Bonefish on the Brain Bonefish and all that relates (maybe a bit about tarpon too).

I am really feeling my age right now. Bonefishing may be more challenging than trout fishing, but it is not more demanding. Today was demanding, physically, and right now I’m more than a tad sore. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.

A lot of time on the tracks today, walking

I fished for something like 9 hours today. This was in a tight river canyon, walking the tracks, wading, climbing up banks, down embankments… physical stuff. Hard stuff.

I wobbled a few times, skating off rocks only to catch myself just at the last second, except for once, when I didn’t and got a nice refreshing October bath in the river, water down the waders all the way to my feet, which got to stay wet for the next 4 hours.

I caught fish… a lot of fish really. I caught more than most people ever catch here, but then most people don’t fish it right, don’t cover enough water, don’t push as hard as they need to. I had 22 fish in the net or to hand. For me it was a decent day, but it could have been better. There were stretches without fish and there were probably 15 or more fish that didn’t stay hooked. This river and I go way back, it produces for me.

One of many.

Right now, now I feel my age. I feel the strain in my shoulder from high sticking and the dull throb in my knees from climbing and hiking and falling. My whole back is sore and I am exhausted. There was a time I wouldn’t have felt too bad after a day getting after it like this, but those days were years ago. Now, now I am in some pain, although blunted by the three beers with dinner at the Dunsmuir Brewery Works.

It is harder to catch a bonefish than a trout, but I’m going to say it is harder, physically, to catch 20 trout than to catch 20 bonefish. To catch 20 bonefish you have to find happy fish and a lot of them, which sometimes happens. To catch 20 trout you have to climb and wade and walk and keep casting, casting, casting. You have to be relentless in your pursuit of the fish.

Good for about 5 fish. This riffle is one of my favorite places, anywhere.

I’m glad I was out there and I hope I have many, many more days like this in my future. Out there, all by myself, just the river, the fish and me, it is strangely peaceful. The aches, though, I could do without the aches.

I know it sounds ridiculous to say that the river was upset with me. It can’t really get upset at me, it isn’t a thing capable of carrying a grudge.

However, the river was upset with me and it was carrying a grudge.

It was never my river, not really. I fished it a bit over the span of a couple of years and got to know it a little bit, like a second cousin. The river is big and broad, cold and fast. The trout are unreasonably large and the river is open all year long. The only thing the river lacks is a really dependable and prodigious hatch, the kind that people come for from around the world. It doesn’t have that, not really.

The Lower Sacramento. Big, broad, fast.

It has a hatch, a massive hatch, the Mother’s Day Caddis Hatch. I’ve seen millions in the air at one time, rafts of caddis floating down the river and not a single nose poking up to take them off the surface. The fish eat nymphs all year and eggs, when that sort of thing is happening.

Now, that sort of thing is happening.

Me.

As I walked out into the water at the Posse Grounds I could see salmon. Living, swimming, powerful and full of rot and fungus. These fish are near the end of their journey, but they still have a redd to make, a mate to find and then there is the dying. Where there are salmon, there are salmon eggs and trout that eat salmon eggs get large… really large.

But, as I mentioned, the river was upset. I haven’t visited this river in a few years and it has been keeping track. I fished for three hours and only touched one fish, a salmon, snagged, which I quickly popped off. The river was clearly giving me the cold shoulder. It wasn’t going to give it up.

I had my choice of water, I had flies that have worked there before, the rig has worked there many, many times. My casting was looking pretty good as I pounded out cast after cast after cast, Nothing.

“Too little, too late.”

Three hours of standing there watching the water go by and I decided to head back to the river that really is mine.  My river is a few miles upstream, the same river, but also totally different. This one I know. This one is like a parent. This river has taught me so much, has been there for me through good and bad and has so often given up the goods.  I’ve put my time in on this river and it wasn’t going to be angry. This river loves me like a child, always and forever no matter how long it goes between calls.

The tracks and the river. Companions.

It wasn’t angry. An hour of fishing brought four trout to hand as the sun, already hidden by clouds, slid behind the Western rim of the canyon. I picked apart one run of nice pocket water, fishing a short line, which always seems to find the fish. Wading knee deep and sometimes deeper, I moved slowly and surely so as not to orphan my child or widow my wife. Studs and a wading staff help.

Hello lover.

Upper Sacramento Sunset

Then, I was done. I had caught fish, the sun was down and it was time to go.

This river still loved me.