My absolute favorite fly fishing contains at least one of the following elements: native cutthroat, a nice hatch (especially mayflies), surface-feeding fish, dry flies, moving water, and finesse casting.

Today, all six of these elements coalesced into an couple of hours of fishing.

A little bonus was the fact that I got to fish with one of the genuinely nice guys in the world. And we rode our motorcycles to the river. And the weather was perfect.

Every now and again, we all deserve one of these days, especially when it follows on the heels of just the opposite.

I anticipated Friday evening with a little bit of giddiness since I was heading to my favorite little stretch of homewater. I typically reserve that place for a time when it feels right to fish there. However, my wife’s family has a yearly camp that lasts for four days. This year my wife’s immediate family (parents and five sisters and their families) were in charge, and they chose my creek. There’s a different theme every year, and they decided to have this year’s camp centered on movies.

I try to avoid the whole thing like the plague. My wife used to be disappointed when I bowed out, but she’s getting to the point of talking about skipping it as well. They needed someone to play King Kong, and I thought I would offer my services. Kind of. In a sneaky, not really offering kind of way. You see, Dan and I had planned on fishing in Idaho on Friday, not too far away from his in-laws’ family reunion he would attend. I told my in-laws that if something happened and I wasn’t fishing that day, I’d love to help them out (knowing full well I was going fishing). Heh-heh-heh! Well, something happened and Dan pushed the fishing back a day to Saturday. And I had to eat my words.

Of course, I would go up a couple of hours early get in some good fishing, do my part, then head home. No problem, I could do that. The first part of the plan worked out pretty well—I got there early. It went down hill from there.

You can’t get 100 people (50 of them kids) camped on a pretty creek without all the little buggers relatives destroying utilizing the riparian zone on a hot day. My brother-in-law Danny (I know, I know, too many Dans to keep track of) and I walked a ways up river to get away from the mayhem wreaked on the water. I hooked into a nice 12″ Bonneville cutthroat, but lost him going over a small waterfall. After that the fish were quiet. Too quiet. Dan’s friend (and a cousin-in-law) Justin happened by around that time and mentioned that he saw a couple of guys with a shocker working a small feeder tributary earlier. I figured they were probably in the mainstem too, but I pressed on.

The hike was enjoyable, and it was nice to see the restoration work that had gone into closing down a road that paralleled the creek for a couple of miles. The riparian cover created from the work looked great, but the fish just weren’t showing themselves. I moved on leaving Danny behind. Which, in retrospect, was too bad, since he would have appreciated what happened shortly after we parted.

I rapidly moved upstream a half mile or so, looking for any trace of fish. While navigating the far bank, I stepped out of the creek to bypass a couple of rocks and sunk my right foot about 16″ into some mud that was part of a sloughing bank. It sucked me down pretty solidly, so I looked for a firm place to put my left foot to get the leverage I’d need to pull my right one free. I was about two feet above the water, which was only six inches deep and covering what looked like gravel—the perfect spot. I put my left foot toward the gravel, shifting my mass in that downward angle, preparing to meet something solid. It wasn’t. It was gravel, but it was covering a layer of the same mud my right foot was in.

I was already experiencing Newton’s First Law of Motion, and it was too late to change the vector. My right foot pulled free with a slurp as my left foot continued to sink. There was enough viscosity that I seemed to be in slow motion, aware of every riffle and seam in the water my face was moving toward. My right foot, free of the muck, seemed to provide enough momentum to speed up the process at the last second.

This creek is about eight feet wide and ten inches deep at the point of impact. I wasn’t worried about drowning. But I was worried about (and for those who have taken a dip a time or two, they know this thought) my fly rod. I flung it away from me, and forward. Into the fastest part of the water. Even though the creek isn’t big, it was still in spring spate, so it was moving at a pretty good clip.

There I was, face down in ten inches of water, muddy boots flung up and over my back in another successful replication of Newton’s First Law as my rod slipped away from me. I had no choice but to to crawl after the rod. Which I did and succeeded in capturing after a couple of feet, just on the brink of dropping over a lip of rocks. Actually, I grabbed the float line coming out of the reel. And pulled. Releasing a couple of feet of line as the rod in fact slipped over the edge. I flung myself one last time and gripped the butt of the reel seat at the last second.

While still in that preposterous position, my first thought was, Did anybody see me? I quickly glanced to see if Danny had made it up, or if some hikers were walking along the path. I was in the clear, so I extracted myself and laughed. That must have been a sight—a one-man Three Stooges routine.

I made my way to a large rock bathed in direct sunlight. I stripped off my shirt and spread it out to dry, then settled my butt into a nice groove in the rock and faced the sun. I shifted my hat over my eyes and relived the humiliation, but laughed again. I really didn’t need to worry about Danny seeing that, as I had seen him take a tumble in the water several times over the 20 years we’ve known each other. In fact, it probably would have done him good to see someone else take it in the shorts for a change.

