I initiated this blog in the spring, presuming I'd be able to post at least one fish story before too much time went by. Spring turned to summer, and summer to fall, and I never managed to wet a line. In fact, I've not yet bothered to buy a 2012 fishing license, much less affix a trout stamp to one. Crap.
It was the usual suite of barriers: too much going on with work (though if you're too busy to fish, you're just too busy), a lack of synchrony between my and my wife's ability to get time off, my continuing focus on cycling (including the acquisition of a sweet new mountain bike), and some other problems - big and small, real and imagined.
Wednesday night, however, I managed to break free and attend the monthly meeting of the Old Pueblo Chapter of Trout Unlimited. I was in TU for a time in Sacramento, joined back up later on here in Tucson, and more recently, I became a life member. Despite this, I'd never been to a chapter meeting. I dropped in to find out what they're all about but specifically, I wanted to see a presentation by Captain Jared Nelson of Lee's Ferry Anglers.
Now, if you're still with me after clicking through those links and seeing the photographs of the big rainbows and spectacular scenery, you can see why I'd very much like to get back up there. I've fished the walk-in area there a handfull of times in the past, but I never knew what I was doing. I still don't know what I'm doing, but now that I'm more or less grown up and have a professional job, I can actually afford to hire an expert like Capt. Nelson or one of his colleagues. I should also probably quit screwing around and just spring for someone to teach me how to operate a fly rod with at least a basic level of proficiency.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I have a plan for getting up there by a specific date, but it's going to happen. It just has to.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Wading in
¡Bienvenidos al El Desierto sin Truchas!
I've long maintained a blog called Free Baja Arizona, which has served more as a personal journal than as a way to entertain its readers. I don't expect this blog to have any more impact, but here it is anyway.
And while my other blog purports to chronicle my literal and figurative traverses of basin and range, it has almost exclusively dealt with my literal traverses - via bicycle - of basins - as in the Tucson Basin. Aside from waxing aesthetic about the beauty of the desert and its wildlife from time to time, I don't know how figurative I ever really became. And though I did venture into the bajadas, I seldom reached the actual ranges, the mountains, the home of the trout.
This must change.
Before I was a mountain biker and before I became a borderline militant bike commuter, I was an angler. Sure, I grew up in Phoenix, which is situated more or less in the same upper Sonoran desert region as my current home of Tucson, but my number one pastime was fishing. The difference was that the Valley of the Sun, unlike the Old Pueblo, was rife with surface water.
Phoenix is sprinkled with public parks in which there are lakes, and some hold decent fish for those who know how to catch them. The city's water supply consists of seven reservoirs: Lake Pleasant on the Agua Fria River, Horseshoe and Bartlett on the Verde River, and Roosevelt, Apache, Canyon and Saguaro on the Salt River - all with unique and varied fisheries. My father taught me to fish when I was ten or so and by the time I was in high school, my interest in the sport consumed me. I went camping with my family, always near a river or lake, and I was lucky enough that my dad owned first a powerboat and later, the small aluminum rowboat that I now have.
My interest in fishing subsided a bit while attending Northern Arizona University as beer drinking and the aforementioned mountain biking made inroads on my free time. I was, however, lucky enough to have an angler for a roommate for a while and we did use Flagstaff as a base for some nice coldwater angling.
I graduated and picked up a seasonal job as a biological technician at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Living in National Park Service housing just minutes from the shores of Lake Powell and having Lee's Ferry within an hour's drive reinvigorated my inner fisherman. I fished during my free time and thought about it during work, especially during my bird surveys along the Colorado River. I spent many hours boating up and down the river, getting out to watch and listen for birds, never a fishing rod in my hand. Seeing guides and their clients at the best riffles and looking over the side of my work boat at rainbow trout that seemed as long as my arm was as inspiring as it was frustrating.
I moved on from Glen Canyon to a job where I measured stream discharges across the Tonto National Forest. In the higher altitude streams beneath the Mogollon Rim and in the Sierra Ancha Mountains, there were trout right there before me. But instead of a bird field guide and Government-issued binoculars, I carried a flow meter and took notes on hydrologic parameters. Still no fishing rod.
A new job in Sacramento, California brought me back to fishing. Now married, my wife and I lived in a cramped, overpriced apartment, the only redeeming quality of which was its placement within walking distance of the American River and its runs of steelhead, Chinook salmon, striped bass, and American shad. It's backwaters held various centrarchids. During certain seasons, a rigged rod was kept leaning by the door and waders were perpetually drying in the shower stall. I never really solved the puzzle as to catching the anadromous fish, though I can vividly recall the struggle with a Yuba River steelhead that parted ways with me when the hook - weakened by my overzealous de-barbing - broke just above the bend. It was the most thrilling 5 seconds of my angling career. I did have plenty of fun with the shad - the poor man's tarpon and indeed, a relative in the herring family - considering it a minor triumph when I finally caught one on a fly I tied myself. I plied the surf for stripers and tried my hand at trout in the mountains. Sacramento ultimately proved to be an untenable living situation, and we moved home to Arizona, which brings me to where I am now.
