Here kitty kitty kitty kitty OW!! F*&#!!!

Who is the dumbass that first decided to go noodling?  And who's the other dumbass that decided to call it noodling?

Before I dive too deep into this rambling, I would like to be serious for a moment and congratulate my little brother on graduating high school.  Pretty sure everybody figured Pops would have strangled ya by now.  Hell, escaping that is a feat in and of itself.  But I am damn proud of ya.

So now all 3 of you folks that are gonna read this know why I headed up to Nacogdoches the first weekend of this month.  Not like it's any of your business anyway.  Ya nosy busy bodies.  Go on, GIT!
Where was I?..Oh yeah.  So Shaunita and I loaded the mutts into the little Honda Egg, and blasted off north to the town of my birth.  Aside from a flame engulfed tractor trailer, a hotel bonfire gone wrong, and an invisible major accident all in H-town (I'm pretty sure that H stands for "Howthehellcananyonestandtoliveinthisgodforsakenwadofbuildings,crappystreets,andhoardesofpeople") the trip was an overall breeze.

The family is all good, thanks for asking. Everybody is getting on in years, the little cousins are getting big, the older folks are getting wrinkles, you know the routine.

So on to the real story, the one you (yeah, the one person that will read this) came to see.

"Let's go noodlin'" says the once little, but now towering brohemoth.  So, I thinks about it for a minute...man, do I really want to go out there and wallow around sticking my hand in random holes I can't see into.  Insert crude joke here. :)  But what I really needed was to spend time with the bro.  Just a good, quality bonding experience, as our last few visits had gone a little too quickly and time was spent at opposing leisurely activities, myself being in bed just as the young 'un was rising.  So, we load up and head on out to the lake.  I must remind you that it has been years since I last noodled and this was likely prior to the development of completely rational fears, such as checking the bite strength of a snapping turtle, playing footsies with a gator's mouth, or getting my nipple bitten off by a beaver.  I mean, could you imagine going through life with one nipple?  So the young 'uns are in the water, splashing around, going under, and coming back up empty handed.  Things aren't looking so good until Blake hollers "fish!" and comes up with a respectable little blue cat.  On the stringer that one goes, not before I managed to lose my grip on it and slice my palm with it's pectoral spine.  ALL of the freakin' gafftops, hardheads, and other manner of toothy, spiny, and otherwise razor sharp fish I handle every day, and  I get sliced by a spine...AMATEUR!!!!!!!


Finally I can't take it any more.  Nipples be damned, I gotta get in that water.  Within minutes, I become the catfish radar.  I can feel their presence before I even touch 'em.  Sometimes you get to where you find a hole, and you can just feel that it's right (Minds out of that gutter perverts). Belly crawling over the rocks, I'm finding fish left and right, but they continue to elude me, escaping from one of the 2-5jillion exits.

 Meanwhile, I  think Blake had found about 2 or 3 and strung them up, when finally I get my chance.  I reach off into a hole, and I can feel that cooler water, then a slight movement.  "A WHISKER, I FEEL A WHISKER!!"
So as I am gently caressing this mystery fish, telling her everything is gonna be okay, I call in the reinforcements.  "YOU! Block that back hole!  You!  Cover the sides!  This kitty's not getting away!"  I take my time and gently maneuver my hand around, trying to locate her mouth.  A belly, a rib cage, a whisker....there she is...CHOMP!!!!!!!!  I'm not sure what I expected.  Everything was going fine. I stick my hand in the hole, feel the fish, fish swims away.  No biggie.  Now, I've got one vised down on my fingertips and for some odd reason, she ain't happy. Betwixt the tears and the snot bubbles, I managed to inform my noodling SWAT team that I was ready for extraction.

 Like any pro fisherman, I had her lipped perfectly.  There was only one problem.  When I put my hand in the hole, it fit.  Now that I was trying to take it out, the hole had gotten too small.  Simple solution, I just get my crew to remove a few rocks, and out comes fishy.  Rock option #1 was slightly too large to extricate.  Rock option #2 then sent rock option #1 settling into place, thus making a too small hole even smaller.  The good news is, my head was above water, so I had full capability of letting loose every curse I could think of to express the excruciating pain that was exuding from my now crushed metacarpals and phalanges. The OTHER good news is, I still had a death grip on my prize whose bubbles of laughter were popping in my face.  One, Two, Three, and open comes the hole just enough to bring the cat up. And as soon as she saw daylight, all five pounds of her set to writhing, and my pro bass grip was rendered useless.  Up she came and down through my bear hugging arms she went.....I was heartbroken.  Defeated.  Awash with shame and agony. "It's alright, you'll get another one" wasn't going to replace what I had lost. The day was ruined.

But later came redemption.  Meanwhile, we continued to prowl around the rocks, each one of us in turn yelling the top secret code word "FISH" upon the discovery of a holey inhabitant.  Blake was pulling them out left and right. 