As the sun inched closer to the ridge, I decided to head back for my movie star debut, where I would get a second helping of humiliation.

My King Kong gig was for the “Universal Studios Tour” put on at dusk, in which the clan would wander around the camp area to view some prearranged movie sets and movie stars. I was to be in a “cage” (cardboard) where the tourists could only see my hairy hands and hear me grunting and rattling the cage. As they progressed on the tour I would make my “escape” only to jump out at the tourists when they came back past the wrecked cage at the end of the tour.

Arriving back at camp from my little water escapade with wet shorts and underwear, I needed to change. Luckily I brought an extra pair of pants, which I planned on changing into anyhow since after the sun drops the temps quickly follow. But I wasn’t planning on getting wet, so I didn’t bring any underwear. No big deal, I’d wear pants sans Hanes.

The King Kong costume was hot and made of some itchy material. In my role I needed to jump around and scare the kids in a gorilla-like fashion. Which I did with gusto. I failed to take a belt with me, and the gorilla-like activity worked the pants down to an uncomfortable position with regards to the nether regions and the chaffing material of the costume. At which point I was reduced to a half-gorilla stoop holding up pants no one else could see lest I give the little kiddies something even more frightening to behold. I returned to my house about midnight, a skunked and humbled man.

At 7:00 the next morning I met with Ken at his house. We fished together last year on Cinnamon Creek, and I remembered what a great time he seemed to have and how eager he was to learn, so I was excited to get on the river with him again. Reports of the river we were going to (herein dubbed “Chalkstream”) had been favorable, so I was doubly excited to go. Top it off with the fact that Ken has a motorcycle and he wanted to ride his bike to the river, and I was bursting at the seams because I was ready for a ride (with the cruddy weather we’d had, there hadn’t been much riding).

It’s approximately 100 miles from my house to Chalkstream. The ride was incredible, with temps in the low 50′s and a rolling countryside bursting with green. The sun, slanting low in the early morning hours, gave it that golden glow photographers love. We planned on meeting Dan and Coach at the river at 8:30, but we didn’t make it until 9:10, enjoying every minute of the ride. Since by the time we got there Dan and Coach had already taken off for some fishing, Ken and I headed across country downriver.

I wish I had my camera, but my wife took the point and shoot with her camping and my dSLR would have taken too much space in my saddlebags, already stuffed with fishing gear. The sun, bright blue skies with puffy clouds, green meadows, clear water with river grass snaking through it…it begged for a pastoral composition or three.

As we readied to cross the river, I saw a rise-ring: it was an excellent sign. I cast to it a couple of times, but nothing came to my #16 PMD. We crossed, headed over a hill (only to find out later that Dan and Coach were just then heading upriver along the bank, out of our sight on top of the hill), then to the water. An angler was downstream and around the bend, so I figured we’d head to an area I’d almost always had success at.

As we stepped into the river, I saw the air above the water thick with mayflies. Not the midwest kind of thick that is picked up by radar, but the Idaho kind of thick that is plenty enough for me. I heard the splashy rises of several fish and looked over the water at rise-rings floating past. The apex of fly fishing for me: rising trout and a slurry of bugs.

I eased toward the center of a river that is atypical for this part of the country. Our usual rivers and creeks are rough and tumble with lots of elevation loss, plunge pools, pockets, riffles—water far fro its destination but eager to get there anyhow. This river is what I picture the chalkstreams of the UK and the spring creeks of the upper Midwest, Pennsylvania and New York must be like.

There is very little structure from rocks. The riverbed is mostly gravel, with some silt thrown in. The gravel gets channeled, and weed beds get thick and ropey. A few riffles and ripples form here and there, most of that hydrology caused by the gravel channels and weeds, but it has hot springs in several places too, adding bubbles and current. But the majority of the surface is smooth.

Except on days when the river is pocked with rises from hungry fish gorging themselves on a thick mayfly hatch.

There were splashy rises from smaller fish, head-dorsal-tail rises from medium fish and pucker rises from the big ones. This wasn’t a Henry’s Fork phenomenon, with hundreds of fish marring the surface, but there were a good twenty or so I could see a hundred feet in either direction of us. It had been a long time since I experienced a good hatch. It got to the point that Dan and I made a special trip to Silver Creek last year just to catch the Green Drake hatch, but ended up missing them by about 20 hours.

My PMD flicked back and forth over the surface and fluttered upriver. It drifted down toward a steady sipper, then carried past him. The next cast did the same. The third cast sent the float line over the fish’s head, and he disappeared. I targeted another riser. And then noticed that Ken wasn’t around. (I tend to get a little focused while fishing, and hadn’t really picked up on the fact that he wasn’t near me in the water.) I looked back toward the shore and there he was, fiddling with his rod.

