Black River Arizona

 

 

“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.