The invites for Coogan Fly Fishers 41 are out. We’re back at the Fall River Hotel, where we held last year’s 40th anniversary celebration—and where, in a sense, everything began. It was on the Fall River, at Rick’s Lodge in May of 1986, that eight anglers gathered for the first time in honor of a man most of them barely knew. Forty-one years later, we’re still at it.
They call it a fishing trip. But anyone who has been on it knows that’s not quite right. One of our esteemed members, Bob Laws, was a member of the London Fly Fishers Club, the oldest fly-fishing club in the world.
Their motto is piscator non solum piscatur—there is more to fishing than fish.
That has always described us, even before we had the words for it.
THE MAN BEHIND THE NAME
Chris Coogan died in December 1985 at the age of 33. He had been diagnosed with leukemia and was gone within two months of falling ill, leaving behind a young widow named Anne and two daughters—Sarah, five years old, and Molly, just two.
The year before his death, Chris had found something he loved: fly fishing. He came to it through his friendship with Chris Allen, whom he met in 1981 through longtime family connections. The two men were in their late twenties, both married with young children, and both with a love for the outdoors. They decided to learn to fly fish together and, one day, introduce the sport to their kids.
In the spring of 1985, they enrolled in a casting course on the Eel River with instructor Al Kyte, a renowned Bay Area fly fisherman, teacher, and author. That June, Kyte led them and three other friends to the upper Sacramento to put their new skills to work. Their next outing—a steelhead trip on the Klamath River, a river they both loved—turned out to be their last together. Chris Coogan died that December.
A MEMORIAL BECOMES A MOVEMENT
The following May, Chris Allen organized the first Coogan Fly Fishers trip: eight anglers at Rick’s Lodge on the Fall River, fishing in honor of his friend. Chris had also established the Coogan Memorial Scholarship Fund to help cover Sarah and Molly’s future college expenses, and the trip fee included a contribution to the fund.
What began as a memorial grew steadily into something larger. Over the next five years, through the sixth annual trip, we fished the upper Sacramento, first from the Railroad Park Campground in Dunsmuir, then from a private compound in Sweetbriar, and the group expanded to 18 anglers. Al Kyte continued to come along and teach the group. The rituals took shape: the Fishwhacker trophy for the best story, an award for the best hat, and the most coveted honor of all—the Big Fish (or Best Lie) perpetual net for the largest catch. Those who left the water without a fish had their names engraved on a hand grenade, its pin still inserted but fitted with a treble hook. Coogan swag was distributed each year so we could wear the brand all year long.
The evenings around the dinner table with liberal libations, stories, and festivities became the heart of the event. The fishing was the frame. The fellowship was the picture.
DISPLACEMENT AND DISCOVERY
In 1991, disaster struck our home waters. A spill of soil sterilant and herbicide at Cantara Loop poured into the upper Sacramento, decimating fish and vegetation and sickening hundreds of residents in the Dunsmuir and Sweetbriar area. The idea of relocating the group was overwhelming, but with the help of Dick May at California Trout, Chris Allen was connected to Tim Alpers and his Owens River Ranch near Mammoth. It became our home for the next 15 years.
(Thanks to the diligent work of CalTrout and others, the upper Sacramento section devastated by the spill was eventually restored as a Wild Trout fishery and designated a blue-ribbon trout stream.)
Alpers Ranch was unlike anywhere else I’ve ever fished. Set in a lush, broad meadow with the headwaters of the Owens River threading through it, the Sierra’s eastern escarpment rising to the west and the Glass Mountains glowing to the east, it offered vintage log cabins, a remarkable cookhouse, and access to some of the finest angling in the state—the spring creeks of the Owens and Hot Creek, the freestone runs of the San Joaquin and East Walker, and countless creeks and lakes in the vicinity.
My first Coogan trip was the 8th, in 1993, at Alpers Ranch. Candidly, I wasn’t sure a gathering of nearly 20 anglers was my scene; I had always been more of a solitary or small-group fisherman. But the Eastern Sierra, and especially Hot Creek, is one of my home waters, so I went. The ranch was beyond beautiful, the fishing was outstanding, and I met some genuinely fun guys. But it was the spirit of the group that struck me most—a deep connection that transcended the fishing itself. I have missed only two trips in the 30 years since.
A DAUGHTER’S WORDS
In 1996, Molly Coogan came on the trip. She had recently graduated from Bates College with a degree in acting, and after dinner one evening, she spoke to all of us about what this group had meant to her.
She told us that in her heart, her father had never died because a part of him lived on in each of us. Every year, when the trip approached, she was reminded of him. After each gathering, she, her sister Sarah, and their mother Anne would receive Coogan swag, a tangible thread connecting them to the man they had lost. And the scholarship fund, she said, felt like an allowance from her dad.
I will never forget that evening. Whether it was her skill as an actress, the free-flowing libations, or the depth of what her words meant to the men who had kept her father’s memory alive for a decade, there was not a dry eye in the house.
FISHING FOR SOMETHING GREATER
When both Coogan girls had finished college—Sarah from Brown, Molly from Bates — the scholarship fund wound down, and the group turned its attention elsewhere. We had enormous respect for California Trout’s work on California waters, so we decided to begin directing trip funds to CalTrout, encouraging membership among all Cooganites, and regularly inviting regional directors to join the trip and speak about conservation work near our location. I remember writing a piece for the group about driving the route over Sonora Pass to Alpers Ranch, tracing all the waterways along the way where CalTrout had done meaningful restoration work. It was a long list. Three of us—Chris Allen, Mike Moran, and I—eventually went on to serve on CalTrout’s board.
Then in 2017, the group’s philanthropic circle widened again. Two of our long-term members, Henry Little and Cal Nakanishi, both Vietnam War veterans, founded the San Francisco chapter of Project Healing Waters, a nationwide program that uses fly fishing as a therapeutic path for veterans navigating recovery and resilience. The Cooganites began helping to fund the chapter. I’m not a veteran myself, but I became a volunteer there and have given several presentations over the years. Not long ago, I heard a veteran who had seen intense combat in Vietnam describe how fly fishing had healed his heart, the heart of a warrior.
FORTY-ONE YEARS ON
In the 41 years since Chris Allen organized that first gathering, 112 different anglers have fished with the Coogan Fly Fishers. Thirty-two have earned the Ring of the Rise silver cup, awarded to those who have made the trip 10 or more times. We fished the upper Sacramento for six years, called Alpers Ranch home for fifteen, returned to Sweetbriar, and have now come back to the Fall River — full circle.
And through all of it, Chris Coogan has never fished a single trip. Only one man, his friend Chris Allen, who started it all, ever shared the water with him.
I’m getting ready for Coogan 41 now. I’m thinking about which water I’ll fish, which flies I’ll tie, what swag I’ll bring to share. I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones—the few I know well and the larger group I see only once or twice a year. It is a touchstone event, a time to be grounded in nature and simply connect.
As Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.”
For forty-one years, the Coogan Fly Fishers have always known.
The Coogan Fly Fishers will take their 41st annual trip next month, returning to the Fall River Hotel. The group has fished together across California for four decades, honoring Chris Coogan, supporting CalTrout and Project Healing Waters, and embodying the belief that fly fishing, at its heart, is about far more than the fish.
