Ants Don't Drown- 13 days

Nevada here we come- fishing the East Walker- home of the trophy brown trout and all-season goodness !! So this trip was all the way to Nevada- just across the border. This is the place we were in the fall when the mountain lion was 4' from me- stalking us apparently- so I did this camping with some trepidation but of course it was for naught ! I am armed with my glock and tetanus shot for all the rusty barb wire on the makeshift fences. This is private water again, so I saved money by camping but spent some money to be alone on the water. Considering it was Father's day weekend, it was a good call. I arrived at Ken Sporting Goods to check in for the private water (after weeks of Denny waffling about going or not- should have told him not to go) to find our reservation was for Friday and Saturday, although I had confirmed for Saturday and Sunday. Luckily they let us fish anyway and of course on Sunday the fish were down and not eating but I don't want to jump ahead. This is the fence that separated me from a mountain lion (below) Friday evening about 6pm I arrive to the ranch- which is a real working cattle ranch with cows, sheep, chickens, horses, rabbits, snakes, just about every animal you can imagine. It's a pretty nice property, not far from the Marine's training center for mountains (i.e. Afghanistan mountain terrain) so you hear helicopters throughout the day when they are on manuvers. This is an excerpt from a course description "Students are taught Tactical Rope Suspension Techniques (TRST), Assault Climber skills, animal packing, survivability, bivouac, mountain patrol techniques, tactical considerations, weapons employment, fire support considerations, the necessary skills to plan, organize, and lead mountain/cold weather operations; to plan/lead cliff assaults; to plan/lead long range patrols on complex ridgelines for overwatch, reconnaissance, or to control fires; to train their units for mountain/cold weather operations; " Needless to say, I don't qualify but it is cool to see them and know they are there (doesn't make sense, I know- its not like this is a hotbed for terrorist mountain activity but I suspect the tolerance for local deryl's is very low !!).
Anyway, I am alone on the ranch- the owners are out of town, so its me and the animals. I am really pretty busy though setting up camp to get ready for the next day so I can get up and get on the water. This involves unpacking the back of my truck, getting the coffee ready for the next day, stringing up my rods, picking out my flies, going through my fly boxes, changing my mind about the flies, reorganizing my fly boxes, then of course changing out my flies one more time. I notice while making my bed in the back however that my truck smells, so I decide to burn some Sweet Grass (not it isn't that kind of grass !!) incense inside my truck and in the meantime I also have a bonfire outside in the fire pit when I realize that in 100mph winds this is not a good idea, so I disperse of the fire and hit the hay. I had a pretty good time, the fire at night- just sitting out there (me and my glock 19 of course) relaxing and watching the sunset and then the stars, just amazingly peaceful. I have a hard time falling asleep, usual in a new place, but I wake up the next morning to a loud thud- I know its an animal and the sun is actually rising but was shocked to see a big ole Horse face literally one foot from my face with his face pressed against the glass. I then notice the other two horses who are running around my truck and alternating between nudging and licking my truck. I assume they think I am going to feed them and go on about my day- coffee, oatmeal and head to the water.
Its a nice day, not windy, nice mayfly hatch coming off, I immediately throw some streamers with no success and then on my nymph I catch a nice brown trout (my favorite trout) which stupidly I don't take a picture of because I assume I am going to catch many browns.