“I broke the cap off the reel seat last year when I fell in. I thought I glued it back together, but I can’t keep the reel on,” he said.

I offered to trade him rods or switch off my rod so he could get in on the action. “Nah, you fish, I’ll be okay,” he said. (I should have been a little more aggressive at switching rods, but I’ve learned you don’t press too hard with a guy who’s 6′-3″ and 250 lbs.) He worked his way into the water and tried to hold on to the reel and rod with his right hand and cast. It was a bit clumsy, especially for someone who was new to such wide open casting (last year’s excursion was in tight quarters with no room to get full casts in). I suggested he hold the reel in the left hand and work the rod with the right. And again suggested to exchange with him. But he insisted he was okay.

By then I had made it into position to work a seam against the far bank that had 5 or six risers. I decided to switch to a smaller #20 BWO parachute pattern. Knowing the fish on the river tend to duck and run when the fly line spooks them, I decided to fish from as close as parallel to the fish as I thought I could get. I put the fly above the riser a good six feet and let it drift back to him several times, but as before, it put the fish down. I moved tot he next fish and repeated the procedure, but with a slightly bigger, #18, sparser BWO pattern.

One of the things I like about fishing to risers is that they’re usually looking for a specific fly. And it’s my job to find the right pattern. That process of elimination and mental work is one of the aspects I enjoy in fly fishing (until, of course, the point comes where I’ve tried every pattern in my possession with no success—but there is even a certain kind of pleasure in that type of frustration).

The new pattern seemed to do the trick, as I shortly hooked into two fish. Both of them seemed to be solid takes and the fish felt heavy. I saw them and they both looked like they would easily be over 16″, but they both were off within several seconds.

It tells a lot about a person when things aren’t going well but they persevere without complaint or cussing. Ken was dealing with his awkward setup when I saw him reach into the water well past his shoulder. Up came the reel. Later he said, “It’s OK I tightened the tension down so I could easily retrieve the reel when it fell again.”

He was ready to head back to Dan’s truck and see if there was duct tape or something he could use to fix the problem. Then it came to me: tippet. We could take some tippet and tie the reel to the rod. Which we did. It worked for a wile, then had to be retied, but it kept Ken on the river a bit longer.

We had moved upriver to an area that has some lava rock on the bed and a few poking out of the water. This place gives a bit of holding water and I think I’ve always caught a fish from there. Sure enough, there were more risers working this section. We had been fishing for about an hour and the hatch had died down considerably. I had been working my eyes and brain in trying to figure out which stage the fish were taking the flies in, since emergers, duns, spinners and spent flies littered the water. As I watched the rises more closely, I could never see a full-wing profile mayfly in the rise. I tied on a #16 BWO emerger pattern (blue-gray forward tilting CDC post, green dubbed body and trailing Antron shuck) and immediately hooked and landed a fish. I had another hook-up with a bigger fish, but couldn’t bring him in.

Watching the big fish work the hatch was great fun. And casting to them was exciting too. Knowing that some of the fish were native Yellowstone cutthroat was unbelievable. Most of the cutthroat I end up fishing for are in the 12″ range, with the biggest pushing 18″. When I fish the Greys River for fine-spotted cutts, the average jumps up a few inches. But Coach had caught a 24″ cuttie just a couple of days before, and I had hooked into and seen a fair number of fish that big working the water.

Casting to rising, native cutthroat of that size just doesn’t happen too often around here, and I was having a great time. But I was ready to land one too. I had spotted a decent-sized fish working the edge of a weed bed on the far side of the river. I had thrown my previous fly his direction several times. The first time he rose to it, drifted down with it a couple of feet, then swam back to his feeding lie. The same thing happened with the next cast. The following five or so casts were then ignored.

With the emerger pattern tied on, I figured it was time to try for him again. My first cast drifted past him, six inches too far to his right. I gathered the line for another cast and put the fly four feet ahead of him in what looked to be a perfect cast. Apparently the fish thought so too as he took the fly, then took off. Fishing weed beds means fighting a hooked fish in the weeds, so it’s a double battle. I had on 6x tippet since the water was so still. I was concerned about keeping the fish on without horsing him too much against the light line.

I soon brought him toward me and Ken scooped him up in his net. I’m trying to get to the point where I don’t feel the need to capture the fish I catch on film (exploitive, and all that). And he was big. I’m also trying to get over the size thing, so I won’t report his size. Okay, that was a lie, he was a good 20″. I can do this. He was the biggest Yellowstone cutthroat I have ever caught. I have given up the “hero shot” some time ago, and my need for reporting its size, but I still like the occasional picture for purely aesthetic reasons. And this one was gorgeous. Some of the fish in Chalkstream are rainbow and a few cuttbow, but this was all cutthroat. Dark, greenish back. Golden, buttery, pinkish belly. Slash of orange-pink on his throat.

