On crossing paths with an acquaintance in the course of my work travels a few weeks ago, I met him with the standard Wyoming fall greeting.
“How’s your season coming?” I asked
“Streamer season?” he replied with a grin. “It’s going great thanks. I don’t really hunt much anymore though, if that’s what you meant. Takes up too much fishing time.”
I didn’t think much of our exchange at the time, but it kept creeping into my thoughts throughout the fall. Out in the garage, selecting, sorting and packing my hunting gear for the next predawn departure, I’d take note of my disused fishing gear piled in the corner and think, “maybe I should throw a rod in the truck… just in case”. Following elk tracks beside a mountain creek, I’d find myself crouched in the snow beside a pool, watching for the telltale flashes of feeding fish. Perched high on a ridge, glassing for deer, my binos would wander back, time and again, to focus on the river far below. I had to admit, my fishing had all but dried up in the fall.
Forgoing deer, antelope and elk for trout still seemed entirely off-kilter to me, but my buddy had managed to plant a seed. Over the following weeks it sprouted into the suspicion that maybe I was being a little too single-minded myself. That sprout continued to work away at me until I decided to give it some water. Cold water.
The river is hosting a whole new ballgame since I was there last. The waterline is lower, the clues are fewer and the fish – half dormant in their deep holes – are less forgiving of imperfect placements; placements made all the more difficult by ice in the guides. Frozen and frustrated, I was ready to reclassify my single-mindedness as good old common sense, when my line sprung to life with that old familiar tug.
We each have to follow our own path. With my rod bent and line leaving the reel I couldn’t help but admire the forces pulling my friend along his.
Theoretically it’s early to be compiling end of year lists, but I’ll be honest I don’t have any big fishing plans on the horizon. Rather I plan to take advantage of the remainder of bird season. But while driving the other day I found myself thinking about my most memorable fish of the year. A fish can be memorable for many different reasons; size, species, location, the people you were with, the amount of effort it took to catch, it’s personal. So for me here’s the ones that stand out in 2016:
1. Snake River Cutthroat – This list is in order and no other fish even comes close this year. This fish was big, native and in it’s native range, in a small stream, caught on a day that yielded few fish, all with my five year old who helped fight and land the fish. I’m still smiling!
2. Permit – After days of effort I had waded within range of a gorgeous permit, in the 20 pound range. I made a perfect cast on my first attempt. Slowly stripping the fish turned. In waist high water, I remained calm as the fish honed in on my fly. Nearing my rod tip I could see the details on the sickle shaped tail and make out the black around his eyes. At the last minute he refused and turned away. Fishing with my brother in Mexico, for 5 days I never hooked a permit. I can’t wait until my next opportunity.
3. Steelhead – This year I was fortunate to return the the Dean River in British Columbia, which has become on of my favorite places on earth. This trip didn’t yield high numbers of fish, but late in the week, after going days without a tug, I hooked into one of the fish that makes the Dean legendary. Kneeling in the cold Canadian water I cradled the buck and it’s image is seared in my mind. Steelhead have carved a special place in my hierarchy of fish, based on their life history and the places they live. They truly are incredible fish and it is a privilege to hold one.
Sometimes, things go just as planned. You may find the elk, for example, grazing lazily in the early morning sun, more or less exactly where you’d expected them to be. But there’s usually a hitch… like a gaudy number of bulls standing broadside between you and the legal cows.
No problem. You make some adjustments, tweak the plan. It’s all part of the hunt, part of the adventure.
Which is a good thing to keep in mind when the next plan, a side-by-side crawl down the opposite ridge, let’s say, hits a hiccup — an accidental strangled-bagpipe scream coming from the call in your partner’s pocket, perhaps. With careful selection, steady rests, and a “one… two… three… bang” simul-shot off the table, it may be time to make some quick decisions instead.
May your thinking be sound, your mind clear and your aim true when the time comes.
And may your heart be light and filled with gratitude, whatever the outcome.
The day is perfect. No one is on the river except us. Golden leaves adorn Cottonwoods along the bank. The sky is a deep blue laced with a few wispy clouds. Temps are in the low 60’s and there is nary a breath of wind. These days are rare.