Of course I caught several rainbows and a squaw fish (left) that I thought was a carp and no more browns. Denny comes with Charlie a bit later and he caught some footballs per usual and I caught some medium fish (16-18") all on nymphs, there were no fish rising and little bug activity most of the day. About 4pm we head into Bridgeport to eat a late lunch/early dinner, I am telling the story to Dennis about the horses and of course it dawns on me that the horses were after the Sweet Grass incense I had burned- who knew !! I also had an incident with an ant- I had been sitting on the ground to tie my flies only to get up and start fishing and feel a sharp pain on my leg. Of course I am fishing and don't want to be disturbed, I am already in the water up to my knees, so I brilliantly decide to just duck my butt down into the water- we've been wet wading all day (its about 80 and the water is pretty warm) which means we don't have on waders just regular camping quick-dry pants and of course as soon as I come up out of the water I remember I had left my truck keys in my pocket so the key remote is soaking wet and in the meantime I feel a really sharp bite AGAIN !! So I dig my hand down onto the back of my legs and smush the very large red ant that is attacking me. As I am telling the story to Dennis he of course says "Ants don't drown" which of course I find out the Hard Way !! but that's why Dad always called me "HWH" for hard way holly (see left) !!
The next day I hike past the border and find some really nice water- I miss exactly 3-4 fish on 4 different dry flies (could have been one fish that many times but usually not and it wasn't in the exact same spot) because either I wasn't fast enough, or too fast, or they just came up to the fly and decided not to eat it- you fish long enough you realize that one person will say one thing, the other will absolutely swear on their dog's life that what the other person said wasn't true and is in fact the exact opposite, so you just really never know what to believe- its mostly about having patience, faith and low expectations- some days one is enough (quote taken from a guide named Mike). My rainbow on a copper john (left)

Speaking of which, the second day I come back and eventually find Dennis about 3pm, he's already drinking a beer (which means the fishing must be really bad) and I was having a pretty hard day, I mean landing a Squaw is sort of supposed to be embarrassing (secretly I was thrilled having never caught one) but anyway I see that Charlie is completely soaking wet because he's had about 3 baths. Like his friend Claude, he decided roll from head to toe in fresh Horse and Cow shit and then run with the horses in the fields. On the 4th Charlie bath Dennis loses my brand new camp soap, so needless to say we call it and head into town to eat dinner. In honor of Dad I actually even ate a few of Denny's chili cheese fries- which after all day fishing, were de-lish.
The drive wasn't bad coming back and on my 2nd trip, I was able to park, get unloaded, put everything away, shower, get my coffee ready and be in bed in one hour, which last trip it took me about 3 hours, so I have a pretty good system. Joe goes to the electrician this week to get the extra battery, lights and speakers, so he'll really be ready for my next trip and of course we will post some pics once its done.
Hope you all had a great Father's day weekend !! I am heading to Austin next Wednesday and then San Antonio for the International Conference. I actually cried on the drive back in just thinking about the last 15 years, all the people who mean so much to me from completely different parts of my sobriety- Chris and John, Lisa Mac, Lynette, Peggy D, Mike and Larry, Rowdy in Colorado, Diaamah in Chicago, Stacy Heath in NYC, my Houston buds, my Austin buds, my SF folks- how amazing my life is, that I get to live so close to the most beautiful mountains and wily gorgeous trout, living in SF- just very grateful, wouldn't have thought it when I moved to Houston in 1995 but hey, it's never too late to learn something new like Ants Don't Drown !!

McCloud Memorial Day- 10 days

Well here it is, a week late, but it's ALL denny's fault (this will become a recognized theme to all) because he took the pictures but in his infinite wisdom was more worried about buying a house in Texas, visiting Austin and travelling for Visa to Denver- I mean priorities. Helloooo ! But anyway, gonna post about the trip and use my woefully inadequate pictures.
Trip started out with a cancellation the previous weekend due to the minor motorcycle issue, so I decided to brave the crowds and try to camp at one of the most popular camp sites on the McCloud river over Memorial day holiday. This picture is all my recently acquired camping gear which easily fit into ole Jo. I was able even to create a little kitchen bag using a make-up travel bag that has all the essentials for cooking including 3 kinds of olive oil, my Penzy's spices, salt, pepper, Nick's cajun seasoning, oregeno and red pepper.

I was able to leave on Thurs night and get to Redding with all my camping gear and Claude for a very early departure on Friday morning. Stayed at the Gaia again and slept well, got up and grabbed some starbucks but decided to skip the grocery store (error #1) in favor of getting to Ah-di-na early enough to get a campsite. After passing 5 police (going the speed limit thanks to my radar detector) I was able to get there by 9am, stopped at the Chevron to get some gasoline and while buying the last two cords of wood- was informed by a local I could get a permit for a fire down the road- now this is about my 3rd fire for which I have never had a permit- who knew ?

