Help Me! I'm trapped in a Chinese fortune cookie factory!

Is it strange that I have always wanted to find the title of this post written on a fortune cookie?

Oh yes, ramblings, adventures and whatnot...I digress.  The best I can figure, I have broken into the illustrious world of the politician.  Lots of peacocking and empty promises and generally keeping my faithful followers dangling at the end of my silver tongue.  Well, I got news for ya JACK! (and Boris and Natasha, my faithful Russian Readers!)  the wait is OVER!  From now on...a few weeks from now.... I will once again rise to that most glorious masthead of a bonafide blogger! (Now if you're not already there, take on a boisterous voice, kind of a cross between a black southern gospel preacher and Captain America...That's it!)
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where was I going with this....
oh yeah.
I'm gonna try my best to post more. ( and now I bet you are laughing at yourself, because you did the whole voice thing)
Alright, so yeah, I've been behind.  After facing such utter disappointment with the last attempted post, I gave up.  I quit.

Morning came all too soon.  2 a.m. and I'm wide awake, staring that imaginary marauding bear down the throat!
"I'll just sleep on my tarp," I says.  "Sleep under the open starlit sky," I says.  It all sounded all well and good when I was half dead from exhaustion....you like how there was absolutely NO transition? :)  well, sit down and keep reading!

So there I was.  10 foot grizzly snarling in my face, and I put my cigar butt out on the sumbitch's nose...I was literally on the verge of pissing my pants when I heard old Mainerd start snoring, and from then on anything so loud as a squirrel fart woke me up in a near panic.  The good news is, the snoring let me know I wasn't the only one who was beat to hell and back from a hard day of travel. One species down, two to go.  And then I began to find peace with it all, settled back into the dirt and accepted everything for what it was...good.
4 hours later, the sun's cracking, and so is the ice on my sleeping bag; if there was any moisture up there.  Place was like a powder box. But man, that warm oatmeal went down and sat like a champ, and I was ready for a new day.  We milled around camp for a bit, had some coffee, filled the water bottles, pulled our straps and strings as tight as we could get 'em  and pushed on.
The valley leading from the Little Kern to the Kern is magnificent.  It's not quite deep enough to be a valley,  more like a pass, but the 700-800 ft. high rock slides on the north side are a mighty sight.  When you hear loud cracks in this boulder field that slopes upwards at a 60 degree angle, and you are at the base weaving on the grass paths between house sized boulders, you start to wonder, "Will this boulder be big enough to hide behind?"  Perhaps it wasn't as wild feeling at the time, but I sure would have liked to witness one of those boulders careening down, from a distance of course.
So we get past the minefield, sloping steadily down, and we come upon a vast canyon.  All we could see, in any direction, was valley.  The Kern River valley, though not more that 1000-1500 feet deep , nor more than a few miles wide, offers spectacular views in a 360 degree panorama of pure wilderness.   One could easily see how the river shaped this valley.  Each spur rolled in upon the other in a flowing, swaying, dramatic dance from east to west elegantly weaving its way down behind the other.  Scattered conifers dotted the rocky slopes that were the least bit inviting for a tree to take hold.  It was a breathtaking view, made all the more awe inspiring by the fact that at the bottom lay a trout stream.  And in it, the 2nd third of my purpose on God's green earth that day.

Onward we marched into the valley, skirting our way down the ledges to the valley floor, all the while cursing the elevation we will have to regain on the return trip. It was a steady grade, probably no more than 20 degrees in grade for most of it, edging your way down and north along the wall for a mile or so.  You could see the giddy-up in Mainerd's step, as the faintest rushes of water started to disturb the dust on our ear hairs.  It's time to fish.

F%&$

I had a glorious post ready for you, and somehow unintentionally highlighted the entire thing, typed the letter m thus deleting everything I had been writing for two days....and the bastard blogger saved a copy of the blank draft....so FUCK! is the word of the day.



But, no matter, here is something to make the day a little better.  From the Back Porch Sessions, here is Daniel Driver and Jeff Mac live with The Greatest Catsquirrel.

Golden Trout Wilderness: Part I

The hash marks on I-5 are zipping by almost at the same speed as the caffiene-diluted blood in my veins.  It's 4 in the morning and the olive orchards are sleeping black shadows; by 5 the rice fields are steaming with mist and by dawn, the sunflowers on highway 99 are looking as eagerly to the east as I am.  Quartering to the south, I drain the last few drops of jitter juice and just catch the ever-clarifying mirage of the Sierras.  Soon I will have been awake for 24 hours, unable to sleep partly because I've been working all night, but only partly.  It was going to be another 10 hours before I could sleep, if that was even going to be possible with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and black bears dancing around my tarp.  But those stars sure are going to look beautiful in that dry open air at 7000 feet with radiant golden trout unveiling their own dance to the wild flowing rythm of the Golden Trout Wilderness.  And I would be inexorably tethered to it, enveloped in the entirety of it all.

