Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Here are 50 songs to fish to
Gas prices have dropped to the point that $20 fills my truck for the 550-mile first leg of my dream fishing trip.
You can get to Jim Daniel’s ranch east of Denver International Airport in 12 hours, and that’s even if you don’t break 75 mph across Kansas. I can handle that sort of restriction, as long as my George Strait “50 Number Ones” CDs keep playing.
That’s right, all 50 on the two discs hit No. 1 on the charts. If one song doesn’t do it for you, the next one is about as solid a bet as a Darren McFadden handoff. And, a song as good as a toss sweep to Lance Alworth is next.
Listening to Strait is akin to watching all of the greats from Razorback football history. I can dream of McFadden and Alworth, but listening to Strait happens every time I get in my Silverado.
The restrictions from our government prevent this sort of a cross-country trip through our heartland right now, but as the price of gas drops below $1 per gallon, I can’t help but dream. That’s what keeps us going, hope and dreams.
I’m like Strait, my favorite Country-Western troubadour, that I have at least 50 No. 1 fishing trips in my rearview mirror and lots more left to do. It’s time to repeat some of the old ones.
As I’m reminded almost every time I tell folks I’m now living on the Norfork River in southern Baxter County, almost every day I can produce a No. 1. That is even if I don’t stray far from my 2-acre property in the pines, oaks, dogwoods and red buds.
Cotter’s Bill Pettit joined Jim and I on that Colorado truck trip that turned horseback in 2009. I really wasn’t
sure where we were going when we left Arkansas. Jim gives you some information, but not everything.
We spent the first day at Jim’s ranch helping sort through the camping gear to make sure a stop at Cabela’s wasn’t required for replacement parts. None were needed. He’s got tents, stoves, cots, sleeping bags and everything else. He said to pick out a pillow from the house. We do not camp rough.
Then Jim started pulling out the gear to load into the four-horse trailer. We would take two trucks, one to pull the four horses, the other to pack some of the saddles, backpacks and fishing gear. I splurged with two fly rods, one of them vintage split bamboo.
Destination: Luna Lake on the Wyoming Trail. The Utes were first to wear that path from New Mexico to Montana. Later fur trappers used it, then railroad workers. There are open meadows where railroad ties were probably cut and hauled out by horses.
An early morning start from Jim’s ranch got us to the trailhead at Buffalo Pass, just under 10,000 feet. That’s above and east of Steamboat Springs. Walden is on the other side of the pass. Obviously, the pass is on the Continental Divide and the trail sticks to that dotted line on the map. You head almost due north.
We loaded our horses, one of them just carrying supplies. I probably looked like a cowboy until I popped onto JD, the 18-year-old quarter horse. I wore my straw George Strait Resistol, my George Strait Advanced Comfort jeans and Ariat boots. I try to sit and rock in the saddle like Jim. But basically, I just hold on.
Jim had on the same type stuff, but also a .38 strapped on his hip. I later learned that was for protection from a possible wolverine attack. I was more worried about mountain lions or bears, and there are some around Luna Lake, but Jim said a wolverine could wreak more havoc to a camp.
You might see elk or moose, but probably no big meat eaters. They will see you and stay clear. A moose with a calf can treat you badly, but you have to make quite a few mistakes to get in real trouble. I came close to doing that one time on another Colorado trip, but not this time.
Petitt looked more like Jimmy Buffet. He had a parrot head straw hat and tennis shoes. But he handles a horse great, better than me. It’s funny, but the horses figure out whom to trust and they all liked Bill.
Oh, how I’d like to do that trip one more time. I’ll be 66 when conditions are right up high in July, and Jim and Bill are both 72. All of us are in good enough shape to handle the chores required to take care of horses.
We’d be safe. There will be no humans around, although we’ve got at least seven or eight weeks before it’s perfect for that kind of trip. The snow will be mostly gone in five or
six weeks, but you want it dry enough that the bugs aren’t so bad.
It’s about an eight-hour trail ride from Buffalo Pass to Luna Lake, mostly flat. There is a great place to eat lunch at the edge of a meadow with a sheer drop of maybe 1,000 feet with a look into North Park. Jim and Bill don’t mind dangling their legs off the edge. Not me. I’d eat my PB&J with a Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pie sitting on a rock about 10 yards back.
Yeah, I’m a weenie, but I will probably outfish them. We will eat fresh fish each night if that’s the goal.
I once feared that kind of a trail ride. My left knee is bone on bone. Mark Powell, my knee doctor, told me I can have no more scopes. It didn’t act up on our last trip to Luna Lake, but going down a steep slope is problematic. There are two such sections.
There was soreness as we built our camp that evening, an hour before a glorious sunset. And, just before dark, Jim made dinner, precooked parmesan chicken out of an Air Force produced meals-ready-to-eat foiled package. Boil the pouch, then enjoy.
I brought a battery-powered sound box. George Strait serenaded the campers and the cutthroat trout with “Cowboys Like Us.” A flask of Crown Royal Black was passed around. It helps the knee soreness.
I’ve never seen stars that bright. My thoughts as we sat at the fire with only one lone hiker camped about 200 yards away: I wondered in 2009 what my father would think of this.
It had been about six years since he’d passed, never knowing that I could tie my own fly, ride a horse into high country and find rising trout all by myself, then cook and eat them.
I ache to go back. There is unfinished business. Each day we explored to a new lake and caught the specialty there. We found a lake full of brook trout, another with only brown trout. But, we didn’t ride to Lake Margaret, the one that’s supposed to be stacked full of big cutthroats.