So I went to the ranger station and secured said permit AFTER waiting almost 20 mins with Claude in my truck while the one woman "working" was on the phone talking about mushrooms. Turns out that mushroom picking is a very large revenue stream for the locals and causes many issues with people buying them with no permits or picking certain varities with no permits and even threatening the woman that they would get their ticket dismissed. Learned more about mushrooms than I ever wanted to know but once she was off the phone, the free permit took less than 30 seconds to secure. So we were legal, unfortunately the 20 mins could have been spent sleeping earlier but oh well, what can you do.



Headed to Ai-Di-Na which is about an hour and a half drive from the city of McCloud. Was able to secure a campsite early on and got some gear unloaded, registered the site with the tag (key thing we learned from July 4th at Lakes Basin AFTER we had setup our entire camp only to find out that there are papers where people reserve or post their registration- and thus had to break and setup camp twice) but anyway, got a great site right on the river and I headed off to fish. Not sure what time Dennis would be returning, I headed up to the Nature Conservancy and tried my luck with a walk-in tag- there are only 10 rods a day on this water- as a side note this is a great organization (the conservancy) and was able to get in, fish and meet a really cool camp host who showed me some great spots. Of course I was worried about Claude being in the truck for the first time but of course upon return he was fine...I met Dennis back at the campsite (he recongized my taco bag first, the paper bag with my name on it afterwards) and we enjoyed our first night outdoors.

Of course I had forgotten the grocery items which I had texted for Dennis to pickup, luckily he brought a huge ice chest of food (as I was packing I realized I had food for 2 nights and was staying 3-4 nights) but even worse, I had forgotten to have caffeine and had a raging killer monster headache. After dinner we hit the sack- Denny in his Toureg with Charlie and me and Claude in the back of Jo. It wasn't that late but everyone was tired. About an hour later, I realize that the sleeping bag and thermal coat are in the backseat of the truck and I am gonna need them- the temperatures dropped below freezing- so Claude and I were cold, my head was hurting and I couldn't fall asleep. In true Milton fashion- I decide right then and there that the truck is going to roll off into the river during a huge earthquake and if it doesn't I am going to quite fly fishing all-together and sell my truck because I just can't camp. Needless to say, it was a bit of an overreaction and once I got the sleeping bag- we were able to sleep.

The next day we have a good breakfast, I drink more coffee than usual to catch up on my caffeine deficiency and we head out to fish. The weather warms up, the McCloud is just a gorgeous river and we find plenty of water to fish. I may not have to quit after all. We don't have spectacular fishing but a couple of fish will do and we once again have a nice dinner, light a fire and enjoy the outdoors- the dogs of course are having a ball, they are getting to romp and explore and nap together, so its all working out. We head to bed the second night and fall asleep no problem and have a great nights rest to prepare us for some tough fishing the next day.
We decide to try some new water, after having a bit of tough time fishing the McCloud on the Pacific Crest trail access, we head to the Upper McCloud where I once again confuse our respective fishing direction and we both proceed to pass in the night after many hours of hiking, fishing and zero catching- I didn't see bugs, fish or even have a bite while access was super-difficult and many animal poo droppings made the hiking a bit scary. I was however able to get cell phone service for the first time in two days and called baby MEG who is now 16 years old, if you can believe it ! Didn't get a hold of her but wished her a very happy birthday which I already know she's having since she got a car !!
We head once again back to the Conservancy to see if anything is going on there- we saw many amazing hatches but no boils or fish rising, so we just couldn't win for trying.
On my way out of the conservancy I meet a guy who is dressed in regular clothes (i.e. no fishing shirt or cap) and is carrying a bag, so I inquire if he was out picking mushrooms (thinking he might think I am a clever local) but of course it turns out he is staying in the cabin ON the convervancy which is pretty much reserved for very large donors and CEOs- so I immediately sort of insult him but he takes my inquiry well and says that no, he is in fact staying at the cabin and is a big fly fisherman. After a brief talk and he helps me pick out some flies to try, he says that I should join him for a trip to Zimbabwe in the fall- to which I reply I have already been and in that conversation we realize he knows Arden (from Houston who now lives in Boston), he knows my friend Marcy Fraser in San Francisco (does non-profit work and goes to my women's meeting on Thurs) and his best-friend is a woman I met at a party once from Visa...Now what are the odds that he would know 3 people from very different parts of my life- uncanny. Anyway, it was fun talking with him and I am hoping his work with restoring Coho salmon runs worked out, he was leaving for the Klamath the next day.

