When I was a kid we lived in Colorado before moving to NM. We spent a few years is Estes Park, a beautiful place with ample places for a kid to get lost and go fishing.
We lived at a couple different places. One of those places was off Hwy 7, a short bike ride from Mary’s Lake, and the other was off Hwy 34 on the Big Thompson River.
My dad taught us to fish and bait our own hooks, and how to rig and run a fly pole.
We mostly fished with water bobbers and flies on a leader. When we were on those lakes, like Mary’s lake, it was just a sin to use salmon eggs. Those were for tourists not real fishermen. When we fished streams we used a fly rod with a secret stash of flies on floater line.
Some of my favorite flies were a grey hackle peacock, a black nat, and a royal coachman – just to name a few.
A couple of my uncles, Duane and Steve, were also quite fond of fishing but they were more lake fishermen from flat country. They fished for walleye, crappie, northern pike and bass. They were always real secretive of their fishing holes and what they used for bait. I didn’t get to spend much time fishing with them but it was enough to learn those two things – and to keep them secret.
Well, one time I was fishing in front of our house on the Big Thompson River, and I was having a good day of it when this old man pulls his car over to the side of the road above me and starts watching. Well I remembered that old wisdom from my uncles, and I figured this guy is spying my fishing hole and gear.
I was casting my fly rod like a pro that day – so smooth and fluid, that I even amazed myself at how well it was all working and then bingo! I got a hit.
It was about a 20 inch trout, a very nice fish.
I looked around for that old man, as pride had set in, and I was looking to brag. But he was gone. O well, so I put that respectable trout on my stringer to keep the others company I’d already acquired, and I moseyed on upstream continuing to fish.
A little bit before sunset I decided I better head to the house. So I gathered up my little fly box and hauled my stringer up out of the water, I and hiked up to the road – a smooth back to the house.
I was hoping to make it back in time to get my fish cleaned before dark, when that old man rolled up in a fancy Mercedes car. He got out and started asking me all kinds of questions about my time fishing. How old I was, how many fish I’d caught, what I was using for bait, things like that.
I said to him, “Hah, real fly fishermen don’t use bait! We use flies!”
Then he asked me where I caught them. WelI, now I remembered my uncles and their rules. Feeling a bit ornery, proud, and maybe a bit high minded I answered, “In the water!”
After a bit, he wanted to take my picture, with the fish, and my fly pole. So I posed like I was fixing to be on the cover of a field and stream magazine. He asked me to hold up my fish for a pose, so I did, and he asked me again “Where’d you catch those fish at?”
Well, like I said, I was a bit ornery as a kid, so I stuck my finger in the corner of my mouth and mumbled around my finger that was hung in my lip…“I aught eber one roght der in da wip jis wike dis!” He slapped his knee and laughed, thanked me for making his day, and then jumped in his car and left.
Thinking back, I probably should’ve been a bit more helpful (and a bit more humble). Who knows, he might’ve been some millionaire looking to leave his fortune to some little fishermen, but changed his mind because that little sprout had a smart mouth. I guess I’ll never know.
But he never knew where and what I used to catch those fish either.
