Days 59-61, July 18-20, Pebble Creek ID

As Einstein reported long ago, space and time are married at the hip. Space is curved, time is relative to the position and motion of the clock-watcher, and Rod Serling still speaks to us through a wry grin from the Twilight Zone. And it’s all rendered more complex by the persistence of memory.

Over 45 years ago, according to our shared conventions of counting the time, I hacked through willows and gingerly plodded through marshes by a little stream on the eastern slopes of the Portneuf Mountains in southeast Idaho and came upon a beaver pond. In that quiet water several trout scattered in reaction to my sudden presence. The visible pool was abandoned but I knew the trout were still there, hiding in the margins. I quietly dipped the little lure on my spinning rod into a small, dark hole beneath overhanging branches and felt the tug of an 8-inch rainbow trout. My eyes were as big as Frisbees when I pulled that fish from the water. It was the first trout I ever caught - perhaps the first fish of any kind. The scene is embossed on my brain for as long I shall live.

Yesterday, caught in a time warp, I hacked through willows and plodded through marshes by a little stream - the same stream, Pebble Creek - flowing from the flanks of Haystack Mountain and Bonneville Mountain in the Portneuf Range. This time I was armed with a short, 3-weight Scott Mountain Rod and countless hours of experience hunting trout on small streams across the country. The trout had no chance, and in a short span of minutes I caught a couple of 8-inch cutthroats. Not rainbows. In the decades since I last visited Pebble Creek, stocking of non-native trout in the upper reaches of the stream has ceased, and the native cutts are the primary residents in this sanctuary. Fine with me.  Here's what a typical hole on little Pebble Creek looks like today, just as it did when I first trod its banks as a boy:

Soon I happened upon a long run of deeper water and cast a parachute Adams into a seam at the head of the pool. A tiny trout instantly hit the fly but I failed to hook him. I was about to move on when I noticed a long, sinewy shape slither out of the deep pocket in the main current and briefly occupy an eddy next to it. For several seconds I gaped at the long, green-backed fish with its reddish fins - telltale signs of a mature Yellowstone cutthroat. This was not a normal resident of Pebble Creek, I knew. It could only be a cutt that had migrated up the creek from the Portneuf River to spawn, and was slow to return home. As my heart began to race, the cutt dissolved back into the cover of the current.

Obviously my parachute Adams hadn’t impressed him, so I decided to attach to the hook bend of the Adams about 18 inches of fluorocarbon tippet, a small flashback pheasant tail nymph and a number 6 shot. That process took a few minutes. Just as I finished and was set to make a cast with my new and improved rig, the large cutt reappeared at the tail of the current and slowly dropped back, soon passing right beneath me, sneaking away as if he knew he was about to be targeted. As I cursed my luck, he slid into the rapids at the tail of the pool and disappeared into downstream narrows.

I made a decision then that I rarely make, which was to backtrack. I knew there was another long pool about twenty yards downstream beneath the narrow rapids because I had just caught a couple of fish there. It was difficult to negotiate the thick willows to get back there, but I believed there was a good chance the big cutt would linger in that pool and I might spot him again. And so it was. When I arrived at the downstream pool and poked my head over the protective brush, the cutt was quietly finning in a very shallow eddy, facing downstream near the tailout of the pool. Again, heart palpitations. The problem was, as any experienced fly fisherman can tell you, that getting a fly to drift naturally in an eddy across a strong current is an exceedingly difficult task. I’ve heard it said a thousand times that “a fish doesn’t get to be that big by being stupid.” A good drift was a prerequisite for fooling that trout, and I didn’t think I had a chance. Nevertheless, catching a trout of his stature in Pebble Creek was probably a once-in-a-lifetime affair even if I fished there regularly, so I slowly positioned myself upstream, behind the finning levithan, to give it a college try.  Here's the fish, trying hide beneath the twinkling glare:

In an overabundance of caution, my first couple of casts landed a foot or so behind the fish, producing no reaction. As I feared, the drift of the fly was unacceptable even if I had cast further - my leader was in the current, swept away too soon. I took a step forward and tried again. This time the Adams, still trailing the nymph, landed about six inches in front and to the right of the nose of the trout. I figured the fish would either spook and run or would ignore the flies. In the best case, I imagined, he might show an interest in the nymph before the current pulled it away. For an agonizingly long time - probably only a few seconds though it seemed an interminable period - the big cutt eased toward my flies an inch at a time. I had put as much slack into the leader as I could manage with my cast and a quick mend, but I knew the current would grab it at any moment. Miraculously, the flies just hung there, barely moving with the natural backflow of the eddy. The cutt’s nose inched forward until it touched the Adams. It was all I could do to let the fly sit while the cutt inspected it. I was sure I was in for rejection. Then boom! The trout sucked in the Adams!

I cannot describe my joy. As I set the hook and struggled to hold the big fish in the pool and land him (or more likely, her), I thought back on my boyhood experience. Maybe I stood in the same pool under the same bright skies in the shadow of the same mountains, I’m not sure. But in the present as is in the past, my excitement was beyond measure - pure ecstasy. Sometimes, though it happens all too rarely, everything goes just the way you plan it. Your stealth is stealthy, your fly is the right fly and holds its drift, the trout is fooled, and he’s yours. And when it all works out and you look around at the incredible natural scene that surrounds you and your prize, joy is almost overwhelming.

I hadn’t brought my regular cameras but I did have my smartphone, so I tried to take a picture of the trout as I held it in my hand. Problem was the cutt was too long to fit in the picture, even though I held out my arm as far as possible and positioned the phone behind my shoulder.   I have five photos of the rear 2/3 of the fish, not respectable enough to post here.  However, I was able to measure him against my rod for later verification of his length and I got some pictures of him in the water. At 19.5”, he was a veritable Moby Dick by the standards of Pebble Creek. Not a tarpon by any means, but a fish I will always be proud to have captured and released.

There is so much more I could tell you about the past few days. When I can, I will write another retrospective post to describe my day in Pocatello, Idaho, where the time warp fully enveloped me. I would also like to tell you about the quiet camping spots I occupied the past two nights - one in the Portneuf Range and the other in the Caribou Rnage - and the campfire meals I enjoyed there. Or the fish I caught on the Portneuf River (including the big one that got away off a gifted streamer) and on Toponce Creek (before a thunderstorm drove me from it) and on Tincup Creek. Or the time I spent with Roger Thompson of Portneuf River Outfitters - thanks for the info, Roger! Or the incident in the storm when I helped a drenched cowgirl open a stuck gate that trapped her and her soaked horse and dog. Or the hundreds of white terns wheeling around mysteriously in the mountain passes east of Gray’s Lake NWR. Or the intense cold that settled on Camelot, my righteous Northstar camper, last night. Or the fortitude and stamina of Excalibur, my Chevy Silverado, who recently has performed the kind of difficult, high-clearance-required, off-road stunts she was acquired to do, all without a misstep.

There is so much I could tell you. Since time has a way of folding back upon itself, I’ll hope for another chance in the future to relive and transcribe those for-now untold experiences. In the future I will tell of the past which is my present. That’s why I’m the once and future fly fisherman - I love it!