It really doesn’t get much better than that. Except catching another one nearly as big a short time later from nearly the same spot. But that one was a rainbow. It was still a nice fish, but not the beloved cutthroat.

It’s amazing how one’s fortunes can shift so rapidly within a 15 hour time span. I plan on fishing Chalkstream again on Wednesday. Or am I better off leaving it alone with the memory of this one perfect day?

I have a quest. The quest involves answering several related questions. I won’t list them all, but the following two questions should give an idea as to the basic gist of them:

• Do fish suffer when they are caught using standard fly fishing techniques?
• Is angling cruel?

I have explored these types of questions in at least four posts on my blog (see links to them at the bottom of this post). And, frankly, I’ve been a bit disappointed at the lack of response. It seems like it is a topic that fly anglers do not want to discuss. I guess I can’t really blame them, who wants to think about their possible cruelty?

Over the years, the discussion has usually hinged on the aspect of whether or not fish feel pain. Various experiments have been carried out, and, depending on where one stands on the issue, various conclusions have been reached. One thing everyone seems to agree on is that “we” are right and “they” are wrong.

Which perfectly illustrates how the issue has been exacerbated through an “Us” versus “Them” mentality. Much of the writing produced in the debate has come from a person who is passionate about one side or the other, typically either someone from the angling community or someone from an animal rights group.

This is as good as spot as any to address two important, and quite different, terms: animal rights and animal welfare. Many groups espousing animal rights believe that animals have equal rights with humans (and in some extreme cases, an animal’s “rights” trump a human’s). The most well known group in favor of animal rights is PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Animal welfare advocates believe that animals can have benefits to humans, but that the animal should be treated as humanely as possible, give the situation. One of the biggest groups supporting animal welfare is AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association). These two groups are often at odds with each other.

Many anglers hear the words “animal welfare” and mistakenly think “animal rights” and begin bashing the views of those speaking on behalf of the welfare of animals. In a research paper from 2007 titled “Animal welfare perspectives on recreational angling” by Steven J. Cooke and Lynne U. Sneddon, they state that “informed anglers and fisheries managers can adopt practices to improve the welfare of angled fish.” They do not advocate the eradication of catch and release, but rather suggest that certain methods be observed to reduce potential pain and suffering. Many animal welfare groups are not against recreational angling.

One of the things most often missing in the debate is clear (to the lay person), reasoned (data, not emotion) and unbiased information concerning the issue. Enter Dr. Braithwaite and her book, Do Fish Feel Pain?

To illustrate a point made above, this is from the first paragraph of the preface, in which Braithwaite describes reactions from an Op-Ed piece she published in the Los Angeles Times regarding fish pain:

After the article appeared, the newspaper and I received letters and emails. These were of two sorts. Some told me that I was persecuting anglers by spreading untruths and myths—wasn’t it clear to everyone that fish don’t feel pain? But the others wanted to know why I bothered to investigate the question—wasn’t it clear to everyone that fish do feel pain?

This is an interesting reaction, in which it is clear to pretty much everyone, except for those who are most worried about the potential for scientific results to change their recreational lifestyle, that fish feel pain.

But that wasn’t her point. Rather than tell you about her point, I’ll let her speak for herself.

I had a certain amount of sympathy with both camps. I could identify with those who believed I was threatening the angling community. That was not my intention, but there had been a great deal of inaccurate information written about research on pain in fish so it was understandable that some people were being defensive. On the other hand, how were the others to know that no scientific analysis of even the basics of fish pain had been conducted before the turn of this century?

Those polarized reactions, which also played out on various websites, prompted me to wonder whether there was need for a fuller account of the science behind the fish pain debate. The result is this book.

My goal in writing this book has been to provide the background to promote informed discussion. Like other animal welfare debates, constructively arguing about fish welfare requires that we understand the issues, that we review evidence and discuss this appropriately. In the book, I examine what we know so far about pain in fish, and whether it is meaningful to discuss fish welfare at all. After reading this book, I hope you will be in a position to make up your own mind. I have no axe to grind—I choose to eat fish and I experiment on them, but while I have been fishing in the past, I am not an active angler though I have many friends and colleagues who are.

This is a difficult topic to cover, and one that will take great skill to do it justice. Having spent much time on my own reading, and trying to write, about the topic, I know that it is more than just the science behind pain. There are at least three branches of inquiry involved when tackling the topic: science, psychology and philosophy. Braithwaite also realizes this when she says, “As the book began to take shape, it became clear that the fish pain debate probes questions about science, welfare and ethics.”

I am looking forward to the continued reading, exploring and writing about this new book. From what I have read so far (the preface and chapter 1), I believe Dr. Braithwaite when she says she has no axe to grind. I believe this book could be a great asset to the serious inquirer.

I will probably post updates for each chapter or two (there are seven chapters in the book, containing 184 pages).

