Happy Father's Day, Pop Pop

Pop Pop didn't become Pop Pop until the Mini-HHMM came along.  Before that he was Dad, or Pa, but mostly Dad.  My insatiable thirst for rivers, my unrelenting hunger for mountains and prairies, and the critters hidden within them... that came from Dad.  By the time I had attained memorable consciousness, my dad was an idealistic biologist, whose love for wide open spaces, productive rivers filled with fat trout, and a world of unstudied resources, endowed him with a whimsical curiosity and a contagious sense of purpose.  In his mind's eye, he could see the high deserts of the Snake River Plain still dotted with herds of bison, with a grizzled trapper covered in animal skins moving between them on his way to a rendezvous in Jackson Hole.  His imagination was powered by the magical country in which he ran, and by the history of those who ran the country before him.  That kinda thing rubs off on a kid.

When Dad went fishing, I wanted to go.  When Dad went bird hunting, I wanted to go.  I wanted to see the country that impassioned my father.  When I was small, I couldn't always tag along... you can't fish as hard or walk as many miles of railroad tracks chasing birds with a six year old slowing you down.  I certainly understand that now, and maybe I understood it pretty well back then too, but when I got to go fishing with Dad, that was a big deal.  I don't know if he did it on purpose or not, but he sure made me crave the opportunity to be outside, to float on the river and catch fish, to sit in a blind and hope to fool a duck.  Sometimes I feel like I can't remember the vast majority of what I learned in ten years of higher education.  I certainly can't remember how to prove a theorem in geometry.  The experiences I have shared with Dad in the magical landscapes of Idaho... those are etched, seared, tattooed, engraved in my most cherished memories.

So for Father's Day, I thought I would put together a timeline of the greatest hits of some of these memories.  The dates may be off by a little, but the experience is right at the heart.

~1985~ Dad puts me on my first fish, a mature, gravid, female Yellowstone cutthroat in the stream where he did his master's studies.  I broke his heart when I made him kill the fish so I could eat it, then didn't like how it tasted.

~1988~ Dad takes me on a camp-out under the cottonwood canopy of the South Fork Snake River.  We did a little fishing, but most importantly we shared a campfire together and he helped me make warrior sticks (my descriptor), which are nothing more than dead tree branches with a sharpened end.

~1990~ Dad takes me on a father-son camping trip to the Jarbidge River.  This is a remote corner of Idaho... really, it gives me my first taste of wilderness.  I find marmot skulls and catch rainbow trout at will, thus making this the coolest place I had ever been, bar none.

~1990~ Dad takes me, my cousin Robb, and my Uncle Bill on a float down the South Fork Boise River.  I enjoy my first true Idaho whitewater experience, Robb and I catch monster rainbows on Rooster Tails.  Dad is a demi-god for rowing Raspberry Rapid.

~1991~ Dad takes my Uncle Chris and me fishing on the St. Joe River.  Uncle Chris moons me.  I get skunked all day long until I throw my Panther Martin into "The Wonder Pool," the most picturesque fishing hole I have ever seen on a trout stream.  I catch what may have been my very first westslope cutthroat trout.  The St. Joe becomes "The Family River."

~1993~ One day before my 13th Birthday, on my first duck hunt, I harvest my first animal that doesn't have gills, a fat hen mallard.  Dad gives me the shotgun I killed the bird with as an early birthday present.

~1993~ As punishment for some wrong I committed against my mother, I am allowed to go duck hunting, but I am not allowed to take my shotgun with me.  This may have been the last time I was grounded.

~1994~ With no wetsuits or drysuits, Dad, Uncle Chris, and I run the Moyie River during spring runoff.  Dad nearly flips the raft at Eileen Dam, I witness the true power of river hydraulics for the first time, and Uncle Chris nearly floats out of the raft and down the river.  Dad saves the day with one final desperate stroke to keep the boat from flipping.

~1995~ Dad teaches me a lesson about hormones getting in the way of good judgement after he kills a sex-crazed tom turkey on a spring hunt.

~1996~ Dad hands me the keys to our Isuzu Trooper, Gus, for the first time.  In this vehicle I get my first taste of being an independent mountain man, though not so hairy yet.

~1997~ Dad and I share one of the most exciting moments of each of our lives when, after an hour or more of tracking, we recover my first elk after I made a poor, albeit ultimately fatal shot.  One day later, Dad kills his first elk and we learn together what it is like to make multiple five mile hikes with a load of meat on our backs.  I drink my first whisky in elk camp.