I head back to camp for what turns out to be the last night out, we have a fire and have hot dogs (all beef organic of course) as Dennis continues to very patiently help me with understanding the essentials of building fires and such. We have a great chat by the fire, the dogs are at this point beyond exhausted and ready to go home. The next morning I awaken to rain and since the fishing hasn't been spectacular, decide to break camp and head home. Denny peeks his head out and asks if I know it's 5:30 in the morning- to which I reply no, I don't wear a watch but I want to beat traffic and we pack it up and head out. I get to Dana's around noon to drop off Claude and on my way from her house to mine the SFPD pull me over. Turns out my registration sticker from CarMax was incorrectly sent with January as the month instead of December, so the very nice policeman lets me go with no ticket but again, to drive about 6 hours only to get pulled over in SF- classic.
Anyway, Jo was perfect and my fly fishing obsession is still in tact. Hoping to go this weekend but probably gonna have to wait, heading to Nevada week after next to private water.

Hat Creek Private waters- 7 days

So you may have noticed but I am counting the days I fish in each post title, from the Spring season opener and on...last year I logged 52 days total all without a 4wheel drive of my own and dedicated fishing only from June through November. Hoping to do more this year without losing my day job :)

This was Jo's maiden voyage and not sure if it was the fish or my ride that made this the best trip ever. Jo found a good buddy at the local Redding Wal-mart which square footage wise was about the size of Port Arthur and still they were out of the ammo we needed. That's alot of ammo sold to Deryl's but I digress.

Back to the fishing- this was my best fishing weekend. Ever. Epic. This property on Hat Creek is a peppermint farm and private water nirvana. Except for the fact that the fly shop didn't get our materials to us and we were supposed to bring our own towels and sheets- this would be my favorite place next to the McCloud conservancy. They have three large ponds or really two medium ponds and a large reservoir. No Deryl's in sight (remember Deryl's short for derelicts) and no Gore-tex hatch on any of the water- my only competition for the water was Denny and some very large beavers? wolverines? hard to say they were so large.

Anyway, we got in Friday night for the evening hatch with some really nice boiling water (meaning bugs hatching and fish coming up to the surface, it looks like boiling water but is actually a fish frenzied dinner time) on the first pond but I had one miss and nothing else. Denny was pounding some little guys on the creek but the wind picked up and we headed into town for some food. Unfortunately there was a power outage in Burney but we were lucky enough to find some pizza. Got up the next morning and hit the creek behind the house. Of course we were off like turtles (one of our favorite expressions because fly fishing is not a fast action kind of sport unless you count the hook set or how rapidly a tree eats a fly) and so after some time we spotted some pods of fish.

Denny was the first hook-up on his new bamboo rod- I was unable to cast that noodle effectively but I followed up a bit later with a really nice 20"+ rainbow. This is not large body of water- Hat Creek, so we were suprised at the size of these fish.

We were able to catch quite a few more before we spooked them for the afternoon and headed out to the reservoir. The afternoon was followed by Denny landing some very large pond monsters on some streamers from the reservoirs- I landed a few smaller guys on some dry flies (smaller meaning about 16") .

Overall these were some picky fish, I threw about every dry fly I had in my box only to watch them come up to the fly and turn right back around- there are so many fish in this reservoir I can't even tell you...We eventually resorted to a canoe but that was a lost cause with the wind, currents, two people fly casting- I had a monster for a few seconds but couldn't jerk the hook set without tumping us over, so I lost another shark...but it was fun regardless.

We then headed off to the other pond where I managed to kill it with rubber legs, just good ole rubber legs- brown. Fish after fish after fish, I stopped counting- good fights- good size. what I live for really. The next day it was more of the same although the fish were not biting at Denny's reservoir but we did manage to catch a few more at my sweet pond.

