The Drowned Spork

I went ahead and re-read a few of those pre-Alaska posts, and found a whole new value in them. You know what they were good for? They gave me an excuse to tell some old stories that I never got around to telling at the time. Like the story of the four bears at my Idavain camp, or the story of the dude in his bloodied shirt outside the Anchorage flea-bag hotel -- those were stories worth telling, right? I certainly enjoyed hearing them after having lived them (and then written them), though that may not be a strictly scientific test of their worth.

I don't have any New Zealand stories. Yet.

But here's an Alaskan story from this summer that I actually started composing right after it happened, and then never got around to telling. It is the story of The Drowned Spork. At the very time that these events were unfolding, they immediately reminded me of a story from a book of cool stories, "Shadows on the Koyukuk," by Sidney Huffington. Needless to say, there is a story behind that too -- this book was given to me by George Taylor, in Ewkok, AK, on the last day of my 165-mile Epic Solo Float Trip -- but the story behind the actual original story was simply that Sidney Huffington was a badass Alaskan outdoorsman who made these "Man vs. Wild" characters look like the clowns they really are.

And before I go on, I want to point out that I am a lesser man, less than both of those classes of men. I neither have been forced into great hardship, where I was forced by Fate to confront the world with great strength and discipline (Huffington), nor have I gone out and intentionally sought contrived hardships so that I could confront them with strength and spirit (Christopher McCandless of Into the Wild), or make them into a personal suicidal psychodrama (Timothy Treadwell of Grizzy Man), or make them into a low-brow, lucrative TV show (guy in Man vs. Wild or whatever the show is called). Far from that, what I do is go out into the wild to have as fine a time as possible given the scenario, which means carrying single-malt Scotch whisky in my backpack and listening to an mp3 player all day when paddling my kayak. I bring everything I can bring to enjoy myself, and take all precautions to come back alive so that I can pack up with more whiskey and Bach and get the hell out there again for more.


Given this, it may not surprise you to hear that the greatest actual misfortune that befell me on my last trip to Alaska occurred when I dropped my plastic spork into six feet of extremely cold lake water. Sure, a few days earlier I had a hungry-looking grizzly walk by 50 feet from my bubbling oatmeal breakfast, and had another bear follow me down a narrow track, and got caught briefly in some white-out fog while paddling all the way through an arctic night; but those were only close calls. This was the real thing: in an absent moment, I turned around awkwardly on the little granite shelf where I had just finished eating grilled lake trout, and knocked the spork clattering beyond reach, deep into the cold, clear water! Without that spork, I was going to have to eat with my bare hands! Oatmeal, pasta shells, couscous, all the staples of my outdoor diet (ramen, I can tackle with twig chopsticks) -- all without the assistance of a spork!!!

I tried a few times to hook the spork on a jig, and also to drag it up with the tip of a fly rod. Useless. Obviously, if I wanted that spork, I was going to have to go down there and get it with my grubby little opposable thumb, diving or swimming into water that was a scant few degrees above freezing, on a cloudy day just below the Arctic circle. Oh boy. They didn't teach me THIS one in Webelos.

Fortunately, I remembered what Sidney Huffington had done when his dogsled team had sent him crashing through actual frozen water, actually above the Arctic circle, creating a serious hypothermia emergency: he immediately built a huge fire, and while warming next to it, built another fire to keep him warm while he stood on the site of the previous fire and dried off his naked self and clothes. Well, hey! I already had a small fire going for my fish grilling, and all I needed to do was build it up into a huge blaze, and then I could stay warm in my birthday suit in the Alaskan wilderness, just like Sydney did!


To make a long story shorter, that is just what I did: after stoking the fire up to a big wide blaze that covered half of the little granite shelf on a little granite island, I stripped down, dove in, and retrieved the goddam spork. Indeed, the fire was hot enough to dry me off and keep my shivering frame from freezing while I put back on all the layers that were critical for getting through the day up there. But all the time, I was chucking and shaking my head, thinking the following:

Huffington stoked up his fires to save himself from certain death due to an unforeseeable accident in the middle of an icy wasteland; I did it so that I could more conveniently eat pesto-flavored couscous with extra virgin olive oil and toasted pine nuts.

