New Zealand, eh?
When a fishin’ buddy asks if you want to go on a steelhead trip the answer is usually a fervent yes, time and finances willing. Of course, there’s always the problem of scheduling, weather, and most importantly, the timing. Get there too soon and the water may be down, get there late and you’re staring at a muddy mess. Fisherfolk plying their talents along Lake Erie’s “Steelhead Alley” know this all too well. The pompous blowhard down at the local fly shop, bragging about “nailing” them all day on white sucker spawn and glo bugs, is often the same dejected soul, a little more humble and tight-lipped, the next time you see him at the local watering hole. Normal response: “I don’t know what the hell happened. Guess the barometer was falling, the moon was far away, they just weren’t damn biting?” Really? We’ve all been there. Steelheading can make you look like a genius or an idiot. I guess that’s why it’s so damn addictive.
But this trip was different if for no other reason then it was out of state. I mean way out of state, as in cross-country to Northern California. Our destination was the scenic Trinity River, snaking along highway 291. The price was right too, thanks to Paul’s largess, the result of a hot housing market, his burgeoning paychecks of late, and the beauty that is frequent flyer miles. How could we go wrong? I knew enough about the steelhead game to feel confident we would catch chromers just as easily as in Erie.
In anticipation of our autumnal odyssey, I chained myself to the tying desk, grabbed my trusty Regal, and fortified by Starbucks and American Spirit cigs, steadily churned out the requisite “show” flies: sucker spawn, glo-bugs, crystal meths, assorted nymphs, and wooly buggers in a rainbow assortment. A quick leader-tying session completed my preliminary packing. A big fishing trip is quite the excuse to over pack, over analyze, and maybe even add a book or two to one’s angling literature collection: case in point: Seth Norman’s “Fly fishing Guide to Northern California” now graces my bookshelf, haphazardly bracketed between Kerouac’s “On the Road” and the 3rd edition of Charlie Meck’s, “Trout Streams and Hatches of Pennsylvania.”
So we arrived at our friend Pat’s pad in Humboldt County, the epicenter of hippie culture, environmentalism, and micro-brews: A land smelling of patchouli, with assorted vagabonds living high on the hog in the temperate climate, mingling with co-eds and locals alike. If I had made this trip a decade or so ago, I’d be writing from Eureka right now instead of Ligonier! But age brings change, so instead of seeking out grass or acid or whatever else, we left the counter culture behind and headed for the nearest fly shop in town.
Fly shops everywhere operate on the same sliding scale principle: the more you buy the more information you get. It’s a fair deal. After all, even in the age of instant internet knowledge, you can’t beat the local cannon of truth. It’s priceless. The web can give you maps, some details, where to get good burgers after a hard day’s angling and so on. But it can’t tell you WHERE the fish are, where they’re going, and where you should be during the seek-and-find migration of salmonoids.
And this is especially important, as we soon found out, on the Trinity. It’s a long river, over a hundred miles of breathtaking scenery. Where’s does one even start when confronted with such daunting mileage? In Erie, it’s quite easy. You drive down the road, and park next to the hundred other tucks, suvs, and beater cars. The streams are small, short in length, and easy to navigate. N. Cali is a different story. Where Erie can be a mob scene, hectic even, with constant cries, of “Fish ON!!” the Trinity is a place of solitude and tranquility. You can fish all day and not see another soul, normally a good thing. The downside is that you can fish all day and not see a steelhead. Not so good..
So after an escalating tossing of gear onto the countertop: the sturdy, vinyl stream map, tippet, a t-shirt or two, the subtotal finally reached the “insider” level of access. “Okay, guys here’s the scoop.” said Dave, spreading out the stream map, we’d just bought (absolutely invaluable), and pointed to a spot. “This is the weir; they close it and all week long the salmon and steelhead “sardine” up behind it. When the weir is opened you can probably walk across the backs of the fish.” Now that’s what we were looking for: precise, succinct information. So I signed my credit card slip, thanked him profusely and offered reciprocal advice if they ever came east to Penn’s woods for a visit.
Strange, they didn’t sell any licenses at the shop so we had to go to the fish office. Inside we immediately knew something was amiss as they handed us our out-of-state licenses and our report card. Hmmm, a report card? Never heard of such a thing. Seems that whenever you caught a steelie you had to write down where, when, how big, natural or stocked, Democrat or Republican, etc. What did this mean? Was this a good thing? On a stellar day in Erie, you’re hands would be permanently cramped after tallying 40 or 50 hookups on a frigid afternoon. So off we went, with a sudden suspicion this might not be the cherry picking episode we had dreamt of on the long flight west.
