Don't get me wrong, I love the long rod too, and very much enjoy taking clients on fly trips, but there's a quite a population of spin-anglers out there, and some of them are looking for guided trips as well. That's part of the reason Victor agreed to work with me. In the past, he would have offered them equipment rentals, sold them some lures, and directed them to the local spin-fishing hotspots, but now he can offer them a day on the water with 'Scruffy Mark'.

And that's just what he did. He told me that Maria Collins and her nine-year-old nephew Mike McDonnell would meet me at the shop at 7:30 the next morning, and that while he informed them I would be taking them spin-fishing on the West Carson River, I would also be bringing along my fly rod to let them try that method as well. Oh boy, I thought, time to make it happen. I had sold the idea that I could do it all; lakes, rivers, spin, fly, whatever the client wanted. Me and my big mouth.

So I stayed up too late the night before, setting up tackle for every conceivable situation, then woke up much earlier then necessary and drank too much coffee to compensate. None of this helped my state of mind, and my stomach churned as I made the short drive from my house to the fly shop on Lake Tahoe Boulevard. I was early, and so were my clients, who pulled in to the parking lot moments later in a shiny new Mercedes SUV. Happy faces and waving hands visible through the windows caught me off guard, and as the doors opened, smiles and warm greetings further confused me as I approached the vehicle. These were not the dour, demanding rich folks I had pictured; they were, well...nice! And genuinely so. Maria and her nephew Mike were accompanied by Mike's mother and grandmother, who had come to drop them off and see the kind of person to whom they had entrusted their loved ones.

"Mike is so excited, he's never been river fishing before and he's talked about nothing else since last night." Maria told me. They opened the hatchback of their vehicle to show me the rods they brought. One had a reel suitable for ocean surfcasting, one had a closed-face spincast reel, which I can't stand, but one was a new, medium-light graphite rod and small spinning reel freshly loaded with light line, four or six pound test.

"We'll just take that one," I decided. "I have plenty of others in my truck set up for trout fishing." In fact I had 4 spinning rigs and a fly rod. I added Mike's rod to the pile, and after we arranged a pick up time with his mother, we were off. As I told them a little about the day's plan and what to expect on the water, Maria commented-

"Oh, don't worry, we just want to get out in a pretty area and enjoy the outdoors..." (that's a relief, I thought) "...as long as we catch a few trout for the barbecue!" She was smiling as if joking, but the look in her eyes was quite serious. The challenge was on.

Now, let me state clearly at this point that Tahoe Fly Fishing Outfitters has always emphasized catch-and-release fishing with barbless hooks, and I also believe strongly in this ethic. I prefer to offer these trips as well, and many of the waters I fish have strict regulations that preclude the use of bait or the keeping of fish anyway. At the same time, I also respect and relate to the ancient desire to harvest the fruits of the earth; to fish for the reason humans started fishing in the first place. Ironically, one of the few places where I feel comfortable taking clients for this type of fishing is the West Carson River, where they can indulge their primitive impulses not by harvesting wild trout, but by plucking the fruits of the hatchery truck. This river is very heavily stocked by the DFG and Alpine County, with many more fish put in than the river can actually support. Bridges are the main stocking points, and the bridge pool at the upstream end of Hope Valley is where we stopped. At eight a.m. on July third, there were already good numbers of holiday anglers working the river at Picketts Junction and walking the cutbanks of the river's meadow section, but there was only one other vehicle parked near the area we picked, and its owner was nowhere in sight.

I took two spinning rods, the fly rod, and a backpack with tackle, then led my clients down to the pool upstream of the highway bridge. I rigged the spinning rods with terminal tackle- a short fluorocarbon leader, two small splitshot, and a #12 baitholder hook for each. I baited Maria's hook with salmon eggs, and on Mike's impaled a half-nightcrawler. As I coached Mike on how to cast in the main section of the pool, I looked upstream to see Maria already casting and drifting fluidly in the riffles at the pool's head. Within minutes she had a fish on, and quickly brought it in for me to net. I complimented her on her skill, and she told me that she used to fish quite a bit with her father when she was younger. It showed. She hooked two more in short order, and since all the fish were freshly stocked rainbow trout, I readily granted her request to provide fish for a barbecue, and put them on a stringer. Now it was Mike's turn- as he became more familiar with the feel of his rod and made better casts, he began to hook up as well. At first he would have the fish on only briefly before losing them, but when I adjusted his reel's drag and coached him on setting the hook and keeping the rod tip up, he was soon sliding fish up onto the bank faster than I could bring the net.

