I wanted to take the boy to one of my favorite places, the Lower McCloud. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth (ya know, to me).
I got him some Redington waders and boots just to be ready for him to stand in cold water.
Crucially, I didn’t call the Ted Fay Fly Shop for a stream report.
We started heading down to the river, leaving the paved road and hitting the kind of dirt/rock road that a city kid doesn’t see too often.
We passed Ah Di Nah (I wanted to name my daughter Ahdinah but her mom thought it sounded like a 70 year old waitress who smokes 2 packs a day in a truckstop town) and headed further toward the McCloud Preserve (run by TNC). We encountered a truck on the way who stopped and I stopped and rolled down the window.
“It’s unfishable” he said.
“Totally off color. Milk. No one is down there. Place is abandoned.”
Well, I could see the river and it looked very, very poor. Visibility looked to be about 4″-5″. I was there, we were there, so we were going to go see it anyway. I thanked the other angler and we headed on down to the end of the road.
There were no cars. We were the only ones foolish enough to be there.
We got out to start getting ready and were set upon by a cloud of mosquitos. Now, I knew this would happen, it almost always does here, but I had not warned the boy. He kind of freaked out about it. As we walked down to the river he really started to lose it. A bug went up his nose and he straight up lost his shiznit. I was not full of compassion and may have said something like “deal with it.” He did not deal with it. There were tears and screams and we very nearly stopped about 100 feet down the trail.
I tried to get him in a position to fish, but… it just wasn’t going to happen for him.
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The McCloud was barely fishable and it wasn’t going to be fishable for your average 10 year old.
We made it to the care takers place and found all 10 tags waiting for us. We grabbed two tags and had lunch.
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After a quick lunch we hit the water behind one of the cabins.
I manged to catch 4 despite the poor visibility. Fish have to eat, even if it is difficult. All 4 at big ugly bugs, probably the only things they could see.
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After about an hour (for most of that time O just watched and played on the bank) we left. That was it. That was all of the McCloud we were going to see and I doubt the awesomeness of that place translated to my 10 year old. All he knows of the place is that there are a bazillion bugs (they pretty much go away when you get on the water) and the water is opaque. We did manage to see a black bear on the road on the way out, which was cool.
We pivoted. We went from the Mac directly to a high mountain lake. We didn’t even get the rods out. We just walked around the lake looking for critters and we found them.
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Highlight of the trip will be this lake for him.
I had so wanted him to fall in love with one of my favorite places, but you just can’t really control what your kids will love. Just gotta go with the flow and find them where they are at.
- Unique Post
He’s got some time to re-discover the McCloud again. Tell him you want to go to the lake, and then make a side trip to check out the river too while you’re there. He’s spending time with his old man, and years from now that’s what he’s going to remember. Maybe even the two of you will laugh about the run in with the velociraptor-like mosquitoes.
Last year I took my daughter to the Great Smoky Mountains, a place I’m enamored with. Somebody smashed my car’s side window at a trailhead. Put a bit of a damper on the trip at the time, but she remembers the other fun things we did on the trip too. I’m sure I could get her to go back again.