~1999~ I graduate high school.  Dad builds me a fly rod for my graduation gift.

~2001~ Dad, our hunting partner, and I each kill cow elk within 40 yards of each other, within half an hour of each other, on the last day of our elk hunt.  We learn what it is like to carry 2/3 of an elk in one trip.  Good thing my elk was a calf.

~2003~ Dad and my beautiful mother give me a canoe for my college graduation gift.  I have paddled that canoe with Chinook salmon in Idaho and with roosterfish in Mexico.

~2003~ For the first time, Dad takes me on his annual Male Bonding fishing trip in October.  This is a legendary trip full of larger than life participants.  This was a true right of passage into manhood.

~2004~ One day after I harvest a deer, I put my dad on the same spot and he harvests a fat whitetail doe.  This is the only time either of us has had whitetail deer hunting dialed in 19 years of hunting the damnable creatures.

~2005~ I move to Montana for graduate school, but Dad and I still kill elk together in Idaho.

~2006~ I meet the woman of my dreams and take her mule deer hunting.  We hike to the spot where Dad and I killed our first elk.

~2007~ Dad puts me on the last elk I killed (I know, it has been too long!) on the first morning of our hunting trip.  Emily (the woman of my dreams) and I harvest our first Montana mule deer on the first day of our hunting trip.  The first person I call is Dad.

~2008~ I marry the woman of my dreams on the banks of the river where I am doing my doctoral research... studying westslope cutthroat trout... Dad stands next to me as my best man.

~2010~ I determine that my skills as an angler surpass those of my father :)

~2010~ Dad kills his first Antelope with Emily and me in Montana.

~2011~ I move back to Idaho and Dad and I rediscover our love of waterfowl hunting together.  Dad becomes Pop Pop.

~2012~ I net Dad's first Steelhead on a fly rod.

~2013~ ...Hey Dad, we can't spend Father's Day together, but will you go fishing with me next weekend?  Are you pumped about hunting season yet?

Happy Father's Day, Pop Pop

Green Peas and Garlic Scapes

Early treats from the garden are some of the most exciting.  Nothing drives away the doldrums of winter and the dreary rains of spring like the first greens and peas harvested from the garden.  Over the last weekend, we harvested garlic scapes.  These are the flower-like tips of hardneck garlic varieties.  Cutting the scapes encourages greater growth of the garlic bulb, but it also provides nice kitchen fodder for the evening meal.  Think crunchy vegetable, like fresh asparagus... and yes, they are garlicky.  We made two meals over the past weekend that included garlic scapes.  For the second of these meals, we did nothing more than saute sections of the scapes in butter and sprinkle them with some kosher salt.  Then we served them with some rare grilled whitetail deer backstrap, an arugala salad, and homemade marinated mushrooms.  We ate it on our back patio while the mini-HHMM played under a giant green sycamore tree with sunlight filtering through the leaves and a warm early summer breeze keeping the smoke from the Weber away from the table.  Does life get any better than that?

According to the World-Wide-Web, this is a good time to harvest scapes... when they make their first full curl.

One of my favorite ways to put fresh off the vine vegetables to use is in a stir-fry.  Cooking in a carbon steel wok over high heat and for a short period of time is one of the best ways I have found to cook vegetables and still showcase their freshness.  We employed the wok to render us an epic snow pea, garlic scape, and venison stir fry.  Here is the recipe (remember, I don't measure so you probably shouldn't either, use the volumes and quantities described as a rough guideline only.  Just keep adding the stuff listed below until it tastes good):

1 small pile of snow peas picked from the garden
1 slightly smaller pile of fresh garlic scapes, cut in to 1"-2" lengths
1/2 pound venison strip steaks cut from backstraps or hind quarters, shaved in to even, bite-sized chunks
1/4 cup canola or peanut oil
1 tablespoon chili paste, Sriracha, or other Asian chili sauce (adjust to taste)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder, or 3-4 crushed cloves
1 teaspoon ginger powder, or 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground mustard

For the marinade: combine the chili paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and mustard in a bowl and whisk.  Add the meat and allow to marinade for an hour or more.

Add the oil to the wok and turn the heat to high.  Remove the meat from the marinade (save the liquid) and put the meat in the wok once it starts to smoke.  Stir fry the meat until it is brown on the outside (won't take long) then remove the meat and set aside.  Add the peas and garlic scapes and stir fry for a minute or so.  Add a portion of the left over marinade as a cooking liquid and stir fry for another minute or so.  The vegetables should still be bright green when you remove them from the heat.  Add the meat back into the wok and stir.

