Fins and Fur

The first time I hiked up this trail in search of small game and trout was nearly 40 years ago.  It wasn’t even wilderness back then.  I had a single shot Stevens .410 shotgun on my shoulder, an Eagle Claw Trailmaster rod in my pack, and two cans of Vienna sausages for lunch, with visions of squirrels, grouse, snowshoe hares, and brook trout spinning around my head.  Things really haven’t changed all that much.  Old habits die hard.

This year marked the sixth annual weekend that my group of friends gather for an extended backpack weekend devoted to small game hunting and fly fishing in remote Colorado wilderness.  It’s especially rewarding because it’s the very same country I’ve been hunting, fishing, and backpacking in nearly all my life.  It’s my home away from home, my stomping grounds.

We always take this trip the first full weekend of October.  It’s a week after the close of big game archery season and a week before the beginning of the first combined rifle big game season.  It also coincides most years with the full color of the changing aspens.  The days are warm and the nights are crisp.  It’s perfect.

The Stomping Grounds, downtown Noneofyourdamnbusiness, Colorado!

The bottom third of the hike always provides the best pine squirrel hunting, and this trip was no exception.  We had barking squirrels just a half-mile up the trail, squirrels zipping across the trail ahead of us, squirrels running up tree trunks…squirrels everywhere!

The first pine squirrel of the trip!

I had recently gotten a new handmade squirrel call from Larry Gresser at Prairie Game Calls in Channahon, Illinois.  Larry makes some amazing squirrel calls, and I my new call got some barks.  However, pine squirrels will bark at just about anything, including human voices, dogs, thrown rocks, and the report from a .22 rifle.  Although the Prairie call produces some outstanding barks, the “chrrrr” of the pine squirrel is impossible to produce with any call I’ve found.  No other tree squirrel in North America barks like this.  So, my quest to find the perfect pine squirrel call continues!

My squirrel call from Prairie Game Calls.  Mine is made out
of a beautiful piece of Asian satinwood.

I carried my new Ruger stainless 10/22 Takedown, topped with a Leupold VX-1 2-7X28 Rimfire scope, in Warne QD rings on a Leupold Rifleman base.  What I had hoped would be the perfect backcountry small game rifle soon proved itself, and continued to do so all weekend, taking squirrels and snowshoe hares out to nearly 40 yards.  I dialed the scope in at 4X and left it there, and it worked great.  At a loaded weight of 5 pounds, six ounces, this rifle was easy to carry, made even easier because I had it cradled in a Kifaru Gunbearer while I was hiking.

A very capable critter-getter, my Ruger stainless 10/22 Takedown.

Once we hiked through the squirrel hotspot, we continued up to our hidden basecamp, nearly five miles from the trailhead, at an elevation of eleven thousand feet.  My good friend, Patrick Smith (founder of Mountainsmith, and owner of Kifaru, International) had brought his 12-man tipi, and we had distributed the shelter, poles, and pegs amongst ourselves at the trailhead, each man helping with the load.  Carrying a 12-man tipi may sound heavy, but its ultralight paraglider fabric makes it totally man-carryable.  Along with the tipi, we also carried in an ultralight titanium wood stove, another of Patrick’s ingenious designs.

A Kifaru 12-man tipi and titanium collapsible wood stove.  Our backcountry palace!

Speaking of ingenious designs, Patrick also hauled in a small rice cooker, which works wonderfully well as a tiny backcountry pressure cooker for small game meat.  One complaint that always comes up is how tough squirrel and rabbit meat can be when grilled over coals on an open fire, whether on a spit or on a grill.  The pressure cooker totally eliminates that problem, and after 40 minutes in the pressure cooker, the meat from the squirrels and snowshoe hares literally fell off the bone!  We were very appreciative of the testing that Patrick had done with this method of cooking small game meat, and that he had hauled this treasure in on his back!

Snowline Technical Mountain Gear pressure cooker.  Weight:  1 lb., 13 oz.

Halved and quartered pine squirrels, ready for pressure cooking.

The pressure cooker and the stew, cooking on the Kifaru wood stove.

A pile of falling-off-the-bone tender squirrel meat!

Our evening meal the first night consisted of the meat cooked in the pressure cooker and an assortment of fresh vegetables that I had brought in.  While the meat cooked, the onions, garlic, red and yellow peppers, zucchini squash, and baby potatoes simmered in chicken stock in another pot.  Both pots fit perfectly on top of the Kifaru titanium wood stove.  Once done, all of this was combined into a stew that I dubbed “Rodent Medley”.  To say it was delicious is an understatement!

The fresh veggies I hauled in my backpack.  Baby potatoes, peppers,
zucchini squash, and mushrooms.

Rodent Medley!  A backcountry epicurean delight!

Late the first night I awakened to the sound of snow sifting down the fabric of the ultralight tarp I was sleeping under.  Rising the next morning to fresh tracking snow, I was able to put the stalk on a nice snowshoe hare, which became food for the second night’s dinner.

A snowshoe hare, taken in fresh tracking snow.

The second day of our trip was devoted to fly fishing, more specifically to tenkara.  Several of us had brought our tenkara rods and a few simple flies, and we knew from past experience that the creek nearby was home to lots of 7-9” brook trout.  With a complete tenkara fishing kit weighing less than five ounces, the ability to take it anywhere you go in the backcountry  makes this a great way to feed yourself in the wilderness.   I arrived back at camp late in the afternoon on the second day with four trout to share.  Nearly everyone else had caught a few as well.  The “surf” in our “surf ‘n turf” meal was secured!  We ate the trout as an appetizer, and dined once again on Rodent Medley stew.   I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a meal more!