So after a few days of sightseeing: stunned stares at the gargantuan redwoods , marveling at the sight of elk along the Pacific’s deserted beachfront, awkwardly ogling at pretty college girls and grimy deadheads, and wondering if the huge banana slugs we saw could be copied on a hook, we headed east along the most serpentine highway in America. Up, down, twist, brake, accelerate, tossing back Dramamine like sailors during at tempest.
The best thing about the Trinity is that it parallels the highway most of the way. You drive along and state the obvious in continued observation. “Betcha there’s some steelies there?” “Let’s stop and peer over the cliff” If you do enough of this you soon realize that daylight is ending and you haven’t even wetted a line. We finally wound up in Willow Creek at the Bigfoot Motel.
I’m not kidding, right next door to the Bigfoot Museum, closed for the season. Wonder if Big Foot is a bait slinger?
The next day, a few miles outside of town, we found a good parking place: had to be, since a cardboard sign along a small orchard stated “PARK HERE.” A short walk later we peered 40 feet below the cliff and saw them, hundreds of salmon sluggishly stacked up like cordwood in a ripple less glide of a couple of hundred yards. I looked at Paul, “This is gonna be sweet” as I gingerly mountain goated down the bank and to the water. Our moment of elation lasted approximately 30 minutes as the normal casts/flies brought barely a notice from the salmon.
Upstream we saw the weir, a wooden gate across the water, a barrier. The catch here is that you have to stay 700 yards below the weir or you’re in place for a fine or something. So we headed around the bend to the fast water below and witnessed the largest fishing entourage in quite awhile: a whole family had gathered along the run: mom, dad, uncles, kids, and so on. We quickly dubbed them “the Swiss Family Salmon”. Not wanting to intrude upon their space we positioned ourselves just upstream and began casting, and casting, and casting. Nada. Nothing. We changed flies, adjusted our weights, moved our strike indicators up and down. And still our sessions was fruitless. By the end of the day we had been skunked.
I had never been skunked before on steelhead, or at least enough had time had passed since I had begun to steelhead that I’d forgotten the one or two days when my creel was empty. We needed a new strategy. The place was pretty good. The fly shop guys had told us. The Salmon family seemed to be doing quite well, with huge baitcasting rods, stout mono, and largish flesh patterns. Every half hour or so, sometimes more frequently, dad or one of the relatives would excitedly watch their rods bend, and the slow process of muscling the beast to shore would be repeated. This went on all day. I could feel the envy evaporating out of my Patagonia waders. They would cast three or four times before getting snagged, break it off, spend minutes rerigging, then repeat. We weren’t getting snagged in the shallower water, but the family in the big hole was having a blast, landing pigs, laughing, drinking beers and Kool-aid, snacking on chips, cookies, sandwiches, and so on. I hated them.
The next day, we got there before daylight, set up position, and on my fifth cast I hooked into a nice one, it jumped, rolled and seconds later my line went slack. Maybe today with our better position we would nail them. Soon after, John from Sacramento arrived. He setup just north of us and in the span of less than half an hour had landed three nice steelies. After awhile he called over to me and offered his spot. How gracious! How nice! Then again the fortunate have the luxury of being magnanimous. I nearly barreled over him in gratitude. Within a few minutes I had hooked, landed, and photoed a “half pounder” what we easterners call a jack. Maybe 20 inches long, feisty, and enough of a fish to soothe my disappointment.
I asked John if he fished here often. “I’ve been here for three weeks.” Three weeks!? You gotta be kidding me. How did he afford this? What special circumstances allow a man to fish the same run for three straight weeks? He continued, “The family is my official photographer” he grinned. So this was the place. Turns out, the Swiss Family Salmon contingent vacations here every year. Who could blame them for not even checking out the miles of mystery elsewhere on the Trinity? They were camped in the hot spot, the vortex of happy fisher folk. Who leaves Fish Nirvana to go anywhere else?
So I asked John what his story was. “So you retired? Are you unemployed, between jobs? What gives?” His replay was one the best I’ve ever heard, and brought quite the chuckle from Paul who was quite familiar with my penchant for evasive answers. “I’m between houses, Mark” was John’s reply. Between houses? Who ever heard of such a thing? But it was a great line, and to this day we joke when someone asks us the same. “Oh, you know, I’m in between houses!” Beautiful thing indeed.