But everyone’s cranky. It’s nap time. Or it seems like that’s what we all need.
My wife traded in the rod for oars and not because she had caught her fill and wanted to let me in on the action. We weren’t into fish. My son wanted to fish on his own but his rod is still somewhere on the bottom of the Smith River. Nearly 600 miles away. My daughter is doing pretty well, but she is perturbed to be stuck in the back of the boat. An unfortunate symptom of being the best behaved person onboard. I’m irked because of the general discontent on the vessel and the varying distance between me and the bank I’m trying to fish.
In a moment of shear luck this all changed. I quit stripping a streamer to grab my son with a free hand, keeping him from falling in the river. Picking up the rod I realize I have a fish on. It’s a nice brown and suddenly it’s game time for everyone on board. My son grabs the net. My daughter provides advice from the back. Positioning the boat perfectly my wife sets us up to land the fish. Even the dogs wake up in hopes they can get in on the action. Turns out one fish was all we needed.
“Horses you say?” I shouted into my crackling cell phone.
“Yeah, and mules. About five miles in,” came the staticy reply.
“In the Wilderness.”
“Where the hell else would we want to go? Plus, that’s where the elk are.”
I had six days worth of deadlines jockying for position in my three day week. The arithmetic of another day away from the desk just didn’t add-up. But math was never my strong suit. And I know an offer you can’t refuse when I hear it.
“Daytrip or making camp?”
“I was planning on a long day, but am up for sleeping out if you want.”
“No, daytrip is perfect. I should tell you, though, I’m not much of a hand with stock.”
“Can you stay in the saddle?”
“Usually.”
“Good enough. So you comin’?”
An invitation to the personal backcountry honeyhole of a retired habitat biologist (and generally great guy to spend a day in the woods with), complete with the horsepower to get you in, and the meat out… well, that qualifies as just such an offer. Kidney transplant, drinks with Bruce Springsteen, presentation to the United States Senate — whatever else you have on the docket can stand a little shuffling, or be accomplished in the hours you’d budgeted for sleeping.
“Does a bear shit in the woods!?”
“Let’s go find out.”
A bugle pierced the cold morning air. It had come from well below us, so we continued working into a small clearing. We’d been following fresh tracks through the snow and it felt like we were close. We just couldn’t see them yet. The sense was so strong that I sat down to wait and let things develop around us. Twenty yards away my father settled under a tree, following suit.
Looking downhill to see how Matt was situated, I found him staring wild eyed past our position, and gesturing wildly. Uphill a bull let out a bugle so close that I could nearly smell his breath. The noise made it clear what Matt was trying to communicate. Spinning I saw two bulls charging down towards us. The rag bull peeled off, realizing he was out of his league. A large six-by-six stopped at 40 yards.
He snorted and stomped, agitated to be interrupted only part way to his destination. Impatiently, he surveyed the clearing and with it the motionless pack of camo-clad men laying between him and the other bull. I quickly sized up the bull in my binos. My dad was planning to be picky, but this was certainly a bull worthy of our efforts. I gave him the thumbs up, heard the safety click off and waited. The shot never came. Seconds ticked by in what felt like an eternity. The bull had enough. He wheeled and bolted out of our life.
Convening with my dad, I was desperate to know what happened. His crosshairs had perfectly bisected the bulls chest. But through the scattered timber, from his angle, he never had a view of the head. In an area where a brow tined bull was the only legal animal he couldn’t confirm what he was looking at. He made the only ethical decision and refrained from shooting.
It was our best encounter with the kind of bull we were looking for. For six more days we worked tirelessly. In the end we came home empty-handed. It was an outcome my dad was comfortable with. Long before our hunt he decided he would happily withhold from shooting an elk and avoid having to pack it out of the rough country we were hunting.
The fact that we didn’t harvest a bull hardly mattered. The time we spent together in country we love, is what we were truly after.
“Dada, Dada look!” exclaimed my four year old. “The buck deer, um… with the pointy antlers… he’s smelling the girl deer’s BUTT! Ewwww… silly deer.”
