California’s trout fishing fly-casts its spell

Four who’ve caught the sport’s fever pursue a crafty rainbow and the reckless brookie.

EASTERN SIERRA NEVADA

Last trout season, two writer friends of mine flew into Los Angeles to fly-fish the Eastern Sierra. The guy from Cheyenne, Wyo., wore a big black Stetson. The one from Brooklyn wore red sneakers. They both dragged gigantic rolling duffels weighted with fly-fishing gear. They were happy to be in California and serious about catching fish. They expected me to show them the ropes.

Showing these accomplished anglers the ropes was an amusing notion: Chuck Box — “C.J.” — is a former fishing guide from Cheyenne, and Brian Wiprud, our Brooklynite, was just back from fly-fishing in the jungles of Brazil. Or was it the mountains of Kenya? Between them, they had fly-fished for 50 years. I had scratched out 10, maybe. It didn’t matter to these men: They wanted Sierra trout, and they wanted them now. I was elected to deliver. The heat was on.

Luckily I had help. Our friend Ken Wilson, a well-known L.A. book publicist, volunteered to co-chair the event, so Ken and I picked up C.J. and Brian at the airport terminal and headed out.

We’re in my Ford, James McMurtry on CD and mountains of gear in the back. We spend the first half-hour catching up on things — our families, our book deals, our ailments and remedies — but four anglers headed for the water can only talk about things not fish for about 40 minutes, tops. By the time we hit U.S. 395, Chuck is telling us about a large brown trout he recently took from a Wyoming pond on a mouse imitation.

“The mouse had wobbling eyes, and I think they helped attract that brown,” he says with apparent sincerity.

“That’s ridiculous,” Brian says.

Chuck produces the mouse from a shirt pocket and passes it around. It’s a cute little thing with a leather tail, a hook hidden in its belly fur, and sure enough, the eyes really do wobble. Fly-fishers learn early that verisimilitude doesn’t mean squat to fish — except when it means everything.

Brian doubtfully examines the mouse. He shakes it so the eyes move. “I made a mouse out of brown shag carpet once.”

“Catch anything with it?” Chuck asks.

“Naw. Fell apart.”

“It looked more like a toupee than a mouse,” Ken says.

Brian has dug out one of his many fly boxes to show us some of the flies he tied for this trip.

A well-appointed fly box is a thing of minor beauty. There are platoons of caddisflies, sizes 12 to 18, in olive and gray and tan. There are legions of blue-winged olive mayfly dressings, and pale morning mayfly duns, and Royal Wulffs with their showy flashes of red.

“But where are the streamers?” Chuck asks.

“Right here.”

Brian is, among other things, our streamer guy. He sets down the first box and finds another, larger one. He opens it, and they pass it around. From the corner of my eye, I see olive and black and brown feathers wafting in the A/C breeze.

I can’t really look at Brian’s craft work because I’m driving. And I’m aware that we’re barely past Adelanto. CHP is thick in here, but I haven’t fished a river since November. I can’t remember what kind of pie I ate at Thanksgiving all those five months ago, but I can tell you exactly where I was standing (first curve of Upper Owens at the monument) when I caught my last fish of the year (a small rainbow) and what I caught it on (No. 18 zebra midge). I turn up the McMurtry and goose the cruise control a little higher over the speed limit.

The miles become shorter, almost friendly.

Four Corners.

Red Mountain.

Randsburg. Ken wants to know if anyone wants to stop to see the old saloons and jail and mining equipment. He has a deep appreciation for California history.

I join the surly chorus of boos and stomp on the gas.

Where the fish are

We make Hot Creek by late afternoon. In a fecund stretch, we stealthily approach trout holding in the shallow clear water. These fish are the stuff of legend — often enormous, popular with the masses, extremely difficult to fool. Anglers from all over the world go slack-jawed when they see these things for the first time.

They’re feeding in their respective lanes, nosing into the current for changes of direction, then sliding back into their slots. Trout of course are territorial, and the biggest ones get the best lies. The biggest one looks to be 26 inches long, and I say so.

“It’s only 24,” Brian says. “The water is magnifying it.”

“I can’t believe the size of that thing,” says Chuck, who is no stranger to the big fish of Wyoming’s North Platte. “Brian, if you don’t catch it, I’m going to.”

Brian sidles downstream and ties on a 4X leader, which is quite large for this clear smooth water, but anything finer would be snapped off by such large fish.

The trout is feeding up in the water column, not down low, not at the surface. Brian ties on a wet fly; it sinks a little and imitates an aquatic insect struggling toward the surface to use its wings for the first time. He makes a slow, hunched-down approach from behind.

He’ll get only one cast, and it will have to be perfect. With a fish that has seen as many flies as this one, it’s first cast or never. One shot. He’ll have to figure in the breeze and get that fly way upstream of the trout, then mend the line away from the fish so he doesn’t scare it off.

All of which he does perfectly. The wet fly swings into the big rainbow’s lane 20 feet upstream. The fish locks onto it early. Target acquired. You can tell by its tiny angle of adjustment. The fish sways, waiting. Four hearts pause; four nervous systems go code blue. The huge trout bullets forward with immeasurable velocity, aimed directly at the fly. Then, as if hitting some invisible wall, it veers past the fly and disappears.

Why?

Did the hook glimmer in the sunlight?

Did the tippet show in the clear water?

Did the wet fly look not quite natural?

Well, we’ll never know. Whatever it was, it’s part of the reason this fish is 24 inches long.

In the silence that follows, my emotions shift like gears: hope, hope dashed, beauty appreciated, beauty lost, riches glimpsed, emptiness. I look up at the Sierra. They do not register our plight. I join the cussing.

Now this run of Hot Creek is vacant, not a fish to be seen. A spooked king is a spooked kingdom. And there are truckloads of anglers pulling up for their shot at these crafty monsters.

Reckless prey

The next day, we fish Rock Creek (west of Tom’s Place) as a way to run up some numbers and see some beautiful country. Rock Creek is full of brook trout, which of the four main strains of trout — brown, rainbow, cutthroat, brook — are generally regarded as the easiest to catch.

They are also, for my money, the most beautiful. And I love the reckless abandon with which they attack flies. They’re notoriously aggressive, and sure enough, they’re lining up to hit our flies.

Fishing a pool, Ken snatches up 12 in about five minutes without moving from his spot. Chuck seems to be hooked up on every cast. Brian catches some then disappears upstream. I find a pod of brook trout that can’t resist my pale morning dun mayfly. My kind of fish: pretty and dumb.

I find Brian around the bend, pulling fish out of a small Sierra lake so clear that the upside-down reflections of the mountains on its surface are nearly as precise and pristine as the mountains themselves.

“We don’t have this in Brooklyn,” he says.

By day’s end we’ve caught and released 155 trout among us. We guess that our 155 fish would weigh about the same as the 24-inch heartbreaker in Hot Creek the day before, but this does not dim our spirits.

We agree to try the big Hot Creek rainbow again tomorrow.

Trekking back to the truck, we’re all yapping away about the fish, then about Jim Harrison’s new book, then more about the fish, then about Chuck seeing McMurtry play in Austin. It’s one of those four-way conversations that has no true north but lots of enthusiasm. We stop at the trail crest to take pictures. The view is magnificent.

Up the trail come hikers. They’re smothered by backpacks, leaning forward against the grade, staffs tapping, boots crunching up dust on the trail. They’re setting a good pace, trying to beat the sunset to the lake. I can hear their shortened breathing. They glance and nod at us as we move aside to let them pass.

I take another picture. My heart is full, and my casting shoulder is sore.

I feel sorry for people who don’t fish.

T. Jefferson Parker is the author of numerous books, including most recently “Storm Runners.”