Assuming you remembered to start cooking your rice on time, dinner is served.

Urgin' For Sturgeon

I don't like to pay for "seafood."  Fish and the like are expensive, and, as often as not, they are harvested in an unsustainable manner.  I have a problem... I like to eat fish.  The clear solution is to harvest fish in sport fisheries within the bounds of the rules, limits, and regulations.  Over the last few years, I have become increasingly focused on harvest when I fish.  Fish taste good, they are good for you, and they are especially satisfying to body and mind when collected on one's own.  I like to harvest perch, mountain whitefish, rainbow trout (including steelhead), smallmouth bass, bluegills, catfish, burbot, and just about any other teleost with tasty muscles.

There are two kinds of sportfish I like to fish for that I do not like to harvest: 1. cutthroat trout (preference only applies to their native waters), and 2. white sturgeon.  Let's not delve into my preoccupation with catch and release cutthroat fishing, let's save it for another day.  Where I fish for white sturgeon, no harvest is allowed, and with good reason.  Sturgeon species, as a group, are generally long lived (up to and over 100 years), slow growing, and they mature late in life (20 years old before they spawn), which makes them the opposite of a good candidate for a sustainable harvest fishery.  There are rivers and reaches where sport harvest of sturgeon is allowed, and sturgeon are delicious, but I am just not sure I could do it... take a club to a fish that might be as old as me.  They may grow slow, but they grow long.  White sturgeon have the distinction of being North America's largest freshwater fish, and rank among the largest freshwater fish in the world.

In the Hell's Canyon reach of the Snake River Idaho/Oregon/Washington, it is rumored that there are still white sturgeon pushing 12 feet in length.  I have personally seen fish approaching nine feet, and they are as amazing as you would expect for a fish weighing well over 300 pounds.

I always described catching my first sturgeon, which was about five feet long, as a religious experience.  Why  religious?  Because the first time you feel a good one, you are in awe of the power of the fish.  I have hooked, landed, and lost many big rainbow trout.  Yes, they are fun.  Yes, they are fast and they jump and they run and they thrash about, but sturgeon pull really, really hard.  When a big sturgeon wants to run, you might have to follow him, in a boat.  My pop once had a big sturgeon tow our raft upstream in a river, with three adults in the boat.  Sturgeon are also beautiful.  Their sides are lined with scutes like plates of armor and their their backs have bony spikes.  Their tail has the same shape as a shark, and their big fins are perfectly proportioned to their elongated and muscular bodies.  They look (and are) simply prehistoric.  The best part, however is the feeling of the fish from their smooth snout covered in beautifully intricate sensory organs to their leathery fins.

In short sturgeon are just really cool animals, and you have to catch one to experience just how cool they are.  It is really fun to release a big one, knowing that your grandfather could have caught that fish when he was a young man.  It is fun to catch a little one, knowing your granddaughter might catch that fish some day as a grown woman.

Enjoy this video of my pop landing a five footer on a recent outing.  Sorry about the wayward finger halfway through... videography is only a hobby.

Meeting a Mountain Lion (on His Terms)

I should be turkey hunting right now, or at least on my way up the mountain.  It is 0446 and my alarm went off a little over three quarters of an hour ago so that I could get up, pull on my camouflage, check my pack for all my gear, drive to a turkey spot, hike through pine forests, call for strutting toms, and, hopefully, come home with the largest upland game bird in North America.  That is what I should be doing, but instead I am sitting here, processing what happened on my last turkey hunt two days ago.

I have never been afraid to hunt, fish, or hike alone.  Solitude and self reliance are important to me.  Don't get me wrong, I am a social animal.  I enjoy recreating in places I love with people I love.  Many times, there just isn't a hunting partner available to go with me.  Folks have busy lives and other commitments, even to other hunting partners.  Often, I hunt alone out of necessity, but I don't shy from the opportunity - I relish it.  My mind wanders both broadly and with depth when I hunt alone, but I also find moments when I am completely focused.  Whether I wander or focus, the result is cathartic.  I get to purge my busy brain, decompress from sudden and unexpected adulthood, and hope to get to that state my Pop and I have always referred to as "predator mode."