Sure we had talked about it plenty, and come up with generalized ideas of what it would take to pull off a trip of this magnitude, typically during alcohol lubricated rants on the porch or on pleather upholstered stools.  Why, we had even gotten a vague idea of what creeks we would have to fish to find the motherloads of geologically induced piscine purity.  But never had we tried to put the plan into action.  It would take months of planning and hours of poring over maps, tying flies, checking leaders, packing gear, preparing food...But we've done all that.  Hell, all we need is the time off. 
Less than three weeks of planning, and we had the loose framework of what had the potential to solidify into one of the most epic troutings to date. Sure, we've ground through day upon day of steelhead hell, making repetitive drift after painfully repetetive drift, but at the end of the day, there are buffalo wings to be had, beers to be quaffed, and firelit tales of elusive glory and the rock that you swear up and down shook its head to free up that fly.  Steelhead fishing has a comfort to it that cannot be explained, only lived.  This trip was going to be a whole different animal, a new kind of suffering that would require an entirely unique approach at losing yourself in the illusion.

37 pounds of food, water, shelter, and zen tools loaded in the back of the grey ghost, and I am getting a shotgun view of the foothills backed by bigger foothills backed by the Western Sierras.  Both Mainerd and I have enough caffiene and sugar in our systems to kill a small herd of elephants, but we're keepin 'er between the white lines, and that's all that matters.  A stop at the local ranger station proved to be less than helpful.  The poor gal had no idea she was about to run into two raging fanatics that had preconceived of actually hunting golden trout in the GOLDEN TROUT Wilderness. "Golden trout?  I didn't know we had those."  My dear Ms. Simpleton, we are only in the GOLDEN TROUT wilderness in the state of California, the flagship fish for which IS the golden trout, Onchorynchus mykiss aguabonita, the purest strains of which are found in Golden Trout Creek and Volcanic Creek, from which it derives the other common name, Volcano Creek Goldent Trout...Oh, and did I mention that we are in the GOLDEN TROUT WILDERNESS!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Aside from that carnival ride, the route we planned to take was completely off the charts for these folks.  The best we could do was get some guess-work at the trailhead location and directions (which actually turned out to be rather easy and accurately assessed, contrary to prior research, due to a relatively new trailhead) to said trailhead.  From there, we were on our own, lost in the vast wilderness.  So naturally, we thank them for their time and recommendation of a $20 map to fill in the gaps and act as a supplement to our other $30 map, and the vividly highlited trail maps distributed for free.  Armed with maps out the wazoo, high-tech toppographical mapping GPS software, and a pocketful of dreams...hearts full of hope...we drive ever onward and alarmingly uphill to the trailhead. 5000 feet we climb beside river and cliff and certain-death preventing guardrails to the babypowderesque sands of Click's Creek Trailhead.

I change socks and clothes, rearrange my 37 pounds of food, water, shelter, zen tools and sh*t tickets, compose the parting shot with the grey ghost, and we're off!, but not before returning to snag the GoPro.  The first bit of the trail eases downhill and across and beside a tiny trickle, probably a tributary to Clicks Creek, but HO, Mainerd spots a trout.  Not only does he spot a trout, but he spots a trout that is rising. Should we stop to fish less than a half mile in? What kind of trout is it? Is it worth the stop? Should we both rig up, or just one of us?  These are the questions that, though most of them had the simple answer 'yes' built into them, belly-crawled me through the grass, enduring the hordes of mosquitoes to the edge of the water.  In a matter of seconds, I was hit with a shockwave as the leviathanic beast broke free of his hydraulic confines into the alien world of my eyes and the winged six-legged appetizer he had just inhaled.  A belly of gold, that's all I saw, and all that I needed to see before Mainerd sets the hook and I thwart his best attempt at pinning a little kern goldent trout to my ear.  Step one: Find trailhead..check.  Step Two: catch little kern golden...double check as I send my wriggling victim skyward and wing my way to a 100% catch rate.  One cast, one fish.

High fives all around, break down the rod, and it's back down the old dusty trail. Until we hit the creek a second time, we're on cruise control.  Already we've knocked out, oooooh, about a mile.  Then we hit a split.  It's midday, the GPS is acting up, and the maps don't show a split.  And where the heck are the signs!?  This trip is getting off great, one mile in and we are disoriented, not to mention we look like a couple of amateurs asking for directions from a passing trail riding group.  We would come to discover that a majority of the folks using these trails are mounted.  Good thing to know.  So we get set in the right direction and we are off again. Down.  Downhill for 2 miles or better, losing all of that precious elevation we had gained so easily in the car. I am quickly finding out that the pack I am carrying is slightly less than trail-worthy, and 4 or 5 miles in, I'm actually feelin' pretty spry.  We roll on through Grey Meadows, right on track and come upon the little pack camp cabin, and two real nice, rugged-lookin' gals.  I had to admit, I was kinda envying the set-up.  Pack in on horseback with 10 or 12 mules and spend a little time in a cabin at the edge of the wilderness, greeting passersby and exploiting some of the small stream fishing (complete with shoreside lunch and a percolating pot of grit-coffee whilst the horses graze hobbled in the trees) damn near every day of it.  Purty romantic, ain't it?  So these gals chat us up, about where we're from, where we're headed, how they used to pack fish in and out of the wilderness area when fisheries management was being born, and we come across some valuable information.  Apparently, Trout Creek Meadows is LOUSY with bears and the rattlesnakes abound by the spring.  So, not really wanting to call it quits at a mere 8 miles, we announce that, "Hell naw, we're headed to Willow Meadows.  We're just gonna walk up all these bunched together skinny lines on this here map and down them other ones, and we'll be there; it's just 6 more miles."

