How did this Happen?

I miss this pool dearly.I'm sitting here, its the middle of November, and while I've had a good year, albeit very busy with the arrival of my daughter, I realize that I never visited my favorite creek all season. Not once. Its not special by any means, a tiny trickle of water cascading down from the upper elevation watershed.

What it lacks in flow, it makes up for in gradient: a never-ending staircase of plunge pools. Some large, some small, but every one is just loaded with gorgeous wild (possibly native) rainbow trout. They're not the biggest speciemens, rarely exceeding 10", and 5-6" being respectable average. What the fish lack in size, they make up for in beauty, numbers, and willingness to attack a dry.

The steep gradient also has some streamside benefits. While fishing is still best accomplished in a direct upstream manner, the vegitation is dominated by large timber, and the steepness of the canyon walls ensures a high canopy, as little sunlight reaches the canyon floor.

Native? I may never know. The simple truth, is that it is this creek that really taught me to be a creek fisherman, without it, I seriously doubt I would be the fisherman I am today: Poor casting skills, limited knowledge of entemology, stuck in a rut fly-tier, and absolutely hooked on tackling trout in tiny streams.

The first time I visited this creek, I was with a buddy, and we spent a couple hours determining that the tip we'd gotten about this stream wasn't a great tip afterall - as we'd certainly confirmed there are no fish. Never caught one, never saw one, never even figured out how someone would go about fishing such a tiny trickle of water.

A couple weeks passed, and something inspired me to make a second trip to that steep, rugged canyon. I will never understand my interest in returning to this fishless creek, but I just had to be sure. This time I set out alone, fished for a few hours in the afternoon, and eventually hooking a tiny brown trout - or at least that is what I assumed that dark fish was which I saw for only a split second. I was wrong, it was certainly a rainbow - in the years since, I've caught hundreds of fish from this creek, and not one of them has been a German import model.

Flows barely fluctuate seasonally.

Confident that there was in fact a population of trout, I ventured back for a third trip, again alone, and what great success! I had close to a dozen rises, and actually has the opportunity to unhook a couple of them by hand. Its the only fishery to which I have given so much for very little return - but my efforts paid off, as it became a personal gem, shared only with closely trusted friends, and visited freqently for a couple hours at a time, usuially on a summer afternoon after work.

It didn't take long after that third trip that counting of fish stopped entirely, there were plenty. After a head injury sustained during a tragic bocce ball accident sidelined me from the wilderness for a few weeks a couple years ago, this old friend was the first place I longed to return to.

But not this year. This year I was like every other angler, driving past as if there was no creek there at all (of course, from the road, that is precisely how things appear), on towards bigger and better things.

Its only November, perhaps its not too late afterall.

It is nice in the fall.

Buzztail Trail

A wild Rainbow Trout: The prize for battling the hazards of a Southern California freestone. Southern California fly fishing isn't all fun in the sun; our creeks are in rugged canyons - truly wild in every sense. It's not that fishing here is dangerous, the drive to and from the stream is undoubtedly the riskiest portion of the day.

That being said, the creeks are lined with all manner of plants that want to leave an impression: blackberry brambles, stinging nettle, and poison oak. Provided you make it through the day without serious infirmities from the plant life, and had no serious falls down the slippery granite, the only commonplace hazard remaining is the snakes(Bear and Cougar sightings are extremely rare). We have several varieties of native rattlers here in the local mountains, and while seeing them isn't exactly a common occurrence (with the exception of a certain portion of pacific crest trail), it's certainly something a local fly fisherman has to learn to deal with, if he wants to sling flies to the beautiful wild fish that call our mountains home.

A Speckled Rattlesnake.

Southern California fly fishing isn't all fun in the sun; our creeks are in rugged canyons - truly wild in every sense. It's not that fishing here is dangerous, the drive to and from the stream is undoubtedly the riskiest portion of the day.

That being said, the creeks are lined with all manner of plants that want to leave an impression: blackberry brambles, stinging nettle, and poison oak. Provided you make it through the day without serious infirmities from the plan life, and had no serious falls down the slippery granite, the only commonplace hazard remaining is the snakes. We have several varieties of native rattlers here in the local mountains, and while seeing them isn't exactly a common occurrence (with the exception of a certain portion of pacific crest trail), it's certainly something a local fly fisherman has to learn to deal with, if he wants to sling flies to the beautiful wild fish that call our mountains home.