When I was
around 16 years old, just old enough to have a driver’s license and be able to
take myself fishing, my friend Doug and I decided to go see if we could catch
some trout at one of our favorite stretches of Crab Creek.
Old Railroad Trestle Crossing Crab Creek |
His parents insisted that we bring his little
brother Dale with us. I have an older
brother named Dale, so Doug’s brother was referred to as ‘Little Dale’, who was
about 10 or 11 at the time. The stretch
of the creek we were fishing was west of the town of Edwall, WA, at an old
railroad trestle with an old road bridge that we never felt safe driving across
but had no problem walking. Under the two bridges was a stretch of water several hundred yards long that had a good
population of 6 to 12” Rainbows, an occasional German Brown and a plethora of
shiner minnows. I am not sure how long
we were there, or how many fish we caught, but I do remember that at a certain
point Little Dale became frustrated because he had not caught a single
fish. We knew how to fix that. We used to catch the shiner minnows to use as
bait in our crawdad traps, so we knew how to catch them easily. All you had to do to was to tie on a small
black fly (even though we were using spinning rods), and go stand on the old
road bridge, which was about 8 to 10 feet above the surface of the water. If you let out just enough line for the fly
to reach the water directly below and dance the fly off the surface, you could
catch shiners to your heart’s content. We
suggested that Little Dale do that so he could catch a fish, which he did, and
he began catching the shiners. Soon the
tears left his eyes and he was beginning to have fun. I was fishing from the bank about 10 yards upstream
from the bridge where Little Dale was standing.
I had been there for at least 15 minutes throwing a little spinner up
and downstream in a section of the creek about 8 feet wide and 2 to 3 feet
deep, all the while Little Dale was catching shiners. At one point Little Dale lowered the fly to
the surface and began dancing it around to attract the shiners, when out from
underneath a clump of grass directly across the creek from me, a very large Rainbow
emerged and began swimming downstream towards the bridge. This fish had been under there the whole time
I was there, and was well over 20 inches long, by far the largest fish I had
ever seen in that creek. I yelled up
to Little Dale "keep dancing that fly there is a big one coming." The big bow cruised down the creek directly
under the fly, went passed it by about 3 feet and slowly circled back. Little Dale was almost shaking with
excitement, but the big bow once again passed under the fly on his way back
upstream. I told Little Dale to keep
doing what he was doing. The fish
continued to cruise upstream this time about 4 feet past the fly. Then, with a flurry of speed the big bow
suddenly turned back downstream and attacked the dancing fly with a
vengeance. Little Dale had zero chance
against this brute. Standing 8 to 10
feet above the surface of the water, with 6 pound test line, a #20 fly, on an ultralight spinning rod and the emotions of a 10 year old that just hooked the biggest fish of his
life… the fight lasted about 3 seconds before the line broke and the fish took
off downstream at warp speed..... leaving Little Dale once again in a fit of
tears.
Thank you, Karl, for sharing that great story from long ago. I could visualize everything just as you described. That is the great thing about fishing. Every time out is a chance at an experience that you will remember for ever!
ReplyDeleteKarl, that was a wonderful story. The only good think about growing old is the stories you remember from your childhood.
ReplyDeleteWe play the game for the stories we can tell.
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