In the strike zone

Work, as the bumper sticker says, is for people who don't know how to fish. So why was I trying to have it both ways? Here I was, hiking along the West Fork of the San Gabriel River, dressed in my newly purchased chest-high waders and boots, fishing rod in hand, in pursuit of a fish and a story.

"OHHHHHH, MAN!"

That's Darrell Kunitomi. He's roaring at the broad vein of water shooting through the carved canyon. The river, he told me, hadn't flowed this fast in decades.

Now I know the world doesn't need yet another practitioner of bad Hemingway, one more fly-hatted, Orvis-bedecked laureate finding nirvana in the perfect cast and prattling on about it in print. But this was going to be a fishing trip, not a pilgrimage. And a fishing trip in our own backyard. It was perfect.

Forget West Yellowstone. Forget the Upper Peninsula. This is Los Angeles. And these are the San Gabriels.

And Darrell's up ahead of me — part guide, part wise master of the Force — taking in the entire ecosystem, checking water temperature and watching for insect activity to see if we were in an "active feeding zone."

Every time we crossed the water, zigzagging upstream, he reached in and pulled up potato-sized rocks to see if nymphs were attached, feeding and fattening up for the trout. Everything he saw told him there were fish in these waters.

I might have been skeptical, but then I'd never given much thought to the San Gabriel Mountains. For me, they were little more than a stunning backdrop to this city, as if Christo had hung a mountain tapestry from the clouds. It didn't seem logical that one minute you could be in a sprawling mosh pit, fighting for the last Costco parking space with some of the other 20 million residents of Southern California, and minutes later you could be stalking wild fish in some semi-alpine paradise.

Black bear lumber around up there, I'm told, along with bighorn sheep and mountain lions. Trout live up there too, and Darrell knows exactly where.

Or so he claimed.

Hold the tartar sauce

The plan was simple: to get my feet wet on a broad public stream where I'd have some casting room, and then bring me back another day to some secret, nearby spot. If I were to divulge its location, ever, to anyone, Darrell warned me, I would be hunted down by the sacred brotherhood of fly fishermen and tortured with bamboo rods and scary little things called woolly buggers.

But I get ahead of myself. We had to master a few basics, and I had a few questions.

I wanted to know how we were going to cook the trout once we reeled it in. Iron skillet, maybe? A little lemon pepper? Nice little feast by the side of a babbling brook?

I might as well have asked a Hindu if we were going to stop for a couple of burgers on the way back from enlightenment.

It's catch and release, Darrell said without hiding his suffering. It's all about the experience. I didn't quite buy it. Sounded to me like going after deer with paint-ball rifles.

But what did I know? Darrell called me a "baitist." I don't think he was being rude; it's just that I've done a little bit of the other kind of fishing.

Fly-fishing, Darrell told me as if he were addressing a cave man, is for the evolved fisherman. It's a game of chess, whereas bait fishing is checkers.

Which might have been too fine a point for the motorists zipping by on Burbank Boulevard the afternoon I tried casting for the first time. We had set up in the parking lot of a Van Nuys strip mall, across from Ralphs, just inviting a few fender benders.