Do you get it? Is that story gettable? Is it even a story? I am very grateful that nothing really serious even happened to me when I was camping alone out on Naknek Lake, where serious things can certainly happen. I'm also grateful that I can laugh at myself and my precious spork. I'm grateful that I ended up reading Huffington, and that lessons from that book helped me out in a sudden plastic-cutlery emergency. I guess I should also be grateful for the big old Google server where this written-down story will live for a while and relieve the pressure on my forgetful mind. It's one of the things blogging is good for!!

New Year, New Trick, New Zealand

In the week leading up to my Alaskan trip last summer this blog received a post per day, leaving no doubt for anyone actually reading that the blogger was excited about his trip. "I'm going fishing in Alaska! I have a PERFECT two-week plan!" It wasn't so much a need to shout this out to readers, but rather just a strong need to vent it -- the excitement was bubbling over and leaving accumulated gasses in all corners of my consciousness, bored to tears as it was with my normal daily life. Writing was a healthy distraction.

So why haven't I written a whisper about the two months of careful, engrossing planning for the upcoming trip to New Zealand? Certainly, I have been obsessing on this trip in the usual way. Trip planning may be my own particular geeky specialty, like entomology and "the fascination of what's difficult" can be for other fly fishing geeks. Taking GPS waypoints from Google Earth, trolling around on bulletin boards for tips, reading and re-reading available books and articles -- I do my homework when it comes to trip planning, and, far from treating it like a chore, I enjoy the hell out of it. The planning process stimulates the mind and the imagination. When the process is finished, the product is a thing of beauty: a logical plan for navigating the landscape (and waterscape) backed up with the right gear to get it done and the best possible information on tactics to help join fly to fish.

Needless to say, the satisfaction in executing such a plan is only exceeded by completely and totally changing it on the spur of the moment, should that be your whim once you are on the ground, and especially if you are the type of person disinclined to obey authorities (particularly your despotic self).

          untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell'd,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebell'd;
Proud though in desolation; which could find
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.

OK, that's a bit of a stretch, but if you have even the remotest opportunity to quote Byron before heading on any journey, you take it!

Anyway -- I'm going fishing in New Zealand! I have a PERFECT four-week plan!!!

Or to be honest, I think it is a good plan. The difference between New Zealand and Alaska or Patagonia for me, is that I'm a complete virgin. When I toss a six-weight line out on to the Hope River in about two weeks, it will be the first time I have fished a Kiwi stream. So, despite an avalanche of good information from friends, books, websites, videos, and kind strangers on bulletin boards, it is pretty much an unknown quantity. For this reason, The Plan is more likely than ever to be broken up and rearranged. Instead of going straight to the Hope/Hurunui area around Lewis Pass (though my bus ticket is already reserved), I may go to St. Arnaud and check out the Travers and Sabine rivers. Or, hell, I might even end up walking down the Hollyford first -- it's all the way at the other end of the island, but it is the easiest trek, and might do well for a warmup. What then if my 43-year old feet or knees or back start acting up at just the wrong time? Then I'm looking a whole different, non-"tramping" (read, backpacking) trip, and the rivers change to road-accessible names like the Clarence, the Mataura, the Grey.


Four weeks seemed to be about the right window for working out these kinds of questions. I may end up wishing I had more time, and/or wishing I had brought my portable sea kayak, or inflatable river kayak, or both. But I figure I need to get the lay of the land over there before making any really gigantic plans. It's important to find out first whether New Zealand is the right place for gigantic plans -- and if you have watched the hobbit movies, you suspect that the answer is yes. I know a few fly fishers who rave pretty hard about New Zealand. In Patagonia, I fished for sea-run browns with a Swedish kook who insisted that I HAD to go try New Zealand at some point. To Ole, New Zealand was mandatory for a traveling fly fisher. I have resisted it partly because I wonder if I am up to the technical challenge of fishing for notoriously spooky browns, and whether I have the patience to walk along sight-fishing and only making perhaps a dozen casts a day, always to visible fish. But a fly fisher reaches a threshold of age where patience and skill may be adequate, and beyond which, legs, lungs and back may soon be inadequate for the task . . . .

