All TWELVE of us made our way following Poppy (aka my Dad) to THE spot for today. We were going to fish some beaver ponds up near the Spring Creek Reservoir. Why this place? Well, a couple of reasons.
1) Not to tough for the kids - they can stand on the side and not have to struggle with moving water while learning to fish.
2) Easier on the teachers in the crowd - aka Poppy and Perry - who were charged with having to teach ALL of us how to fly fish properly
3) Easier on Meme (aka my Mom) to be able to get out and watch us without too much exercise while she’s still adjusting to the altitude
Imagine - the prep work for TWELVE people to go fishing together!!
- Ensuring everyone has the correct shoes, clothing
- Lunches/beverages have to be packed
- Fishing Gear for 12 have to be packed
- Everyone has to get in the cars ... :-)
- Fishing Licenses for the 6 grownups have to be obtained
- Driving to the location
- Setup of the Rods (entire section below about this one..... )
Ok - so a moment about the fishing equipment we are using. Poppy is an avid fisherman and has been for most all of his life. He doesn’t get to fish as much as I’m sure he’d like to but he has enough equipment to outfit seven of us (not including his and Meme’s which are too expensive to let anyone else handle). At least one of his rods is the one his DAD gave to him long, long ago when he was a kid. Poppy takes extremely good care of his stuff. We were all the lucky beneficiaries of his loving care of this equipment. Made you a little scared to put them in the hands of these kids who have no idea how old and meaningful this stuff is.
The thoughts kept running through my head wondering about the number of times this equipment has been touched by not only my Dad and my Mom over the years but by my grandfather perhaps when teaching my Dad long ago. About how many fish have been caught and the fun times had with these fishing rods. It was indeed an honor for Poppy to let us all use his rods! Hopefully, we don’t mess any of them up!! :-)
Dad also brought tons and tons of flies!! Cute little flies that look like ants, grasshoppers, regular flies, nymphs, etc. etc. That’s good he brought so many because we were pretty efficient at losing them. :-)
Setup of the Rods
There is a setup time (a very long time) required in order to fish. One reason these rods have been around so long is that after each and every fishing expedition, you take the whole thing apart (i.e. separate the rods from the reels) and put each piece back into it’s respective box or container for the next time. Even if the next time is later the same day or the next day. Consequently, when it comes time to putting them all back together, it takes a little bit of time. Doing it for 12 people.... a really long time. We thank both Dad and John for going through all the effort it took to put all those rods together and then tie flies on to each one of them!!
While they were doing all the hard work, much of the rest of the crew decided to just sit down and eat some lunch. Seemed like a good plan while we waited.
One by one the rods became ready and eventually enough were ready that we could start learning to fish. Dad and Perry proceeded to teach each of the grandkids, me, Stacey and John how to handle our fly rods!
How did we do, you ask??
I think we were quite successful on our first day of fishing!! Three fish surrendered to our capable fisherman skills yesterday!! :-) John caught one, Holley caught one and I caught one!! Brown Trout - ranging in size from 6 inches to about 10 inches. I’m told they will be yummy when my Dad cooks them on Thursday night. I’m trying not to be skeptical. The only kind of fish I enjoy is one that I can’t taste the fish. :-) No fishy taste for me.... no sir. My Mom tells me that she doesn’t like the fishy taste either and that my Dad cooks it very well.
One interesting tidbit is a story about my Mom and Dad recounted by my Mom yesterday while we were fishing. Mom & Dad spent their first anniversary (so 1965) up in the same Crested Butte area we are in now camping and fishing. They rented a trailer and camped out somewhere around the area. Given my knowledge of my Mom’s love of camping, I would never have guessed that this even occurred. I would have been wrong!! Mom tells me she is convinced that when she first started fishing, my Dad would make sure that she caught lots and lots of fish. That way, she would enjoy the fishing so much that she’d want to come back which furthered what he wanted which was to camp and fish! (He’s pretty smart that way.) Mom says it worked. She really enjoys fishing a lot now.
This is why we are spending time here this summer - time with Meme & Poppy and all the family making some great memories!
I’ve decided that fishing up here is kind of like playing a slot machine. Huh, you ask? Stay with me. Each time you throw out your line (and you do this a lot), it’s a chance to catch a fish. You toss (ok, throw) out your line, slowly bring it in and hope like crazy that a little fishy takes the bait and you get to yank it out of the water (you win!)!! :-) Here’s my analogy to slot machines. Each time you pull the lever (or just hit the button which is way to easy), you are hoping like crazy that your symbols, numbers, characters, etc. line up and you win! The similarity is that in both cases, the winning occurs very infrequently, but you keep gambling. There you go.....
Ok - so now that I’ve written enough for the first chapter of War and Peace.... I could go on and on with some other stores, but it’s time to go fishing again!! I’ll get some more pictures out soon. Takes a while to upload out in the middle of the forest. Amazing it can even be done!
MA
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