The mere name of a fabled river can cause an angler far removed from water to lose focus on the task at hand and drift into a fantasy where peaceful thoughts and special experiences cloud out the demons of a bad day. Those of us who chase mystic fish to the ends of the earth have our favorite places, whether it be lake or stream or sea. One of mine is a place in an untamed wilderness, on Kamchatka’s remote west slope. A coin flip gave me the right to be the first man to cast a fly into an emerald pool on the Kolpakova River that held hordes of huge, wild, steam-bred rainbow trout. Another is closer to home, up on the Lost Coast.
Pools, runs, or rapids on a river can have intriguing names. Some are downright descriptive, such as the Piling Hole on the Smith, the Steel Bridge on the Trinity, or the Junkyard on the Bighorn. Others are named for individuals, such as Baker’s Hole on the Madison, Ryerson’s on the Klamath, or Richard’s Run on the Little Truckee. Most need few words to tell a lot: Zug Bug Alley on the Fall River, the Toilet Bowl on the Truckee, the Foundation Rock on the Yuba, or the Cathedral for the McCloud.
A place does not necessarily have to be the most remote or the most beautiful to be remembered with reverence. A flashback to another place and time can bring back memories of great adventures and time spent with close friends. Such is the case with the Woodruff Hole on the Smith River and Boxcars on the Eel River, near Fortuna, California. My experiences there culminated several days of fabulous fishing and torrential downpours on California’s Lost Coast.
Three of us chose to drive north from our homes in the Bay Area’s Amador Valley to fish for winter-run steelhead on the Smith River near the Oregon border in the days between Christmas and New Year’s in the late 1970s, a time of drought. André Puyans, fly shop proprietor and our fly-fishing guru, had drawn a map on a cocktail napkin that showed an access point on the Smith where three dollars would give you the right to cross a farmer’s pasture and launch a small skiff. That access allowed us to motor down to the Woodruff Hole, where we could beach our boat and fish from the less trafficked shallow, sloping gravel bar on the north shore. Several years of little precipitation had brought low water flows. Schools of steelhead and salmon were concentrated in the lower reaches of the river, moving in and out on the tides, waiting for rains and higher water to send them upriver on their spawning journey.
We had driven up the day before, arriving late and camping in Jedediah Smith State Park, a few miles above where the Smith River crosses Highway 101. We piled out of my well-traveled Chevy van and attempted to set up a camp kitchen. A major problem was that it was raining an inch an hour. Even under massive redwoods and Douglas firs, the drip drenched you from head to toe. The dampness was beyond anything we had experienced in a Bay Area winter. Five-inch-long yellow slugs crept on the ground where we wanted to cook.
We stretched a tarp between two trees and secured the ends to our van. Out came a Japanese cast-iron hibachi that came home with me from my military stay in the Philippines. A decent fire would have been impossible without starter fluid. My friend Gordon huffed and puffed to get the coals going, and soon a huge marinated chateaubriand was lifted from a zip-lock bag and placed on the grill. We shredded unwashed lettuce and tossed it in a pot with sliced grocery-store tomatoes, then drizzled a third of a bottle of Wishbone salad dressing into the pot with a shake of garlic salt, a bag of croutons, and freshly ground black pepper. Out came a jug of Red Mountain. Razor-sharp sheath knives sliced off the crusty edges of the sizzling slab of red meat as it neared medium rare. We tore off chunks of Larabou French bread and alternated between slices of rare beef, forkfuls of the salad, and swigs out of the wine jug. Does it get any better, even at a fancy dinner party with bottles of 50-dollar cabernet?
Three tired anglers crashed in the back of the van and slept out the storm. Even then, the Smith was revered because rainfall several inches would not turn the river muddy brown. Logging practices that had devastated most of the North Coast had not yet ruined California’s best steelhead river.
We pulled away from our three-dollar launch before first light and idled along the river in a dense fog that limited our visibility to less than thirty feet. Soon, voices fading in and out and swirling mists confused us. I turned the skiff to starboard and raised the outboard as we coasted toward shore, then killed the engine and raised the tilt as our bow nudged a sloping gravel bar. We drew the boat up farther, carefully set our anchor, and stepped into eight inches of cold water as the first rays of dawn pierced the clinging fog.
On the bank, our heads were a foot above the dense mist, but our bodies were in the damp. On a twenty-foot-high bluff across the river, we could see at least fifty anglers with lines pointing downstream in the current. Some were fishing salmon roe for bait, others night crawlers, and a few were chucking flashy fluorescent-red spinners, oblivious to the fact that they could and would hook other anglers’ lines as they cast across the channel and retrieved their lures. It was the zoo that concentrations of trophy fish attract. Farther downriver, a line of boats anchored perilously close to incoming Pacific breakers in what was called “suicide row.”
I was dismayed. Where was the wilderness pool? This was a circus. I thought the Smith was hallowed ground. We secured the boat and rigged our bait-casting rods. Casting and drifting a fly through the gauntlet was out of the question.
