TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

2024 was the ninth year that I’ve been a full-time RV’er and I have been looking to upgrade to a new model for the next ten years. My business has been good this last year, or rather you could say I worked more than I wanted. A happy result is that I’ve saved a substantial fund for a newer RV.

The sad result is that I didn’t get to my favorite fly fishing waters until after the peak hatches had passed, and so I attempted to find some new favorite waters this year. It was not a particularly successful attempt. And hovering in the background like an oil spill that has not yet come ashore were the election and the awful possibilities that the future might bring.

Since the beginning of my wanderings in 2015, I have focused on fly fishing as my primary avocation. I had only started in on this new-to-me hobby four years earlier, after a 20-year pause. I had enjoyed fishing with my dad when I was a boy, and I subscribed to a number of fishing magazines when I was a young teen. But I don’t think I had a fishing license between the end of high school in 1987 and my next purchase around 2011 in Marin County, CA.

I had been walking laps for exercise around Phoenix lake, a small reservoir in Ross Valley, when I noticed the quite large bass that were also cruising laps close to shore.  I bought a license and some cheap spinning gear and managed to catch some decent fish there on Rapala crank baits and plastic worms. At some point, I realized that the lake had some big bluegill as well, and for some reason, I bought a cheap box of flies and a casting bubble to be able to chuck them out there with my spinning rod.

Well, I caught a horse of a bluegill on that rig, and that led me to buy a beginners’ fly rod combo on Amazon for about 20 bucks.

There was some frustration trying to learn to cast it, watching YouTube videos and practicing with the junk flyline that you get with your 20 dollar combo, but I was able to get it out there far enough to catch some fish.

Then I upgraded with a ten dollar reel from Cabelas with a 30 dollar fly line and I caught some trout from a Sierra mountain stream.

I next bought a real fly rod, a Grey’s 4 weight, with which I caught my first Upper Sac rainbow. That rod expired and was replaced by a 5 weight from “The Fly Shop” in Redding, and my escalating progression was underway.

One of the reasons that I left California to become a nomad was that it took a minimum of 3 hours driving to reach a legit trout stream from my North Bay home. When I headed East in June of 2015, it was to target little trout in the streams of Northern Nevada, and that was a successful adventure.

The next leg of that year’s journey took me to the Henry’s Fork in Idaho, and that was successful too. I caught a bunch of fish all over Montana, Wyoming and Idaho that year. I was feeling pretty good about my pick of fly fishing as a new hobby.

Since that beginning, I have had a number of ups and downs with the fly rod. Six months in Florida was an education in patience and perseverance. Three months on the rivers of Northern California searching for steelhead was a similar trial: three months, one fish. But I caught some big Lahontan Cutthroat on Pyramid Lake in Nevada the first time out. And I caught a few sight-fished reds on Redfish Bay by Port Aransas, Texas.

I cast to picky trout on Frustration Creek, a secret branch of the Snake in Jackson Hole, and I tried to fool educated fish on the South Platte at Eleven Mile, Cheeseman Canyon and at Deckers, down in Colorado.

I had a great day on the Madison in Montana feeding three inch stoneflies to big rainbows while the wind blew sideways. I landed an amazing 20 inch cutthroat on Flat Creek on the Elk Preserve in the shadow of the Tetons. And I fed little PMDs to amazing browns on the Bighorn River, way down on the Crow Reservation in Montana.

So, all this is to say that I’ve had some highlight moments over the past nine years. Also, some moments of excruciating frustration.

2024 made me think that perhaps the frustration is not worth the perseverance. My aforementioned plan to scout new waters did not pay off well.

Southwestern Wyoming streams that were supposed to be full of feisty native fish produced one or two small trout after hours of bad roads and long hikes upstream. The Green River in Wyoming that is famed for its giant browns gave me one cutthroat (not even fairly caught), while anglers in drift boats hooked two fish over 24″ right in front of my campsite!

I spent a few days on Flat Creek, beautiful late August days, interspersed with thunderstorms and brief hail, with only a couple juvenile fish to hand. I cast to one big fish for over an hour, and the one time it ate my fly, I missed!

So, by the time that September rolled around, I was feeling a bit disgruntled. Yet I maintained my enthusiasm for the fall run of big lake-run fish that would start up in September, and I booked a campsite for the last week of that month. I bought a new two-handed trout spey rig and tied a couple dozen flies. Like the first time I fished Bakers Hole in 2015, I caught a really nice fish the very first morning. But that was the last fish to hand for the rest of the week.

It was an Indian Summer, sunny, bright and almost 80 some days. The long term forecast said maybe there’d be some rain in the future, so I decided to pause for a week and come back when the weather changed. So the second week of October would be my last shot, and I did have a good day on the one day that was cloudy and wet. But I was skunked more than not, and the last day saw another empty net.

That last day, there was a guy with his boy, maybe 14 or 15 years old, that hiked in from the parking area just ahead of me. I passed them casting to a stretch where I’d never caught a fish, even though I’d swung through it many times. I considered letting them know it was a low probability run, but decided to keep to myself and went to the next bend, where I got bupkis. Downstream, I heard whooping and hollering, something damned exciting had happened. Walking out later, I met the duo and the dad showed me the photo on his phone… he’d landed a 24″ brown, with another half dozen nice fish between them in the previous hours where I had been getting skunked.

Well, dang.

So I left Montana feeling pretty blue. Wondering about my skill level, my motivation, my ability to persevere.

I stopped in Reno for a family visit and decided to try Pyramid again, as it had been pretty good to me in the past. Both prior visits saw some big fish in the net… no giants, but bigger than most of my Montana catches for sure.

I got permits for six days from the Paiute tribe and setup on Indian Head Beach. I got skunked every single day.

That was the last effort for 2024, and then November 5 rolled around.

So, what am I going to do in 2025? Is it time to stow the fly gear for a time and pick up a new hobby? Maybe go back 20 years and start drawing again? I’m going to need something to occupy my mind to keep me from losing it every time a new atrocity of justice hits the news. “K$H” Patel, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Fer Fuck’s Sake.

Come on, New Year. Let’s get it over with.

Thanks for coming along on my journey, and best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2025 to you and yours.