So with that in mind, I finally quit my full-time job and got the ticket for this trip. Several months ago I moved to a terrific apartment with cheap rent (helpful for taking long trips) and then over the past six weeks have unwound my full time technical writing work (essential for taking a long trip) with a certain share of anxiety and uncertainty, and so things have been busy. The next Friday coming up will be my last work day, and the Sunday following gets me on a plane that goes over the date line and lands two days later. What I actually see or do after that, what I actually catch or (likely enough) do not catch, will be the topic of some blogging from Down Under!

Fascination of What's Difficult

Flys4b8 Mike doesn't shock easily, but I think I surprised him by suggesting that, if the steelhead fishing were slow, I might drive on over to a certain not-too-far trout stream for the day.

"What!? You loser! With that kind of attitude, you're going to be a steelhead virgin forever! Buck up and put your game face on, boy! If it were easy to get one, it wouldn't be the premier game fish!"

And so on. If Mike's mouth were a verbal river, it would be rising and coloring!. Egad! To consider taking one day out of a three-day trip to cast flies to some lowly resident rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) instead of the rare, noble migratory steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) . . . unthinkable! Outrageous!

But actually, Mike is comparatively mellow about it. Some of his steelheading brethren are really just tiresome snobs, dour old drudges who spend far too much time weaving around steelhead fishing an elaborate (though dull) mythology or minor religion, whose first commandment is this: steelheading is better because it is more difficult.

Difficulty! What's it worth, compared with the aesthetics of casting a fly line, and the joy of having a pull on the other end? I have long thought that many fly fishers suffer from the Fascination of What's Difficult. Replace that second stanza, and you've got my response to the steelhead mantra:

My curse on fish
That strike once in 200 drifts,
On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
Floating down the river in a guided drift boat.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I'll find the valve on the Lewiston Dam and pull out the bolt.

Within the past several years there have been a couple of California steelhead seasons when the numbers of fish migrating into the system went off the charts, and the fishing went off the hook. For a while, any dolt could get a steelhead. I went to the river early in one of those seasons and drifted a canyon section with a buddy in our inflatable boats. We hooked a total of four fish -- which is really good for an early season day of steelheading -- and I think you can guess who unbuttoned and then snapped off, respectively, each of his two fish. How else would I still be talking to you now as a "steelhead virgin?"

So no, this year does not seem to be shaping up as one of those great years, and no, nobody landed a steelhead on our wintry three-day weekend trip. Mike H. got a really nice brown, and Mike W. had a good steelie on the line for a while, and I did worst of all, snapping off one big fish on the first and second days each.


I got to see the first steelhead, and it was a giant. I went home thinking, "how the hell am I supposed to land that blimp on 4x tippet?" The next morning I went out with 3x tippet, got a strike on one of my first drifts, and watched the fish rip across the current going 75 mph until he ripped the tippet as well. I think he got me in a snag, but the Mikes seemed to think I put too much pressure on him. Again, I have to say: "how am I supposed to fight the damn fish -- by tickling it with a feather?" I was left muttering and daydreaming about dragging in striped bass on 25# tippet -- private thoughts that would undoubtedly scandalize any true steelheader.

In happier news, I can report that the fish-to-fun ratio was still positive, despite that dismal catching record. I put on my game face in the end, getting up at first light on perhaps the coldest day of the year and heading out to fish for steelhead. We tramped through a frosty landscape covered with snow and rime and stood in a frigid stream until our extremities barely functioned, for a morning's total of several six-inch smolts and one 11-12 inch brown. The brown ended up being the biggest fish I touched in the whole three days. But so what? This cold, this adversity -- this difficulty! -- this is steelhead fishing!!! As long as a high fever and pneumonia do not develop in the next few days, I'm sure it will be a treasured memory.


