Renewing An Old Tradition

Forget all the New Year's Eve hoopla. I'm not even interested in small home parties. Such things no longer interest me.

All the parties celebrating another year ending doesn't mean diddly to me. I'm in bed and asleep long before the Big Ball drops in New York's Times Square or the Big Red Cherry falls in Traverse City, and the crowds of people go wild. I'm zonked out when all the bars empty out and the drunks hit the highways. The roads are not a safe place to be on that night.

A bit of celebration may be in order, and I'll do my celebrating one of these afternoons real soon. No, no drinking for me. I quit alcohol 26 years ago, don't miss it, and prefer peace and quiet, solitude, wild nature and the sounds of silence. However, sometime between now and Friday night, I'll renew an old tradition of mine.An old fishing tradition of mine.

A typical brown trout from the early 1970s.

Many years ago while guiding from 1967 to 1976 on the Platte and other rivers, I celebrated New Years Eve in a certain way. For many of those years my celebration took place on the upper Platte River, upstream from Haze Road, and it was just me, my Shakespeare Black Beauty fly rod and the river. The fish and I had a quiet celebration of another fine year of fishing, of guiding and living, and of taking care of one another.

I'm not really sure why this year-end personal celebration ended, what caused it to stop, but it ended some 25 years ago. I've thought about it for several days, and about the time the salmon and steelhead disappeared from the upper Platte River before Dec. 31, was about when I quit the tradition of a last-day fish.

No bells or whistles this year. Just me celebrating life and living, giving thanks for the good things in my life. and there was always something about the upper Platte River that has been haunting me. This year, like  the last three, will be a necessary trip, one of another personal reunion with flowing water, and if a fish is hooked and landed, it would be a bonus.

Twenty-five years ago there were still plenty of fish in the upper Platte River on New Years Eve, but things changed years ago. I suspect it's been a decade or more since there were a few steelhead in this river stretch at the tail end of December. No matter, because I wasn't there to catch them. I was there to celebrate my many years of fishing the Platte, and the river had indeed been kind to me.

Renewing the tradition and bringing it back to life.

Last year I slipped into the river at Haze Road, and worked very slowly upstream, scanning the shallows through Polarized sunglasses. I came to the old cabin on the right, and the owners had added a second story to the building. The old cabin had been there even before I started guiding in 1967.

There, just upstream from the cabin, was where a tree had toppled into the river during a storm in the late 1960s. The top of that tree landed six feet from the far bank, and the current dug out a bath-tub sized pocket under the submerged tip. That spot, for nearly 10 years, would produce big browns on a daily basis. How big? They averaged eight to 10 pounds, but one memorable hook-jawed old male of 15 pounds sucked up an orange fly of mine, and we kicked that river apart for several minutes determining who was boss.

He came to hand after a strong fight, and was landed, unhooked and released. One year, from mid-October through Halloween, that little pocket would produce five (the legal limit at the time) brown trout daily. Most of them were released unless someone wanted a wall-hanger.

The tree and the brown trout are now gone, and further upstream was the spot where in 1963 I caught my first steelhead from the Platte River. The current had hollowed  out a hole of quiet water under a shoreline cedar, and a buck steelhead and his lady friend were spawning. A local man during that era made and sold Colorado spinners, and I had one knotted to my line. This was in the days before the single-hook rule, and I'd watched the lure maker cast to a spawning male. He never fished for the female, and his rod was a fly rod with an automatic fly reel and 10-pound monofilament. The spinner was knotted to the end of the line.He'd stalk close. and begin casting. As soon as the spinner washed past the male, he'd lift it out and cast again. Cast, lift it out, cast again, time after time until the male hit. That was what worked for that big male under the cedar, and I quit counting after 300 repetitive casts, and my arm and shoulder ached like a bad tooth, but somewhere between 300 and 400 casts, the buck hit.

We fought it out with no holds barred, and I landed that fish. It's cheeks and gill covers glowed with the color of orange-pineapple ice cream, and a crimson sash streaked its lateral line, and even though it was my first steelhead from the Platte, it was quickly released.

Once the site of thousands of spawning salmon.

Further upstream was a shallow gravel bar that was once covered with the spawning redds of thousands of coho salmon. Shallow pock-marked areas all held fish back in the good old days, but not on this day nor will they be present this year.

I stood, the current gurgling around my ankles, and listened as a mated pair of Canada geese flew overhead, honking, and the sounds carried on the soft breeze with a touch of wildness on this day. Back in the woods a ruffed grouse made that little putting noise they make while feeding, and thousands of memories of people and fish washed over me.

I sat on a snow-covered log, and drank in the glory of what had been and what will never be again. In that era, steelhead followed the brown trout and chinook and coho salmon upstream to feed on free-drifting brown trout or salmon eggs.

An accurate cast with a No. 6 orange fly would work. The fall steelhead would go crazy, tail-walking across the river, trying to rip off line on strong downstream runs, and each fish was a victory or sorts and another reason to celebrate the passing of another year.

Such a venture this year will bring back other memories of another era. It was one of more fish than most modern steelhead fishermen could possibly imagine or comprehend, and it was a time when big brown trout were common, chinook salmon to 30 pounds and coho salmon to 18 pounds could be caught with some regularity. The river is no longer that way, nor has it been for many years.

Sadly, things have changed. It seems that the good things always do and all that remains are the memories, and they are enough for me.

Trips down Memory Lane no longer the same.

My two-hour memory trip on the river last year was filled with calmness, solitude, the chuckling sounds of river currents washing around sweepers, and a feeling of loss. I no longer need large numbers of fish to make me happy, and many times one or no fish will work for me, but last year was just about me and the river and more memories than I could bring to mind during a two-hour fish. The fly rod, archaic as the guy carrying it, was nothing more than a stage prop.

Not a fish was seen while covering a mile of river, and on any other day that might have bothered me, but not a year ago or this year when I return. I was there to pay homage to the river of my  dreams, one that has nurtured me through the beginning of my writing and guiding careers, and a stream that has helped make me what I am today.

Happy New Year, and this year why not take a moment to remember your home stream. Going back more than 40 years to another era will be another quiet and solitary celebration for me.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors