SOMETHING SPECIAL : Old Navy Buddies to Hook Up Again as Trout Season Opens at Lake Crowley

God does not deduct time spent fishing.

--Anonymous

If that’s true, Bill Herring and Frank Nagle have built up a lot of compensatory time sitting in boats on Lake Crowley for the last 3 1/2 decades.

These two old Navy buddies--Herring from Pasadena, Nagle from Dublin in the Bay Area--will make a pilgrimage to California’s most-famous fishing hole next week, a tradition that they began 35 years ago.

Judiciously, however, they will avoid the Crowley crush of the opening weekend of the Eastern High Sierra trout season that starts at daybreak Saturday. They won’t be there when the flare goes off, the signal for about 5,700 anglers in nearly 2,000 boats and maybe 12,000 more along the shore to cast their lines into the chilly water. But they’ll be out in force a few days later, with 10 friends and relatives.

Their plan, which has served them well for many years, is to get there after the rush but before the fish are gone.

“Opening is horrendous,” Nagle said. “I don’t want to get into that mess.”

But they were there once on opening day--by default.

“That was the year (1969) the lake was frozen and our reservations were for the next weekend, which became opening day,” Herring said.

Said Nagle: “In the early days, we used to go up close to Father’s Day (in June). There were times we didn’t catch anything.”

Herring added: “We’d sit there all day and maybe catch one trout and a couple of carp.”

“Really bad,” Nagle said. “That’s the reason we started going up close to opening. You get to know what you’re doing after a while.”

Herring said that he and Nagle, both 62, became friends at quartermaster school in Gulfport, Miss., in 1944.

“It was 1945,” Nagle corrected his friend. “I graduated from high school in ’44. We’d gone through quartermaster school, but we were in different classes. (Afterward) we were going from Treasure Island to Guam on a ship called the Flying Arrow--a naval transport. It probably took us 20 days. We met on the ship.”

Herring said: “Frank’s memory is probably better. He’s four months younger.”

Nagle continued: “And then I stayed in the Navy three years and Bill got out. While we were going (to Guam) I had gotten a ‘Dear John’ from my girl. Later, Bill introduced me to the girl who eventually became my wife. She had introduced him to the girl that he married. Now both of our wives have died and we’ve remarried.”

After the war, they settled in California.

“We had read about Crowley,” Herring recalled this week. “It was the prime fishing ground in the country at the time, known all over for the big fish there.

“For five years it was just the two of us with one boat. Then as the group expanded we started getting two boats and now we’re up to three, with four in each boat.”

Nagle, now semi-retired, missed a couple of years because he couldn’t always get away from his job as a manager for J.C. Penney auto service centers. Herring, an engineer with Caltrans, hasn’t missed a season. He makes the boat and motel reservations for the group, whose ranks have been swelled by the enlistment of sons, brothers-in-law and friends.

A few sometimes return later in the year--”That’s when we bring the wives,” Herring said--but the first time is special.

Traditionally, they play golf at Bishop on the way to the lake, have dinner at Paradise Camp at the base of Sherwin Grade, then head up and check into the Sierra Gables motel opposite the lake. They fish, they play cards, they laugh.

“We don’t do anything horrible,” Nagle said.

The group may be more typical than unique. They don’t show up with electronic fish-finders or tackle boxes full of exotic lures.

“We’re bait fishermen,” Herring said. “Salmon eggs or Velveeta cheese.”

But they do have their own special bait.

“We kind of developed this over a period of time,” Nagle said. “Frank’s secret bait. I’m sure people can buy something very close to it. It’s a Velveeta base, has garlic in it and some red coloring.”

Said Herring: “The house smells pretty bad when I’m cooking that up.”

Nagle added: “A long, long time ago, Velveeta was the hot thing. Then we kind of developed this, and it seems like the last couple years, I’ve noticed that the guys who use Velveeta are beginning to catch as many as we are. Maybe it’s run its course.”

There have been good years and not-so-good years, but even some of the latter turned out OK.

“We weren’t doing too well at Crowley one year,” Herring said. “So we went up to Lake George, above Mammoth, and started trolling. A storm came up and lightning was flashing all around us and it was getting pretty rough, and our buddies were standing back on the dock laughing at us.

“But I caught a 3-pound brook trout, came in and threw that on the dock and they all stopped laughing. I have it mounted in my office now.”

Sudden storms are a danger on Crowley because it is so open and shallow. Nagle’s car once got sandblasted sitting on the shore.

Herring said: “Once we were doing real well and celebrating our catches and didn’t notice what was happening. Turned out we were the last boat on the lake, and the patrol boat came out to get us.”

Added Nagle: “In ’77 we got snowed on. There’s been some horrendous snowstorms we’ve fished in. You just sit out there and the wind comes up, but until the (patrol) chases you off, we just stay out there to the bitter end, unless we’ve limited out--which we usually do pretty early. Sometimes we’ll just raft up, the three boats of us, sit out there and just have a good old time.

“This is probably the biggest high I get all year long. It isn’t just the fishing. It’s the camaraderie, the friends.”