General enjoyment was greatly enhanced by a nice cabin with a woodstove and a full-featured kitchen from which gourmet-ish food and drink issued fairly continuously: good cheese, fine wine, Belgian beer, smoked pork ribs, fancy frittatas for breakfast, unagi and takuan, Laphroig scotch whisky, and so on. Without a place to dry off and warm up, we all probably would have died of hypothermia with 7wt rods (with ice in the guides) clutched tightly in our frostbitten hands, becoming true top-tier steelheading sufferers in our last moments. Or maybe, in a minor technicality, steelheaders are permitted unlimited enjoyment whenever they are off the river, I'm not sure.


For a moment dropping all species of attitudes, I have to confess that I got a little bit of the steelhead bug this weekend. Maybe I'll have to go out when river is colored and I can use bigger tippet, or maybe I need to wait for another one of those idiot-proof seasons, but I will keep trying off and on. You'll never see me drinking the real steelhead kool aid; I will keep heaping my plate with low-end grub like chum salmon, triggerfish, and plain-old resident onchorynchus mykiss; but the steelies aren't completely free of my little stinger quite yet. Meanwhile, I apologize to the two fish who are up there shaking my rusting hooks out of their mouths.

My Annoying Friend Rick

Weather forecasts are a fisherman's friend, but they sure can be an annoying one. I can't count how many times I have backed off from a good plan -- an early winter weekend on the Pit River, or a long day with perfect tides on the delta -- only to find that the snow predicted at 2000 ft. never fell, the 20-30 m. p. h. gusts never blew. This gives you a feeling of having been cheated, and not by Nature, which is always fair though often fickle. You feel like you have cheated yourself by listening to fool's forecasts.

However, last week around this time I found myself saying this to my new fishing partner JT: "I hate running from weather reports, but this one is a hurricane report . . . ."

I refer to reports of the ominous reports of Hurricane Rick, who at the time had just been upgraded from Tropical Storm to Hurricane and given his oh-so-scary and menacing name. He was headed, by almost all projections, directly toward the lower part of the Baja peninsula. Of course, I was planning to approach lower Baja that same night from the opposite direction.

I'd already caught some whiffs of Rick from wunderground.com forecasts, and they didn't look good. In an area so dry they usually don't bother making bridges across the rivers, clouds and rain were forecast for mid-week. This alone would have interfered with me and my plans, because I do like driving off on primitive dirt roads and camping primitively on the beach, away from big gringo RVs. Even if I had my 4WD truck instead of a Cabo rental car, this would be bad news.

From Fishin Sabbatical

Plus, along with the rain forecasts, they were forecasting unusually strong winds up to 40 m. p. h. both in the morning and afternoon. I paddle in decent winds like any other really commited sea kayaker, and I do it because you inevitable get caught in them and must be prepared to handle them. But I ain't stupid enough to paddle out when it is already whitecapping at first light. And when those winds are part of a thing called a Hurricane, whatever its name? I think not.

The storm was basically forecast to keep me on shore for several days or more, gutting my trip. I had a sinking feeling from the start that cancellation would happen, but nonetheless got busy hunting around for information and checking stormpulse.com every ten minutes. Friday was not a restful day. Some people I consulted just said "Go for it," and I was sorely tempted to do so. I thought maybe I could hide out inland in a hotel in Ciudad Constitucion for a couple boring days while the storm passed and then get back to fishing. But other voices, from bulletin boards frequented by expats actually living in Baja, told a different tale:

If you are there and this one, "Rick" comes through there will be no hotel rooms available. People I have talked to who are there now have all reserved rooms for this blessed event already. If this is like Jimena, which I sincerely hope it isn't, there will be no food, water, electricity, no atms, bridges knocked out, etc. It is NOT the place to be during a hurricane or after, for that matter.

