Red Humpy

Am I a fishing spot snob because I don’t disclose the details of where I fish when someone asks? I have definitive evidence that I am not.

I have learned from experience that there is a good reason to be evasive about good fishing holes. But let me start with a simple mathematical demonstration first.

Telling only one person about a fly-fishing spot can turn to many very quickly.

In 2001, I take a friend, “person B”, to a good spot to fish, one that was shown to me five years before and that I haven’t told anyone else about. Assuming that I was the ONLY person that was told by the person that told me, and assuming that the person who told me found the spot himself, that’s only three of us who know about this great hole.

In 2002, person B takes his best friends, persons C and D, to the spot, telling them to please keep it to themselves as it is special. There are now five of us that know about the hole.

For the next three years, three of us tell no one. But one of us takes a close friend there, and another takes his dad who lives in town. By 2009, the seven of us have each told one additional person. Fourteen of us know about the hole and are pleased to have such a pristine place to fish. In the next two years, only three of the fourteen takes a single buddy there.

When 2011 comes around, it has taken ten years for that one person sharing a fishing spot to have unwittingly let seventeen others in on the special hole. And that is a conservative number.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE #1: the WATERFALL

Now that the math is out of the way, and in case you are thinking that what I’m describing is an unrealistic scenario, let me share two personal stories with you.

Shortly before I married my second husband, we followed a creek upstream in search of a waterfall that a close friend had told me existed. I was given the general vicinity and went exploring with the man who was my boyfriend at the time.

We found the waterfall and it was spectacular. After finding the falls by sound, then realizing the cascading water had made a large, deep pool in the lush shade of the cliffs and trees above us, we climbed the short but slippery slope and were rewarded with not only a waterfall that was something you’d see in a photo of the tropics, but also with a crisp, clean and chillingly cold pool that took our breath away when we stripped down to underwear and each took a plunge.

After we had stopped shivering from the swim and had dried in the sun, we decided together that this would be our special spot – a secret waterfall in the forest. It was a good feeling to know that we found something that was our own.

My boyfriend, however, had not only a good feeling, he had the urge to share his excitement with his close friend. He told this friend exactly where the waterfall was and explained how to get there. I remember telling him that I was disappointed that he told this guy about this spot we have found only hours earlier and claimed as our own.

He shooshed me and said I was being selfish.

Just one week later, at a friend’s barbeque, I listened in dismay as a woman I barely knew told the large group about a cool hike she did that weekend with SEVEN OTHERS. They went on an adventure, she explained, to find the waterfall that our friend had told them about. I was crushed, and felt sick to my stomach. Although the man became my husband, we never went there again together, and it wasn’t until several years after the divorce that I got up the nerve to go explore the spot again. 

PERSONAL  EXPERIENCE #2: FLY-FISHING FOR CUTTHROAT

I have been pretty darn frugal about who I take to what fishing spots, and there was one place that in fifteen years I had only been to with one other boyfriend, and that was only because we were in the midst of a serious, five-year relationship and he had shown me several of his own secret spots.

A nice cutthroat caught on a royal humpy fly while fishing with "Woody".

When I started dating Woody (that’s a made-up name so as not to embarrass the real culprit), one of the things he loved was learning to fly fish. Not only was he a quick learner, he fished my style, meaning he could enjoy a slow day on a high mountain creek with no fish as much as catching big fish, left and right, all day long. He didn’t mind hiking to find good water, and he liked to fish in pairs, with one of us  fishing and the other watching, rather than hole-hopping where two people fish at the same time in separate holes and leapfrog each other upstream.

So if anyone was worthy of learning about my very special spot, it was him. This spot was unique because it was just 30 minutes from my front door, with less than half a mile on dirt roads. Although it was near a main road, very few people knew that this creek was fishable, and that there were good-size, wild cutthroat in every pool. From the car to stepping in the creek was just a ten minute hike. We went there many times in one summer, and he verified his understanding that this was a special spot and not to be shared.

Woody and I amicably went our separate ways the following winter and when our paths crossed after that, we sometimes talked about trips up to the creek and compared stories. It wasn’t until it was too late and fifty-thousand copies of a publication were distributed in the community that I realized what he had done.

In an interview about his business for a local summer visitor’s guide, this man who I had shared something special with, something that was almost as sacred as sex to me, had said in the publication that in his spare time he liked to go to this great location because it was excellent fly-fishing and close by. Although he didn’t specifically identify the spot, just by naming the vicinity allowed  anyone to look at a map and easily narrow down the options.

