This past weekend I couldn’t decide whether to go bow hunting for elk and deer or take one last backpacking trip and go fly fishing. It was a tough decision but I finally decided this would be my last chance for a backcountry fly fishing trip before winter hit so fly fishing won out.
I ordered a bunch of Skulls (black wooly buggers) and elk hair caddisflies from flydealflies.com and I was good to go. I’d been doing a deal out of town so I ran home Wednesday afternoon and started packing. I had a bunch of articles I had to get in before I could leave so I hit it until late and got up early so I could wrap things up.
I finally got all the have-to-do projects done, threw everything in the truck and took off. I got to the trailhead and, wow, not one truck was in the parking lot. Bizarre! What has become of America. Are we all just a bunch of indoors, video-playing yuppies now? No backpackers, elk hunters, deer hunters or bear hunters. Oh well — their loss was my gain. Probably setting at home mowing yards and watching the paint dry.
I threw everything in my pack. Dang, I could actually lift it up so I threw on a half-gallon of Lipton flavored tea. By now because of a few luxuries my pack had gained a little weight but I hit it hard and made it to my camping spot in record time.
I hate that it is getting dark earlier now. I slapped up camp and got things settled. The river had really dropped since a few weeks before. I built a ring of rocks on the edge of the river and set my jug of tea in it.
I figured it would be colder this trip so I’d throw in some Carhartt long handles. I’m glad I did because it did get semi-cool at night. I’d passed a lot of bear scat coming in. Obviously the bears were down lower now eating berries. They should have been up on top of the ridges by now. Maybe it is so dry that the berries were history already up high. There had been sign on the trail for the last 20 minutes before I got to camp, some as close as two minutes away.
I went to bed with my pacifiers (My S&W .44 mag and my Coast flashlight) and slept like a baby. I woke up the next morning before daylight and stumbled out. I dipped some crystal-clear water out of the river and boiled up a pot of coffee.
Time to get to fishing. My favorite hole had a huge log jam in it and was messed up. The river has really dropped so the fish were more congregated in the holes than ever. I skipped down the river just hitting the good holes. Wow, this was nice. Not a soul in the wilderness but me.
I started off using black wooly buggers but it was slow. Then I switched to some pheasant tail nymphs and got a few hits. In fact, I netted a couple of nice native cutthroats. Gee, they’re beautiful in the backcountry. I never can capture their stunning beauty on film. Then I got a decent sized Squaw fish that put up a good fight and an OK rainbow.
Speaking of nets. Ugh, I’d forgotten mine. I bet I have six nets, too. I’ve never forgotten a net before. Luckily I wasn’t catching any of the 24-plus-inch bull trout this time or I’d have been in trouble.
Sometime after lunch, it warmed up so I took off my long handles and was just fishing in shorts and a T-shirt. In a bit I saw a hole I wanted to slip down to and try. I didn’t think it was that steep but somehow my feet slipped and flipped up like the bandits in a “Home Alone” movie and I came down hard on the rocks. Luckily my bum took the brunt of the blow and not my back or ribs. Ugh, I already had a broke rib from an incident three weeks earlier. Didn’t need one on both sides!
Well, after a few days, it was time to pack up and leave. Packing out, I finally passed a real live human being. What unique creatures.
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.