Tucson is a nice place to live, and I love the desert. The heat counters my intense dislike of being cold and the low latitude keeps the winter day lengths out of seasonal affective disorder (aka winter depression) territory. We left apartment living behind and bought the type of house we could never have afforded in NorCal. Unfortunately, we also left behind the water and with it, the fish.
To put it indelicately, and despite the hard work of the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the fishing in southern Arizona just plain sucks. It's not so much the lack of fish as it is the lack of waters. There are a few impoundments, most of which I've never fished due to time constraints and a general uneasiness with being in the backcountry near the border. The limited number of lowland rivers, which actually should be refuges for Arizona's native fishes, are largely dominated by nonnatives, many species of which which add insult to injury by being unworthy of my pursuit; fathead minnows and mosquitofish are not sportfish.
The Santa Cruz Sand Trout notwithstanding, the opportunities to fish for salmonids in moving water in southern Arizona are even more limited. The Sky Islands, save for the north face of the Pinaleño Mountains and the long-since burned over and silted-in Rucker Canyon in the Chiricahuas, have precious few coldwater streams. But that's enough complaining about the relatively sad state of my angling opportunities - the purpose here is to document my return to my angling roots.
It's worth mentioning that those roots involve no devotion to one technique over another, though somewhere along the line I abandoned fishing with bait. Occasional inattention to baited hooks often led to deeply-hooked fish which, in turn, frustrated my catch-and-release ethics. Regardless, I am equally skilled with baitcasting and spinning tackle, using one, the other, or both as conditions dictate. And while I've tended to pursue most fish with these sorts of equipment, I still view flyfishing for trout in streams as a thing at which I'd truly like to attain some proficiency.
Flyfishing success, however, has always been elusive; I've been a beginner for going on 30 years. I caught my first trout - a nice little brown - on my first-ever cast with a fly rod but I soon thereafter came to view flyfishing as a surefire path to getting skunked. Nevertheless, I've kept trying. I'm a trained zoologist with coursework in entomology and invertebrate biology and a long work history of applied conservation biology, hydrology and fluvial geomorphology. I have several shelves filled with books about fishing and I can tie my own flies. I should be able to find at least semi-regular success once I get around to putting in my time on the water.
Given that I am a desert rat by nature and presently live at as high of an altitude and latitude as I likely ever will, I have to accept that any return to angling will probably require more than a little travel. I'll never again be able to walk to the American River, drive a few minutes to Lake Powell, or be at Lee's Ferry at sunup without having camped there the night before. What I can do is to snowshoe into Rose Canyon Lake in the Santa Catalina Mountains for early-season, holdover trout. I can drive to the Pinaleños - if and when the streams holding Gila trout become capable of sustaining a fishery and are opened - or, a few hours further, I can pursue the same fish in the upper Gila River in New Mexico. I can still camp out at my beloved Rim Lakes or I can deal with my borderland concerns and bass fish at Patagonia, Arivaca, or Peña Blanca lakes. All I need to do is just go.
Making the time for fishing, and fitting it in between life's other responsibilities, not to mention that I'm still an avid cyclist, will take some deliberate effort. Once I do manage to get out there, I'll put my results here.
Until then, here's a photograph that demonstrates the appearance of the freestone stream closest to my house and a second one showing that there are also Desiertos con Truchas.
One of Tucson's typical ephemeral and fishless arroyos.
I've long maintained a blog called Free Baja Arizona, which has served more as a personal journal than as a way to entertain its readers. I don't expect this blog to have any more impact, but here it is anyway.
And while my other blog purports to chronicle my literal and figurative traverses of basin and range, it has almost exclusively dealt with my literal traverses - via bicycle - of basins - as in the Tucson Basin. Aside from waxing aesthetic about the beauty of the desert and its wildlife from time to time, I don't know how figurative I ever really became. And though I did venture into the bajadas, I seldom reached the actual ranges, the mountains, the home of the trout.
This must change.
Before I was a mountain biker and before I became a borderline militant bike commuter, I was an angler. Sure, I grew up in Phoenix, which is situated more or less in the same upper Sonoran desert region as my current home of Tucson, but my number one pastime was fishing. The difference was that the Valley of the Sun, unlike the Old Pueblo, was rife with surface water.
Phoenix is sprinkled with public parks in which there are lakes, and some hold decent fish for those who know how to catch them. The city's water supply consists of seven reservoirs: Lake Pleasant on the Agua Fria River, Horseshoe and Bartlett on the Verde River, and Roosevelt, Apache, Canyon and Saguaro on the Salt River - all with unique and varied fisheries. My father taught me to fish when I was ten or so and by the time I was in high school, my interest in the sport consumed me. I went camping with my family, always near a river or lake, and I was lucky enough that my dad owned first a powerboat and later, the small aluminum rowboat that I now have.
My interest in fishing subsided a bit while attending Northern Arizona University as beer drinking and the aforementioned mountain biking made inroads on my free time. I was, however, lucky enough to have an angler for a roommate for a while and we did use Flagstaff as a base for some nice coldwater angling.