I was crushed, deflated, disillusioned, and definitely burned bad enough to know that I wouldn’t make that same mistake again.

HOW LONG IS LONG ENOUGH?

Is there a length of time, then, that a dating relationship should be established before one should share their sacred fishing holes? Since I haven’t gone back to the cutthroat spot in the years since it was printed in 50,000 magazines, I have only a few other secret locations left to share. I wonder what my criteria will be before I take a special someone to those spots. Will it be based on a gut feeling, or on how many new spots they have showed me first?

For now, if I meet someone who wants to go fishing, they will have to prove themselves not only worthy of knowing where the good spots are, but of knowing well the unspoken rule of being very prudent with who they choose to share the information with.

I’m not a snob by being vague about where I fish. I’ve just learned from experience that telling even one friend can grow to many in a very short time.

It is early July and my knee has healed enough to start playing tennis again and venture back out into the creeks. Although the San Juan river running through Pagosa Springs is running low and clear, the creek I visited up higher was still a bit high and cloudy due to the late afternoon rains we have been receiving.

the West Fork of the San Juan, running high, but there were still good pockets to hit with a dry fly.

I fished the West Fork of the San Juan, near the campground located off of highway 160 below Wolf Creek Pass. I couldn’t yet cross the creek in the spots I was at because the flow is still pretty high. Later in summer, the same spots are wadable, offering lots of still water to throw a dry fly into.

This past weekend, though, the water was high and I couldn’t get in much deeper than my thighs for fear of being swept away, but there were still pockets to be found. I started with dry flies and had some action, but it was difficult to get a good drift with my line being pulled so hard in the fast current. I could only do so much mending to get the fly to float naturally. I had a few hits on my Irresistable, but had too much slack in the line to be able to set a hook.

I had better luck with a stonefly nymph pattern. One with bright orange legs, a specialty at Pop’s Let It Fly shop in Pagosa Springs, did the trick and I landed a nice, beefy brown. Playing that fish on 6X tippet with a strong current to contend with was tricky, but my tippet knots held and I got the fish in my hand, only to have my dog Yoda get too close and cause the fish to snap loose with my fly and a piece of the tippet. I’ll have to try and catch the same fish to get my fly back!

The mosquitos were thick in the late afternoon air, but using the last of my bottle of Citronella oil kept them at bay.  I finished the evening with only one bite on my hand.

When the sun had set behind the high canyon walls where I was at, I turned to head away from the creek and was surprised to see two spin casters standing just downstream from where I was. It is always a shock to see other people on the creek when I think I am alone, and in all the years I’ve fished the West Fork, it was only the second time I’ve seen someone on this specific stretch.

I left the West Fork valley with enough light to allow me time to stop and fish the San Juan in downtown Pagosa Springs. I had several hit and misses on the dry fly I was throwing and tried tying on a few other patterns until it was too dark to get the tippet through the hook eye. I didn’t catch any fish there that night, but the water was so good that I’ll be back out to try again this coming weekend.

I read a blog post today by a lady in Indiana. She wrote about how you can usually tell that someone is a fly fisherman by the decals on their vehicles, their fly fishing hats and gear, and the accessories that they flaunt to let you know they catch fish on a fly. She posted photos of her many fly fishing odds and ends that adorned the interior of her truck.

Honestly, I couldn’t at all relate.

I try to think of the people I know that fly fish and if you would be able to tell that they partake in the activity by looking at their vehicles or clothing. My previous best friend who now lives in the Pacific northwest was an avid flyfisherman, but you wouldn’t know it if you saw him on his motorcycle, a BMW touring bike. His white Toyota pickup truck does, though,  have a trout sticker with ‘catch and release’ printed on it. I was with him last summer after a good day fishing the upper Piedra and we stopped in the Sportsman Supply  store for a snack. He saw a sticker display on the counter near the register and pulled out the same ‘catch and release’ decal to buy for his father who was staying with him for several weeks. His dad is also a fly fisherman and enjoyed the location of his son’s house just a hundred yards from an incredible run of the San Juan river, but by looking at his well-travelled camper, or at him, you couldn’t tell he fished either.

