The good ole' days

    While fishing the East Walker river this last weekend, on a mild 67* day in late January, i found myself thinking back to what feels like a lifetime ago.... The first time i arrived at this beautiful river in Nevada's back country.
   
     It was in November 2011, on a sunny mid fall day, when my brother and i first turned onto HWY 338, in remote Smith Valley, and headed toward the East Walker river. I remember how anxious we were, excited, watching this new country fly by us, as we sped down the road. You see, we had never really fished anywhere besides the Truckee river, and Pyramid lake, and a small valley in Plumas county. Our fishing world was very small, we had only recently taken up fly fishing ( like 2 weeks ago recently) and had only been seriously fishing for a year. We had spent that year heavily fishing the Truckee river, and enjoying the prolific water of the 2010-11 snow-pack. We lived in a small universe, that was now expanding. We we novices, in a huge world. We had only just started practicing catch and release, and still had a long way to go to perfect our handling skills. So much promise lay ahead though, down this new road, HWY 338.

    As we arrived, we sat in awe at the base of the Sweet-water mountains, starring out over the Rosachi ranch valley, orange and yellows, surrounded by brown and blue mountains. It was a whole new world, a new fishing universe lay before our feet. That first trip, we chose to fish right below the Elbow. As we maneuvered my 05' Chevy Cobalt down the dirt road, across the Rosachi ranch, we starred in awe at this new river. It was so much smaller than our Truckee, so much more overgrown, so different all together!
  
      We arrived around 12, and got our gear together. Back then, our "gear" was a fishing pole, and small tackle box that fight in our pocket. That was it, light, simple, easy. I was still using my regular spin cast reel, with a small red/white daredevil lure. Brett however, was bold, and choose to use his new fly rod, which we had picked up at a garage sale. We literally knew nothing about fly fishing, about nymphs, or tippet, or leader, or shit. Like, we knew nothing!! I remember though, for some reason, he choose to use a red copper john. Maybe because its the most common, and popular nymph around, but it did go his way. We also had no idea what "wadding" was either, but we were about to learn! We had always just fished from shore, never gotten in the water. The only time we got wet, was falling in, or netting a real monster fish. Well, on that 60* November day, we where about to learn what wadding was, and what wearing jeans wadding meant!
  
       The East walker was, and is Extremely overgrown! That was totally new to us back then, the Truckee has a lot of open bank, but finding open bank on the East walker is like finding..... well, its tough! Finally, we just pushed through the thick brush, and dove into the icy water. it was a long 2 hours of fishing, but we managed several small rainbows. He caught a few on his fly, me a few on my lures. I'll never know what ultimately brought us back to that amazing river. It was shallow, like nothing we had fished, tough to fish, and the river was only giving small 10" rainbows. Plus, its a 2.5 hour drive. But something did hook us, and we came back ( with waders next time!)

     That was the day our fishing Universe expanded, and kicked of some of the greatest fishing years of my life. We began exploring every creek, river, and lake withing 120 miles of Reno. It led us to some of the most breath taking places on earth. To some of the biggest fish we had ever seen, and created some of the greatest memories we will ever have. It touched off an arms race of finding every Lil stretch of river or creek that was fish-able, untouched by our feet. We spent all week researching new locations, online looking at videos, and maps, and pictures, trying to decipher where was good an bad. We felt like true explorers, venturing into untouched wilderness in search of the next trophy trout. This was truly the golden time, the time I look back on so fondly. It seemed like it would never end.

     But it did. Life changed us both, and we have since drifted apart. And while I still fish just as hard, and just as much as I ever did before, our Universe has stopped expanding. I have now been to every little creek and lake in our region. And while there are still some unexplored regions high up in the sierra, the magic is gone. Don't get me wrong, I still love to fish, heck, I cant wait to be on the East walker river this coming weekend. Just, its different now, all those places that were once new, shinny, and unexplored, are now places Ive been to so many times, I know them like the back of my hand. I know what to expect around every bend. 

     I do have some new places to explore this year, some new lakes and rivers I want to fish for the first time. But to give you an idea of what i mean, in 2012, I must have tried over 60 different new lakes, rivers, and creeks. In 2013, it was probably around 40 new places, with many still fresh. In 2014, I only tried about 15 new places, and only 10-15 on my list this year.
    
       After a bit of reflection, after writing this article, I realize what i need to do this year, and that is bring the magic back, find new places, new stretches of untouched land in this fishing universe of mine, make this year a year I wont forget, and renew my soul in the lake and streams I haven't yet touched!