For the rest of the day we struggled as the Salmon family whooped it up, going through about 50 miles of mono and enough flesh material to stuff a hippo. But they were catching fish, no doubt about it. For maybe the second time in my fly fishing career I wished I was slinging any other tool than a fly rod. Give me bait or give me death!! I wanted to hook into those big hooked-jawed salmon in the worst way.
Later in the afternoon, the dad, came over to me, and sincerely asked with the eagerness of one accustomed to continued success, how hard it was to learn how to fly cast as I lofted another lovely, yet fruitless cast into the riffle in front of me. “You know, that looks awfully difficult? Is it? I’ve always wanted to try fly fishing, Guess I just never got around to it.” How nice of this fellow to inquire about my methods in the face of our obvious and brazen failure to light up the weir stretch.
“Well, it’s like anything else. Practice makes perfect.” I offered. “Of course you guys seem to be doing pretty well.” What I wanted to say was, “I’ll give you 50 bucks to switch rods, please take my Loomis and wave it around all you want, Hell break it in two on a salmon. You want to learn? Be my guest. I’ll just hang with the fam and soothe my soul with mono and flesh patterns.” But instead I thanked and him and congratulated him on his success. A few minutes late the guy was landing another 20 or 30 pound salmon, if I could’ve gotten away with it, I would have strangled him, seriously.
And that was that. We tried other places along the river, with the same lack of success. I think our final tally was one legal steelie and maybe 4 or 5 “halfpounders”. It seemed everyone we ran into had the same story. “So how’d you do today, guys?” I’d ask my fellow flyrodders upon meeting them streamside, near yet another picturesque run “Great!!! WE caught one yesterday, and today we had three hookups. Man, what a river!” Great, this was great? After some more talk they’d get around to asking about Lake Erie and when told of the sheer numbers there, would gaze dreamily as if I’d just given them a glimpse of an afterlife of heavenly angling were the streams were full of steelhead and bikini-clad virgins cooked and cleaned every fish.
A huge sign along the river declares “The Trinity River: Poor Man’s New Zealand” which is kinda perverse when you think about it. If the fishing is this bad in New Zealand then I need to scratch it off my dream destination list. And this, my dear friends is the Trinity. Did we have fun? Of course. Will I go back? Definitely, if circumstances allow. Any trip on the cheap simply can’t be turned down. It’s against the Trout Bum code.
A final note: While there we kept running into a mildly, crazy cat from southern California. We first met him at the pizzeria in Willow Creek (try the Hawaiian style), when he (John) walked over to our table in the nearly deserted place, probably seeing our fishing clothing and tossed his box of flies on the table, a bold almost intrusive gesture. “I’ve had good luck on Hilton’s wet flies just below the surface.” He had that goofy, deranged look in his eyes from a man who probably has just spent the last few months alone, camping out of the back of his Ford truck.
We met him again at the convenience store, at the gas station, and finally along the water at different spots. He was a friendly chap, sporting a Sage XP, obviously indebted to his addiction. The three of us set up along a simply perfect glide, us casting our nymphs, he casting downstream with his wets. We caught some dinkers, but nothing large, no adults. “Well, I’m glad to see you guys are in the same boat as me.” He offered in light of our collective failure. “Usually this place is my honey hole. Don’t know where they are, with this rive to just have to catch them, find them as they migrate up river.” “Guess your right, buddy?” I answered.
“But, they will and have come up just below the surface to take my flies. It’s the best thing in the world!!” He was sincere. He didn’t put an egg or nymph on his line all morning. Maybe he should have, but deep down I applauded his tenacity to his technique, his purity of tactics, perhaps. And maybe that’s what the Trinity is all about, staying with your game, the endless casts, in the hope that a big one will respond to your style.
The Trinity I found out isn’t about numbers, but about countless hours hunting the fish, waiting, just waiting for the time when everything falls into place. On the long flight back home, in the quiet of the plane’s cabin, I thought about that old angling cliché, oft repeated by grizzled old-timers, “That’s why they call it fishing, not catching!” And as I nodded off to dreams of prolific hatches and willing trout, I finally realized where this old chestnut was born: on the pristine, blue ribbon of frustration called the Trinity River.
Mark S. Lynch