It turned out that every steelhead that hoped to go upriver was in our pool that day, and the word was out. I had built a fiberglass bait-casting rod that I was proud of and had paired it with a new Ambassadeur level-wind reel. We used sliding sinker rigs with pencil-lead weights adjusted for the slow current, and we fished inflated night crawlers. The day would be both memorable and frustrating. After figuring out the subtle signs of a take, I hooked and lost seven fish that arced downstream as they ran to the sea after they felt the sting of my hook. These were no mere juvenile sea-run trout. Each silvery-chrome fish surfaced after fifty yards and tail-walked two or three times toward tidewater before continuing its mad greyhound dash. Each time, my line popped, sounding like a small-caliber gunshot as I tried to stop the fish. A guy who had taken a spot next to me in the line offered me a new spool of monofilament. He turned and said, “That rig is for the Garcia or the Gualala. You’re under gunned for this show.” He had broken a long-standing state record for steelhead two weeks before with a twenty-six-pound, six-ounce fresh-run fish. My ten-pound-test monofilament line was incapable of landing such a huge steelhead.
I kept trying, not stopping for lunch. One of my fishing partners succeeded in landing a fourteen-pound fish after chasing it two hundred yards downstream, only to find that it was foul-hooked in the outside of the mouth. We knew that a California Department of Fish and Game warden was watching with binoculars — our partner didn’t. He gently removed the hook, revived the fish, and released it to a ringing chant from the zoo chorus on the bluff: “Foul hook, foul hook, foul hook.” We had worried that temptation might cause him to kill the fish and earn a handcuffed ride in a Fish and Game launch.
In mid-afternoon, a small pram powered by an electric trolling motor and carrying a lone standing angler beached below us. A tall, gangling fisherman got out and approached. When his cowboy hat came off, I recognized him as Neil Bohannon, a guide and fly shop proprietor whom I had met at fisheries conservation meetings. We had shared the campground at a Little Truckee River habitat restoration workday that I put together. He wasn’t yet legendary, but he had guru status. At that point, this novice steelhead angler needed help, and guru status looked really good. We exchanged pleasantries and fishing information. I told him of my frustration. Neil asked me if I was interested in “herding steelhead.” He noticed the rigged fly rod in my boat and added that I would have a chance at taking a steelhead on a fly if I helped his group downriver. I would have said yes no matter what, but an inner alarm sounded when he said “herding steelhead.” I had read a dozen books, from Roderick Haig-Brown to Ralph Wahl, and had never heard the term or seen anything about the technique. For a brief moment, I thought of snipe hunts in the Boy Scouts and at summer camp, where I was duped at first and later became a conspirator. Was I being duped here? Was there a rite of passage or a ritual that you had to go through to catch your first steelhead? My snipe-hunting expeditions years before involved leading the victim into a darkened woodland setting. Usually the target of torment was led to a ravine and told to wait alone in the dark with an open burlap bag. The others would spread out and supposedly drive the snipes down the ravine into the bag. The tormentee was left holding the bag for several hours, while everybody disappeared and finally came back running and screaming, about when the victim thought all was lost, and he would never find his way out of the woods. Hooting and strange animal sounds in the dark didn’t help. Bigfoot campfire stories flashed through your mind. Was herding steelhead an angling version of those snipe hunts?
From my reading, I knew that steelhead are called the fish of a thousand casts. I also knew from my reading that some anglers never have caught one in a lifetime of angling. Against my better judgment, I signed on and headed downstream in my boat after Neil. My two partners waved, gave me strange looks, and kept fishing.
I followed Neil down the run and around a large bend in the river. He hesitated, then waved me on and stopped where there was a long, shallow gravel bar that split the river. To my left and compass south, a side channel paralleled the gravel bar. Neil signaled and said, “Throw your anchor high up on the bar. There’s a good tide coming in. If you see a low, rippling wave of “nervous water” coming upstream, it’s the steelhead, maybe with some salmon. Get out. Wave and stomp, make a commotion. We want them to stop and stay in the side channel.”
I’m thinking snipe. I’m left alone. The main river behind me is where I would expect fish. Half an hour passed, then another twenty minutes. Eagles and ospreys flew up and down the river. Fog was creeping back, and the sun got lower in the sky. I turned to check my boat and saw that it was no longer beached. My anchor was holding, and the skiff had swung with the current of the incoming tide. I barely noticed, but my knees were nearly underwater.
Where was everybody? Are the snipe coming? Last light was less than an hour away, and I was worried. I would get my initiation at the Ship and Shore Bar tonight. I was thigh-deep on the gravel bar. There wasn’t much light left. Then I saw four prams in the distant mist coming slowly upriver, a series of low, rippling waves leading them. My God, they were herding fish. The wave phalanx turned south and headed into my channel.
In my excitement, I forgot to make a commotion. I waded in and started casting. I had read that the best fly for the river was a Smith River Special. It was a simple pattern. You tie in a tail of black hen hackle fibers at the hook bend, wind silver tinsel forward, tie in one turn of fluorescent red chenille as a collar, then two full turns of black hen hackle. Tie it off and build a small head with black tying thread. Finish with a dab of head cement to hold everything together. There isn’t a trout on earth that doesn’t like black, and the red and tinsel are like fish candy.