Predator mode is that subliminal moment when a hunter is 100% completely focused on his or her quarry.  In most successful, do it yourself, hunts, there is a time when everything converges; where hunter and hunted are in the same place in the space-time continuum, the hunted is unaware or off guard, and the hunter is completely focused on the hard conclusion.  Senses heighten and heart rate increases, but if you are in predator mode, the adrenaline doesn't lead to jitters, or buck fever, or panic.  For a moment, it makes you primal and deadly.

I didn't expect I would ever experience prey mode, on the receiving end of predator mode.  I didn't think I would be the sole fixation of what is likely North America's most fixated predator.  Puma, Panther, Catamount, Cougar, Mountain Lion.  No matter how you say his name, he is a frightening creature, at least when he has you on his terms.  Mountain lions are reclusive, silent, powerful, athletic, and absolutely majestic.  Now I know how it feels to be in his sights, caught unaware, or at least off guard.

I was hunting turkeys in fresh snow.  It had already been an eventful morning, but not on the turkey front.  I had hiked a couple of miles for a couple hours with no responses to my calls, but the morning was crisp and bright, and it felt good to be hunting while most of the Pacific Time Zone was barely filling their coffee pots.  Earlier, I had a close encounter with a great grey owl.  He watched me with suspicion, rotating his head further than seeems natural as I walked around and under the snag on which he was perched.  Naturally, I already considered the outing a success.  It isn't every day you get to see a great grey owl.   With only fifteen more minutes hiking to do, I heard a gobble in response to a yelping call.  That was why I was out there, for the hunt, and I thought "responsive toms are worth a few hours of vacation time."

I could hear three distinctive gobbles across a meadow.  My goal was to get within a 100 yards or less of the birds, and entice them into shotgun range with the calls of a willing mate.  Call, locate, hike, set up for a shot.  I repeated this several times, but the birds kept moving away from me, apparently not convinced my calls were truly those of a willing partner.  Finally, the gobbles drifted out of earshot.  I knew the birds had crossed above me, moving left to right, and I knew with fresh snow, I could follow them with more purpose and greater direction.  I trailed them for several hundred yards, through thickets and snow banks, around a curving ridge to the edge of a ravine.  That is when I got them calling again.  I thought they might still be in the bottom of the little drainage.  They sounded close.  I could hear clucking and putting and other turkey noises in addition to the volleys of excited gobbles.  This is when turkey hunting gets really fun..

Still, I couldn't get a bird to show himself.  I carefully crept to the edge of the ravine, which was littered with dead fall and noisy branches.  I could still hear the birds, but I then knew they weren't in the ravine after all,  rather they were calling from the bench on the other side.  I crouched and crept to a tree ten yards below the edge of the bench.  I knew this would be a tough spot to bring the birds in, with such a severe blind spot, but I couldn't go further without risking exposure.  Now the birds were hot, instantly responding to each of my calls, but still, they were hung up.  The blind spot made them wary.  With my head low, I moved across the face of the ravine to another tree twenty yards away hoping to change the game just a little.  I settled in with my back to a tree and started to call again.

That is when I heard a noise of soft movement behind me and over my right shoulder, from a small thicket of dog hair timber.  My first thought was "excellent there is another tom coming in."  I raised my right hand to cup my mouth to slightly muffle the sound of my diaphragm call.  I let out a burst of yelps, the toms let out a burst of gobbles, and I heard a burst of movement from behind my right shoulder.  I actually froze at that moment.  In the split second, I thought I was going to see a sex-crazed tom turkey run right past me.  The only question was whether I would be able to swing my shotgun on him without him noticing.  The gun was laying on my lap, muzzle pointed to my left, where I expected the other toms to come into the open.  I was one convergence away from predator mode.  I turned nothing to the right but my gaze, and as I did, a primal fear welled out of my core when I saw the lion make the sharp turn around my tree with vicious speed.  My hand was still at my mouth from calling, so my arm was already in a defensive position.  The lion's right paw swatted me hard in the chest, and I pushed away from his chest with my raised arm and I screamed.  I didn't notice until I felt a bruise later on, but the cat must have hit me hard on the right shoulder as well.  I fell on my side and he reared back.  He must have been startled by my scream.  Turkeys don't make that kind of noise.  Turkeys don't weigh 235 pounds and they probably don't fight back all that well.  I guess he must have been startled by that too.  For a second the cat stood there just a few feet from me.  His tail was long and it was crooked at a couple of places.  His fur was thick and healthy, but it looked wet or at least oiled, not like the clean tanned pelts successful hunters hang on their walls.  I yelled again, "holy sh#t!," and the cat hesitated then retreated back to the thicket, looking confused.  I jumped up to face him, this time with my shotgun ready.  He stood in the thicket, only ten or fifteen yards below me.  He wasn't a huge cat, but he was an adult.  His length was remarkable, with that iconic long tail flicking the same way our house cat's tail does when he is agitated.  Lions can look confused and disdainful especially when an easy meal of nesting hen turkey turns out to be much more than he bargained for.

