Every fly fisher I know dreams of being a trout bum. They’ve read John Gierach’s book or at least heard of it, and their eyes glaze over at the thought of so much freedom. My father swore he’d buy an RV when he retired, park it by a good bass lake, and live there every summer, but he never did. As often happens, he suffered a shortfall between the dream and its reality. To liberate yourself from the shackles of everyday life, you sometimes need a kick in the butt from fate. For me, it came in the shape of a lost job, a broken heart, and a burglary all in the space of a week.
I was young and newly arrived in San Francisco, happily working away as a stock boy in a book warehouse when the axe fell. Business was slow, my boss laid me off, and I signed up for unemployment. Whether my jobless status led my girlfriend to dump me I can’t say, but it was clear I’d invested more in the romance than she had. Not long after her heartless, peremptory phone call, the neighborhood junkies broke into my cubicle of an apartment and stole my stereo, TV, and, unbelievably, my best pair of shoes. Here was Wild West living at its finest. With truly nothing to lose, and only a pittance to pay in rent, I decided to be a trout bum.
It’s a virtue of youth, along with being mildly clueless, that you don’t waste too much time planning. I can spend days prepping for a trip now, but at the age of 26 I was ready in under an hour, every essential bit of tackle and camping gear tossed into the back of my old Toyota wagon. I had no idea how long I’d be gone or exactly where I’d fish, though I doubted I could stay away for more than a month before I started to feel guilty about becoming the sort of do-nothing my parents always feared I’d be. All I knew for certain was that I’d begin on the Stuart Fork of the Trinity, where in fact I’d once spent a long weekend with the girlfriend I now wished I’d never met, and work my way home from there.
I set out in a July heat wave. I still recall the exhilaration I felt as I headed north, doing for once in my life precisely what I wanted to without any anxiety about the future. In what seemed the blink of an eye, I’d gone from urban living to a camp on the Stuart Fork, luxuriating in the scent of sun-warmed pines and sipping a cold beer. That first evening, as luck would have it, a caddis hatch came off, and I caught lots of smallish rainbows on attractor patterns. But their size didn’t matter. I craved experience, not trophies, an attitude that still governs my fly fishing. I was grateful to roll out a sleeping bag under the stars and wake to the bickering of Steller’s jays.
Below Lewiston Dam, I hooked a fat brown by swinging a Pheasant Tail nymph and got my photo posted at the Old Lewiston Inn, where dudes in beards and flannel shirts gathered to admire it. I felt like a proper hero. On Coffee Creek, low and clear, I was less heroic, spooking the trout with each cast. As an experiment I tried dapping my fly, letting it drift for two or three feet before picking it up and repeating the process. If the fly landed with a splash, so much the better. Insects that fall or are blown into the creek apparently make a similar noise. Whatever the theory, the trout struck quickly as I fished around branches, brush, and logs without hanging up.
The trip, I suppose, was about such lessons. As a rookie, I had much to learn and took my setbacks on the nose, too excited to complain. If you’re going to be educated, sometimes painfully, what better place than the trout streams of California, still mostly virgin territory to me. As I drove the back roads, I realized I’d stumbled on an earthly paradise. I’d never seen such a spectacular landscape — mountains and rivers without end, as poet Gary Snyder might say. Every stream along the way smacked of fly-fishing legend — Hat Creek, for instance, with its beautiful meadow stretch. I almost bowed down in homage. But I caught nothing there, totally outclassed by the experts who could plant a size 22 BWO on the nose of a rising trout at a distance of 50 feet.
Yellow Creek defeated me as well. The pristine conditions tested my limited skills. For starters, I walked too close to the creek. The trout sensed the vibrations, they saw my shadow and scattered. With a sad heart, I watched them vanish, darting and silvery, into the depths. Skunked again, I quit in the late afternoon and splurged on a motel in Chester, a buckboard town like the set of a western. After the longest shower on record, I put on my only clean shirt and ordered a steak and a bourbon at a restaurant with a vaguely Polynesian décor. From a stack of old magazines, I selected a Field & Stream and learned that the average Yellowstone cutthroat is caught and released 9.7 times in its life, a factoid I’ve never forgotten.
Early the next morning, I hit the North Fork Feather where it empties into Lake Almanor. A few boats were on the lake, anglers idly trolling. The water was more to my liking here, less challenging and easier to read. My shredded confidence began to piece itself together. If the fish played by the book, I might even catch a few. Sure enough, I took a rainbow right away on a small Stimulator and next its cousin or nephew — respectable trout, although not worthy of a photo. The North Fork is famous for its big browns, but they’re usually only present in the fall, when they enter the river to spawn.
The mountains and rivers were memorable, yes, but so too were the folks I met on the trip, a friendly crew by and large, although eccentric at times. Take the grizzled dude in Downieville, pencil thin and wearing, of all things, a Springsteen t-shirt. He looked about 140 years old, a relic miner blessed with eternal life. He peddled gold flakes in tiny glass vials. “Mark my words, you’ll come to regret it,” he said when I refused to buy one, but he was wrong. My regrets don’t include gold flakes in vials. In nearby Sierra City, I ran into a gent with three Corgis in two. I bent to pet them and asked their names. “Moe, Joe, and Curly,” he said. I thought he must be kidding, but nope — he kept a straight face.
In Markleeville, on the East Carson, I met my first true trout bum. He drove a VW van and looked to be in his mid-30s, bearded in a tractor cap. How long had he been on the road? He scratched his head. “Six months, maybe? Can’t say for sure.” Time had lost all meaning for him. He lived in Reno, but he’d keep fishing until the weather turned cold. “There’s always casino jobs and apartments,” he told me, so he had no reason to rush. He kept an angling journal in a spiral notebook, logging each day’s results, the flies he’d used, and the precise spots he’d fished. On the East Carson, in three days, he’d caught and released 32 trout, the largest at 19 inches. At that point I’d been gone three weeks myself, and I began to fidget. I had no job, and San Francisco had no casinos. Had anybody even missed me? This was long before iPhones and e-mail. What if my girlfriend had changed her mind? (Not likely.) What if an editor at a little magazine wanted one of my poems? (Even less likely. The poems were pretty bad.) What if something terrible had happened to my parents/brother/sister? You get the idea. I was like the guy with an angel on one shoulder and the devil — fly fishing — on the other. In the moment, the devil won.
I lit out for Tahoe to fish the Truckee and the Little Truckee. While there, I came across a lovely little stream that flowed through a meadow strewn with wildflowers. In that meadow, still in my waders, I fell asleep in full sun, and when I woke I admitted I’d had enough fishing, 24 days in all. Fatigue had set in, and I wanted to sleep in my own bed again — if it hadn’t been stolen — and get on with my life, however messy. As a trout bum, I was a minor leaguer at best, but the trip through Northern California is another thing I don’t regret. When I wax nostalgic and regale my friends with the details, they ask if I’d ever do it again. “In a heartbeat,” I say, and I mean it.