So I did cancel. And guess what? By Saturday Rick got promoted to category 5, and they started saying he was the second strongest East Pacific hurricane on record. By Sunday he was already turning away from a path toward landfall on Baja, and by Monday he was demoted several points down, almost to a mere tropical storm. Rick fizzled out. It turned out to be a best-case scenario, in which I could have gone down and lost one day on the water, if that.

Though in reality, I probably would have been having a very unrelaxed time in a camp on Mag Bay, watching the sky and worrying if my cheap rental car was ever going to get back out of there.

From Baja Winter Solstice Fishin Tour

No matter, there is a new plan, and it is good: the spell of condo livin' and panga fishing that was planned for the end of my trip is now at its beginning, and the forecasts look wonderful for the foreseeable future at the tip of Baja. I'm going to hang out and fish with some friends, paddle a new area for new pelagic species, and probably drive off to spend a few days in my little remote fishing heaven down there. Personally, I'm forecasting a flurry of dorado with occasional 40-80 pound gusts of striped marlin and yellowfin tuna. We shall see.

Snake Pits and Hornet's Nests

My last entry described a fairly ideal campsite, and this one is kind of going to describe its opposite. They can't all be perfect, can they? Neil Kelly (of The Baja Catch) commented that he was known to camp "on donkey turds" in order to get near good fishing. That is correct; that is science: there is some kind of complicated algorithm to describe how the interaction of scenic values, fishing prospects, and weekend/vacation time constraints all add up to a guy sleeping in his truck on a gravel levee. Or look at it this way: in The Happy Isles of Oceania, Paul Theroux paddled freely around a south Pacific paradise, grousing and grouching all the way; balancing the equation from the other direction, I camped last night in a construction site and went into reveries about the joyous romantic values of the setting.

Anyone who has spent some time in the delta knows what I am talking about. When you get back into this giant maze of canals, cuts, and flooded islands, you can momentarily feel like you are in a true wilderness. It can be quiet and vast at times. The tules surround you while the currents whispers through the weeds, a heron lifts slowly into the foggy air with its lonely, rasping cry, and then -- and then on the bank you espy the sixteenth abandoned couch of the morning. The seventh refrigerator. The fifth houseboat, burnt and sunk for insurance purposes.


Weekdays are the best times in the delta, as my last visit with flys4b8 Mike demonstrated very clearly. Our plan was to camp Friday night at Russo's Marina ($20 to camp in basically a parking lot, $10 to launch a kayak), and our error was to not call ahead and ask questions. For instance, we should have asked if Russo's was hosting anything like the weigh-in for one of these rich cultural events known as "fishing tournaments." If you have never witnessed one of these events, let me tell you that it is quite an experience. Not only was the usually-deserted campsite full to the gills, but the lights were kept on all night on a general spectacle of drinking, shouting, bragging about fat fish and fast boats, and, most especially, misdirecting and misinforming the competition about fishing spots and methods. It was a true comedy, and we did settle down and try to enjoy it. But no sooner had the human hullabaloo died down than the diesel thunder began, and guys started backing their trailers down to the water from 3:00 a. m. right up to sunrise in order to get an early start on the day. Both the sound and smell of that prevented any real sleep from happening inside a backpacking tent. I feel sure that the winners of these bouts are the guys who fish best on zero sleep, drunk and/or hungover.

Way down away from the concentrated human activity near Russo's, there is an area of the south delta that feels especially forgotten, empty, and pleasant. There's a run-down marina/resort in the area, of course, but get this: they charge THIRTY dollars for a crap campsite on top of the ten for launching. You gotta be kidding. I'll stay in Motel 6 for 37.99 before I go for THAT. And no, I do not pay those ridiculous launch fees. My general way of getting in the water in this area is to launch ever so carefully from the rocky levees enclosing one of the east-west running canals. There's a bit of wake-dodging to be done on weekend mornings, but then boom, you are right on fishable water and in position to hit prime areas both on the outgoing and incoming tides, as long as you time it right and are willing to paddle a few miles to your fishing. I always am!