 The boy's got talent, and a reckless confidence that just makes you feel like you're not doing your part.  My next fish was much like the first. A cool confident search for all exits, blocking them in turn and feeling for a mouth.  Well, I found it.  Should have called that one Bam Bam, because she had a vise grip on my thumb and was not letting go, rather chomping repeatedly as if to chew it off.  At one point I wasn't even holding her, just pulled her out with my thumb firmly clamped in her jaws.  It was kinda like a sick version of a chinese finger trap.  The one thing I can say is that since I gently maneuvered her out, she didn't have a mark on her.   Blake's fish looked like they had been run through a meat grinder.  

It's getting later on in the day, so we start working our way back, covering all of the holes that we might have skipped before.  Suddenly, I come upon one that just has that feel.  A nice concealed entrance that goes back a little way before opening into a large cavern.  I reach in, waving my fingers around further and further into the cooler water, feeling for the slightest sign of a BAM!!!! OW S#&$!!!!   My right ring finger had been cleanly bitten off at the first knuckle!  I had found a snapping turtle, pissed it off, and it ate my finger with the ferocity of a cornered tasmanian devil!  My gawd, what am I gonna do without a right ring finger!?

Well, I pulled my hand out and there was the finger, minus a little bit of skin, but Christ almighty, that little fish hit it like she wanted to take it right off.  I didn't catch the fish, thus claiming the redemption that I truly wanted, but I was reminded of exactly how stupid this whole noodling thing was.

On to the next hole.

Then I hear our cousin Chase holler "FISH, OMYGAWD ITS A BIGGUN!" as no other Okie could slur it. Blake and I fiercely dog paddle to the scene and secure the perimeter.  I follow chase's hand down and feel around for other exits, find one and stick my arm in it, whereupon I feel the fish right away. Her body was as big around as my leg!  Alright!  I make quick action to press her up against the side of the hole so she can't escape, while both the other two boys are feeling around for a mouth.  Chase finds it, and she clamps down. I can feel the tremor of the bite, but oddly enough, when he pulls her out, my fish doesn't move...."THERE'S TWO!! THERE'S TWO!!!!!!"  Blake is promptly back in the hole and extracts another 10 pound flathead.

It was around this moment that I got that warm fuzzy feeling of the comfort of knowing that quality bonding time was being well spent, and that even if I didn't see another fish, I know that I saw my little brother for the man that he was becoming, and I could not have been more proud.

I won't tell ya about the big one that got away, or the trophy photos at home.  I figure this is as good a place as any to end this ramble.

Cobia de Mayo: That's not a Spadefish!

Alright, so everything you migh have read in Salt 396's blog...all lies, the filthy pirate.  Lemme tell you what really happened...
9 a.m. and no compadres to fish with.  They says "9 a.m. the train's leaving"  so after chucking the chickens a little bit of grain and violently throwing all my gear into the camper, I'm running red lights to get to the station on time. I even drag raced a B-line bus (totally beat that sucker off the line) just so I wouldn't miss out on this once in a lifetime trip.  Alright, so maybe we were just trying this setup out for future trips, but I damn sure wasn't gonna miss the maiden voyage of the SS Innertube. These boys come dragging in around 9:15 while I'm cramming down the last half of my chorizo and egg taco and washing her down with a little 99.9 FM the Tejano central, and I gave 'em the cussing of a lifetime.  When it's time to go, bigawd, it's time to go!  There's fish to be caught!
Maybe I was a little rough on them, youngsters as they be, but you promise me a shot at cobia, jacks, and sharks, and I am bound to get a little antsy.
Mine eyes then beholdeth our vessel for the day, and majestic she was.  So we go through the usual strains and struggles, getting everything loaded just right, clamping the motor down, unloading everything and reloading it again because it just didn't look right, eat lunch after repositioning all the gear a third time.  You get the picture.  And we're off like a herd of turtles, myself in the bow, The Bandit riding shotgun, and Salt on the stick. Now, we had some pretty calm conditions to work with, but I want you to imagine putting an outboard motor on an innertube and then hurtling out into deeper and deeper shark infested waters with a few sticks, a 12 inch long louisville slugger, and a couple of gopros to defend ourselves.  I'm sitting here thinking to myself, between frequent baptismal dousings, "I'd be better off hopping in the chum bucket and paddling out."
After a long night of restless sleep, we arrive at the first rig.
Salt did get one thing right.  You remember that scene in Jurassic Park where the herds of Brachiosaurs are bugling to one another.  Cross that with the AT-ATs from Star Wars, and that's the scene you get out at the rigs.  Each four legged monster calling to the other, and coupled with the waves, they do appear to be migrating together.
But enough of that sissy crap.  Here comes the action....Wait for it....Here it comes....Just a few more seconds.....any day now.....................................

Yeah, the initial wait.  we're diligently frothing the water with torn up Spot and Pinfish, and all we get in return are some ghostly silhouettes of spadefish.  Every new one that showed up was a jack at first.  Tensions were high.  And we waited.  And waited.  So I says, enough of this crap.  Time to drown some squid and get this party started.  As soon as that 2lb lead egg cratered the bottom, BOOM!  SNAPPAH!  Too small, so I throw 'er back.  SNAPPAH! Again, too small.  SNAPPAH! SNAPPAH SNAPPAH!