The book is published by Oxford University Press. The bulletin from Oxford Press says it’s available May 20. However, Amazon is selling copies (I don’t know if they are shipping yet).

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy, although I do not know the author and am in no way affiliated with Oxford University Press or any of its designees.

http://scarles.org/blog/cutthroat-stalker/1173/fish-pain-here-we-go-again/
http://scarles.org/blog/cutthroat-stalker/1186/hooking-things-survey/
http://scarles.org/blog/cutthroat-stalker/1246/css-double-dog-dare-why-not-birdermen/
http://scarles.org/blog/cutthroat-stalker/2120/gotta-again/

Saturday we rode to southern Idaho for a look at the wild and scenic Bruneau River. We only fished about 45 minutes there and didn’t raise a thing. The water was a bit high and off-color. But it sure was beautiful at the overlook in the gorge section!

Here is a Google Earth view of the area. The overlook is the blue box on the right. The Matterhorn in the distance. Notice the discolored circular area to the lower right? Bombing range for the air force base at Mountain Home, Idaho.

[The following video requires MS Silverlight.]

Play Video

The gallery below contains more pictures from the trip (including a “cartoon” version of many of the pics—apparently someone was a bit bored).

Topo Map

I have been lacking motivation to write for the last couple of weeks. I’m just dying to get on the river, but the weather and prospects for local fishing in the winter is pretty low. And, I’m just not as interested in fishing in sub-freezing temperatures anymore. This has all brought on a lethargy. A little SAD maybe. I don’t know, but I’m ready to hit the river soon.

I bring you something a little different: a two minute reading of this post. Click on the link below to listen.

A New Season’s Topography

Let me know if there was a problem with the audio (other than my voice—I already know that’s a problem, I’m talking technical issues here).

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For those of you who can’t stand listening to me, don’t want to drive your workmates crazy listening to me, or just prefer to read instead of listen, here is the hardcopy:

Speeding along the twisting canyon road, my eyes rarely leave the river—watching, and waiting for a rise. A dimple and ripple expanding in rings. Emanating ever outward—like the map I spread over the kitchen table last week, and the week before, and the week before that—it’s rings expanding over the earth and right off the table’s wooden edge.

Not really rings, but ragged lines. Lines stepping their way up the smooth pate of a hill. Lines that push and pinch together veeing up a canyon: a thin blue strand wefting through the warp of brown.

Snow dusts the gravel where the truck rolls to a crunchy stop at the top of a canyon. In the alpenglow, and by the glow of the cab light, the map is unfolded and consulted. A finger follows the route down. The sun suddenly thrusts itself above a far ridge, and we follow its diffused edge down, as the snow melts before us.

A month ago we traced the contours of the map. Then, there, hunched over paper, tracing the contours of the map, it was all possibilities and anticipation. The giddiness of a new fishing season building as lines were checked. Flies, feathers and a vice packed. Waders rolled and stowed. The Thermos readied in the early morning darkness as the soft hum of the furnace pulsed through the preparations.

But here, now, down in the crease of the canyon… My line lassos realities, cuts an arc out of the sky. Water bunches and folds around my legs: hard edges fore, soften aft, and spread, following the river. Taking a piece of me until those wakes merge and flatten—all a part of the flow. These lines in the sky and water mirror the topography surrounding me. They shadow me through the day and into the season.

Cutthroat Stalker Ezine - February 2010

The long awaited (okay, nobody actually knew I was tinkering with this, so obviously they weren’t waiting for it) ezine version of Cutthroat Stalker is hitting the virtual stands today. Just click here to view the ezine where I have three new (and short) pieces of writing (I’ve found viewing full screen (f11 in Firefox) and clicking on the magnifying glass on the top makes it a bit easier to read). I am mostly just playing with the software that can produce this kind of ezine, I don’t think I have any real desire to do something like this on a continual basis. Maybe to archive each month’s content?

Come back and post a comment to let me know what you think. I am specifically interested in the following:

• Do people really like this “magazine” format (for any content out their, not just mine)?
  • Why?
• Do you personally prefer to read fly fishing content as a daily/semi-daily fix like most blogs, or do you prefer to get a big chunk in one fell swoop (like an ezine)?

For those of you who would prefer the ezine as a pdf file, here you go.

I’m also playing around with making this as an epub file for ereaders (including Kindle).

And check out this flash version from Prezi (after you click on the play button, click on the “more” to the right and choose “fullscreen”):

She conducted four experiments looking at pain in fish. One of the primary problems with pain studies in animals is that the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), who refer to themselves as “the leading professional forum for science, practice, and education in the field of pain,” has given some definitions for pain that make it hard to determine pain in animals. The sticking point? The part of the definition for pain that says:

Pain is always subjective…and also an emotional experience…Activity induced in the nociceptor and nociceptive pathways by a noxious stimulus is not pain, which is always a psychological state, even though we may well appreciate that pain most often has a proximate physical cause. (found here)

“Subjective,” “emotional” and “psychological state” are all terms that make it more difficult to determine if animals can feel pain because it is difficult (impossible?) to determine an animal’s emotional or psychological state (or if they are even capable of such states).