The fish of a thousand casts misbehaved that afternoon. A chrome monster struck my fly on its second drift down the deep side of the side channel. When it felt the sting of my fly, it broached, then tail-walked for thirty feet and ripped off a seventy-five yards of fly line and Dacron backing from my reel as it headed for the Pacific Ocean, flinging silver sea lice from its gill rakers as it leaped. Had it run another five yards, I would have been toast. Three times I worked the fish upriver toward my position, and three times it surged back toward the sea. I ran and stumbled downstream after my fish. When I got it close, it somehow knew where there was a submerged piece of brush and circled to run through the branches. Lady Luck looked kindly on the novice, and my line cleared the obstacle.
My boat and net were fifty yards away, but one of the fish herders saw my predicament. He anchored and waded toward me with a large salmon net. I struggled to pull the fish toward my helper. He dipped and lunged to scoop up my steelhead. As he lifted, the thrashing fish broke through his rotted net and streaked again for freedom. We landed it three minutes later using my wool sweater as a net.
To date, three decades and then some, that fish has been my largest fly-caught steelhead. After catching my breath and pausing to drink it all in, I motored back upriver to join my pals. They had been unsuccessful. A friend, David Draheim, had a room at the Ship and Shore Motel and let us use his shower. The fly-fishing fraternity is a gracious one.
After a hearty meal, we hitched up the boat and drove south. Morning brought New Year’s Eve. Darkness and another of André’s cocktail napkin maps led across an Eel River bridge below Fortuna and onto another gravel bar. Only on the coast can it rain through a ground fog. We carved leftover chateaubriand and washed it down with more Red Mountain. Sleep came easily. Another drenching downpour rattled the van’s roof, and Jack Frost followed. By dawn, our breath had fogged the windows, and a layer of ice covered everything, including the rocks, on the gravel bar.
At dawn, a fuzzy-headed angler opened the van door, peered out, and spotted a familiar brown Dodge van fifty feet away. Its windows were frosted, too. Soon, a door slid open and a young kid stepped out. A minute later, a hulk of a man with a black beard and a proud torso followed. The curved meerschaum pipe was already in his hand. It was André. There were handshakes and hugs, and soon André’s pipe was lit. Who was the kid? Out tumbled my crew and with it our Coleman stove and a huge coffee pot. Food was a second thought. We donned waders and boots, rigged our rods, and all moved across the gravel to a pool in the Eel River that was called Boxcars. Why the name? A train derailment left two rusted red steel boxcars hanging on the bluff above the river. André introduced the kid as Steve. It was his first-ever steelhead trip.
The five of us waded in and took positions about thirty feet apart on the south bank. Swirling fog absorbed our sounds. André was first upriver, the kid called Steve next, my partners and I downstream in the next three positions. You could barely see the deeper slot across the hole. We knew that was where the fish would hold. When rain poured down during the night, the river rose, but it was still a steelheader’s wishedfor emerald green.
I was new to the game, but had done my due diligence and had worked on refining my double haul. My first cast with a shooting head was a good one, ninety feet out, with the leader and fly turning over, but it landed short of the slot on the far bank. André shot a cast out, and like mine, it fell short of the target. We inched out farther . . . as much as the swift current allowed. Nobody even thought of the kid. We were dialed in on our last chance of the week. Quietly, smoothly, and effortlessly, the kid gathered in line, false cast twice, and shot his shooting head thirty feet beyond our best efforts. His cast was slightly downstream of perpendicular. He threw an upstream mend, fed line out, mended again, tightened, and fed his fly down through the slot. His line hesitated a microsecond. He struck with a rod lift and a long strip and was fast to a leaping giant. Twice the youngster shot line out far beyond any of our longest casts, twice steelhead came to his fly, and twice he fought and beached fish that weighed over ten pounds.
It turned out that the kid’s name was Steve Rajeff, and that year, he had won the world championship in fly casting and would win that championship seven times. Today he is a legend, a notable in the fly-fishing world, generous with help and advice, winning many accolades in the process, and he earns his living in the industry.
I lost track of Neil. We heard that he tired of California’s madding crowd and moved to Montana, then Florida, where he chased the flyrodder’s ultimate challenge . . . tarpon, bonefish and permit. His mentor and mine, André Puyans, another legend, passed away a few years ago in an Idaho hospital. His name is engraved on a bronze plaque that is set in a granite boulder on the edge of his favorite section of the Harriman Ranch at Last Chance, Idaho, on the Henrys Fork of the Snake River. That’s where he pontificated in a good way and held class for many years. André mentored a lot of anglers. Today, many of those graduates form a nucleus in our sport, a cadre of great fly fisher and fly tyers who are mentors themselves and who, like me, are racing toward that great steelhead river in the sky. We left Boxcars at nine and arrived home in time to shower and dress for a New Year’s Eve party. Since then, a lot of water has gone over the dam.
