed both by tardy results that took a full five days, AND by the airline. The airline changed the flight almost daily in the week running up to departure, making it more inconvenient each time. My first-class one-stop turned into a mixed cabin 2-stop with an overnight in Anchorage real quick, and when the last change popped up even as I was looking at checking in even though I didn’t have my test results -- that’s when I realized it was time to give up and cut losses.
And that explains all the unloading. Definitely, I’m happy that I’m not sick, and that I live in the woods, and that I can still drive to some wild country and find some good to great fishing. But man, I was dreaming hard about that big lake full of fat lakers, char, and rainbows, and the little spring creek filled with grayling, and the back bays teeming with big pike, and even of a finale of swinging mice on the last day before pickup. On balance, it seemed worth a 5-6 hour trip in the germ tube, all masked up and claustrophobic . . .
If life is anything like normal next year and nonstops to Anchorage can be had, I might do *both* Alaska and Canada in the early summer. Eventually the Big Unload will just be a distant memory to laugh at; but right now it is definitely still too soon.
