From the files of Donald R. Kirk:
Some people go fishing to get out of doors, to go camping, to walk up and down a creek or river, or around a lake. If they get a few fish, so much the better. I go for all of these reasons, and fishing is good this morning. I already have three nice trout in my wicker creel. Although the sun rose over the Warner Mountains a couple of hours ago, many places in this westward sloping canyon are still in shade. The banks of East Creek are intermittently brushy and open. The latter areas are dense, covered in grass and luxuriant with wildflowers. I can’t walk in the open areas without stepping on paintbrush, yarrow, buttercup, and larkspur.
My favorite way to fish is with dry flies which are hand-tied artificial flies that float. This morning, however, the fussy fish are ignoring all the flies I throw at them. As I slowly move downstream, I soon discover what they want. My boots scare up a grasshopper that promptly leaps into the creek. I watch it float downstream, kicking itself toward shore as it goes. It never makes it to dry land; with a splash of water it disappears into the mouth of a fine trout.
I put away the flies, lay the creel aside, and lean my graphite fly rod against an aspen. Crouching low, partly on my knees, I flop my large-brimmed straw hat down over a grasshopper. Worming my hand beneath the hat, I clutch the ‘hopper, bring it out, and put it on my hook. Back I go to the creek, and on my knees in the tall grass, I gently toss out the hopper on my hook. There is hardly time to blink when, wham! A big rainbow trout grabs the bait. I retrieve my creel, and within the next hour I almost have a legal limit of fish.
I come to an area where local beavers have recently been active. On both sides of the creek they have felled perhaps twenty aspen trees, leaving them where they lay. Many aspen are partly in the creek, holding back the water a bit, making it deeper and slower, providing protection and shelter for fish. While this is a fine, natural habitat improvement for the creek’s trout, and I’m sure the fish love it, the fishing is made much harder for me and whatever other creatures might fish from this creek. There is not enough room to cast my grasshopper between the aspen logs in the creek without getting snagged. And, if that isn’t bad enough, I suddenly realize that catching hoppers among the logs on shore is just too difficult. I walk around the tangle of aspen logs and go on downstream.
Here the creek is wide and very shallow, no good for fishing. After another hundred yards of hiking, both the canyon and the creek narrow. Rocks appear on shore and in the creek. The creek bank drops vertically into the water but is supported in many places by sizeable rocks. All this makes for many deep holes of placid water, great for fishing. Grasshopper-catching is hampered by the rocks, but much easier than among the aspen logs. I lean my fishing rod against a rock, take off my creel again, and hat in hand, I crawl toward a nice hopper on the ground between me and the creek. I am about to slap my hat over the insect when from the corner of my eye I notice movement across the stream…to be continued.