In addition, the definition makes clear that “Activity induced in the nociceptor and nociceptive pathways by a noxious stimulus is not pain.” Nociceptors are receptors that, when stimulated, send signals to the brain through the nervous system to let the brain know that there might be damage to tissue at the site of the stimulus. This is a physiological process, not a psychological state. Those who wish to claim pain in animals must do so without the benefit of nociceptive experiments and responses.

Anyhow, the bulletin released by NSVS feels confident enough in Ms. Nordgreen’s research to say, “No single experiment can unequivocally answer the question of whether fish can feel pain, but the current findings, seen in the context of existing literature strongly indicates that fish are not only capable of nociception but also of conscious perception of pain.” (At that website you can get a brief glimpse of the research conducted that supposedly supports the “pain” theory, but I would like to see a more in-depth report of the research.)

A few question for the masses (or at least the three of you who read my blog):

1. Is the proverbial noose slowly tightening around anglers’ collective necks, or is this just so much hokum?
2. Anybody ready to wuss out yet and hang up the rod for good?
3. Anybody ready to stand with me as founding members of AA (Anglers Anonymous)*, where our first step is in boldly admitting that we cause fish pain, and (unlike the real AA) we don’t care?

[*I in no way mean to demean or devalue the work the real AA does.]

No fish felt pain from the publishing of this post (although some might be when I get off work tomorrow at 2:45 and head to the local river)—though some of you may feel pain at reading it.

Logan, in northern Utah, was not much different than most early Mormon settlements. White settlers first arrived in 1859 and located near the Logan River. They planted crops, diverted the North Branch of the Logan River for irrigation, and the settlement grew. Canals and ditches were expanded and added to meet the city’s growing needs. Mills sprouted along the canals. Still more people arrived and with them came changes: adobe walls replaced logs, clapboard replaced adobe and brick replaced clapboard. However, one constant through the changes were the canals. Mills along the canals came and went, but the canals remained.

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“What a pretty little town!” My father heard that from my mother several times as they drove through Logan while traveling from California to Yellowstone, or Seattle to the Grand Canyon. That refrain may explain why, when my father’s twenty-one years in the navy were done, they bought ten acres of land near Logan. I was 13 and had already lived in the concrete jungles of San Diego and Los Angeles, the green hills of Seattle and Salinas, and the ocean-sprayed shores of Guam.

canal west of main street

I quickly found that Logan was not as remote as Guam, nor did it offer as many trees as Washington, or provide the opportunity to visit museums, missions and historical sites like California. It did have heat—dry heat—and, as I soon discovered, a large amount of water for such a dry place: like the continuously flowing drinking fountains dotting Main Street’s corners. And gutters flowing with water all summer long. Streets lined with giant maples shaded those gutters. One such maple-shaded gutter flowed in front of our house.

While my parents worked on building their dream home on their ten acres, we rented a red brick house across the street from the front doors of the high school. Two parking lots flanked the house. Across the parking lot to the east, on the corner, stood the nearly one hundred year old mansion of Moses Thatcher, son of Hezekiah Thatcher. Our gutter water mysteriously bubbled from the bottom of the gutter in front of that house.

I traced the source of our gutter water to a canal half a block further to the east. That canal began somewhere east of Main Street, flowed west under the road, then worked its slow course behind the V1 gas station kitty-corner from the Thatcher house, bisected the back of the high school grounds, crossed 300 West Street at 200 South Street then disappeared in backyards. I followed it a total distance of a half mile.

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In 1859, to supply lumber for the small settlement, James Ellis and Ben Williams operated a whipsaw along what is now 100 South Street just west of Main Street, and kitty-corner from the soon-to-be-built Thatcher home. They dug a pit and logs laid across the pit. One man stood in the pit while the other stood above as they operated the large two-handled whipsaw. The following year, Hezekiah Thatcher, Joel Ricks, Sr. and Ezra T. Benson constructed a canal to supply water to a wooden wheel that powered a circular saw blade—Logan’s first sawmill. They called the canal the Mill Race.

The blooming community’s need for flour prompted Thatcher to add a small gristmill to the operation. The gristmill proved so successful they removed the saw and built a larger gristmill on the site in 1865.

In 1880 they replaced the gristmill with a roller mill, calling themselves Thatcher and Sons Union Roller Mill. By 1886 they added a two-story, 40,000 bushel elevator, becoming the Thatcher Milling and Elevator Company. They produced enough flour to sell not only in the Rocky Mountain region, but in Montana, Nebraska and Arizona as well.

