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A spring fish story: Trout bites man
by Deborah Taylor-Hollis
Getting away for a family weekend takes more persistence than a Rhino mating with a whitefish, and usually ends up as another lesson in lowered expectations. Our first outing of the year--a simple getaway to fish camp, turned into a grueling four-and-a-half hour drive similar to the Bataan death march east out of the valley to Highway 5. I spent most of the time complaining that absolutely nobody could be driving with a legal license to create such useless bottlenecks and stop-and-go traffic. Apparently lower housing prices in Tracy are directly correlated to lowered IQs on public streets.
So we get up to camp, and the weekend begins to pick up immediately--the spaghetti feed is on, the coffee is hot, and our tent cabin is right down by the river. We were safe in the arms of mother nature on the most momentous weekend of the year--opening of trout season.
For those of you unfamiliar with this rite, many of us wait all year for the first time we can sit down on the damp banks, open up the rusty tackle box, bait the end of a bent sharpened wire with a live worm and then throw him repeatedly into the fastest-rushing, iciest water ever felt. We throw him in repeatedly until he is gone, pulled off in some deep snag of dead branches, pine needles and thousands of yards of old fishing line cut off and abandoned by previous fishermen. Then we decide to use salmon eggs.
Many others also wait for the first fishing weekend--armed with the same amount of bait and tackle, they also load up with several cases of various liquors and plan to sit on those same damp banks and tell stories about the largest , most beautiful worms you ever heard of and how those worms committed suicide rather than let these self-same fishermen come home with anything more than hangovers.
Now for us this was a playing together, having fun with each other kinda weekend--until that rushing river brought out the primal hunter-gathering instincts of my spouse, and he seriously began to fish. Stuart and I went to drop worms off the bridge after a while, but Breck got some serious lures out and started casting for dinner. That's when things got strange.
From what I understand from the fireman who helped him, while trying to get a stringer on the 13-and-a-half inch rainbow trout, that bad boy whipped around and put two of the three treble hooks on the back end of the lure right down deep into Brecks hand. There was no way to pull them out, so he had to cut them off from the lure--embedded in my honey's index finger down to the bone.
Breck then managed to make his way back up to us, and we took all the tackle while he went in search of some first aid down at the cook house. Unfortunately, there wasn't any nurse on duty for trout season, so we took his swollen bleeding digit back to the car, loaded him up, and started the one-hour trek down to the Sonora Emergency Room at the hospital.
Stuart and I tried to remind dad that it's not unusual to get a hook in you every now and then--just kinda unfortunate that we had been out on the river for about 45 min., it was only 10 a.m., and the better part of the day was going down the proverbial tubes. We felt very bad for the poor man (I was sure they were going to cut open that finger to get at them), and we tried to keep everyone in a light mood.
Eventually, the docs got a good look at him and managed to pull out both hooks without tearing the skin too bad, and we got back to camp by 2 p.m. with lots of time left for us to answer our fellow campers inquiries about Breck's health and our Saturday drive (although all the fish were gone by that time and we never got another nibble all weekend) and by dinner time we were more than happy to hoist a few and toddle off to bed. Breck retired slightly earlier than I did, what with the medication and all.
Me--I found four local guys with a bottle of good tequila and lots of beer, two guitars and plenty of stories to tell. Of course, the first story was just what happened up there on the river and the pressing concerns of all men in the woods--did we catch the fish?
Yes, we did get that fish--got ice at the hospital while they pulled out the hooks, and brought him home for supper. We called him lefty after the hand he had nailed, and we told everyone that while Breck caught a fish, the fish caught him. And now that I'm home, toting up the expenses, I hope that fish tastes mighty good tonight. What with the cabin, the gas and the bait--along with the medical expenses, that fish cost us $185. Now that's about $92.50 a pound, but a very small price to pay for a weekend that exceeded our wildest expectations.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