I swear to the almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster, I think I recaught the same fish about 20 times. Woohoo! Lane Snapper!  Still a little undersized, but hey at least We're having fun.  "Hey look, a turtle" Says ol' Salt. "And those ain't brown trout circling that sucker...LINGLINGLINGLINGLING!"  I'm here to tell you, it sounded like a firehouse bell out there.  I'm screaming Ling  with the intensity of a 14 year old girl trying to win front row seats at a Justin Bieber concert, I'm pretty sure Bandit fell out of the boat at some point, and ol' Salty lays the biggest, gaudiest fly you've ever seen right in that ling's eyeball! Now, I will take credit for the flourescent pink and chartreuse monstrosity that might as well have been a Nudie Club Neon sign...hell, I think that fish might have responded a little better to the neon.  Snubbed.  Bigger than Dallas.  If that ling had fingers, I can guess which one might have been lifted for us.
To say we were devastated would be a gross underestimation.  I know we've got time, boys, hell I'm kinda dreading the putt back in, but that was a perfect shot.  A broadside on a whitetail at 15 yards, and we shot the damn feeder!
So we put that all behind us, unhung the 200lb lead pipe of a rig hook, sanded a few barnacles off the rig legs, and purred our way to the next rig.  Long story short, there wasn't a damn thing here.  A few bermuda chubs, a couple of spades, no snapper, no ling...Screw this, we're hopping to the next one.  Same old shit, different day.  After a brief powow and a couple quaffed shots of Campo Azul and chum juice for luck, we roll on back to rig numero uno.  We've got one fly drifting in the current, Bandit asleep in the bow, and we're wearing those mini snapper out.  I did manage to boat one keeper, so at least the trip wasn't a total loss.  "I'll have snapper, you boys can eat the chum,"  I says.  A few more shots, just to pass the time while watching the sunbathing pods of spadefish, when out of nowhere, a spinner rockets out of the water, just behind the boat.  I put down the squid rig and grab a fly rod.  It ain't a ling, but I'll take a shark.  Nada.  So I keep blindly casting up current, letting the fly sink as far as I possibly can, letting it drift down and under the boat, and slowly stripping it from the depths on the other side, when what should be behind that little E-Z braid squid, but a little 4ft blacktip!  I stop, she ignores it.  I strip and she swipes it.  "Oh, you b*&$#, eat that squid!"  A little closer to the SS Spare Tire, and it's adios charky!  Oh well, back to watching spadefish, chucking chum, and trying to disable the child saftey lock that is preventing me from downing the whole bottle of tequila.
What, ho?  What be this?  Doth mine eyes deceive me?  "Hey Salt...I don't think that there is a spadefish."  You gotta understand, at this point, I was so tired of crying wolf, that I was gonna wait until I could smell the difference between a spadefish and something else. Those slow slurred words might as well have been like yelling "FREE ICECREAM!" on a short bus.  We kept our cool, all standing up at once  and subsequently falling into the chum bucket, onto the gas tank, and I'm pretty sure Bandit fell into the water again. Lucky for ol' Salt, I had tied my special squid onto the broomstick/winch combo Bandit brought.  "Fish on" Unbeknownst to Bandit and myself, Salty had already laid out a beautiful cast to an equally beautiful ling, who, as is to be expected, inhaled that squid with reckless abandon.
Okay, here's what we gotta do boys.  Scurry and scramble to unhook from this rig and get as far away from those razor sharp barnacle encrusted legs as possible.  So we tied Salt's life jacket to the bow line (I figured if he lost this fish, he was of no use to us anyway), and drifted away.  And that's about the time he put the heat to her and she tried like hell to bury that broomstick of a fly rod in the gulf mud. After some grunts and groans and general cursing at the size of this little fishy, The Bandit decides it's time to piss her off a little bit. Now, I'm all for a little excitement, but for some reason, sticking this old girl with a gaff was like telling the old lady her feet stink and to get her ass back in the kitchen.  It seemed funny to tease her at the time, but man oh man did we nearly catch the frying pan upside the head.  That fish went ape shit and dove for the bottom, but not before wrapping the fly line around the gaff.  So here I am, holding Bandit by the ankles as he leans waaaaaaayy out over the side and frees up the gaff.  Round 2, and so far ol' Salt is in the lead, as he puts the winch in full gear.  Gaff attempt number two went swimmingly, with a left hook under the chin...(ha, get it?  left HOOK)  and we pull her along side to give her the old treatment.  When they're misbehavin', club 'em over the head. We did it, got her in the boat and took all the trophy photos we could, and went back to the rig for more.

Well, there was no more, and to avoid dragging this out any further, we decided to call it a day and putt our way back home.

That, boys and girls, is the real story.  No fluffy edges, just hardcore, in your face live action.
Hey, if I'ma lyin' I'ma dyin'.

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!)
...
...
...
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.