After a little interpretation, just short of breaking out our flawless conglomeration of modern navigational means, we finally all get on the same page with the destination, and they casually toss out the little factoid that grey meadows to willow meadows was 2 or 3 hours on horseback, and that we'd probably wanna look at camping at the Little Kern Bridge.  It was half the distance, and the bears and rattlesnakes were actually rather friendly, aaand we probably weren't going to make it to willow meadows by nightfall.  Like HELL!  Onward we march, stifling our laughter at how the underestimatory remarks and suggestions had bounced off of us like small twigs, splintering in the dry sand!  HA! (and for the record, I'm pretty sure I just invented a word.  Take THAT Webster and the world!  You are welcome.)

Our eyes were first opened by the smooth granite canyon of the Little Kern River.  Breathtaking fall-aways, smooth granite walls, and a wild little mountain river crossed by a picturesque bridge with a seemingly perfect little campsite right off the trail.  Come to find out later, that campsite would have been a nightmare.  Imagine pack train traffic running right upwind of your campsite next to a trail whose sand is, no joking, finer than baby powder.  I mean, you breathe a little too hard and you are gonna be dusted. Anyway, we pressed on.  7 or 8 miles in at this point and I decide to take a look at the old GPS, and..."We are headed entirely in the wrong direction" I says.  'Huh?'  " We're headed towards the meadows that the two ol' gals back at Grey Meadows casually warned against, Mainerd, I think we  missed a trail."

Utter disbelief.  How could we have missed a trail? There WAS no other trail.  So I volunteer to go back and take a look, and sure enough, we had missed it.  Standing right on it, I wouldn't have even known it was there, but for a small duck (or cairn or pile-o-damn-rocks).  Manzanita and some other low shrub had covered all but a sliver of the depression of the old cutoff trail, as we were informed it was by a passing pack train that dusted us thoroughly and left us standing in a mound of horse shit.  I'm sure this is it, and now it's Mainerd's turn to set the pace, because by now, I'm losing that bit of second wind.  WWW,TRD?  What Would Walker, Texas Ranger Do?  He'd hike up this damn trail, that's what!  Then turn around and karate kick it back into a mountain!  Well, we never brought it down from being a mountain spur, but up and over we did go until through the trees, I start seeing hints of an opening.  At this juncture, I am stumbling exhausted, we're not entirely sure there is a decent spring at this meadow, it's getting near dark, and I just noticed a few bear tracks on the trail.  Suddenly, after rolling down the backside of the hill, I get up, dust myself off and my eyes fall upon a quiet meadow hemmed all around by huge pines and firs, and a pretty well set up cow camp.  This is it, I'm locked in on my target and I'm going down.  I hit the log bench like a bag of hammers, too tired and worn out to even talk very loudly, and threw that pack off like it was a rabid wolverine strapped to my back.  I just wanted to be as far away from that accursed thing that had been riding on my back and slowly peeling the skin off my hips and shoulders! 

We slowly reconciled our differences and the bastard conceded to let me dig around for my food bag and water bottles, but I could still feel that evil glare that said, "Round 1, I win."  So I turn up the flame on the stove, boiling right along with my pot of tasty tortilla chicken soup, and silently cursing  and weaving vows of revenge.  And it's off to bed with an aching body, a weary soul, and a small glowing ember of hope for tomorrow's awaiting conquests.

The uprights on that bridge are about 25 feet high and the rock in the bottom center had the remains of the old bridge whose remaining pieces are my size.

My heritage trout #5, The Little Kern Golden Trout.

Mainerd's LK Golden.

Filler

Yeah, that's right...FILLER!  I have all of the footage I need to compose an encapsulating video chronicle of the trip to the Golden Trout Wilderness, but I have yet to make any headway on acquiring the software required to arrange the visual repertoire that I am envisioning.  But fear not, I am in the process of weaving the tale of the adventure, and it will be unleashed in the next post that draweth nigh.

Until then, I cooked up some filler.  Yay! Filler!