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The weather has warmed, the ice in the canal thawed. It is a warm enough early February day for me to have my jacket tied around my waist. My son, Ben, grabs a chunk of snow and throws it into the water near what is now left of the old Thatcher Mill. Signs are tacked to portions of what remains of the mill wall:

WARNING!
NO TRESPASSING
THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY
Will Prosecute Under the Provision of Section 236
FORBIDDEN
CRIMINAL TRESPASS

We continue walking east toward Main Street and spook a dam and drake mallard. They take off careening past buildings, then cross Main Street.

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The first summer we moved to Logan I wandered the banks of the half-mile section of canal that made up my world. I was tempted, but never swam its four foot deep waters. During the spring, summer and fall, it ran at full depth, but in the winter it slowed to a trickle. That trickle puddled and froze. Behind the high school my father taught me how to ice skate beneath huge, leafless cottonwoods.

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Those same cottonwoods were possibly used as cover by Charlie Benson in 1873 while he tried to escape town after shooting David W. Crockett. Benson and Crockett were heading to the Valentine’s Ball when they began arguing. Words were exchanged and the gun-toting Benson shot Crockett, who, according to eyewitnesses, died instantly.

Charlie made his way to his house, told his mother what had happened, grabbed some bread, cheese and a buffalo robe, then hid under the hay in Moses Thatcher’s barn on 200 South Street. He hid there four days while searchers combed the town and guarded the streets heading out of Logan. No doubt while he waited he contemplated his quick temper that led to the death of another man four and a half years earlier in Idaho.

After four days in the barn without food, Charlie made his way to 100 South Street in the early morning light, then west and out of town. A patrolman saw him running and informed Marshall Crockett, David’s uncle. A posse of 100 men tracked Charlie who had few possibilities and was soon captured and put in the County Courthouse—after fourteen years as a city, they still didn’t have a jail.

The posse stayed, working themselves into a lather because of the four days of grief Charlie had given them and their families. Several men from the crowd made their way into Charlie’s cell in the courthouse. They took him out of the cell and to the waiting crowd outside. A noose was already made and quickly put around Charlie’s neck. Throwing the loose end over the “Cache County Courthouse” sign in front of the building, twelve men pulled. Six days after David Crockett’s murder, Charlie Benson was buried.

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Ben and I follow the reverse path of Charlie Benson and wander down to the canal, just behind the old city softball diamond. I point to a small opening in the stump of a large cottonwood. Ben peers in. “Hilary,” his little sister, “could fit in there!” he says.

“When I was a kid and we used to watch the softball games, we could fit in that hole. It was a full tree then, not a stump, and the hole wasn’t half-full of dirt like it is now.” He throws a stick into it. We continue up the bank and onto the old path next to the canal.

I tell him about skating on the ice as a kid, and how the ice we see looks almost ready to skate on. “It’s not very smooth—it has slush on the top,” he points out.

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Before moving to Logan, while living in Guam, I learned about fishing and spent hours with friends tossing a hand line into the ocean, pulling out small, colorful Picasso trigger fish just off the reef. We didn’t buy fishing licenses. We had never heard of limits. We just fished. I saved Christmas and birthday money and bought a blue fiberglass Garcia pole at the PX on the naval base. I fished with it several times before we left the island.

Our second summer in Logan I wandered the banks of the canal to the east of our house to Main Street, and two blocks further to Central Park, thinking about that Garcia pole. I asked some people who lived nearby about fishing in the canal. “There aren’t any fish in the canal, you’ll have to go to the river to fish,” was the typical reply. I never saw fish in the canal, so I figured they were right and the pole stayed at home. Instead I spent hours staring into the rippling canal water where it passed under Main Street.

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In 1879, Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan independently invented the incandescent light. The electrical systems used to power the lights was the hard-to-transport direct current (DC). In 1882, after successfully setting up a power plant in London, Edison built the Pearl Street Station in New York City to generate and distribute direct current to 59 customers. In that same year, Nikola Tesla, born in Austria-Hungary, invented the more reliably transferred alternating current (AC) system. Tesla moved to the United States in 1884, and in the same year invented the AC generator. By 1886, the AC systems were introduced for commercialization and later, in March of 1886, demonstrated to the public.

Christian Garff and Gustave Lundberg built a planing mill on the Mill Race on Logan’s Main Street in the early 1880’s. In January of 1886, two months before the public AC demonstrations, they used their hydropower at the mill to turn an AC generator, becoming the Logan Electric Light and Power Company—one of the earliest AC hydroelectric power plants in the United States.

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Ben and I wait at the traffic light on 100 South Street and Main Street—standing over the canal that passes under Main Street and under “Logan’s Heroes,” the sandwich shop on the corner, just behind us. We cross Main Street and pass the old woolen mill, one of the few mill buildings still standing. A concrete path dotted with new “old-fashioned” lamps follows the curves of the canal on the north. To the south the city created a small landscaped park consisting of a creek, pond, rose garden and gazebo.

