All Fishermen Are Liars by John Gierach

Author:John Gierach [Gierach, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

12

TEMPORARY PURIST

I live near the confluence of two perfectly good freestone trout creeks in the Rocky Mountains, but in early April when the midges are still on and the first of the blue-winged olive mayflies could be starting, the grass seems greener on the small tailwater in the next drainage north. This isn’t a long drive as drives to rivers go, but it involves going twenty-some miles up my own canyon—gaining over 2,000 feet in elevation in the process—crossing the saddle above Muggins Gulch, then looping around Mount Olympus and down into the next draw.

In the kind of chilly, low-ceilinged spring weather that’s thought to be best for hatches, this trip also involves driving the narrow canyon road up into the sensory deprivation of the cloud cover. I know the route by heart, but when visibility is down to thirty feet, landmarks dissolve, one bend in the road looks a lot like another and I can catch myself wondering, is this Split Rock, or am I already at Lion Gulch?

I’m not a fast mountain driver even in the best conditions, but I’m really creeping along now; peering ahead into the fog for a glimmer of taillights going even slower than I am, for the deer, elk and occasional bighorn sheep that are all possible obstructions on this road, not to mention the odd bike rider pumping uphill with his Spandex-clad ass aimed lewdly at my windshield.

I also know that this wet spring weather lubricates canyon walls, causing them to shed a winter’s worth of frost-heaved rocks. These can be anything from a scattering of sharp granite pebbles in your lane to a car-sized boulder to a road-blocking landslide, none of which you want to come upon too suddenly. If you have any romance at all in your soul, the mountains in fog are hauntingly beautiful, but it’s best to keep your eyes on the road instead of mooning over the landscape.

So it takes longer to get there than usual, but now that I’m down off the back side of the saddle, the visibility has improved a little. When I cross the bridge a few hundred yards below Olympus Dam, I can see that the river is flowing clear and right around a hundred cubic feet per second, even though the dam itself is just a faint shape in the mist. This is a perfect flow. It’s low enough for the trout to rise freely if they have a reason to, but still high enough to keep them from being any spookier or leader-shy than they already are.

The last time I was here, the midge hatch was still going strong. I fished dry flies all afternoon and landed maybe half a dozen brown and rainbow trout, two of which were good-sized for this river. The first of the blue-winged olives were also just starting to sputter off to the tune of one mayfly every few minutes. It wasn’t even what you’d call a sparse hatch, but the bugs were an inkling of things to come.

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