The cat slinked away, but my rush didn't go with him.  Those three silly toms gobbled again above me, apparently not dissuaded too much by the commotion below them.  I marched over the hill, thinking maybe there was still some luck in my bank.  Thirty plus yards away, a tom turkey popped his head up.  I aimed and fired, but my aim wasn't true.  Everything that day had converged in the space time continuum, except the turkey's head and the lead from my shotgun.  I suppose not being lion food was enough luck for the day.

In hindsight, the speed of the attack was what was truly frightening.  It wasn't the silence... I knew something was there.  It was the speed.  I was armed, but once I knew it was a threat, not quarry, there was zero chance of defending myself.  Even a sidearm would have been useless, other than for a potshot through the trees as the cat slinked away.  In the high of the adrenaline rush, I didn't feel scared, but truly exhilarated.  I had just counted coup on one of the most formidable predators in North America.  I checked for bites and scratches, but couldn't find much.  My chest was a little sore, and I had an almost indiscernible laceration on my right nipple.  I was lucky that biting wasn't the first thing that lion did to dispatch his poultry dinner.

Now, for the first time in my life, I woke up and thought twice about hunting alone.  After processing for a couple of days, I know now that was my most frightening moment, and I might need the buddy system when I go back to the woods.  I will hunt alone again and I will do it soon.  It is too important for me to have that solitude to let a scary kitty cat get under my skin.  I think I will probably look over my shoulder a little more now.  I know what it feels like to touch the wildest of wild, and walk away unscathed.  I would rather foul up a turkey hunt than meet another mountain lion on his terms.

The Mountain Man Recipe Projects

HHMM needs a project.  The way I figure it, since this blog is about hunting, fishing, gardening, and food, I might as well make the project about all of those things at once.  Really, it will be a series of projects, with each one aimed at gathering, growing, or concocting one of the important ingredients, then writing a story about it.  How awesome will it be to sometime in the near future enjoy a meal flavored not only by the delicious meats, seasonings, and vegetables, but also by the tales of a day or days spent afield gathering those ingredients?

There are several cuisines that lend themselves well to a project such as this one.  The cuisines have to lend themselves well to wild versus domestic meats, or they have to regularly showcase such meats.  Cajun cuisine is perhaps the genre that first comes to mind.  I can't tell you how many times that I heard "well, you can cook it up in a gumbo" when the misfits of the game meat world - coot, squirrel, jackrabbit - were discussed.  If those misfits are accepted, even welcomed, in Cajun cuisine, then any game will be at home.

Gumbo is perhaps the most iconic of all Cajun dishes, and gumbo will be the my gastronomical muse for this adventure.  Sometime in the coming months, I will make an epic gumbo that will be rich, savory, spicy, and hearty (at least that is the plan).  In this gumbo, I will have crayfish, which I will harvest from my local waters.  The dish will also have andouille sausage, which I will mix, stuff, and smoke.  Perhaps if I am lucky, the sausage will be made from the meat of the bear I hope to harvest during this spring season.  The gumbo will have tomatoes, bell peppers, garlic, and onions, hopefully all of which will come from our garden this year.  Here is the recipe I plan to use (modified from the Creole Crab Gumbo in this book):

1/2 cup sliced onion*
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 pound wild game fish fillets*
1 pound cooked crayfish tails*
1 pound smoked andouille sausage*
1 pound okra, cut up*
5 cups canned tomatoes*
1 cup diced green pepper*
2 garlic cloves, crushed*
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons salt
Black pepper to taste
2 cups brown game stock*

The starred ingredients above are ones I ought to be able to acquire or grow on my own.  The way I figure it, even if I fail to produce one of these ingredients on my own, and I have to resort to acquisition of foodstuffs from alternative sources, at least I will have a story.  I will publish each one of those stories as a blog post.  It should be fun...

The Best Cider

Brewed. Blended. Bottled....

