Details for fishing trip hard to nail down
"All right," I said to the Hunting Club gathered around the large corner booth in Doreen's 24 HR Eat Gas Now Café. "We've at least nailed down the area where we're going to fish. And we've paid for the cabin. All we have to decide is how many days we want to hire guides, and this summer's trip is set."
"What kind of guides?" Doc asked.
"Fishing guides, of course," Wrong Willie answered.
"No, I meant are these guys gonna just lead us to a stream, or are we taking one of those horseback trips?"
"I don't want to ride any horses," Jerry Wayne said. "I just want to fish."
"The last time we rode horses on a trip, I got rubbed raw," Woodrow said.
"No one said anything about horses," I said, raising my voice. "You guys need to calm down. We're gonna hire fly guides, and they'll take us in to some good streams."
"No one said we were going fly fishing," Doc pointed out.
"Sure we did," I told him. "We agreed three months ago on a Colorado fishing trip."
"But not a fly-fishing trip."
"But we're going to Colorado. What did you expect? Trotlines?"
"We want to spin fish," Jerry Wayne said.
"Willie and I want to hire a good guide to take us into the back country and catch ginormous trout on little skinny fly rods."
Willie and I high-fived.
Doc and Jerry Wayne folded their arms.
"Besides, I don't think they have spin-fishing guides," Willie said.
"That's okay," Doc said. "We'll figure something out. I've always wanted to catch a trout on a cane pole."
"You're kidding," I said. "You're willing to pay all this money to fish in the mountains, and you want to use a cane pole?"
"I'd have just as much luck with it and wouldn't stay tangled up all day and raising my blood pressure," he said.
"Good point," Jerry Wayne said.
"We won't be hiring the guides for every day we're there," Willie pointed out. "We'd just hire them for two days and then fish on our own after that."
"I can fish on my own four five days and save two days of guide fees," Doc said.
He had a point.
"But I want to hike in to see some water that most people don't get to fish," I said. "Hence, we need guides."
"Hence," Jerry Wayne said, pointing at me. "He said 'hence.'"
"I don't want to do any hiking, either," Doc said. "The last time you told us we were hiking in to fish, it turned into a death march."
"Going downhill wasn't so bad," I said defensively. "It was the up part that almost killed us."
"I'd just like to drive down to a river and fish," Jerry Wayne said. "Like you see those guys parked on the side of the road in the mountains. They're just standing down there in the river, casting away."
"That's the issue," I said. "I don't want to just stand in the river and cast. I want to catch something."
"There's no guarantee you'll catch anything with a guide," Doc said. "We've hired fishing guides before and didn't catch anything but a bad sunburn."
I sighed for the 10th time. They were making sense.
"Let's just hire a guide for one day," Willie suggested. "Then we can fish on our own after that."
"All right," I conceded. "But we're still going to Colorado, right? You guys aren't changing anything else, are you?"
"We didn't change this," Doc argued. "We've just clarified our position."
I left the booth and leaned over the counter to speak with Doreen. "You need to keep something stronger than coffee back there for days like this."
She gave me a look. "What makes you think I don't keep anything back here? How do you think I get through every day with you guys? I just hope it holds out until y'all leave for your trip."
I sighed and left the cafe. And went in search of a cane pole.
Reavis Wortham's e-mail address is reaviswortham@att.net.
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