Drove a couple hours westward yesterday to a special place.
It's a high valley, laying just under 4,000' elevation through most of the basin, where a dozen creeks come together in the span of just a few miles to form the headwaters of a major watershed. It's all wild and native trout, it's been many decades since a fish was stocked here. No delayed harvest or pellet pigs. So, not a lot of fly-shop sports fishing in here. But it's just my kind of place.
This place has some special emotional ties to me, as it was my Grandpa's favorite place to fish and camp. When he was in his early 80s and was informed by the doctors that he had terminal cancer and likely only a few months to live, the first thing he did was to go home and pack his camper and rods and head into this valley for several weeks to get his head wrapped around the news and come to peace with himself. Some of his daughters got mad when they found out, and raised Cain, saying that he wasn't able to be doing stuff like that, and he would probably fall in the river and drown or any number of other things. He should be at home where they could take care of him. My dad stood his ground against them and told them to leave him alone and give him his space; and that if he died while he was out there fishing, it would be the way he wanted to go, on his own terms, not laying in a hospital bed connected to a bunch of tubes and wires.
He came back much better than he was when he left, and lived nearly three more years, until the hospital bed and tubes and wires finally got him.
I haven't fished this valley since I was in my late teens or early twenties. A lot of the water, I've never fished. It's about time to go back.
When I arrived, it was just breaking daylight, foggy, and a light, misty rain was falling. @alittlebird had given me some intel about a stretch that might hold some good browns (thanks, Wes!) so I headed down the trail as daylight broke.
Came upon this huge yellow birch with a cave under the roots, where the sapling had originally sprouted on a big nurse log or stump and the roots had run down to the soil over the log, still there long after the log rotted away. The pics don't do it justice, you could crawl in there and sleep.
Ghost pipes were growing along the trail. Strange, mysterious, pale parasitic plants that lack chlorophyll, because they steal their nourishment from the photosynthesizing trees around them by connecting their mycorrhiza to their root systems and sucking nourishment from their hard-working hosts, kind of like Democrats. Oddly, they are closely related to rhododendrons and azaleas and blueberries, but they have gone off on their own path of vampirism until they are no longer recognizable as ericacious plants. They live around the world in dark, high, damp places, from Siberia to the Andes. In some places, they are called corpse plants. They contain a powerful nervine agent that has been compared to opium or Xanex. I find them pretty fascinating.
An odd, colorful, slimy fungus: the stalked puffball in aspic:
After a long walk downstream, I wriggled through the streamside rhododendrons and into the water. Looks promising:
My intel was good: nice browns were here, and they were hungry. And pulled like freight trains.
Oops:
Really nice fish for a creek this size. I hung and lost one that could have likely swallered a fair-sized housecat.
To be continued.....
It's a high valley, laying just under 4,000' elevation through most of the basin, where a dozen creeks come together in the span of just a few miles to form the headwaters of a major watershed. It's all wild and native trout, it's been many decades since a fish was stocked here. No delayed harvest or pellet pigs. So, not a lot of fly-shop sports fishing in here. But it's just my kind of place.
This place has some special emotional ties to me, as it was my Grandpa's favorite place to fish and camp. When he was in his early 80s and was informed by the doctors that he had terminal cancer and likely only a few months to live, the first thing he did was to go home and pack his camper and rods and head into this valley for several weeks to get his head wrapped around the news and come to peace with himself. Some of his daughters got mad when they found out, and raised Cain, saying that he wasn't able to be doing stuff like that, and he would probably fall in the river and drown or any number of other things. He should be at home where they could take care of him. My dad stood his ground against them and told them to leave him alone and give him his space; and that if he died while he was out there fishing, it would be the way he wanted to go, on his own terms, not laying in a hospital bed connected to a bunch of tubes and wires.
He came back much better than he was when he left, and lived nearly three more years, until the hospital bed and tubes and wires finally got him.
I haven't fished this valley since I was in my late teens or early twenties. A lot of the water, I've never fished. It's about time to go back.
When I arrived, it was just breaking daylight, foggy, and a light, misty rain was falling. @alittlebird had given me some intel about a stretch that might hold some good browns (thanks, Wes!) so I headed down the trail as daylight broke.
Came upon this huge yellow birch with a cave under the roots, where the sapling had originally sprouted on a big nurse log or stump and the roots had run down to the soil over the log, still there long after the log rotted away. The pics don't do it justice, you could crawl in there and sleep.
Ghost pipes were growing along the trail. Strange, mysterious, pale parasitic plants that lack chlorophyll, because they steal their nourishment from the photosynthesizing trees around them by connecting their mycorrhiza to their root systems and sucking nourishment from their hard-working hosts, kind of like Democrats. Oddly, they are closely related to rhododendrons and azaleas and blueberries, but they have gone off on their own path of vampirism until they are no longer recognizable as ericacious plants. They live around the world in dark, high, damp places, from Siberia to the Andes. In some places, they are called corpse plants. They contain a powerful nervine agent that has been compared to opium or Xanex. I find them pretty fascinating.
An odd, colorful, slimy fungus: the stalked puffball in aspic:
After a long walk downstream, I wriggled through the streamside rhododendrons and into the water. Looks promising:
My intel was good: nice browns were here, and they were hungry. And pulled like freight trains.
Oops:
Really nice fish for a creek this size. I hung and lost one that could have likely swallered a fair-sized housecat.
To be continued.....