Whilst this was by no means a haphazard project, putting together this short did take under 2 hours tops...the first time!  There I am, whipping together a video, furrowed brow, drooping dark sacs filling beneath my eyes, and BING!  Up pops the old "youworkin'onsomethin'?Oh!COOL!" POWERDOWN!!!............................................................................................................................dramatic pause...............................................................................................................imagine these dots are creating a little electric feedback hum.................................................SON OF A B&*%$.   The computer goes FLYIN' across the room, and I'm flyin' after it to catch it.  I was a wee bit steamed!  But I got over it, and now, a week later, I started 'er up again and everything flowed.  I gotta say, for the remaining hour and a half I spent re-making this entire video after a song just CLICKed with me today at work, I don't think it's half bad.  It really paints a decent portrait of what the trip was,  a dang near fishless, cold, wet, dart throwin', punchin' baggin', drunk and hollerin' in the woods, frito chili pie makin', sasquatch trappin', hell-raisin' good time.

For starters, it hadn't been that good of a steelhead year to begin with, we had one fly-fishin' greenhorn, a wanted fish and wildlife outlaw, Mainerd and me, and we figured this trip was gonna be a doosey.  We had one week to get on some steelhead from just out of the valley damn near to Oregon.  One week to get some of the biggest, juiciest, perfectly breaded and sauced hot wings this side of the rockies.  ONE WEEK...to, party, because I hadn't been out there in quite some time, and dangit, I'm on vacation!
But we pulled 'er together and got loaded at Tips, as is the custom, and loaded up to head coastward.  First day on the water and ol' Mainerd (aka Mercury Risin') latches into a steelie.  Then tops it off with a beautiful brown.  Everybody else, ZIP!  No hookups, nada.  But merriment would be had!  We roll on west eventually meeting up with EGGO in Arcata. And so party night began.  We were all fresh on the road, had put in a great fishing effort for the day, doused those delicious buffalo wings with ample amounts of ice-cold SN Pale Ale off the tap, and it was time for vacation...I don't know what it is about that stupid punching machine in the bar, but I look at it now and see that I OBVIOUSLY missed out on a wonderful collegiate investment.  If anybody is reading this and is thinking about going to college, check out a punching machine.  Tell me you can resist cramming all your hard-earned money into one of those suckers after a few pints.  "Hey! Hey! Hey, hey hey, HEY! You GUYS! I'll bet you, the, the next pitcher,  I can score higher than you! *HICK*" 

Well, you'll see it.
 Have you ever fished for steelhead?  Have you ever fished for steelhead...with a haNGOVER, MAN!?  Not highly advised.  Oh, and garlic cream cheese and lox on an onion bagel...sounds delicious, but don't do it!  Mercury takes us crashing through the quaint streets of downtown Acrata, and then into the roadside jungle down a near vertical hillside that , when you include the washed out traces of the old highway, stirs thoughts of post-apocalyptica.

  At one point I wormed my way out of the rabbit path and through a slope of hobbling vines, only to plunge headfirst into an 8 foot dropoff cushioned by jurassic-sized pampas grass. That is no estimation, 15'+ clumps of pampas.  RIDICULOUS!  Needless to say, I think next time we'll just take the longer route.  Anyway, Big Lagoon yielded nothing but relentless wind and a few agates. On down the road to the Smith River.  Talk about a big, beautiful, and brutal river.  The water is crystal clear, if you could see through all the white-washing rapids and plunges.  I am really looking forward to giving this river a little more fishing time, as frustrating as she may be.  We did hook up with a few coastal cutthroat trout, racking up heritage trout number 3 (the two prior being Steelhead  and McCloud River Redband). 

A few goose-egg days on the Smith got us all itching to move, so we parted ways with Eggo and headed back south. If you can't catch anything else, you can catch a buzz.  Hard at it five days on the road and we headed down to Six Rivers Brewery and then the Mad River Brewery.  Both are excellent haunts if you find yourself in the area. 

The next day on the river would be the toughest yet.  Hopes were still high on hooking up with a little steel, when Bizzuh takes a dunkin'.  Let me tell ya, taking a full on, wader-fillin' dunking first thing in the morning in 30 some degree weather after a week of torture and frustration will really get to a guy. Add to that a broken rod while slip-sliding out of the river looking like a drowned rat, and well...You're gonna be one sad panda.  And sad panda he looked, but by-golly he kept the ol' chin up and racked out in the car while the die-hards finished out the day with NADA!!

We ran Bizzuh back that night, licked a few wounds at Tips, slept the night indoors, and vowed to make a fresh start of it in the morning for one last over-nighter HOORAH!.  And a great attempt it was, covering more water on foot than I think we've covered on that river.  All for a take or two and a little half-pounder steelhead.  But the night was brought to life when a small pile of scat was drunkenly discovered on the campground picnic table.  After a few failed wobbly attempts, the deadfall was set, and we were ready to catch ourselves a Sasquatch! Well, maybe smash his hand a little bit when he tried to take my Fritos.  I mean, come on, I made a little dead-fall using stripped bark to weave a noose for goodness sake, it was bound to work.  Plus, we baited it with beer-soaked Fritos, how could it NOT work?  Awake in the morning and the deadfall was tripped.  No sasquatch, but we did find a coarse whitish hair, possibly Yeti, but it would only be incidental, as we are a bit west and south of their native range, and we really have no way of knowing for certain until the follicle analyses return from the lab....