We headed out towards Mount Lassen to fish the Hat on the way back but it was really blown out and Deryl population was high- we managed to hike in and find some good spots but not much catching. We paid homage to the Chevy's in Redding and learned a very valuable lesson about radar detectors- if your music is up really loud and you don't notice the christmas tree lights on the radar- you will see CHIPS in your rear view mirror- luckily we weren't pulled over and made it home safe and sound.

EPIC fishing, quiet, nice beds, all that water just for us.

2010 Fishing Season Opener- 4days

Denny fishing the Pit at Big Bend
This trip has long since passed but hey- figured it might as well catch up while laid up from a minor motorcycle spill on the 101. Bike is fine, body is fine but Sergio Rossi boots- pretty scuffed but back to the fishing.

April 1-4th :: First trip was to Fall River Mills to fish the Pit and Baum lake. We left on Thursday night and stayed at Gaia in Redding which is probably the best fishing accommodations ever to be had- eco green, modern, quiet, comfortable, new and friendly staff- oh and more importantly less than $100 a night. Next morning after enjoying a nice brunch we head to the Sundial on the lower sacramento which had some great fishing reports the previous couple of days but a heavy rain was falling and we weren't deterred considering we both had new gear- G-Loomis MAX GLX and Abel Super-6 while Denny was throwing his new Winston Boron IIX (don't remember the reel but probably abel knowing denny). After about 4 hours in a texas like downpour we headed to Chuys- wishful thinking but of course it was Chevy's. There were about 5 drift boats with guides around us and we watched only 2 fish come in, since we hadn't spent $400 on a guide- we were feeling pretty good. The gear felt good and Denny's margarita was cold (my diet coke was a pepsi but oh well)....

After Chevy's we headed to Fall River late in the afternoon on Friday and of course a couple hours in there was a blizzard- lots of snow, not looking good for our fishing exploits but we carried on to Burney. In Burney we had the lovely experience of getting my gun license from the friendly folks at the only Fly and Tackle shop- Vaughn's, Denny bought a 22" rifle and we both got a wealth of information about the new Pit construction including the woman who wants her name on a plaque saying she restored the Pit to its historic flows (seriously, why??) to who in SF County has a conceal license to carry since there are only 7 permits issued currently (we can start with one is not for me, and not a surprise- it's all politicians) and of course California Groundling Squirrels. These little guys apparently eat the alfalfa intended for California's large cattle population (I probably have that wrong- remember my brain is a sieve from which sometimes information stays but often it falls through) and so these folks get sent out with a days worth of ammo and sit in chairs while taking out hordes of these squirrels.

Anyway, after about two hours we left the shop and checked in, had a warm meal at the lovely Fall River Mills hotel. Next day, we got up and headed to Big Bend- we really wanted to fish closer to Pit 5 powerhouse but the road wasn't plowed so we hiked into Big Bend- Denny had some bites and I landed a little 12" on a March Brown but the river and creeks were pretty blown out. Come to find out, the Pit isn't "as" affected by snow melt versus the claim by said fishing partner that the Pit isn't affected by snow melt but I digress- important point is that the first fish of the season was on a Dry ! its gonna rawk !!

Little Bow on a March Brown (above)

We headed to the Baum to see what's doing over there after a pretty crappy time at Big Bend- which we get to Baum and Denny's left his Simms jacket with his camera in it (about $500) so he leaves me with his glock (in case of Deryl's which is short for derelicts who like to steal fly fishing gear) and goes back (about an hour round trip) to find said jacket which gratefully he did recover. Ang had lost her brand new G-Loomis Max GLX and Abel reel last time we were at Big Bend- so we agreed no need to go back- too many lost things and really tough access and mediocre fishing- we can skip it, especially since I hadn't lost anything yet. Next day, Denny goes to church- it's Easter and I sleep in with Charlie dog. We head back again in a blizzard and then really hard rain- but hey, I caught a fish :)

The Baum

April 13th Steve Santucci Striper trip where many many fish were caught- mostly keepers and a couple of bass, crappie, etc..but nothing as gorgeous as that little guy on his March brown.

See you on the river...