Fishing Ain't Casting

Hard lessons from the Sierras

I have just returned from an adventure at 7000 feet elevation. I have learned in a couple different ways, why they call them the Rocky Mountains, and I have had a throwback experience. In certain ways it was entirely understandable that I would, as a man in his 60s, desire, suffer through and delight in this journey, noting as I do, the irony of even bothering to go.

On the South Fork San Joachin River in central eastern California, the water temperature is in the mid 60s as is the air. The sky is crystal blue and the sun beats down brightly. I have special shoes and socks made out of surfer suit material. As many streams as I have walked through in my life, never had my feet been so comfortable. I’m wearing a thick flannel shirt, tac pants and my low key LA Dodgers hat, having stripped off the large backpack and long sleeve undershirt. Our guide, JD tells us that we’re going to be wet and that everyone falls. So I leave the SLR in the Toyota. I’m down to a small front pack with Slim Jims, my iPhone and a pair of needle nose pliers.

We gathered together at the dirt lot of Mono Hot Springs back at 9AM, it is now about 11:30 and we’re 20 minutes north of Jackass Meadow. Nobody comes around here. We’re so far off the beaten trail that I wasted an hour gazing at topo maps attempting to find out exactly were we went. If there was a sign at the spot we eventually parked it would say something like, If you die here, nobody will find you for weeks.

Jackass Meadow

This is wilderness, but wilderness with a dirt track. It’s not as if it would be impossible to be found. Although AT&T has no bars within an hour of this place, the GPS in my iPhone gives a decent approximation. I tell you no lie when I say that we were fishing between Poison Meadow and Hell Hole Meadow.

We were the group of seven noobs including two dads, three kids, myself and my buddy Wink and our fearless leader, JD who has been trout bum his entire life. We were here to learn the fundamentals of fly fishing for wild trout in the Old School tradition which means no bobbers. A bobber is the fishing equivalent of a Ring doorbell. It sits quietly on the surface, as conspicuous as a little beach ball and will dance a jig when a fish hits your rig. The problem here, aside from the fact that such a contraption is anathema to JD, is that these are wild fish. They are not imported. They are not stocked. They are not trained to chase breadcrumbs chummed on the water. They are paranoid. They fear bright colors. They are born, live and die in these pools. They don’t migrate. They stay in the same area their entire fishy lives, in just the right spot where there is oxygen and food. Their eyes are on the sides of their head and they spook when they see flashy movement. So we noobs need to be schooled on our approach.

JD explains, like someone telling about hunting wild boar, what we need to be doing. You have to approach the fish from the rear, which means hiking downstream and then literally crawling up the river. Every picture you can Google about fly fishing is about as accurate as every TikTok about girls dancing. There is no standing up on the shore with 20 yards of monofilament snapping in the wind. This is sneaking up a maze of granite boulders gating rapids in water up to your gonads keeping your head on a swivel. You’re looking for a pool and a bubble trail. The fish will be somewhere near that constantly moving section of water as it loses velocity into the pool on its way down the next cascade of boulders. The fish is looking upstream for bugs to fall in its path. The fish is seeking the lazy, ideal condition, and it is hungry. Like an anxious hipster in line at Starbucks it is single-mindedly in search of its refreshment but also highly sensitive to any peripheral bad vibes. Unlike the hipster, wild fish will bug out of line and wait for the entire place to clear out before approaching the perfect cup sitting there. You get maybe 4 casts per pool. If you don’t catch on the first, you probably won’t catch.

So we only get a few chances to fish up the pools. Considering how bad we are at casting and how clumsy we are stepping through slippery rocks in 3 feet of water going upstream, our progress is glacial. After the second hour my feet are starting to go numb, but not only are we commanded not to head back to shore, in most places along this river, there is no shore.

Finally, JD demonstrates strategically what has been confounding us tactically. He whips out 15 yards of line, snaps his rod back and forth at twice the speed of a lion tamer and casts out exactly to a spot he pointed out. None of us can see the fly but he points out its movement - it’s going too fast and in a moment has travelled twenty feet downstream. But he is at right angles to it, just like the posers in all of the Google pics. “We are not long casting. We are short casting just behind the fish. You have to get up close and let the fly float slowly.” Aha. That’s why he was saying to keep the stick up, contrary to everything I’d been instructed before. That’s why he’s telling me to look at the stick as I bring it back, contrary to everything I’d been instructed before. All that stuff is for lakes, and stocked rivers and places where bros spend $600 per night for cabins and it’s OK for SLRs and Red One cameras. This, on the other hand is between Poison and Hell Hole - this is fishing Sparta!