Then it happened.  Last day on the water, fishing the last run.  I had worked the same drift over and over and over and over and over again.  Mercury comes waltzin' up and BAM! the indicator takes a sharp upstream jerk and the jerk downstream ripped 'er south!  I can replay the moment in my mind in slow motion.  The water sprays off the line running laser-straight from her jaw and she breaches the surface like a 7-pound pissed off submarine and all in one heartbeat radiates cold, glistening beauty through an elegant dance, levitating before my eyes.  Ay, she was deadly beautiful, and that image of her twisting and turning and throwing me off and sliding gracefully back through the same rippling water she'd leapt from, was enough to make the trip for me.  What a way to top it off! I was just as happy to lose that one fish in less than a second as I would have been catching a hundred fish on any other trip.  Too bad it didn't make it on video...Probably a good thing though.

Wow, I started this out at a one-paragraph post and it quickly got out of control.  Oh well.  I felt like you at least needed an explanation for the lack of fish in the Shiddeo.  Sometimes it's not the fish that we are after.

Steelhead 2011

USE THE PATH!



 It's 3:30 a.m. and I can't sleep.  No really, I can't sleep.  Maybe a catnap here or there between tows, but it's a ritualistic answer to the prayer bell that vaguely resembles a small kitchen timer. We plod forth, well really aft, to retrieve our net and survey the spoils of our war against these filthy monsters that plague our river, fornicating and masticating in defecation!

I've been larval sampling.  What is that you say?  Just nothing shy of brainscrambling torture! I have yet to decide if I am in an ever-increasing state of elation at the thought of being rid of this 6:30-3am sleep deprivation experiment, or if I am in fact madly in love with the easily justifiable laziness that is entrained in this nocturnal nonsense. 

July 1, 2012:

Following a night of forcing myself to stay awake in preparation for the shift from a regular old 7:00-15:30 schedule, I managed a solid 6 hours of sleep kicked off by half an episode of Trailer Park Boys.  'Alright, eight o'clock!  I am SO ready to stay up til 3!'
(Cue the robotic tour guide voice) "The Sacramento River is home to a genetically distinct population of Green Sturgeon that journey upriver to spawn. Relatively little is known about the sturgeon's spawning habits. Our dedicated biologists at the US Fish and Wildlife service are working to gather as much information as they can to better understand our magnificent, prehistoric piscine pal."

Everyone presses into the port rail, causing the gunwhale of this gaudily decorated tourist barge to list within a perilous few inches of the river's surface...

Sorry, I got lost there.  So it's Sunday and I am prepping to go into work at 6:30 p.m. in attempts to capture out-migrating juvenile green sturgeon. Lunch is ready by 6:00, or is it dinner?  In either event, it's ready and I am off to work.  Fast forward to tonight.  We make the necessary preparations, check all of the sampling gear, make some "adjustments" to the net frame to make sure all the bolts "fit", no matter that they are splayed at 120 degree angles to one another when they should be parallel and I was off target the first few swings and now the net frame is pocked with persuasion dents that look oddly similar to the head of a hammer, THEY FIT DAMN IT ALL!  One thing I love about my job is that if it don't work, take a hammer to it and see if that fixes it. Nevermind that hammer looks a lot like a crescent wrench and the toolbox is last week's wine box. I believe Mickey Moused is the best way to describe the sled configuration of that sampling net.  Boat's full of gas, Truck's full of gas (although at 8mpg, she won't be for long), Scott's passing gas, and we're off like a herd of turtles. 

At the boat ramp while administering my daily dose of public outreach, reciting this exact anecdote to all the local yokels, I realized I was drunkenly rambling in the face of my colleague who continues to exasperatedly plead with me to just "BACK THE *&%@#  BOAT OFF THE $&#(@^ TRAILER!!!"
Maybe I should have only had 3 beers with breakfast at noon.
So the gist of this operation is to capture juvenile sturgeon by towing a benthic D net.  Rotate that D to 270 degrees and you've got a general idea of what the net looks like. Attached to the boat via one 10 ton hydraulic winch, 50,000 lb test kevlar cable, and half a dozen safety lines should the others fail, we drop our net, heavy as nibbler terds to the bottom of the river.  Heavy duty netting trailing behind the D frame will channel all that enters its mouth through its bowels into a solidly packed mass of river debris, bottom dwelling insects, leeches, leaves, and sticks, and hopefully the occasional sturgeon in a perforated PVC live care (which has it's own safety line by the way).  For 20-30 minutes at a time (dependent upon the amount of debris) we leave the net fishing on the river bottom.  At the end of 30 minutes, we tow the net back to the boat, putting intense strain on the davit arm that has gusseted gussets, record river flow readings, and sort through all the collected debris in hopes of locating outmigrating juvenile sturgeon.  We are attempting to narrow down what time of year and in what locations our sturgeon are spawning, when the juveniles are migrating out, and all the other ambiguities surrounding this species.  It really is interesting subject matter if you happen to be a fish-head, or if you long to leave the world of cubicle decorating behind for a free boat ride on the river five nights a week. Although this particular detail is more reminiscent of tying up to an old stump in the middle of the lake and helping rid the alcoholics of the world of the aluminum cans of demonic temptation.  Well, minus the fishing all day and coming home with nothing but your liver in the cooler.
So we tow the net for 30 minutes, chat it up, read books, play Angry Birds, snack, and pull in the net again. Pretty routine.  And that has been the last two weeks.  Again, I am undecided if I am ready to be rid of this schedule.  I rather enjoy waking up around the crack of noon with the rest of the afternoon to get my affairs in order (i.e. deciding between Cap'n Crunch or Mom's Best Luck Charms knockoff), pack my dinner, tie a few flies, watch some Dennis the Menace and Leave it to Beaver, and go in to work right as it starts to cool down to a balmy 95 degrees. Golly, life sure is swell!