Most nights in this particular area, you'll see trucks or vans pulled over near a burning campfire, and several guys, girls and kids sitting in camp chairs next those big, long rods people use for catfishing. Somewhere at the bottom of the canal you presume there is some stinky old bait (mackerel is apparently a favorite, even though no mackerel naturally comes within 75 miles of the spot) and on the end of the rod there are usually bells that jingle when you are getting a bite. Some even have little motion-activated lights on them. Among the crowd there are hardcore catfishers that sit there fishin and drinkin right into the wee hours.

That's interesting (and probaby fun) fishing, though it ain't my particular type. But why shouldn't I follow their example and park on the levee all night? You can't do this everywhere in the delta; most of the "ground" is too wet, and on the raised ground and levees there is a sense that you are sure to be hassled or run off the property if you linger all night. By contrast, on this levee it seems to be OK to park and fish all night long. How about if you pull your truck up, put out a chair with a rod next to it, and make like you are catfishing all night when in fact you are inside the camper shell trying to get some rest for the next day's striper fishing?

This basically did work out for me. I'm not saying that it is perfectly restful nor that a few random trucks won't drive by in the wee hours, rousing you with Deliverance-type concerns. But I am saying that it is a practical way to not get gouged for third-rate camping, and I'm also saying that there are recommendable pleasures in it as well. The stars aren't as bright as in the sierras, but there is still an odd sense of the immense sky, ringed as it is by a ground horizon sprinkled with faraway lights. The wind farms on the hills look like weird Christmas tree farms, with red blinking lights going on and off in sychronization. You know that there's a lot of human habitation out there, but it is comfortably far away and the immediate surroundings are very quiet and peaceful. I sat in my camp chair with an abbey beer taking all this in, and even reached that sublime level of night-outness where I spontaneously talk to myself like Nick Adams. I thought about the hotel alternative in Tracy, with all the freeway noise and meth-heads in the next room, and said aloud, "I'm only going back into that hornet's nest if they make me."

As Thoreux wrote in Fresh Air Fiends, "My ideal in travel is just to show up and head for the bush, because most big cites are snake pits. In the bush there is always somewhere to pitch your tent." A levee in the delta ain't exactly the bush, and I didn't exactly dare to pitch my tent there, but you see what I mean. I was perched just on the fringe of the snake pit, the hornet's nest.

And yes the fishing was pretty good. Still no stripers of size for me, but I got a decent one on topwater Friday night, and then had a really good run of 2-4 pounders Saturday morning on the incoming tide. I'm glad I went, and I'm glad I have started a new career of camoflage levee camping. I hope to refine this practice as the striper season heats up through November. For I did spy some nice flat areas right near where the train tracks go through, and trains only make an enormous racket five or six times during the night . . . looks promising!

Slowpacking the South Sierras

Now twenty years after I hiked down the John Muir Trail, I am proud and/or ashamed to say that I am still using the same backpack. It is a Gregory Shasta that I bought because the Backpacking Moses -- Colin Fletcher, author of the backpacking bible "The Compleat Walker" -- used a Gregory Cassin and considered it state of the art, and also because when I tried it on, it fit. Bless the thing, it has survived a mileage total that may now reach in the two thousands after all my huffing around Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Nepal, and the Japan Alps. One tough pack!

Meanwhile, dramatic technological and social changes during that time have rendered both my pack and my self most obsolete. During that time, not just "ultralight" but also "fastpacking" have forced their way into any compleat notion of walking as a sport. "Wha was that -- 'fastpacking?'" It passed me right by, in a blink of the eye. My personal experience of it goes something like this: one minute I was watching my friend Scott pass out in a camper van, empty bourbon bottle and creel of live eels knocked over by the campfire, and then the next minute someone was telling me that Scott had finished the entire Appalachian Trail in six weeks -- and was trying it a SECOND TIME. Fast, indeed!

"A wise man climbs mount Fuji," the Japanese say, "once."