I finally put this cider to bed this weekend... it was a long road for this batch, very unlike the process I describe in http://hairyhippymountainman.blogspot.com/2013/01/easy-cider.html.  Oddly enough, a portion of the cider started as a batch of "Easy Cider" from a local orchard that must not have had the proper balance of juices.  It started as my first failure in the cider making business.  The batch in question was almost undrinkable - much too tart and without any balance.  Emily and I aged the cider for months in a glass carboy, without any marked improvement in the flavor.  We gave up and bottled the stuff in every growler we had sitting around the house, figuring we would use this bulk beverage for something down the road.  

As time went on, we tried a nip of the stuff here and there, and after a year or so since it was brewed, the cider started to mellow, get drinkable, and almost good, but it was still a little too much on the tart side to be called good.  Around the same time, we took a trip to a you-press cider operation (http://www.bishop-orchard.com/).  The must from this adventure went into primary fermentation with the best fragrance of any cider I had brewed.  Unfortunately, that is all that came out of the fermenter... fragrance .. the juice was relatively flavorless.  So now I had two poor ciders on my hands, and both were poor because they were too strong in one component of tasty cider.  So I mixed 'em.  Two gallons of the tart stuff and four gallons of the fragrant stuff.

I had read about the virtues of blended ciders, but this has been my only firsthand experience making one, and I couldn't be more stoked about the result.  The clear lesson is this: if you ever have a cider that doesn't come out quite right... save it.  For one, flavors will mellow with time.  Second, you never know when a strongly flavored cider in the cellar will balance well with a future boo-boo.

Salmon River Steelhead

I must be getting older, because never before had my hand been numb from just a couple of days of hard fishing.  The skin on my right thumb and forefinger was chapped and cracked, and the cracks had filled with the oil and grime that is an inevitability of days afield in the mountains in early spring.  The same grime filled the crevices and spaces of the cork handle on my favorite flyrod, though those deposits are the result of many trips and days and hours of chucking line laden with lead and weighted flies.  Many people go fishing to relax, but I had only just reached my zen, after two and a half days with no steelhead.  I had hooked a couple whitefish, validating that I hadn't forgotten how to drift a nymph and detect a strike, validating I wasn't a worthless fisherman.  The steelheading had been so slow, I was ready to try anything.  Normally we drift big black stonefly nymphs trailed by an egg pattern for these late season fish, but I decided to try a mix of swinging and drifting a gaudy purple articulated fly one of my technicians had tied up for me.  Swing, dead drift, swing, dead drift, swing... nothing, but the day was bright and clear, the air smelled like spring, and I was standing in the Salmon River with my Pop, so I was content.  Maybe that is what the river gods needed... my contentment... because that is when my indicator stopped and slipped beneath the surface in the way that only happens when a fish strikes the fly.

I set the hook hard: not the way you do when you are frustrated and anxious about the fishing, but rather the way you do when you know it is "fish on."  The way the fish came with the fly as I set the hook, I was convinced I had hooked another whitefish, and I declared such to Pop, who was re-rigging his gear on the bank behind me.  Almost immediately, the fish pulled harder, and I saw its bright red stripe.  "No! It's a steelhead!," I declared.  The fight was on, but the battle was short lived.  Spring steelhead like that one have already had a long journey - some 850 miles from the ocean, and the fish hadn't fed in several months.  The energy stores it had been surviving on had almost been depleted, and there wasn't much left in the tank for epic battles with flyfisherman.  The hen, on the small size for a steelhead at 23 inches, had an adipose clip, which meant she was born in a hatchery and was destined for a grill or smoker.  I dispatched the fish and cut her gills. The thick red blood flowed down a rock at stream's edge and diffused and disappeared into the flow of the river.  I imagine that blood was a microcosm of the diffusion of the waters of this river as it moves toward the ocean, first mixing with the major forks of the Salmon River, then the Snake, then almost washed away in the Columbia.

One of the other members of our fishing party, Jim, had come downstream to watch the battle, and he offered me a congratulatory cigar.  Jim and I sat on the bank in the Salmon Country sun watching the swirls of pungent smoke drift downstream, while Pop gave it one last try.  This wasn't my first steelhead, or the biggest.  It was certainly the hardest-earned fish of my life, but that sense of relaxation I had after a great trip with great friends in beautiful country made me feel like I hadn't worked all that hard for it in the end.

A hard-won steelie and a contented angler.

Enjoying the finer points of a boys' fishing trip with Paul.

Pop soaking up some spring sunshine in some of the finest country in the world.