On the down side, the adventures have been at a minimum.  I went a did a little geocaching off Muletown Road, of which 1000+ acres burned a few days ago (Not my doing!).  Had a failed attempt at sampling the wares of the Dunsmuir Brewery, as all those darn tourists drank the brew pub dry over 4th of July weekend. There was some consolation in that I gained a healthy reprieve from the torrid central valley temperatures in the baptismal waters of the Upper River of the Blessed Sacrament. Howeve, Brian was the only one who truly got saved.  Came up looking like a drowned rat, and lost his net to boot.  I myself came close, but I managed to balk at the prospect every time. 
And now I am looking ever forward to the exploits of the encroaching future.  5 days, 4 nights, 50 miles, 8000+ feet of elevation, 15 hours of driving, 4 tanks of gas, 2 guys, alone, in the wilderness...It's a full-blown Man-cation.  Fishing for gold in the Golden Trout Wilderness of the Sierras.  Look for the vid.
Even better than that, I am only 3 weeks from seeing my beloved!  Shauna is coming out the 5th of August for a week of rambling through these California hills.  Add to that a trip to the Deschutes River in Oregon for some dry-fly steelheading, and I've got some good times coming to break up these central valley doldrums and build into a great culmination of fat fall fish and sizzling steelhead action and Christmas in North Carolina!  Hoping to see a great friend of mine, and father to one of my favorite compañeros, Mr. Paul Driver in the near future. 
  Things are starting to look shiddy!

Cache found!

Billie found some cool mud

That is the true grade of the hillside I bushwhacked for some of these caches.

Whiskeytown Reservoir to the north

What a spectacular place for a geocache.

Quarter Pounders and half-pints, eh?

Green Sunfish on a San Juan Worm

It's been a busy few weeks.  For those of you that just want the meat of the story, read no further, because I know you've got busy lives too.  In summation, I have had 0 time at the office, staying out in the field all day (which is AWESOME....sorta).  I fished Trinity Lake over the weekend, listened to log trucks' jake brakes all night and caught some very respectable Trinity Lake rainbows.  My buddy Aaron, of  Chronicles of Cod fame (http://chroniclesofcod.com/), rolled through town, and now here I sit....How about that, my week summed up in a 60 second read?  Not very appealing is it?  Here's what really happened....

So after a long week at work, saving salmonids one screw-trap at a time, I decided that Thursday, I'd go out for an after work special (that's fishing after work for all you common folk) and maybe a few beers at Tips to celebrate the day, why not.  So I took Marc out to a little mini-stream chock full of little sunfish and smallmouth, and boy did we get into some hawgs!  I wrestled in one smally that was pushing at least...4, maybe even 5....ounces.  A quarter-pounder with cheese on the fly!  Pretty little fish though, and what a fun way to unwind, plucking tiny fish out of a tiny stream on tiny rods.  Not really much to tell here honestly, that's what it was, fishing to fish, pure and simple.  I DID add two new species to my fly list, so I guess something came of it.  9 o'clock rolls around, and I can hear the faintest call on the wind, ".....tiiiiiiips.......tiiiiiiiiiiiiips."  Who am I to deny the voices of fate?  So, off I roll down the old dusty trail to the waterin' hole.  Greeted at the door by Montana Shane and a cold Coors Original already open on the bar, I knew this was where I was supposed to be.  So I drive a few beers in me, plug some money into the jukebox, and settle down on my barstool to stare down the same wall I've stared at oh so many times before.  When what before my eyes should suddenly appear?  A wee little feller ordering a cold beer!  No red beard, no green jacket and pants, no pot of gold or lucky charms, so I eliminated Leprechaun.  Could it be!?!  Is this the break-dancing "little person" that I had heard tell of.  Ricky (the NOT Leprechaun)...MAN, I hate the whole politically correct thing, but I really don't want to offend anyone....okay, I'm not sure what the cutoff between dwarf and midget is, but this guy was short.  Knee high to a grasshopper!  For the record, he seemed an extremely nice fellow, and I am by no means poking fun.  Next thing I know, tables are being cleared , the floor is opened up, and I am now watching this little fella spin around on his head like a human dreidel and worming his way across the floor.  It was at this point that I requested that my favorite bartender in the world please clarify that I was in fact seeing what I thought I was seeing.  I guess the little pieces of paper and that half a rufee in my beer had actually not taken effect yet.  This cat was tearing the floor up!  He then proceeds to calmly dust himself off, shake hands with a few people, and penguin his way back outside...Holy hell!  It took a hi-lift jack just to get my jaw off the floor.  I looks over at Jess, expressed my disbelief, and ordered another beer to see if the lollipop guild would show up while my BAC was on the rise.  Tips.  Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and break-dancin' midgets just happen occasionally.

