Desert Solitaire - Chasing Secrets

There are few well kept secrets in the fly fishing world. As we become more and more connected to instant access to unlimited information...

There are few well kept secrets in the fly fishing world. As we become more and more connected to instant access to unlimited information, keeping a secret is harder now more than ever. It now only takes one person to spill the beans. Instead of vague directions to a creek in the middle of the desert, people post GPS coordinates for everyone to see. This means that the spot that generations of anglers worked so hard for is now public domain, never to be tucked back into obscurity. So when we do find that secret, it is ever more important to keep it that way.

I am not going to lie, I have been kicked off of a fishing forum. It was just gut reaction. I saw a post that was GPS coordinates to a spot on a river back east somewhere, with detailed parking info as well as layouts of the favorite holes. My reaction went something like this: "if you pulled that crap in Oregon, you would get punched". I was not trying to be a troll, I was just so shocked that someone would actually do that, it was the only thing I could think of to say. It turns out that posting GPS coordinates is quite common. I still stand by my comment even if it did get me kicked off the forum. I wouldn't really punch someone, but I believe in my heart that it is, at best, bad karma to post a secret spot for the whole world to see. The person who posts that information was certainly not the one that found it. Dozens of other anglers worked their butts off to kept it secret for years before someone that had no appreciation for it threw it all away!

Nothing but miles of solitude and the occasional trout

So I have been sitting on a rarely-fished creek for 15 years now. Some might call it a secret. There is a rare, but real possibility of massive desert brown trout, the Shangri-La of trout fishing. It has gone by many names; Cougar Creek, Spring Creek, Tick-Haven Creek. Those are not the actual name of the creek, or are they? I can say that it is in the Northwest; Montana, Oregon, Washington or Idaho.... and it took me way too long to drive there last weekend. When I was in my early 20's and was far more willing to drive literally anywhere to catch a fish, I had spent many days there after stumbling upon it by accident from a non fishing friend that had grown up in the area. He had told me that I should go check it out, that he had seen big trout rising. He was a hunter and had gone out there to shoot things at some point.

I had started off 40 miles upstream of this place, and one dirt road at a time, explored the area thoroughly, but finding mostly dead ends. It had taken a year or so to work my way that far downstream and it had become my regular weekend spot for two years before steelheading had taken over my life. In that time, I had seen big brown trout lurking in the pools, but had never caught a big one there... I rarely caught anything back then. I wasn't good enough at fishing back then and I knew it.

At 37, I am not as interested in driving half of the night in order to fish for a few hours any more, but this place had been calling me back to my roots for a couple of years now. I just kept wondering if it was still in good shape. These little thoughts would pop into my head at odd times. Were those big browns still there? Would they eat a mouse pattern? How big was that big one I saw?

This pool haunts my dreams now.

I was worried that years of increased interest in fly fishing had led to increased pressure on the creek. This really isn't a secret, many people know about it and choose not to advertise it. Mostly, the pressure is low because of how far away it is from a town. There weren't any other fishermen around when I pulled in, and based on the state of the trails near the river, it hadn't been fished much recently. Good. A serious lack of garbage, monofilament or beer cans confirmed my suspicions. It looked good to go.

I hadn't been up there in maybe 10 years, but it looked exactly the same as I remembered it. Beyond it being a really, really long ways from home, I honestly have few friends that I would trust to keep it secret, or that would appreciate it for what it is. It isn't about the fishing, but having this little place that is so special to the people that visit it that it must be protected.

Since it looked like not a lot of people had been fishing there, I started wondering if recent droughts, potential changes in water management (I hadn't checked) or any other unknown factors had caused a decline in the fishery. That is part of the risk in driving ___ hours to a secret creek, especially if it has been a decade or more since last visiting. It happened to me earlier this year. Another one of my other favorite spring creeks has seen a major decline in water levels and quality as increases in cattle grazing upstream have all but eliminated decent trout fishing in the decade since I had last seen it. The prospects here looked better than the creek I went to last spring.

I strung up a streamer rod (a 9' 6wt Temple Fork Impact with a Titan Streamer Line) and chose to work upstream; a coin toss, since I cannot remember any particular hole either way.

Riffles, pools and undercuts, perfect!

