The Perfect Fishing Trip
A Fishing Trip
"What are you going to do all day, Doc?" I asked one morning as Wrong Willie, Jerry Wayne and I loaded our fly gear into the truck.
He looked at the clear river flowing just 50 yards away from our rented Colorado cabin. "Well, I'm going back to bed for a while to get some sleep."
"Sounds relaxing," Wrong Willie said.
"I'll be catching up on the sleep I didn't get last night," Doc answered.
Jerry Wayne put his fly rod into the truck. "I slept like a baby."
"You slept like a baby that snores like a man," Doc said. "I slept for only an hour because he sounded like a diesel truck."
"That's why I wore earplugs," I said, stuffing $30 worth of new flies into my fishing vest.
"I wear them too," Willie said. "I've slept in the same room with him before, and I know how loud he is."
"My wife sleeps just fine," Jerry Wayne said defensively.
"At least y'all have a king-size bed. That one in there isn't much bigger than a Barbie bed," Doc answered. "Anyway, after I wake up I'm going to walk into town just to look it over and I might fish for a little while right here."
"The guy we rented from told me he catches good trout from this spot," I told Willie.
We left Doc to his nap, and met our guide at the fly shop for the day's fishing. "All right guys," the guide said. "Do you want to catch a lot of little fish, or a few big fish?"
"Define a lot of fish," I said. I know how crafty these guys are.
"Yesterday another guy and I caught nearly 100 brookies," he answered.
Jerry Wayne raised his eyebrows in question.
"Brookies are brook trout," I said. "They're small. Sometimes they're so small they call them bait back where we come from."
"But they're little fighters," the guide said. "Or we can to up on the Lake Fork of the Gunnison and you'll catch maybe one fish an hour, but they'll be anywhere from 17 to 20 inches."
We chose the brookies, to practice our casting. After paying over $100 per person to the guide, he took us to a beautiful meadow stream where we caught nearly 40 fish each.
When we returned that evening, Doc was sitting on the porch, watching the burgers smoke on the grill.
"How was the fishing?" he asked.
We told him, and then learned that Doc woke up that afternoon and then he fished for 4 hours without catching a thing.
We ate burgers, watched the stars after dark and turned in to prepare for the next day's fishing. Everyone wore ear plugs, and we put Jerry Wayne in his own room.
We slept peacefully.
The next morning Doc planned to stay at the cabin and pursue the trout that were supposed to be 50 yards away. The guide took more money from us and we drove for an hour to a beautiful, swift stream. We fished hard.
I caught nearly 20 trout.
Wrong Willie caught nearly 20 trout.
Jerry Wayne caught nearly 20 trout, and then fell in.
I caught my forearm with a fly. Luckily, it was barbless and left only a small hole.
That night we learned Doc hadn't caught anything, again. We slept peacefully, and drove up to the lake the next morning, where none of us caught anything all day long.
It was another perfect Colorado day.
Our last day was similar to the first two, but without the guide. While Doc again stayed at the cabin and fished the river, we drove to another spot and caught fish until the world looked level.
When we came back to the cabin, we found a very relaxed Doc dozing on the porch with a satisfied look on his face. He woke up and gave us a huge smile. "What did you catch?"
We told him, and then waited for what I knew to be the inevitable.
"All right, Doc," I said. I'd recognized the grin. "How big was it?"
"Twenty-one inches. It was a monster."
For the next hour, he described the battle, the feel of the rod, the removal of the hook, and finally, the release as everyone in the nearby rental cabins gave him a standing ovation.
We left at noon, in a driving rain that cooled the air to 48 degrees. We drove home along the winding road, each of us taking turns telling about the fish we caught. Three of us were nearly $300 lighter, but with tales of many fish.
Doc went home in the 105 degree heat to tell of the trophy trout we caught on the last day, just before we had left.
It was a perfect Colorado fishing trip.
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