Sundy rolls around, and I get the fishin' itch, so Marc and I loaded up the kayaks, made the necessary preparations (stock the cooler with food and beer, buy more beer, pack fishing gear, buy more beer, you get the picture) and it was off to Trinity Lake.  When we first show up, the first thing I hear is, "Oh, no, this doesn't look right."  We're out here chasing down a hot tip Marc got, and suddenly "this doesn't look right comes up...Oh boy.  So this is when I says, "Well, you wanna fish it?"  And fish it we did, but not before we had a meet and greet with some of the fine folks that frequent Trinity Lake, earning us our fair share of momentary fame and glory.  We recieved such pearls of wisdom as: Don't get so faced by noon that you forget your sunglasses in the truck or you'll blister the bottoms of your feet whilst 'Woohoo!'ing yourself hoarse.  She did however compliment me on my stunningly white teeth.
"He ain't from around here." spouts the most redneck voice a Mainer can muster. 

Sorry for that pause that you guys can't tell that just happened; I had to put down my beer because I couldn't stop laughing.

To the frequenters of Trinity Lake, You are wonderful people and damned good entertainers.

Fishing Trinity Lake

Anyway, we caught some very nice fish in very good numbers in a variety of fishing styles, the stillwater dry being the absolute mindblower.
 
8 minutes of tiny mends for micro wind-currents to keep your fly from dragging, all the while waiting on a trout to meander into a tiny window on their patrols where your little foam fly, which is no bigger than the word ENTER on this screen, floats nearly perfectly in sync with all the little white bubbles and yellow pollen flecks on the water...thenBOOM!  All hell breaks loose when that fish either sips that fly with barely a ripple or just demolishes it in a silvery, pissed off rolling boil.  That first take was the latter.  A flash of trout and a quick, violent whorl, and I'm ripping the surface with 60 feet of line! 

I may post a real-time video, just for anyone that wants to see the full extent of intensity in the focus.  Heck, I'll even put some music in there.

Hooked up, and keepin' er out of the willows.

Buggers, nymphs, dries, even Ro-Jo bugs were catching fish.  So two days  of spectacular trout fishing and we're wanting to change direction a little bit, so it's up Stuart's Fork we rumble and bushwhack through some of the roughest terrain we've ventured through thus far in the season for a few dinky little trout and one GORgeously coloured California Mountain Kingsnake, a new snake species for me. 

California Mountain Kingsnake

On to the next week of work which goes as work goes, and we see such events as, the bottling of Austington Wit (my first gluten-free belgian-style ale), meeting up with Marv at the casino ( A fantastic guy, a wonderful friend of mine and the family), and a deer cleaning out my bird feeder and subsequently getting ineffectively attacked by the rabid pack of terriers.

Bird feed thief

 My good friend, Aaron, also rolled through town. He guides at Fish Tales Fly Shop in Calgary, Alberta, and is currently wrapping up a phenomenal 4-month fishing hiatus that has spanned from Belize to Houston to Corpus Christi, Baja, Cuba, and Red Bluff, CA.  Check out his blog, http://chroniclesofcod.com .  The guy is a great writer, a bang up fisherman, and probably the most personable guy you can meet. 
I took Aaron out to the home waters and we had as good an after-work special I could have asked for.  Aaron picked up a few quality California rainbows, and I said hello to a new, thicker shouldered fish in one of my favorite runs. 

And now, here I sit, clickity clickin' away on the keys. What will tomorrow bring?  Maybe geocaching around Clear Creek and up Mule Mountain, or maybe jigging for land-locked tschawytscha on Lake Shasta in the kayak.  Who knows....

Stay Shiddy!

Shasta National Forest; Follies, Fawns, Fish, and Fun

Blacktail fawn

I write to you from the campfire….

DAMN!  Technology is cool.  I mean, really, I am violating one of my cardinal rules here by bringing a computer camping, but I couldn’t resist doing it just once.  Plus, I’m by myself, I’ve been staring at the fire and drinking for a little while, I figure, it’s okay.  The screen is blinding though, so I shall keep this section short.

Made it out to fish for some McCloud river redbands today.  Salmo Shasta  is a one of eleven native  trout species  (heritage trout) found in California.  California is home to eleven distinct and, at one point in time, geographically isolated populations of trout.  Should one catch six of the eleven species, said person will have completed the Heritage Trout Challenge.  My goal this year is to complete the challenge.  Thus far I have caught the redband, Coastal Cutthroat, and Steelhead.  I figure it’s a pretty realistic goal to accomplish, though finding the pure strains of some of these trout in their native waters will prove to be little sagas all their own. 