“Yeah, they’ll do that sometimes,” I said, hoping my indifference would stop the inevitable line of questioning in its tracks.
“Why’s he do that?” he asked, undeterred.
“Well… uh… you see…” I stalled for time, trying to figure just how to put it..
“Look, look!” he interrupted my bumbling. “He’s trying to jump over her!”
“Yeah… um… so…”
There’s nothing like nature for tossing you a teachable moment, ready or not.
It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I realized what direction I should have taken the conversation. I was working the brush line along an irrigation ditch, trying to scare up a tender whitetail doe, and had found little more than barbed wire and cold wind, when a hint of motion drew my attention to the adjacent slope. With a sweep of my glasses, previously invisible mule deer materialized, alone and in clumps, amid the snow covered sage. More or less in the middle of the herd stood two sizable bucks, heads lowered. Their mutual animosity was palpable from five-hundred yards.
Mule deer season closed weeks ago in these parts. But my whitetail hunt hadn’t turned up any leads, and I’m a sucker for a good show, so I set about getting closer to the action. A subtle crease in the mountain offered good cover and a nearly direct route to the battleground. In no time at all I’d scurried within a hundred yards of the pair. On crawling out of my ravine I discovered that the watchful does had been onto me all along. They all gave me the wary stink eye from a safe distance. But not the battling bucks. There they stood, oblivious to the rest of the world. Through the binos I could see the tiny specks of snow and mud flying from their hooves, and the steam wafting from their rut thickened necks as they chased each other back and forth, and locked horns again and again.
Slowly, as the contest raged on, my initial excitement at the spectacle faded, and a new feeling crept in, something akin to embarrassment. For all of their passion and head banging drama, they were, when you come to the quick of it, acting like complete idiots. They were so single minded in their determination, and so fixated on domination, that they willfully placed themselves in mortal danger. I saw in their behavior way too much of my personal history and, I feared, a sizable chunk of my son’s future.
I wished I’d brought him along that afternoon, or that I’d been quicker on my feet with him earlier that morning. “See,” I wanted to tell him. “You’ll feel like that too someday. And possessed by the need to prove yourself – either for a girl, or your pride, or peer pressure or some other fool reason – you will be just as inclined to make spectacularly bad decisions as they are. You come by it honest. Just try to be aware of that. And remember, unlike mule deer, it’s always open season on stupid.”
It was an opportunity missed, but that’s alright. At least I now have another great excuse to bring him along on the next hunt.
Daylight savings was yet to kick in. Our daughter had gymnastics practice for the next two and a half hours. The weather was unseasonably warm. We headed to the river. With streamers tied on and sandals on our feet we enjoyed a rare October day. Leaves had begun to turn and the fish were hungry. We were unencumbered by waders, wet wading with a laissez faire attitude common in August.
Snow is starting to stack up in the mountains. We’ve seen a little in the valley but it has quickly melted. While cooler temps are becoming the norm and winter is just around the corner, late fall provides some some of the best days of the year.
Swinging an olive bugger, my wife had hookup after hookup in a juicy run. Not to be out done my son flung his Echo Gecko, holding it like a 13′ two hander, with reckless abandon. Our time was limited, but we made the most of it. I didn’t catch a fish, but I soaked it all in. You have to make the most of these days. Before you know it I’ll be shoveling the drive and wrestling ski boots on and off of the kids.
“Keep your orange on, please, and no chasing each other with the axe,” I said, scrambling to think of what I might be overlooking.
“O – Kay,” answered the boys in a sing-song harmony. It didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
“And no climbing on the cliff,” I added for good measure.
“We KNOW Dada!”
The dance between days afield and dad duty is a perpetual work-in-progress, and keeping-up means keeping your moves fresh. Time was, packing the kid carrier was the only step needed to impress. But as your partners gain mass, mobility and maturity you’ve got to adapt.
“Honk the horn a bunch if there’s an emergency.”
“Emergency? Like what?”
“Like someone’s bleeding… a lot… scrapes don’t count. Or someone’s broken. Or snake-bit.”
“Broken?”