Some of these bait-caught fish were hooked in the mouth and could be released, but enough swallowed our offerings that despite pinched-down barbs, they had to be kept. Maria wisely decided at that point to try a small, barbless Panther Martin spinner. I explained how to cast the 1/16 ounce metal lure across the current, swing it downstream just fast enough to spin the inline blade, and lift-and-drop it through slack water. She quickly nailed the technique, and then nailed two more rainbows, both of which were easily released. Meanwhile, Mike was continuing to hook fish on worms, and I was quite busy running back and forth between my two happy clients, netting fish, rebaiting Mike's hook and untangling the occasional bird's nest of line.

Next, Maria asked if I would set her up on the fly rod. As if I don't have enough going on, I thought. I had begun to think that they were so busy and so happy with their spin fishing experience that I would not have to teach them fly fishing as well. I had the fly shop's owner to thank for promising them that I would be happy to do so, and of course it was to be expected. He's always looking to bring another wayward sheep into the fold, to turn a bait-dunker on to the thrill of taking fish on the fly.

I explained to her what she would be using and why. The St. Croix rod had floating line, a nine-foot, tapered leader, and two feet of 3X fluorocarbon tippet. I had attached a bright orange styrofoam strike indicator several feet up the leader, and pinched a small lead splitshot to the tippet above one of my favorite West Carson flies, my own hand-tied chartreuse Marabou Caddis Larvae, a nymph that imitates one of the common insects found here. She told me that she had pictured long casts with graceful loops like she's seen in movies, and was surprised by the shortline-nymphing method I showed her. This is a very easy technique to pick up, yet it can be refined endlessly as an angler advances in skill and experience, and is absolutely deadly on freestone rivers like the east and west forks of the Carson. "Just feed a little line out and let the current take it downstream," I told her, "then pop the whole rig upstream, hold your rod high to keep your line and leader off the water, follow the drift back downstream with your rod tip, and follow the indicator with your eyes. If it twitches, goes under, or acts suspicious in any way, strike!"

I've given these same instructions to many people who then set the hook for hours on every bottom bump and spot of river turbulence as telegraphed to the indicator, without ever hooking a fish, but Maria was a natural, and after perhaps ten flawless casts she hooked the biggest fish of the day. I had just left her side to check on her nephew when I heard her holler and looked upstream to see the rod doubled over and a fish close to 20 inches long thrashing in the current! "What do I do? What do I do?" she shrieked as she tried to drag the fish onto the bank the way she had with the smaller ones she'd hooked on spinning gear. As I ran to her with the net, I realized that I had never really explained what to do if you actually hook a fish. For the record, dear fly fishing readers, strip the small ones in by hand, let the big ones take up the slack or wind it in yourself then fight them on the reel, and pray to God that you made the right decision as to the fish's size.

There wasn't time for such a lecture, though, before the trout came unbuttoned. Some people might be upset at such a loss, but she simply looked at me with the fire of a true convert in her eyes, commented, "Wow, that was a good one!" then went back to fishing. She continued using the fly rod for the rest of our trip, catching and releasing two more fish, a rainbow and a Lahontan cutthroat. As other anglers arrived to try "our" spot, we hiked upstream a few hundred yards and fished some inviting pockets and runs, with Mike hooking and releasing a few more small yet beautifully marked Lahontans.

It was near noon at that point, and as we returned to the productive bridge pool, the bright sun revealed numerous rainbows finning and circling slowly in the depths. Some were in the two to three pound class, and while Maria again drifted the Marabou Caddis nymph at the head of the pool, I helped Mike to sight-fish and throw nightcrawlers in front of visible trout. He tangled momentarily with some of the bigger ones, but couldn't keep them on. He brought two more smaller fish to my net though, catching himself a five-fish limit. With Maria's three, they had a total of eight trout for the barbecue, with nearly as many released and even more hooked and lost.

Mike's aunt checked her watch and announced that it was time to go, but he had been bitten hard by the fishing bug, and had a difficult time accepting that catching a limit meant he should stop fishing. The trout went on ice in my cooler, and on the 22 mile drive back to South Lake Tahoe, we talked and laughed like old friends, with Maria vowing to call the shop and book another trip with me next time she visited from her home in Marin County, perhaps for a catch-and-release fly fishing trip.

If you'd like to introduce a kid to river fishing, or are ready to step up to catching and releasing trout on the fly, Call Tahoe Fly Fishing Outfitters at (530) 541-8208, or Email Mark for information.

Until next time, remember, never stand in a canoe!
Mark Wiza
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