Our first morning, Joyce, Mikey, and myself headed up the Middle Fork. I tried fly fishing, but the water was just too high and rough. Joyce caught the first fish, a small native rainbow, on a night crawler. We picked up two more (and released them) just below a diversion dam, under a swinging bridge. We worked our way upstream for a mile or so, and returned via a trail that wound through the lovely spring woodland. Everywhere, wildflowers covered the ground, in lovely shades of purple, pink, red, white, orange, and yellow. Buckeye trees hanging in the trail sported new green, tropical-looking leaves.

In the evening I went up Marble Fork, a smaller stream, and hooked 5 trout on spinners. Using barbless hooks, I landed two and lost three. I discovered a complex diversion structure and saw a trout deep in the artificial ditch, which was overhung with wildflowers.

April 1, 2001. The next day dawned warm and sunny, and the three of us headed up Marble Fork. The stream was running high and rising with the melting snow. After trying a few different lures, I finally started getting some action on my old standby, the black Panther Martin spinner. My first fish was a sleek, colorful wild rainbow, thin from his winter fast, but full of fight, and ready to go free as I released him back into the cold rushing water.

Hiking upstream was rough. The stream bed was overflowing with clear, foaming snowmelt, and the canyon walls were steep and rocky, and infested with thickets of poison oak, the shiny leaves just unfolding and juicy with their notoriously toxic sap. Eventually, Joyce and Mikey turned back, leaving me to my devices (or should I say, vices?).

I climbed up and up, over huge boulders, crawling along narrow ledges above the roaring river, and wading the icy shallows, in search of the elusive wild rainbow trout. Finally I came to an impassable place where the canyon walls met the water’s edge, and my only option was a brushy hillside think with poison oak, so I turned back toward camp.

By day’s end, I had landed about a half-dozen fish, and lost about a half-dozen more, on black spinners. Back at the diversion ditch, where I knew there were fish lurking, I set up my fly rig and tried floating a dry fly above the waiting trout. It looked sooooo good: slick deep water, with flowers and grass dangling in it, even a hopper or two in evidence. But alas, I succeeded in only spooking the fish and entangling my fly line in the streamside bushes.

Some day, I may be able to call myself a fly fisherman, but not yet... not yet.