The McCloud River

Anyway, more on that later.  The sound of the river down below me is pretty entrancing, so I bid you all adieu, good morrow, the clickity clicking of these keys is kinda ruining it for me.

…..

You know, I had the toughest time trying to decide how many periods to put right there.  That is how utterly uninspired I feel to write at this juncture.  And the most obnoxious symbol on the keyboard goes to….I got lost here… Oh yeah!  So there I was:

I spent the rest of my night trying to wedge the dog off the bed and get comfortable in the back of my truck.  Yes, no grand tales of stargazing and getting lost in the night wilderness.  Fitful sleep on a poorly made bed for me!  I guess I’m just a sucker for that exhausted, achy feeling after a good hard overnighter camping trip.  Woke up bright and early and started up my little fire to thaw my skinny, thin blooded butt out, rigged up my boiling pot, ground my coffee, and proceeded to sit and bask in the majesty of the morning.  Having had my coffee and stretched my legs a bit, I proceeded to follow Billie’s example by walking around, sniffing the bushes, and marking my territory.  I tell ya, it was like a scene right outta one of them there fly fishin’ movies with Brad Pitt.  You know, that ONE movie that entirely defines fly fishing, and the very essence of shadow-casting…(insert muffled guffaw here).

So I’m down in the canyon.  I’ve done a little brush-busting to get where I’m at, at least a half river mile downstream from where I had always stopped in previous years.  New water.  I’m casting a pretty clumsy rig consisting of a foam grasshopper fly tied 3 feet above a weighted nymph with another 18 inches of tippet to another nymph.  3 points of weight and wind resistance= clumsy rig.  Then it happens… You know that feeling when you get hit by lightning 2 days after having someone tell you, ”SHYEAH! Call me when that happens.”   BOOM, Brett!  BOOM!  I see a flash on my lower nymph, and at the exact second I go to set the hook, ANOTHER fish slips up and sips that hopper you’ve got on.   Needless to say, I was in shock, because this NEVER HAPPENS!!  Not that I’ve heard of anyway.   Two Trout One Drift.  I only wish I was more diligent with my GoPro, because that might just have been the nastiest bit of fish porn on the web!  I mean, we’re talking 500 hits here! 

Pure strain McCloud River Redband

But, seriously, amazed the Bjeezus out of me!  Sorry to say I did not land them both.  The little guy shook off, as I had no way to keep tension on them both with such light line.  I did land the bigger one that sipped the hopper, though.

The rest of my trip went well.  Got great gas mileage, stopped and fished some new water on the Upper Sacramento River, saw tons of nice fish, and nearly had to take out a deer with a rock…Wait a minute…Deer, rock….Oh yes, I’m getting there!

So I’m teabag deep in the river stalking some rising fish about 20 yards from the bank and I hear Billie barking.  She’s chasing a deer through the brush, no big deal, she had already chased one out a little before, an event that ended in she sees me and comes to a screeching halt.  About face, into the river downstream.

The one that ran away

Something’s different though.  Both the dog and the deer are headed my way through the wall of blackberries and brush, and the dog is in the lead…Billie comes bursting out of the brush about 5 feet out into the water and hot on her heels is a red-hot pissed off doe.  I mean, this B*&#$ was in STOMP mode, HULK ANGRY, SMAAAAAAAAAAASH mode!  So she’s trying to make Billie a new part of the riverbed and I don’t know whether to laugh, help, take a picture, or piss myself.  I start heading that way and Billie gives her the slip and starts muskratting her wait in a beeline for me.  The doe gives up pursuit for the moment and Billie and my fly line proceed to swim circles all around me.  So I grab the dog and haul her up to the nearest rock, all the while lecturing Billie about the dangers of messin’ with momma and otherwise pissing me off on a perfectly relaxing day of fishing.  Fast forward to 30 minutes and 200 yards of river later and Billie is back on the bank, not willing to venture very far from the water’s edge any more.  I hear scree (a loose accumulation of rocky debris on a slope or cliff) sliding, then blackberry bushes crashing, and the general “HEY! THIS AIN’T GOOD” feeling comes upon me.  Billie must have had that feeling too, because she was already in the water and headed my way, but she only got a foot out when that deer busts out stomping.  I already had a softball sized rock in hand and hucked it right at that screaming mad mother.  I guess a rock that big right behind the shoulder will snap you out of any craze, because she looked up all sorts of apologetic like and hopped right back into that thicket.  I kinda felt bad, but I kinda knew where she was coming from with the whole protectiveness thing.  Thus the reason I did NOT throw the rock as hard as I could and she was able to walk away bewildered, but otherwise unharmed.  Just in case anyone was wondering.

So, now I’m back en la casa, back at work, and awaiting the next ramble.

Stay shiddy kids!