In my Marin County days, I often used to organize a spring fishing trip with my old friend, Paul Deeds, a prune rancher from Alexander Valley. Deeds taught me everything I know about catching steelhead, but he’s just as ardent about trout except for the fact that he has to travel to find them — there aren’t any in the Russian, his backyard stream — and he gets antsy as soon as he’s five miles away from his home base. Sam Shepard once said his father didn’t “fit with people,” and Deeds is like that, more or less content with his own company.
In other words, I had to do a little coaxing to motivate him. I’d lie and say the traffic wasn’t so bad anymore, or that I knew a place guaranteed to be free of other anglers in early May. He found out the truth soon enough, of course, and probably suspected what I was up to all along, but he forgave me once a river was in sight. My only mistake as a motivational speaker was the time I tried to entice him with a few YouTube videos about fly fishing in California, forgetting that he mistrusts computers and social media and barely tolerates his landline phone.
I even drove up to the rancho to make my presentation. Deeds doesn’t employ a housekeeper and it shows, but I managed to clear a space on the kitchen table, shoving aside a big box of Wheaties, the same and only cereal he’s eaten his entire life. His first complaint was the music on the videos. He hated it. “It’s not a hoedown, it’s fly fishing,” he scoffed. Next he dismissed the ease of the hook-ups they filmed, often on a first cast. “If you believe that,” he laughed, “you must think Hillary Clinton did no wrong.” He disliked watching a guy set up his tent by an alpine lake (“North Face must’ve paid him off”), nor was he pleased with the smallish rainbows caught outside Downieville (“Why would you bother?”), but his most serious criticism involved pure Deedsian logic.
“You make a video like those,” he said, “and you’re inviting the whole damn world to your favorite spot!” For Deeds, other anglers are a bane. He’s been known to drive them off his patch of the Russian by pretending to be some sort of bailiff. It wouldn’t surprise me if he flashed a phony dimestore sheriff’s badge. He’s not above it. At any rate, we moved along, and I tried to force a decision about the trip. Deeds ruled out the upper Sac and Sierra streams where the water might still be too high. A spring creek looked the best bet, but he wouldn’t go near the crowds at Hat Creek, so I suggested the upper Owens instead, a river Deeds had never fished. I’d only fished it once myself, at Arcularius Ranch years ago, and found the trout very picky. I’d also read about the so-called Crowley “steelhead,” huge rainbows who migrate to the river from Lake Crowley to spawn in the spring, and Deeds perked up considerably when he heard about them.
We arranged a date and met at Bishop Creek Lodge, where Deeds found the café much to his taste since there was nothing on the menu you couldn’t order at any other café in Christendom. After a late lunch, we drove to Big Springs and set up camp. The campground was quite primitive, with no piped water, and not very busy, which also met with Deeds’s approval. The weather was chilly, though, with a good bit of snow on the mountains, so after a fine dinner of steak grilled over a wood fire, we decided to bed down after the long trip and start fishing in the morning.
Deeds is an early riser. It comes from his life as a farmer, always in the orchard at the crack of dawn. When I got up, he already had a pan of bacon sizzling and a nice pot of cowboy coffee on the boil. From Big Springs, there’s a mile or so of the upper Owens to fish before you hit private property, and then below that property, starting at Long Ears, there’s another good long stretch right up to the lake. I prefer the second stretch because the stream runs through a meadow on the high plains, whereas below Big Springs you’re into a mix of oxbows, pools, and riffles. But you wouldn’t be stuck for beauty on either section with the Sierra Nevada on one side and the Glass Mountains on the other.
Deeds beat me to the river. That was a given. I’ve never been first. Nothing was hatching yet, and the fishing was tough. The water was so clear you couldn’t make a false move. If you cast a shadow, you might as well hike fifty yards downstream and start over. I tried fishing a streamer under the cut banks, while Deeds used a variety of nymphs, but neither of us connected until a hatch of BWOs came off at mid-morning. Then the trout got active, and the bite was on. It lasted for nearly an hour. Deeds caught and released three good fish, two browns and a rainbow, but I hooked only one. Sadly it was the size of those in the Downieville video, but at least Deeds was kind enough not to rub it in.
That afternoon, the conditions changed. The wind kicked up around three, blowing so hard the sporadic hatches dwindled to none, and I was about to swap the river for a beer and a nap when Deeds cried out that he was into something special. From thirty yards away, I watched him play the fish, slowly bringing it to the net. It was a beautiful brown of some twenty inches, fat through the middle and brilliantly colored. As he released it, I asked what he’d used. “A foam beetle,” he said. “With that wind knocking out the hatches, they’re the tastiest item on the menu.”
I’ve never been a big fan of terrestrials except for hoppers, so I was a little surprised. I always thought the trout ignored them until later in the season when the mayfly and caddisfly hatches aren’t so robust, but according to studies I’ve since come across, land-bred insects are an important food source for trout even in May, June, and August, with beetles at the top of the list. What’s deceptive, I guess, is that we don’t readily see trout taking terrestrials. They seldom if ever leap up and make a splash, and the rise, if any, is subtle, often just a nose poking out of the water. I had no beetles with me, so Deeds loaned me a few in sizes eight to twelve. I ordinarily cast terrestrials toward a bank, but he advised me not to ignore the center of the stream where the bugs float after they die. With that in mind, I tied on a beetle and let it drift a good distance, following Deeds’s lead and not bothering to twitch the line. One pleasure in fishing a foam beetle is its high visibility. You never lose sight of it. The river looked so inactive you’d think the trout had gone to sleep, but on my third cast, sure enough, I picked up a dandy brown. Deeds caught the day’s trophy brown, of course, fully twenty-four inches and as stout as a sumo wrestler.
We only hooked and landed six or seven fish between us, but they were all sizeable enough to merit a photo. The beetles had saved an afternoon I’d almost written off. When a tiny change like that solves an angling problem, it tends to confirm the idea that you’re a genius. Pretty soon you’ll meet the girl (or guy) of your dreams, cash that lottery ticket, and buy your place on the Fall River. Even Deeds, who’s inclined to be curmudgeonly, was susceptible to the high spirits, although he turned contemplative by the fire as he drank a last cup of coffee, his only drug. “I’ll miss this,” he said quietly. I asked what he meant, and he replied, “When I’m old and can’t do it anymore.” I understood completely.
I’m happy to report that Deeds, though officially old now, still fishes the Russian for steelies with his customary zeal. At the upper Owens, he was at it again the next morning, already two browns to the good by the time I’d eaten breakfast. On our way back to the flatlands, he insisted we stop at the café in Bishop and once again sang its praises, tying into a 14-ounce Black Angus T-Bone. For a while we stood outside the lodge, savoring the evening air, and I remarked, “Well, it was a great trip. We ought to do the same next spring.” I expected a quick assent, but Deeds was silent. “C’mon, Paul,” I chided him. “You had a terrific time.” He looked at me and said, true to form, “I don’t like to commit to things too soon.”