Judging by the amount of times I see the same trucks in the parking lot, there are a few guys in town who are frequent visitors to a fly shop in Pagosa Springs, Let It Fly. (A great name for a fly shop, don’t you think?) One of the regulars drives a tricked-out Land Cruiser with a bright yellow Let It Fly sticker in the rear window. He has the same sticker on his pickup. There are a few other Pagosans that have the Let It Fly stickers on their trucks, which is a pretty good giveaway that they fly fish, but not neccessarily flaunting the fact. I have yet to see a Let It Fly sticker on a car or truck with numerous other fly fishing stickers or signs that the driver is a fly fisherman, but maybe I’m just not noticing.

I must admit that I do have two Let It Fly stickers, but they are not on my car. One is on my blue  snowboard, the longer ‘powder board’ that I ride when Wolf Creek Ski Area receives over a foot of fresh snow. I used a black magic marker to cross out the words on the sticker that I don’t like and replaced them with my own. Where it says, “Put ‘em back, dammit” I changed the last word to ‘darnit‘. I didn’t feel good about cussing over catch and release.

The second sticker is on a Wells Fargo Bank portfolio, a canvas notepad holder that zips and was given to me when I closed on a home equity line of credit in 2004. I wanted something to cover the Wells Fargo logo so it didn’t look like I worked there when I used the portfolio at workshops. I cut off  the lower half inch of the decal to remove the line I didn’t like before adhering it over the Wells Fargo logo.

I chose not to put a Let It Fly sticker, or any fly fishing sticker, on my vehicle so when I was parked at my favorite, coveted fishing spots, no one would know why I was there unless they happen to drive by and see me leaving or approaching with gear, which is rare because I take precautions not to be seen. (And that’s a whole other story!) 

The cars and trucks I see parked on the side of forest service roads at the spots I know are close to good fishing spots rarely have fly fishing insignia attached. Often, during hunting season, I’ll see a  truck parked in an odd spot and the elk head decal is a hint at their forest activity. So maybe the occupants of the cars and trucks near the creeks just happen to be hiking in the forest and not fishing at all, and just by chance parked in that spot? But I have seen way too many people gearing up at those unmarked cars, or approaching the vehicle with their gear, to believe that hypothesis.  This leads me to believe that perhaps most people who fly fish in this area of southwest Colorado do so discreetly and without fanfare.

There were two trucks that I saw at the grocery store in mid-May towing dory-like river boats. Both trucks were adorned with fly fishing stickers all over the rear and side windows of the shells.  I didn’t recognize the drivers and the name of the company was out of Durango, which is 60 miles from Pagosa Springs. I remember wondering where they were going to fish here in Pagosa this time of year, especially this year. We had 110 inches of snow on the mountain in April and it is now late May and we  haven’t had more than a few days in a row of warm weather all spring. The snow has been melting slowly and we haven’t experienced the peak high water runoff that usually comes in May and attracts the kayakers and rafters from miles around. I suppose the only logical explanation for two boats from Durango would be fishing at one of the lakes.

Sitting, waiting, watching in my neon blue wetsuit/waders

I was told by someone who lives near Williams Creek, up Piedra road and below Williams Lake, that it is running high but is clear and fishable. I haven’t had a chance to make the half  hour drive out the gravel road to check it out.  I suppose that this weekend will be a good time to dig through my overflowing garage and find my farmer John wetsuit that used to be for surfing and now is used for wading in creeks and rivers. I prefer to fish in shorts, but the creeks are flowing with snowmelt and are quite cold and uncomfortable with bare legs. I will have some free time available next week and can probably find a creek that is fishable unless we get several days of warm weather. I haven’t even purchased my license for the year. 

I wonder what that lady from Indiana would think if she saw me gearing up next to my silver minivan that has no fly fishing stickers or signs of that activity. I would be putting on my neon blue 80′s wetsuit under a pair of vintage plaid water shorts, a  t-shirt and long-sleeve, quick-dry fleece. My rod, vest and wading boots would be the giveaway to my intended activity. Although the attire might be a bit unconventional, it is functional, comfortable and didn’t cost me anything.

Maybe that’s just how fly fishermen do it in Pagosa Springs – whatever works.

But I can only speak for myself and the few men and women I have gone fly fishing with. I mainly fish solo, and in places where there aren’t many vehicles.  I would love to hear from you about your fly fishing persona. Do you have several fly fishing stickers on your car? Do others you know? Please feel free to comment.