August 11, 2009

Trout between the Tree Trunks

Up into the Sangres today to beat the heat. No mushrooms in sight--I do think the Wets are the place for mushrooms.

But the trout were there in a small creek that flows through a real jungle, where you crawl out on old silvered tree trunks cut by long-gone beavers to dap a brushy dry fly into three feet of flowing stream that is exposed between the tree trunks.

No room to play a fish, obviously -- you "horse" it out, or it breaks off. Both happened.

At one point, realizing that I could only see a few feet in any direction, I was momentarily glad that there are no grizzly bears hereabouts. On the other hand, if there were, I would wear my bear spray cannister on my hip and fish anyway. Carefully.

Meanwhile, Colorado newspapers are having a time with the case of the late Donna Munson, whom it appears was killed by one of the bears that she fed all the time -- in defiance of the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Was her maternal instinct in overdrive? ("These animals need me!") Was she advertising that she was more in tune with wild critters than is the average Coloradan? Was she another "animal hoarder" of the type Mary Scriver encountered in her former job?

Like Timothy Treadwell, she inadvertently caused the death of two bears. That seems to be what such people do.

1 comment:

mdmnm said...

Chas-
Novices, we've had a hard time finding much in the way of mushrooms down in NM. A couple of oysters and some Aspen boletes (which we haven't tried) is all.

That's one of my favorite types of trout fishing. Those small stream trout are amazingly fast to hit and then reject a fly!