Of course it is the 12 year old boys wearing short pants who get the first hits. They have the energy, nervous attention and lack of prejudice to do exactly as they are told. Me on the other hand, I’m used to standing up and casting. This is not casting, this is fishing. JD has been directing two active groups to fish pools on opposite sides of the boulder cascade. We have become accustomed to his hand signals and calls to go, to either move or cast left, right or further up the bubble trails. Finally he directs me to the next pool, but not before I’ve snagged my fly and broke the leader fetching it out of a logjam. JD has mastered the art of polite grimace. He does it without rolling his eyes, but his sigh is audible. It’s already past our 3pm lunch break and the spot where we dropped into the canyon is visible 300 yards upriver.

I have fallen three times. Twice on my right elbow and once on that hip. I’ve been navigating with the chest pack, worried I might face plant despite my extensive experience bouldering on dry land. I’m about to lose nervous connection to the front of my feet. I believe I am sending commands to my toes, but I cannot be sure if they are responsive. My ears tell my I’m falling, my elbows and wrists confirm the failure. But now it’s my turn. I am on the right, JD gestures me towards him in the middle. I’m ready, suffering and all. I see the pool, he points out the parade of slow bubbles. I get right on it. I’m squatting low as I move past a large granite boulder that dams up the river on my right so that I can get to its edge where the small waterfall exits the calmer waters. Ten feet behind me is the far edge of the boulder where the water trickles more slowly from the pool. I cast directly into the bubbles and keep the stick up. I’m mostly in shadow so I can see my white and orange fly which is no wider than my thumb. It’s eight feet in front of me and floats gently on the surface as the bubbles pop around it. It’s coming towards me and then slowly veers off to the right, behind the boulder and out of sight. But my stick is high and I can see where the leader is and thus my bait.

Fish on! At a three quarter angle, I have enough room to yank back and set the hook, I can feel the dance as I move the rod back away from the lee side of the boulder to dead in front of me and I see the trout swim down the waterfall. Our hooks are not barbed but he’s on it and not getting away. I’m not so excited that I fall into the water but JD has to tell me to put the rod under my arm so that I can use two hands. The hoots go up and I gently reel in my prize, a brown trout about as long as my cupped hands. It has reddish orange spots on its belly. It’s the fifth and largest fish we caught so far. As much as I paid for the stupid pliers I cleverly attached to my front pack, I want to use my hands to unhook the fish. I keep it in the water while people fumble out iPhones, but eventually JD has to get it off my line and release it back into the river.

The prize.

I posted the picture on Facebook and friends wonder if my fish was bait, but I take comfort in JD’s assertion that we were in the New York of fishing spots. If I can catch fish here, I can catch them anywhere.

Satisfied, I dragged my shivering gluteals up the river and finally out of the water. Once I wedged my feet out of my previously glorious footgear I was able to walk barefoot on the dirt road for 10 minutes before the feeling came back. I knew that next time I would bring a hiking stick and maybe kneepads. But I’m not so sure that I like climbing rivers. Still, I am immensely grateful for this tourist experience and truly enjoyed getting to learn how to read this kind of river for these types of fish. That’s what it’s all about.

A river tumbles down it. You climb up it.

I can’t say that I’ve gotten more in touch with my inner caveman or anything like that. It’s not as though we hadn’t driven there or that our poles start at $250. But every trip into the wilderness, and there have been many for me, remind my of what it feels like to actually push my body to some limit in an unforgiving environment. I’m still having difficulty sleeping on my bruised up hip’s side, and I didn’t eat lunch for three days. I was down to one and a half meals over the long weekend and I dropped 3 pounds. Today, I’m at my ideal weight of 180 pounds. This means I’m a middleweight which is basically what I wanted to be back 40 years ago when I was stuck at welterweight. (For most of highschool I was a featherweight). The trick now is to convert a bit more fat to a bit more muscle and add a bit more flexibility and balance. Maybe eat a bit more fish.

I’m reading Neal Stephenson’s new book Polostan. So far so good, an excellent reference for today’s wannabe socialists and something of a reminder of where we were less than 100 years ago. Getting off the grid and surviving on 1200 calories on a good day is a good lesson for us all. The entirety of the Sierras is a reminder of the mean to which our environment will revert, but it’s nothing like Siberia. The planet is fine. The question is more of what pains will we be prepared to suffer if the air conditioning fails. It’s nice to know that if I can catch a fish there, I can catch one anywhere.