Ben runs ahead. He throws sticks into the pond. Then runs ahead again.

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As a kid I found it easy to explore the canal behind the high school where it passed an old brick building—the remains of the Brigham Young College. Founded in the 1880’s, this one building was all that remained. At one time the college’s Mechanic Arts Building tapped the Mill Race, but by the time I moved to Logan, that building was gone.

I visited the late night softball games on the city diamond just west and south of the high school. The outfield fence bordered by the cottonwoods where I learned to skate always collected a crowd. I met a couple of kids there and asked about fishing in the canal, but the only reply I got was, “Nah, there’s no fish in the canal.”

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So I rode my bike along the path under the cottonwoods between the canal and outfield fence further west. At the western edge of the school grounds sapling cottonwoods  clustered around a small field. Old cement work along the canal at 300 West Street and 200 South Street made for exciting bike jumps, and the Garcia pole was still left behind.

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In 1875 Charles O. Card built the Card and Sons Sawmill, Lath and Shingle Mill. In addition to operating his own business, Card was appointed by the Mormon leaders to oversee the construction of both the tabernacle and temple the Mormons built in Logan. As a prominent Mormon leader himself, and a practicing polygamist, Card worried about the roundup of polygamists conducted by the federally appointed state government in the late 1880’s and early 1890’s. He eventually fled to just north of the present-day Glacier National Park into southern Alberta in Canada, settling the area with other Mormons. The land he settled is named Cardston in his honor. He is the great-grandfather of author Orson Scott Card.

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Ben and I walk off the road and into the canal just off 400 South Street, between 300 West Street and 400 West Street. There is no water in the canal and Ben easily points out all of the garbage as we pass an apartment complex: a bicycle, broken glass, scraps of metal, an old jacket. Just beyond the apartments is a field and the canal is cleaner. We spot bird tracks in the fresh snow. A rooster pheasant lifts off twenty feet in front of us, startling me as they always do. We see the spot where he stood, then trace the spot with our fingers where his wings brushed the snow on takeoff.

We get out of the canal, cross 300 South Street and come to the old railroad spur. A fence blocks our way on the far side of the rails, so we hop into the canal between the road and the rails. We crawl on our hands and knees over ice until we pass under the fence. We near a hill where cottonwoods and willows line the canal. To our right is the fenced off yard of the old Anderson Mill. We stumble onto somebody’s tree fort and a lot of concrete, including stairs leading up from the canal. We walk along the concrete wall of the canal’s edge to the top of the old millrun.

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bottom of the millrun

At the spot where the old Mill Race came nearest our brick house, east of the V1 gas station, west of the site of the old Garff and Lundberg planing mill, were the remains of the old Thatcher Milling and Elevator Company after it burned down—a few crumbled stone walls, some giant fallen timbers and the millrun the only clues of what once stood. Fifteen feet below the millrun a small pool and back eddy formed. Although I didn’t see fish, it seemed the most likely place for them of any I visited.

With my blue fiberglass pole finally in hand and a boyish desire for fish, I made my way to the gas station. I might have stopped, as I often did, to talk with Bill about my plans. The old man was my friend and occasional employer. He taught me how to run an old press in the small back room of the gas station. And he trusted me, a teenager, to watch the till on slow days.

I worked my way behind the gas station then down the steep path to the plunge pool at the bottom of the millrun. A few minutes later some salmon eggs and a split shot or two plunked into the eddy.

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The only trout native to Utah’s waters is the Bonneville Cutthroat. By the 1900’s residents so heavily fished the Logan River that in 1917 they stocked the river, but native cutthroat were not use. Records for 1927 show the Logan River was stocked with 25,000 salmon, 86,000 brook trout, 95,000 rainbow trout and 210,000 grayling.

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I was told many times, “Fish don’t live in the canal.” But that day I saw no one. I spoke with no one. My line swirled and tugged below the lichen-covered concrete walls of the old mill. I reeled in an empty hook, put more salmon eggs on, and cast again. More swirling. A decisive tug. And I tugged back.

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Fewer gutters flow with water now than they did 30 years ago when I first moved to Logan. The drinking fountains dotting the corners on Main Street are gone. The red brick house we lived in is no longer flanked by two parking lots—it is part of the parking lot. A single mill is left standing. The last building of the Brigham Young College is being torn down while I write this. The softball games moved from along the canal to the fancy new four-field complex west of town. But summer’s heat is just as dry. Winter water still gathers into frozen puddles. The canal forms the same eddy at the bottom of the millrun.

In a photo album somewhere there is a faded picture of a boy in jeans and a green and yellow T-shirt, a blue fiberglass Garcia pole in one hand and two twelve inch German brown trout in the other. I never fished the canal again.

I point to the spot where I caught the fish. “Awwww, can I go fishing there?” Ben asks.

“There are no fish in the canals,” I say.