We will escape the suburbs of Los Angeles, traverse the coastal mountains and San Andreas fault. Descend into the hot Mojave desert, not far from where the Space Shuttle landed on the lakebed. Ahead of that we'll pass through tilted geology, and begin to hit a higher desert region. And then, when the fairly recent lava flows appear dark and craggy, and I begin to wax far too waxily, we will enter the long Owens Valley. Wax off, We are going fishing, dammit. We are hitting the best waters, doing all our cooking (Marcelo is an Argentinian sort of fellow and he loves to cook), avoiding public places like restaurants and we will thoroughly enjoy our selfish selves, leaving all worldly cares three hundreds miles behind us.
My sole problem with the boy is that he's a graphitist. He's not much of a gear guy. I clean his lines, check for sand in his reels (they're often dry, not a spec of lube in them), and he fishes other people's flies, which I never do. I am weird, I don't feel right if I catch a fish on somebody's fly. But he can fish. And too much: he refused to come in from the Madison when the wind turned into a hurricane, he developed blisters on his rod hand. He forgot to drink water at elevation, and wound up with a migraine to fell Godzilla, and was rushed into emergency. He's had a stent placed. Told him, "We're fishing slow, dude, we're taking breaks."
But he does know a good rod, give him that. He fishes classic Scotts and Sages, and his favorite small stream rod is one of those great LLs, a 279, very sweet on the small waters we love.
I will be taking up a lot of bamboo and St. Georges and Sunbeams: 8' Reams, 7 1/2' Perfectionist, 7.5 Brandin splicer, 7 1/2' Goodwin, 6 1/2' Bacon-Guba Payne 96. A report of the proceedings to come later.
Here we are fishing through an off-road zone.
