The Fourth

Last year the Fourth found me six days away from attending Marine Corps Officer Candidate School and three months from getting married.  The impending changes -  I expected to be permanently stationed in VA by the coming spring - lent the time I spent fishing the country I grew up in a particular sweetness.

On this particular afternoon I decided to fish a local creek I'd discovered the previous spring.  "Creek" is a somewhat misleading term, since these waters fall almost 2000 feet in only a couple of miles.  Its really more like a three mile-long waterfall.  Although its lower three or four pools are heavily fished due to their proximity to a small community the steepness of the drainage deters much angling from the bubba crowd, and a 20 minute climb puts you in virgin territory.

 The creek viewed from across the canyon.

Up close, the creek is typical of the year-round drainages in this part of the Sierra.  A pool is deep if it approaches five feet; depths of two feet or less are the average.  Innumerable waterfalls large and small form the attendant eddies and pockets, and the current is stiff in the early months of the summer.

I like to start fishing once I reach a large pool about 15 minutes from my truck.  There is room to make a few bad casts without losing flies and this is important because excitement and lack of practice always conspire to create a few humbling mistakes to begin with.  Equally important, the fish in this pool never seem to be particularly flighty and I can almost always pull one or two from it to jump-start my self confidence.

I approached the pool in a crouch, using the trunks of a few old alders to screen me.  Once I had a clear shot at the base of the little waterfall at the head of the pool I made a couple of false casts and put a mosquito imitation right into the turbulence.  Perfect.  The fly roiled in the agitated water, then surfaced in the current, drifting towards the rocky bank to my right.  A 6 inch brook trout attacked it, and I set the hook as soon as the fly disappeared in the fish's mouth.  The electric impulses twitching through the fly line confirmed a solid hook up, and without bothering to touch the reel I pulled him to the net.

I file all the barbs off my hooks, and so with a quick movement of the needlenose pliers the hook was out and the fish flitted back into the shadows....

....one of which, positioned just below an underwater ledge formed by the waterfall, moved.  Or had I imagined it?  I moved a few feet to the side to avoid the glare.  The shadow appeared again, gently swaying in the way that the bigger fish do when they're head-in to the current.  This had to be the biggest fish in the pool, and somehow he wasn't spooked.

I didn't think I could get away with a false cast, so I pulled the slack off the rod and performed a very unprofessional arching flip, aiming for the part of the waterfall that seemed to be directly feeding the current the fish was feeding in.

Success!  The fly caught for a moment in the algae on the face of the rock, but quickly tumbled down through the bubbles and reappeared....

....on collusion course with the trout.  In slow motion, the fly drifted right into the fish's mouth.  Without even adjusting himself he sucked it in and I set the hook.

Immediately, the fish - much stronger than the brookie I had just released - headed for the safety of the ledge.  He disappeared, and I could just make out the leader dragging on the granite as he headed for the back.  I extended my rod arm out over the pool, trying to take the friction off the line.  Sensing the change in pressure, he made a run for the shallow end of the pool to my left.  As he screamed through the water, the light flashed off his flanks in a kaleidoscope of white.  Connecting to the powerful wild rainbow felt like hooking up to a meteor, and although my 6X tippet was more than enough to handle anything in this creek I was seized with fear that the fish would snap the line.  Accordingly, I gave him his head, letting him dash from side to side, just keeping enough pressure on to pull him away from the bottom.  These wild fish tend to tire quickly, and I was soon able to pull him to the net, securing him just as he hit his second wind and began thrashing.

I snapped a picture, unhooked him (a solid hookset deep in the mouth) and revived him slowly.  He moved out of my hand and headed straight for the bottom.

A sizeable fish for this creek

I spent another hour working up the creek, and caught several more rainbows.  Each were in the 9-13 inch range, which is on the large side for the creek.  Evening was deepening, however, and I needed to make it down the treacherous mountainside before dark.  Above me I could see and hear more pools, each more inviting than the last.  It seemed that I had hardly scratched the surface of the creek in two years, and worst of all, this was likely my last trip for the foreseeable future.

The utter peace of the area contrasted with the chaos I was going to enter in less than a week.  Here mosquitoes flitted over the water, trout rose with little slurping sounds, and the water murmured down the mountain.  Not a single mechanical sound made its way past this natural symphony.  Regretfully, then, I headed downhill for the truck. 

Familiar environs seem especially beautiful in anticipation of leaving them, but on this evening the early summer sunset had bedecked the mountains in uncommonly beautiful hues.