You don’t need an excuse to go fishing, of course, but I’ve relied on one at times to facilitate a trip, starting years ago when I labored as an underpaid stock boy for a San Francisco book company. When the summer rolled around, I began calling in sick every other Friday so I could beat the traffic crunch and set up camp in the Sierra ahead of most other anglers. At first, my boss felt sorry for me, thinking I was frail and suffered from an awful disease, but eventually he figured out what was up — I did myself no favors by returning with a sunburn — and handed me my walking papers.
In truth, I didn’t regret being fired. I’d saved a little money, and I used my free time to try to improve my skills as a rookie fly fisher. The Internet didn’t yet exist, so I looked for tips in books, rather than YouTube videos. Being a voracious reader, I soaked up a huge amount of angling information, much of it trivia. I could tell you, for instance, that Fred Mather, a New York fish farmer, introduced brown trout to the United States by importing eggs from Baron Lucius von Behr of the German Fishing Society. Did you know that browns will feed on baby birds that fall from overhanging nests? I shared my trivia with anyone who’d listen, well on my way to becoming what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “a veteran bore.”
I practiced casting at the pools in Golden Gate Park and in my tiny backyard on Lake Street, often hooking a big jade plant with my wayward back cast. I came to despise that plant and finally, in a fit of despair, I chopped it down. My landlord was very unhappy and docked me twenty bucks to replace it. In spite of my lack of expertise, I believed I could slide by on enthusiasm and catch a few trout. I still recall the first I took on a fly, on the Stuart Fork of the Trinity in full sunshine. The river was so crystal clear (a cliché, but true) I doubted it held any fish, but a little rainbow rose to a Humpy, and I was in business.
When I became a full-time writer, self-employed and marginally solvent, I had no sick days to cash in and no boss to fool except myself. As my own boss, I could be a tyrant and demanded long hours and hard work, so I had to come up with a good excuse to explain (if only to myself) why I deserved a break. I borrowed an old hippie slogan and insisted (to myself) that I “needed some space to get my head together.” That wasn’t an outright lie. I’m not by nature a city person, and at times, San Francisco grated on me, and I’d feel an acute craving for the mountains. Whenever I began to rant at barking dogs and threaten those who disturbed my peace, I reckoned I ought to grab my gear and hit the road.
One summer, I rented an isolated cabin on the North Yuba to get away from it all. The cabin overlooked the special-reg section and included everything a burned-out writer could ask for, from a wood stove for chilly mornings to a half bottle of Jack Daniels. I spent a July week there and happily fished from dawn to dusk, rarely seeing anybody except a grizzled gold bug working his claim. I even lucked into a hatch of Gray Drakes, the large mayfly you don’t often see on freestone streams. The rainbows came readily to my Parachute Adams, but I failed to hook a single descendant of Baron von Behr’s German browns.
As I gained some traction as a writer, I discovered another excuse for making a fishing trip, which was to gather material for a story. That was legitimate, although I employed it more often than I should have. But I was fortunate to have an editor at the New Yorker who trusted my instincts and once financed a trip to Hat Creek and the McCloud. As part of my research, I spoke with a fisheries biologist before I left. To my surprise, I learned that as late as 1968, Hat Creek was largely populated by trash fish who’d either eaten or otherwise interfered with the trout stock. About seven tons of suckers, hardmouths, and buffalo fish went belly-up when the creek was treated with chemicals. Wild trout were planted again, and by 1971, they were flourishing. My fishing didn’t go as well as the research. I was still new enough to the sport to be intimidated by the challenge of a blue-ribbon spring creek, especially when I saw how elegantly the experts handled it. One of them took pity on me and suggested I move over by the PG&E powerhouse. The riffles there would help mask my faulty presentation, he said. His advice, though well-meant, produced no results, so I walked upstream to some slack water rolling through a meadow. Trout were rising everywhere, but my fly had to land as lightly as a feather to attract them. Instead, it hit with a thunk and scared away the fish.
I hoped for better luck on the McCloud, where I’d invited my old fishing partner Paul Deeds to join me, not that he jumped at the chance. Deeds clings like a barnacle to his Russian River homestead and his beloved steelhead. But it was summer, and there were no steelies to be caught, so he was at loose ends, with only his prune orchard and his dog to keep him busy. As ever, he worried the river would be too crowded — three other anglers meets his definition of a crowd — and I did my best to talk him down. At last he conceded it might be fun (“Maybe it wouldn’t hurt,” was how he put it), and he was waiting for me on the porch of the McCloud Hotel when I arrived.
We faced a tough drive to Ah-DiNa Campground. The road was seven miles of bad dirt. We bounced over ruts and potholes, but that didn’t diminish the beauty of the canyon. There were stands of virgin timber with Douglas firs three hundred feet tall. Black oaks and big-leaf maples were mixed among them, and black-tail deer were on the move. The river lay at the bottom of the canyon, a classic California trout stream of pocket water, deep green pools, and fast-flowing riffles. To the delight of Deeds, the campground was mostly deserted.
The McCloud wasn’t easy to fish because of the terrain. To reach the choice spots, you needed to be half mountain goat and half acrobat. When I noticed one likely looking pool, I had to climb over boulders and deadfall, then bushwhack through alders and cottonwoods to cast to it. Along the way, I slipped on a pinecone and cracked my shinbone against a granite outcrop, raising an ugly, eggplant-colored bruise. But a fine hatch of Golden Stoneflies started, and that helped to compensate. The trout were really eager, too. They hadn’t been subjected to the same pressure as those in Hat Creek, so I picked up a half dozen decent-sized rainbows in an hour or so. Deeds did even better, naturally, but for once, he had the grace not to brag.
The last excuse I used to make a trip involved a friend who was going through a divorce. I’ve come to regret it, at least a little. Jim wanted my support, I told my wife, so I should visit him in Sacramento. (My marriage wasn’t so hot at the time, either, and I’d soon be facing my own divorce.) But I was being slightly disingenuous. I failed to mention that Jim owned a drift boat or that we’d conduct our therapy sessions in the open air on the lower Sacramento. To be honest, we did talk about how a marriage can go awry, but the river kept distracting us. I’m sure we deserved our fate, which was to watch others haul in fat, broad-bellied trout while we caught only puny specimens.
I decided recently that I’m old enough now to quit with the excuses. An angler my age should have the right to fish when and where he or she chooses without a guilty conscience. My current (and last) wife understands that and agrees with me. She’s learned from experience, too, and we both keep an eye out to avoid the pitfalls that can derail a relationship the way that pinecone hobbled me on the McCloud. It’s possible she may come along with me to a river someday, although I suspect it might be a bridge too far to offer her some waders and put a fly rod in her hand.