I walked for close to 30 minutes before looking for a place to wet a line. This should put me into some really untouched goodness. I found one nice corner hole with depth and current, plus a high vantage point to look at fish from behind where there was a good chance I would not be noticed. I snuck up to the hole and to my surprise, I saw two incredibly large brown trout sitting in the shallows next to one another. We are a few weeks from spawning time and it looked like those two were pairing up for a dance.

Shaking badly, (it's been a long time since I had seen a brown trout this big!) I made one halfway decent cast at the pair of big browns, pulled on the streamer twice and watched one of the beasts turn and chase down my Conehead Crystal Bugger (in olive). It grabbed my fly and I set the hook, and I watched as my fly came out of it's mouth. The fish, along with it's mate, sank down into the depths of that pool. The fish had grabbed the tail of the fly without getting hooked... And I had another problem: I had heard the distinctive crack, now I looked down at my rod to see that it had transformed into a 5-piece instead of a 4-piece.... That is why we bring backups.

Why we take a backup.

I was nevertheless, disappointed. That was the first day I had fished with that rod... I switched some lines around, situated myself and started moving upstream again, looking for likely holding water, and it was everywhere. Undercut banks, riffles, deep pools. In the next 6 hours I landed a handful of nice fish in the 16-18" range, but I don't need to drive ___ hours for that. I came here for big game.

As evening approached, I ran into another like-minded fisherman. He had arrived after I had, but had chosen to start even further up and work his way back down. We shared some fake secrets (where we lie to each other about the flies that we were using along with where and how we were fishing), before slowly revealing truths. He showed me a picture of a monster he had caught a few hours earlier. I was jealous, but I was more excited for him than anything. He was stoked! But it confirmed for me that the monsters of the deep are alive and well in old Wildcat Creek.

As I made those calculations about how much further away from my car I could walk and fish before having to hike miles in the dark, I found a nice little run where two little channels met. A couple of casts in and I saw him. He came out of nowhere and crushed my bugger. Holy mackerel, this was a nice trout! I had to quickly find a way to get off of this high-grass bank and into the water without knowing exactly how deep it was. Luckily my feet hit bottom at just over knee depth when I took a leap of faith through the tall grass into the creek.

My weekend went from great to incredible!

After too many jumps and runs, I realized my next problem was that my net was too small.... Oops. I still managed to get him awkwardly into the basket without breaking him off, even if his tail was sticking out 6 inches past the end. This is the droid I'm looking for! It was an absolute beautiful, colorful pig of a rainbow trout!. He posed for a picture or two before gently returning to the undercut bank which he had likely just come out of.

High on life, I decided that it was a good place to stop for the evening! I drank a victory beverage by the side of the creek and listened to the wildlife for a while before heading back.

That walk back to the car is invigorating when you have just landed a trophy! It felt as if it only took a few seconds to walk through all of that uneven, thorny mess. I set up a small camp, made a great dinner, had a nice fire and enjoyed an incredible sunset. I love camping by myself, because of that sunset; that sunset was mine and I didn't have to share it with anyone.

I fell asleep next to the fire way too early.

Making friends on the river!

Morning came minutes after I closed my eyes. The fisherman I had met the day before had come back for more, and he left the parking are at 6:00 a.m. while I was making coffee and breakfast. After making quick work of my fresh bacon and strong coffee, I decided to track him down. I wanted to find out how he knew about this place. It turns out that he had learned about it in a roundabout way from friends of mine who also hadn't been out there in years. I had always suspected that those guys knew about that spot, as I am sure that they suspected the same of me... but it never came up in all of the fishing I did with that crew. Secrets...

So we shared stories and then he showed me his favorite couple of spots in that little section of the creek. Fishing was not great that next day. In fact, we saw zero fish, even though we had found a nice rock outcrop that sat above a really juicy pool. We should have been able to see them as soon as the sun was up. There had been fish visible throughout the previous day, either sipping flies or just sitting on the bottom when seen from above, but not on this day. My new friend and I parted ways, and I made my way back to camp, then back to Hood River.

It's good to know that there are still secrets out there in the world, and with some hard work, they can stay secret. It's not that it is some incredible fishery, I did get skunked one of the two days I fished, and that is pretty typical from my memories there. It is not that it is a super secret, I know that there are plenty of people that go out there. It is that it is a sacred place for me, and for all of those that get to fish their own "secret spot", and that is why I fish.