The big one

tiful. I watched for a moment, then started to head back to the packs to get the fishing gear and as I turned to leave, there, in the pale aquamarine water, I saw it.

Big, black, twice the size of the Goldens, SOMETHING swam through the Goldens, parting them like Moses at the Red Sea. It was so big, it cast a shadow on the ground. I’ve been fishing these high-country lakes for many years now and have never seen any fish that big up above 11,000 feet, which we were. And what the heck was wrong with the color? It was much darker than the Goldens and then I saw another one, same size, same color, following its friend. I yelled for Chris, “Bring the pole, bring the pole, hurry, hurry!”

For anyone who fishes the high country, the five-fish-fordinner thing is pretty common; they just don’t get very big up here. This one fish could feed us both.

“Hurry, hurry,” I yelled.

He came crashing down to the lake, trailing gear and a pole that was still not set up and we set up the pole fast, throwmac’s ing one of Ron from Sporting Goods in Bishop’s homemade flies on the line, then cast it into the clear water. No luck. Tried again, no luck. Again, no luck. Then, I got a strike, and it sure as heck wasn’t one of the little Goldens. I started to reel it in, trying to figure out why I wasn’t gaining on it and then I realized the tension was set for a sub-one-pound fish.

“Tighten it, tighten it,” Chris said, and I did and it worked and I started to reel the huge trout in and then just two feet from shore... it slipped away. Off it went into the deep blue.

I spent the next hour trying to recreate the glory with no luck. I handed the pole to Chris and headed back to the camp because part of me just didn’t want to end the life of something that big. It had earned its size though some very hard work.

Hours passed and still, down by the lake, cast after cast, hour after hour, the big trout eluded the man. But I know Chris and I know that once he saw that thing slip away from us, there was no way he was going to give up without a fight.

At dusk, I heard him yell, “Got it,” and I ran down to the lake where, sure enough, he had landed one of the big fish we had seen. It was huge for the backcountry; at least two pounds, maybe 24 inches long and it was also very odd; it looked nothing like the resident Goldens that were supposed to be the only fish in this lake but then, we thought maybe we just didn’t know what a such a mature Golden looked like because we had never seen one. We took it home and had to cut it in half to fit in our little backcountry frying pan.

It was a magnificent meal.

Then, the stars reeling above and the pines sighing, we slept.

We crashed out of the lake basin the next morning, chased by a massive thunderstorm, bound for Bishop and a date with work Monday morning.

Within an hour, we were soaked as torrents of rain came down and creeks flooded and then it did the Sierra summer storm thing and sleeted and snowed and after eight miserable, wet miles down the wild and rocky Pine Creek trail, we heard it; an immense roaring sound like thunder and cannons going off all at once.

We watched in horror as the section of the trail we had just come from disappeared under a massive wall of rock and mud but there was no time to even take in how close we had come to death and we shot down the trail looking for someplace safer to wait out the flashing storm, dodging house-sized boulders and crossing more landslides and I have never, ever been so scared in my life in the backcountry.

The problem was, there was no safe place to wait out the storm on this entire mountainside, not up, not down. We were stuck on the steepest and most exposed section of the trail and staying in place was a dangerous as going down, so down we went. All we could do was dodge the falling rocks and scramble over the gouged-out trail on unstable new rockslides and drop down into steep ravines cutting the trail in half, hauling dogs and packs through on a wing and a prayer.

And then, finally, it was over and we came to a halt in the shelter of the only trees on the trail down by the pack station and all I could think was, “Damn, that was one fine trout.”

Ed note: After arriving safely in Bishop, we sent photos of the big trout to Fish and Wildlife biologist Jim Erdman and sure enough, it wasn’t a Golden at all, it was a Cutthroat trout, which should not be in the lake because it could spawn hybrids and ruin the Golden trout fishery up there; the opposite outcome of why the lake was set aside for the rare and beautiful Golden trout in the first place. No one knows who planted the Cutthroats in there or why, but there it was. So, we will be back this year to catch and eat the other one(s) because, after all, it’s just a nice thing to do.