“Yeah. Like with a funny shaped arm or leg. Or bone sticking out. That kind of thing.”
“Got it.”
Neither my son or I can tolerate too much house time. But he’s too big to carry, and too little to keep up in craggy terrain with birds on the move. So we’ve added a new maneuver to the repertoire this chukar season. I think of our solution as concentric adventures.
It goes like this: I park the truck in a visually prominent, but zero-traffic, spot off a two-track somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The squirt and a friend hang there, free to explore with-in sight of the vehicle. They build forts, collect bones, catch bugs, play make-believe and generally be six-year-olds. While they do what they do, the dog and I chase birds in as broad of an orbit as will allow earshot of the horn, circling back every so often to count noses.
“So you guys good?”
“YES! Just GO Dada!”
“OK. We’ll check back in a half hour or so. Have fun.”
Leaving a couple of little boys unsupervised in Wyoming wild-country isn’t without anxiety. But I remind myself that actual and perceived risk are rarely the same thing; that personal responsibility doesn’t develop in a vacuum; and that given a choice between my boy spending the day in cyberspace, or in the sage… well, that’s a no brainer.
“Be safe Dada,” he called after us as the dog bounded into the brush.
I resisted the urge to echo his advice.
He’ll figure it out well enough on his own.
I’m not ready to concede the cliche “it’s the journey not the destination that matters” is true in all cases. I’m usually headed somewhere for a reason, so to say it simply doesn’t matter seems overstated. Generally speaking though it’s a good axiom for life; a metaphor that you can tip your hat to when it’s convenient and leave at the door when you please.
Putting on miles for work, or to hunt and fish, sometimes I think I spend more time in the journey phase than at the destination. Fortunately for me modern pop music is one of my guilty pleasures. Air drumming on the steering wheel, hitting the hard notes somewhere near the rear view mirror, I cover highway miles across the American West with a sense of euphoria rarely matched elsewhere in my life. In short I like the journey.
Recently, I had the opportunity to go on a journey of larger proportions to a destination that is on the life list of many anglers. It took the better part of three days to get from my Wyoming home to British Columbia’s Dean River. This is a case where it was certainly more about the destination, but in retrospect the journey is worth recounting. Here’s the quick hits:
Chilcotin Highway, Photos by Steven Brutger
Drive (Toyota Land Cruiser) Lander to Denver 6 hours Highlight: Eminem is blaring and one friend cracks a 24oz Tecate as my buddies pull into my driveway at 7:45am. (Note, I am 10 and 30 years the junior to my two companions. They set the bar high).
Flight (Boing 737) Denver to Vancouver 3 hours Highlight: Sunset over Mt Baker on approach was unreal.
One night in a hotel in Vancouver Highlight: We arrived late and were hungry. At 11:30pm we headed to what appeared like a hole in the wall Chinese restaurant that was recommended to us. Upon entering we were surprised to find the place jam packed with Chinese family’s and not a word of english being spoken. This is not a surprise to anyone who knows Vancouver, but it caught a couple of Wyoming boys off guard. The food was fantastic!
Flight (Beechcraft 1900 C) from Vancouver to Bella Coola 1 hour, Highlight: I extra hour on the tarmac (no AC) due to a flock of birds being hit by previous aircraft. Once airborne the flight could not land in Bella Coola due to weather, rerouted to Anaheim Lake.
Bus (Yellow School) Anaheim Lake to Bella Coola 3 hours Highlight: Descending several thousand feet on the most improbable of of dirt roads. Built in the 1950’s the Chilcotin Highway was carved into the side of a mountain and has an 18 percent grade with no passing room for a particularly rugged five and a half mile section.
One night in a hotel in Bella Coola Highlight: Waking up to overcast skies and steady drizzle, with hopes that it would help usher in a push of fresh fish.
Helicopter (Eurocopter AStar) to The Dean River, 30 minutes Highlight: Worth the trip alone, cutting through rain and clouds over a glaciated mountain range and then dropping into the Dean Channel is a site I will never forget. Topping it off with an up close fly by of the river had everyone salivating to rig up our rods.