It Will Remain A Secret

Hi everyone.

Sorry, but this is not like the "secret" lake that everybody knew about. This is something I was told in strict confidence and unfortunately I can't tell you about.

It is so off the wall that you wouldn't believe it if I told you, but I can't. 

Let me say that I told someone about a place that was good, in strict confidence, and then it was passed along to everyone.

Can't do it this time, but thanks for trying. 

Oh So Lonely

I have no idea what's going on in the fishing community. Two months of moving, a week of sitting with my foot up because it was smunched, and no one is saying anything out on the forums about fishing the upcountry lakes has left me fishing blind.

So, with little expectation I drove up the hill this morning. Made my usual stop at Cooks for coffee, but let me make a note here that what used to be a 10 minute trip from the old house to Cooks, now takes me 30 minutes. What used to be about 5 miles is now 27 miles. There seems to be some disadvantage to living in town. ALTHOUGH, come Winter, fishing downcountry is going to be a breeze.   

That said, I made my first stop at Bear River Reservoir. Since nobody is talking, I didn't know what the water level was going to be and was pleasantly surprised to find quite a bit. It wasn't May levels, but more like late August/early September levels. 

Still nursing a bum foot, I did find a nice, flat spot not too far from the water. See below.

Not so far from the water

There were two other groups fishing to my left and one to my right. The gentleman next to me said that fishing last week was good (of course), but today not so good.

Those to my left

The dam over yonder

Over the period of two hours I fished rainbow Power Bait plain, with sweet corn, with garlic, with anise, and a hand full of Kastmasters to no avail. 

Then everybody left, leaving my by my lonesome.

Only the lonely remained.

Then a couple of young men dropped off the dam and started fishing right next to it. All during the time I was there people kept looking over the side of the dam and noting multiple fish swimming around. You know as well as I do that just because you can see them doesn't mean you can get them to bite.

One of the two young men started pulling in fish after fish. What the hell? So I hobbled over to see what he was using. I was stopped by some invisible force field fifty feet from where they were. I guess what they were using was a secret.

That said, they were kind enough to tell this poor, hobbling old fart what they were using, but swore me to secrecy. It was one of those cut your palm and slap palms with the other guy kind of blood oath thing, BUT NOW I KNOW.

So I went home skunked, but as Arnold said "I'll be back".

For All You Fly Fishers Out There

This is the article I wrote for the local paper yesterday.I think you'll find it interesting.

 River Runs Through Six Degrees Of Separation

People used to play a game called six degrees of separation. I don’t know, maybe they still do. According to Wikipedia, six degrees of separation is the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

Being a fly fisherman, in part anyway, I’ve read many books about fly fishing and was even inspired to write my own book, after reading Seth Norman’s (A well-known author in the fly fishing community) book “Meanderings of a Fly Fisherman.” If you’d like a copy of my book Fishing, Ghosts, and my Mother’s Gray Hair, just email me at markkautz1946@comcast.net. 

The six degrees or in this case three degrees put me three steps away from Seth Norman. Here is how it went. Yuki met Seth Norman, got a signed copy of his book and gave it to me as a present. 

Thursday the 14th Yuki was going to stop by the house and we were supposed to head up to Bear River Reservoir for a day of fishing. Following the weather guessers, they said that rain and snow down to 6000 ft. was the prediction for not only Thursday, but Friday as well. 

My new truck is not equipped for snow travel although it is a 4x4, it has those mud & snow radials that are absolutely useless in snow, so the only logical thing to do was cancel and fish another day.

Yuki, on the other hand, didn’t get my email cancellation until after he got to the house. I was gone running errands so Yuki decided to do a little river fishing on the Mokelumne off Electra Road.

Later in the day I received an email about his day. 

He said the river reminded him of the movie “A River Runs Through It.” Then he casually mentioned that he knew Norman Maclean. Casually mentions that he knew Norman Maclean.

He said that Maclean just walked into his office one day and after a while became friends. Yuki described Maclean as a short, shy, modest professor. 

Have you ever watched this movie? This is THE BEST fly fishing movie ever made. It is the “Holy Grail” of fly fishing movies. I have the CD and watch it at least three times a year. Yuki casually mentions that he knew Norman Maclean. 

Yuki was working at the University of Chicago. Norman Maclean had just retired from a teaching job in the English Department and shyly mentioned to Yuki that his novel was just published by the University of Chicago Press. This was kind of odd because of two things. One, he couldn’t find anyone to publish the book (little did they know) and two, the University of Chicago Press only published academic and cooking books. Maclean told Yuki that being a Professor in the English Department changed their policy about publishing the book. 

So, once again we have the six degrees of separation and once again it’s only three degrees, from me, to Yuki, to Norman Maclean. 

Makes me wonder who else Yuki knows. 

Who would have thunk it?