* Dream Trip: Trinity River Nov 6
Check out our web page and see the great day we had. Unbelievable!! www.ernies.com - Diane and Ernie Kinzli
* The Deep End: Hat Creek, 2005
Forty minutes east of McCloud on Highway 89, flows the river to which all other spring creeks are compared, Hat Creek. The 3.2 mile stretch below the power house is a technical fly fishing Mecca, notorious for two things: broken tippets and big trout. It tests the skill of all serious anglers, and crushes the ego of most.
The brisk wind stung our noses as my father and I sat around the river rock fireplace eagerly consuming the lukewarm Stagg's Chile after the strenuous six hour drive to our cabin on the shoulder of the sacred Mt. Shasta. After scraping our bowls clean, my father turned and announced, "Time for bed. Tomorrow weĠre hitting Hat, and we need our rest." I complied, as I knew all the hype about Hat Creek, being the overzealous angler I was. I had read every article published in any fly fishing magazine in the last fifteen years. At this time it is crucial for the reader to understand that Hat Creek is only a creek in name, and at the section we were planning to fish, it was a river to me.
Once we pulled into Power House Station 1, the preparation in the dirt parking lot was as careful and precise as it could be, knowing that within casting distance was the fish of a lifetime. We checked all of our knots twice, because the only thing worse than not catching a trout, is breaking one off.
We stumbled along the weeded rock bottom to the bank of the second island, a place where my father said he had had luck in the past. The last hour of sunlight passed without the sight of a feeding trout. "The real action begins when the sun falls behind the trees over there," my father assured me, and himself, as he motioned to the hill with his rod. I was ready; now was the time, I felt it. "This is the cast. No, this one", I thought to myself, cast after cast, for some time until I couldn't see my florescent green line. Then there was the hatch.
It started with a dull buzz of what I now know was a swarm of two inch long stoneflies that could only be seen against the starry northern night sky. Following the emergence of these monsters of aquatic insects was the "gulp...gulp" of the hand-sized heads popping out of the water to devour the helpless insects. Surrounded by the feeding fish masked by the dark, some as close as five feet away, we began to cast to the sound of the gulp and set the hook at the sound of another. Both of us using this technique for the extent of the twenty-five minute hatch proved to be unsuccessful. After taking five "last casts" out of desperation, we called the experience to an end. My Swiss Army watch read 9 o'clock and that was the darkest 9 o'clock I remember. Neither one of us had the strength or patience to trudge the half mile against the current back to the parking lot, so we decided to cut across the steady current to the other bank, a stone's throw away and walk back from there.
With my father leading, we started across, the water getting continually deeper, my waders pressing in around my legs. Soon my belt disappeared in the black water, before I could think about the size of the fish that were most surely contemplating attacking us for intruding. I was up to the brim of my waders, six inches below my collar bone. I raised my arms, feeling vulnerable, so as not to get the sleeves of my shirt wet. The sky was dark, and the river darker, provoking primordial fears of deep holes and unexpected water creatures. Ten feet away from the bank, it happened.
"Boom...Boom," two quick taps on my crotch, the first harder than the second. I was sure that two feet under the black water lay something that wanted me dead. There was nothing I could do. I was at this beast's mercy. After the paralyzing shock traveled through my body, I started jumping around in the water, kicking in every direction.
"Dad, Dad, something's trying to bite me" I yelped as I ran, as much as running is possible in four and half feet of water, to the cliff of a bank, and pulled myself up on the edge. Feeling myself to see if I was intact, --it was a close one, but I was.
"I am sure it was a muskrat, and heĠs probably as scared as you are, "my father assured me, but I was still wide-eyed. The forty minute car ride passed quickly as my mind raced through all the animal shows I had seen with sharks swimming up rivers... I was sure I had survived an encounter with a new species of freshwater shark, and to this day, a year later, I haven't worked up the courage to return to the mighty Hat Creek. - Weston Frisk, an old English class essay