I graduated and picked up a seasonal job as a biological technician at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Living in National Park Service housing just minutes from the shores of Lake Powell and having Lee's Ferry within an hour's drive reinvigorated my inner fisherman. I fished during my free time and thought about it during work, especially during my bird surveys along the Colorado River. I spent many hours boating up and down the river, getting out to watch and listen for birds, never a fishing rod in my hand. Seeing guides and their clients at the best riffles and looking over the side of my work boat at rainbow trout that seemed as long as my arm was as inspiring as it was frustrating.
I moved on from Glen Canyon to a job where I measured stream discharges across the Tonto National Forest. In the higher altitude streams beneath the Mogollon Rim and in the Sierra Ancha Mountains, there were trout right there before me. But instead of a bird field guide and Government-issued binoculars, I carried a flow meter and took notes on hydrologic parameters. Still no fishing rod.
A new job in Sacramento, California brought me back to fishing. Now married, my wife and I lived in a cramped, overpriced apartment, the only redeeming quality of which was its placement within walking distance of the American River and its runs of steelhead, Chinook salmon, striped bass, and American shad. It's backwaters held various centrarchids. During certain seasons, a rigged rod was kept leaning by the door and waders were perpetually drying in the shower stall. I never really solved the puzzle as to catching the anadromous fish, though I can vividly recall the struggle with a Yuba River steelhead that parted ways with me when the hook - weakened by my overzealous de-barbing - broke just above the bend. It was the most thrilling 5 seconds of my angling career. I did have plenty of fun with the shad - the poor man's tarpon and indeed, a relative in the herring family - considering it a minor triumph when I finally caught one on a fly I tied myself. I plied the surf for stripers and tried my hand at trout in the mountains. Sacramento ultimately proved to be an untenable living situation, and we moved home to Arizona, which brings me to where I am now.
Tucson is a nice place to live, and I love the desert. The heat counters my intense dislike of being cold and the low latitude keeps the winter day lengths out of seasonal affective disorder (aka winter depression) territory. We left apartment living behind and bought the type of house we could never have afforded in NorCal. Unfortunately, we also left behind the water and with it, the fish.
To put it indelicately, and despite the hard work of the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the fishing in southern Arizona just plain sucks. It's not so much the lack of fish as it is the lack of waters. There are a few impoundments, most of which I've never fished due to time constraints and a general uneasiness with being in the backcountry near the border. The limited number of lowland rivers, which actually should be refuges for Arizona's native fishes, are largely dominated by nonnatives, many species of which which add insult to injury by being unworthy of my pursuit; fathead minnows and mosquitofish are not sportfish.
The Santa Cruz Sand Trout notwithstanding, the opportunities to fish for salmonids in moving water in southern Arizona are even more limited. The Sky Islands, save for the north face of the Pinaleño Mountains and the long-since burned over and silted-in Rucker Canyon in the Chiricahuas, have precious few coldwater streams. But that's enough complaining about the relatively sad state of my angling opportunities - the purpose here is to document my return to my angling roots.
It's worth mentioning that those roots involve no devotion to one technique over another, though somewhere along the line I abandoned fishing with bait. Occasional inattention to baited hooks often led to deeply-hooked fish which, in turn, frustrated my catch-and-release ethics. Regardless, I am equally skilled with baitcasting and spinning tackle, using one, the other, or both as conditions dictate. And while I've tended to pursue most fish with these sorts of equipment, I still view flyfishing for trout in streams as a thing at which I'd truly like to attain some proficiency.
Flyfishing success, however, has always been elusive; I've been a beginner for going on 30 years. I caught my first trout - a nice little brown - on my first-ever cast with a fly rod but I soon thereafter came to view flyfishing as a surefire path to getting skunked. Nevertheless, I've kept trying. I'm a trained zoologist with coursework in entomology and invertebrate biology and a long work history of applied conservation biology, hydrology and fluvial geomorphology. I have several shelves filled with books about fishing and I can tie my own flies. I should be able to find at least semi-regular success once I get around to putting in my time on the water.
Given that I am a desert rat by nature and presently live at as high of an altitude and latitude as I likely ever will, I have to accept that any return to angling will probably require more than a little travel. I'll never again be able to walk to the American River, drive a few minutes to Lake Powell, or be at Lee's Ferry at sunup without having camped there the night before. What I can do is to snowshoe into Rose Canyon Lake in the Santa Catalina Mountains for early-season, holdover trout. I can drive to the Pinaleños - if and when the streams holding Gila trout become capable of sustaining a fishery and are opened - or, a few hours further, I can pursue the same fish in the upper Gila River in New Mexico. I can still camp out at my beloved Rim Lakes or I can deal with my borderland concerns and bass fish at Patagonia, Arivaca, or Peña Blanca lakes. All I need to do is just go.
Making the time for fishing, and fitting it in between life's other responsibilities, not to mention that I'm still an avid cyclist, will take some deliberate effort. Once I do manage to get out there, I'll put my results here.
Until then, here's a photograph that demonstrates the appearance of the freestone stream closest to my house and a second one showing that there are also Desiertos con Truchas.
One of Tucson's typical ephemeral and fishless arroyos.
Colorado River at the Paria River confluence downstream from Lee's Ferry.
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