“Can a fishing trip be
enjoyable, I mean really fun, if you’re not catching fish?” Asks Paul. I set my
drink in the chair’s cup holder to tend to the campfire; which I consider one
of life’s pure pleasures—stoking the fire. This is not one of those questions
that I can just bust out an answer to. More accurately, I can bust out a quick
answer, but then it would be followed by days of jabbering on and on in an
effort to really expand upon the topic. Sadly though, I doubt I would get
any closer to any understanding.
“Yes,” I reply. I sit
there for maybe 5 seconds. Wait for it… “Well, let me explain…” I blather…
Night
one:
4-day annual fall fishing trip.
Destination:
White Mountain Range Black River
(Including East & West forks)
Cast of
Characters: Same as last year’s trip (John, Paul,
and David
and Erik) this year each
character takes on nick name based upon their select method of Mafia style of
killing (Johnny “Ice” Engel, Paulie “Six String” Judd, David “Chippa” Skelton
and Eric “Tommie” Hammer)
Let just say Paulie’s
question was never really answered, and I don’t think he expected and answer.
The query was laid out there to see how everyone felt about this year’s pick;
what they wanted to see, what they hoped for, along with catching a few
fish—who knows maybe even catch an Apache Trout.
The Black River and the
forks of it are impressive. I love their size, and they have fairly good access.
All my experience with boiling hot Arizona is Saguaro cactus and baked dirt;
the White Mountain range caught me off guard. It’s kind of like mixing the
Sierra Nevada’s with the Wyoming tundra—tall beautiful Ponderosa Pines; open
meadows with tall grasses. They had a pretty healthy fire a few years back that
left a lot of those beauties scorched toothpicks, but recovery seems fast.
Saturday turned out to be
the day of going deep and dirty. It was decided to get the hell off the beaten
path, avoid the bait totting Bubba’s, bellying up all over the East Fork, and
try to find bigger fish then on the West Fork.
We hiked down a half-mile
of so following a small stream leading to the confluence. I broke
off with the man who selected the Tommy Gun as his mobster weapon of choice, so
I’m supposed to refer to him as Tommy. But with a last name like Hammer, I just
gotta stick to Hammer; it’s just one of those names that is better than any
nickname anyone could come up with.
I can’t say for sure,
because this is my first time on in this area, but I think we got to some of
the best this river has to offer. The fishing and the beauty of the canyon
did not suck. Hammer decided to go Euro Nymphing and hooked up on a nice Brown
no more than 5 to 10 minutes into the game.
Although the fish weren’t
big by any means, we were catching. I remained hopeful that on the end of my
line would be an Apache trout—as much as I wanted one of those Browns to be,
they were not.
A lot more questions were
asked that day, as well as around the campfire: questions, chaos, mischief and
mayhem. Each man had to stay ever watchful due to an angry, lethal dive-bombing
squirrel. He was bounding from limb to limb on a full-grown Ponderosa above us
just going nuts dropping green pinecones on our tent and camp area. I am
convinced it was because of Paul’s I-Pod playing Nickel-Back every other song.
Let’s be honest, one Nickel-Back song is too many. Half the other songs were
produced by Nickel-Back—who can blame the little pinecone bomber!
Questions or not I
learned a lot. I thought I knew everything about fire—wrong. I know volumes
about keeping the core hot, I work up to a log that I refer to as “The
Grand-Dad” and there is a real process to heating that bad boy up. I learned
that smaller logs can’t be longer than a pit; they must remain fairly flat;
energy/heat is lost by moving up past logs instead on focusing on the
fuel—thanks Paul.
Good God David can cook;
I’m not even close to understanding smoking and basting. I aspire to be an
outdoor cook. David and I spent the entire time building each other up, an
entirely new concept for us. Our traditional method to show each other the love
is cut-downs, laying hands of pain upon each other, and general berating. More
times then I care to mention, I reverted back to bitch slapping David down; old
habits die-hard.