Not to boast, but I did climb it, once. John Muir trail, once. But about the sierra lakes I have fished multiple times -- best we not go there. I'm not going to give out any names of my secret spots, anyway. I won't even mention the lake at the end of my Tahoe-to-Yosemite hike where I was quickly deprived of my last flies by big snap-offs, and which, after a few days restocking down in San Francisco, I drove back out and hiked back up 20+ miles to reach again and have a second whirl at. Nor will I mention that I have been back there five or six more times since, with a friend, and a (now ex) girlfriend, and giddily alone. Oh, how closely I will guard the secret of having witnessed the spawning run one July, and taken the measure of xxx or so trout of xx inches or more milling in foot-deep creek water!

Over the recent labor day weekend I took five days of serious slowpacking time in the south sierras, and it was sublime. Bucking personal trends, I hiked in to a completely new area, fished completely new lakes and streams, and had a catch-a-thon to remember. Friday's hike may have been hell on wheels for my feet, back, and head (OK, I admit it, I did slowpack a bottle of Allagash Curieux three miles into my Thursday night camp) but when I was eating sweet orange brook trout flesh for dinner under the stars late Friday night, I cannot say I was feeling much pain.

The next day I did a 10+ mile day hike that saw me fishing three different bodies of water and having more and more fabulous fishing all the way up. Though a committed slowpacker, I am nonetheless a weight nazi who only packs essentials, and I guess this time around I decided that a 22 oz. bottle of bourbon cask-aged Belgian-style ale was essential, while a small (but dense!) digital camera was not. If I had known how beautiful the lakes and the fish would be, I might have reconsidered that. The brookies were in full fall mating colors, and the goldens I caught were so colorful -- and large, for their kind -- that I almost wept at the effect of their blazing red smears on spotted, irridescent golden backgrounds.

I fear this may be one of the lamest moves in blogging history, but here are some pictures I have poached of someone else's trip report to the same area (curse him for posting the place names! I shall not; and these image file names have been changed to protect the innocent). This is a lake where I sight-fished for brookies with a big hopper pattern that they just couldn't resist:


And in this lake a little further up, I got lots of goldens like this, and several that were bigger and even more colorful (probably because they were males, with larger, kyped heads and lots of red in the sides):


In fact, I sight-fished repeatedly for a golden trout that might have gone 16 inches or more, and who really acted like a wise old bastard; meaning, he refused six different patterns that I threw at him, from the hopper to a size 20 pheasant tail. Which is not to say that his smaller cohorts didn't come crashing in after a nymph as soon as it hit the water, or move 20 feet in a hurry after hearing the hopper splat down on the surface. We are talking Very Fun Fishing.

And also, far more than I ever appreciated it back in my epic-hikin' days, Fun Walking and Fun Camping. Other humans were mercifully few, and trees and stars were practically infinite. The moon was big too, at midnightlighting up my orange tarp like some kind of psychedlic cocoon (which in a way, I suppose it is). You can't beat the air nor the quality of the light, especially in mid-morning, which is the time I am usually sipping coffee, laying back and gazing around as I slowpackingly put off the business of the day.

The year is slipping away slowly and the nights were very cold, but I still think there may be one more weekend trip left in this oustanding 2009 slowpacking season . . .

Cameras and Alaska

Don't mix. Every year I seem to take, and destroy, an increasingly less waterproof camera. It was endless rain on Prince William Sound that did it last year. This year I had insanely dry weather -- just one rain day and fourteen dry, sunny ones -- but a firm wag of an angry trout's tail waterlogged my camera for good. This is the culprit:


The rest of the few decent pictures are on Picasaweb. I'll tell the rest of the tale with uploaded films, which of course only come from the first seven days of the trip. I didn't get any stills of the magnificent mountains on Grosvenor Lake nor a fat trout with a mouse pattern hanging off his lip; nor did I get any footage of chillin' at Fure's cabin nor prying a tenacious pike off my thumb and forefinger with a metal fork. I'd have taken em if I could! But I did get this stuff:



Outstanding weather.



Fun Fishin.



And again,




And again,




And again.




And again, and again, and again, until I'm no longer able to get out there anymore.

Now, to get out to the store and buy my next digital victim . . . .