All Fishermen Are Liars Page 20
I’m not saying where this stream was for the usual obvious reasons, but I will say that the great state of Wyoming has more than its fair share of these small, surprisingly good trout streams that fall outside the boundaries of efficient itineraries and are therefore largely ignored or overlooked. This is the predictable result of 97,812 square miles with a population roughly one sixth that of Denver and with the pressure from visiting fishermen concentrated along well-worn tourist routes where hospitality is a profession. It’s not that the folks out in the countryside are standoffish, but a friend once said that every time I go to Wyoming the population of liberals temporarily doubles and that doesn’t always go unnoticed. But then I go there to fish, not to discuss politics.
We fished for two days, covering a sweet spot that stretched five miles upstream from camp and ended abruptly where a tributary emptied into a good run. This is where Doug landed two trout as perfectly matched as bookends, both about eighteen inches long. These were the two biggest cutthroats we landed, but there had been some others that came close. Above that confluence pool, both forks were too small to be much more than nursery water, but we waded up both just to make sure. At the highest point I heard a distant piping sound that might have been an unfamiliar bird or the backup horn on a bulldozer working on the bridges upstream. I stopped to listen but lost it in the white nose of running water.
We broke camp that afternoon, determined to find a route that would take us on south toward those Bonneville cutthroats without going all the way back the way we came. We backtracked a few miles down the drainage and turned east along a little feeder called Sheep Creek. By staying on what seemed to be the most heavily traveled road, we threaded our way up a narrow, one-lane pass and then gradually down the other side, out of the cool spruce and pine through descending foothills and onto a high sage bench. We weren’t entirely sure where we were, but we had half a tank of gas and were tending generally in the right direction on an unmarked but serviceable dirt road that was bound to lead somewhere sooner or later.
The first vehicle we saw was a pickup going in the opposite direction and the driver flagged us down and asked for directions. We said we thought we were still on a certain-numbered Forest Service road, but that we’d passed enough unmarked and unmapped forks that we couldn’t actually swear to it. I’d been studying the map while Doug drove, so I went on to say that the watercourse along the road was probably South Cottonwood Creek, although it could be North Cottonwood or, if we’d strayed farther south than I thought, maybe Apperson or even North Piney. Once I said this out loud, it didn’t sound as helpful as I’d intended.
We were stopped side by side blocking the road in the fashion of rural Wyoming with the compass and map spread out on the guy’s hood. His wife and young daughter were still sitting in the cab acting either patient or bored—it was hard to tell—but his dog, a large brown mutt with a hint of pit bull, had jumped out of the open pickup bed and was doing his best to scare up a rabbit.
I pointed to where I thought we were on the map. The guy nodded thoughtfully and pointed at a different spot where he thought we were. That seemed to settle it for both of us. He whistled up his dog and we parted amiably, agreeing that one or the other of us was lost.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Gierach is the author of numerous books on fly-fishing. His work has appeared in Field & Stream, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and Fly Rod & Reel, where he is a regular columnist. He also writes a column for the monthly Redstone Review. He lives in Lyons, Colorado.
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ALSO BY JOHN GIERACH
No Shortage of Good Days
Fool’s Paradise
Still Life with Brook Trout
At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman
Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders
Standing in a River Waving a Stick
Fishing Bamboo
Another Lousy Day in Paradise
Dances with Trout
Even Brook Trout Get the Blues
Where the Trout Are All as Long as Your Leg
Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing
Fly-fishing Small Streams
The View from Rat Lake
Trout Bum
Flyfishing the High Country
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2014
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Designed by Akasha Archer
Jacket design by Daniel Rembert
Jacket painting by Fred W. Thomas
Author photograph © C.D. Clarke
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gierach, John, date.
All fisherman are liars./John Gierach.
—First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
pages cm
1. Fly fishing—Anecdotes. I. Title.
SH456.G579 2014
799.12'4—dc23 2013012784
ISBN 978-1-4516-1831-0
ISBN 978-1-4516-1833-4 (ebook)