Grilling brook trout on the coals.

My tenkara rod and my .22 rifle.  Making meat in the backcountry!

Later, after dark on the second night, we were pounded with rain, graupel, hail, and wind.  It’s a good feeling, snug and warm in a down bag, inside a bombproof shelter, listening to heavy weather drum against the tarp while lightning bounces off nearby ridges.  I can really sleep well after a storm like that.

Late the last morning we pried ourselves from our campsite and started our hike back down.  It always amazes me how easy this hike is going out and how difficult it can be going in.  You really can’t appreciate it until you hike downhill for five miles going out.  After easing off our packs at the trailhead, shaking hands, and saying goodbye to good friends, we all drove home our separate ways, dreaming of next year’s trip in search of fins and fur.

Rob, on the hike out.

Ori, Randall, and I.

My sensei, Patrick Smith, and I.  

Catching Up!

I’m finally home from a long, busy summer in Ridgway, Colorado, where I work full-time as a professional tenkara guide and fly shop bum at RIGS Fly Shop and Guide Service.  There really wasn’t much time for anything else, with days off few and far between.  I’ll guess that RIGS does two-thirds of their business between June and August, so drinking from the fire hydrant is the norm.  I was fortunate to be surrounded by fellow guides and shop folks who take hard work to a new level.  We have a solid team at RIGS, led by co-owners Tim and Heather Patterson.  The two of them set a high standard for hard work, flexibility, and perseverance during a busy, stressful time of year.  I couldn’t ask for a better place to work!

Closing down the fly shop on my last day behind the counter in mid-August.

The busiest place in Ridgeway, Colorado!

In all, I guided 25 trips, and spent the rest of the summer working in the fly shop or shuttling whitewater raft trips.  Combined with the two tenkara weekend clinics I put on each year, that puts my guiding up above 30 days per year.  Not too shabby, if you ask me!

Happy clients, happy guide!  

Most of my guided tenkara trips take place in the Cimarron Range, which is a northern extension of the San Juans.  Ridges, spires, turrets, and hoodoos form a line, running north from Uncompahgre Peak all the way to Cerro Summit.  This is stunning country!  The drive from Ridgway over Owl Creek Pass is arguably one of the most scenic anywhere in Colorado.  We’re permitted in the Uncompahgre Wilderness, so my trips can be done from the extreme southern headwaters of the three forks of the Cimarron River all the way up to the northern boundary of the Uncompahgre National Forest, just below Big Cimarron Campground.  At the fly shop we call this entire area “The Cimarrons”, and it provides a vast, diverse region that’s absolutely perfect for tenkara.  Each drainage above Silver Jack Reservoir holds its own special qualities, and is unique.  Each one of them requires different strategies and techniques, ranging from the wide-open lower end of East Fork, to the brushy and intimate pools and pockets of West Fork, and the twists and turns of Middle Fork.  One of my favorite places to guide in late summer is the Cimarron River tailwater below Silver Jack Reservoir.  It’s technically a tailwater, but it looks much more like a freestone.

The Cimarron River above Silver Jack Reservoir. (Photo courtesy of Stephen and Melissa Alcorn)

Once or twice a summer, if the water is lower and clear, I guide on the San Miguel River between Telluride and Norwood.  This summer “The Miguel”, as we call it, turned out to be very fishable, and my clients caught some really nice rainbows.  There are few things more fun than drifting a #14 Crystal Stimulator or Puterbaugh Caddis on the far edge and having a nice sixteen-inch rainbow crush your fly and take you for a ride.  A fish like that on a tenkara rod is simply amazing!

The San Miguel River below Telluride.

In all, it was a great summer season!  It’s always fun to head 200 miles southwest to Ridgway, and it’s equally good to return home to my family each August.  To my clients this summer…THANK YOU!  I had some amazing days standing beside you in wild water.  I hope you learned a thing or two.  One of the most rewarding things about guiding is spending quality time with such interesting people.  To do so in such magnificent country makes it all that much better!   

My last two clients of the season, Tim and Mona.  We had a stellar day fishing the Cimarron River backcountry!

Why I Kill Trout

A while back I posted an article on my blog entitled “Cañones de Invierno”, which was a trip report from the cañones this past December.  In that article, I talked about catching, killing, and eating brown and rainbow trout.  I posted photographs of trout sizzling in a pan on top of a wood stove, and of those browns and rainbows grilling on top of some scraps of iron on a pile of glowing coals in an open fire.  While reading Facebook posts today, I found one where my partner on that December cañon trip, Eric Lynn, explained when and why he and I kill trout in the backcountry.  Eric, thank you for your explanation!  I’d like to expound upon what you wrote.

Eric Lynn with a brace of brown trout, ready for the pan.

I kill trout and eat them.  However, there are self-imposed limits to this, and more often than not, I strictly adhere to a catch-and-release ethic.  When, where, and why I kill trout is dependent on a number of factors.  I have chosen to live a disciplined life on many levels, and my tenkara is no different.

First, I never keep fish unless I’m backpacking, period.  I’m not quite sure why it bothers me to do otherwise, but there’s something about backpacking, spending one or more nights out in the boonies, and celebrating the fact that I’m totally self-sufficient, that makes catching and eating a trout or two acceptable.  Much of my wilderness backpacking is done to reconnect with my paleolithic roots, and I devote a lot of time practicing bushcraft, hunting, and fishing to hone those ancient skills so important to keeping myself safe and well-fed off the land.

Freshly caught trout and miso soup, cooking over hot coals in the backcountry.

Fellow backcountry hunter, and renowned hunting ethicist, David Petersen, wrote that fly fishing (which tenkara IS, in case you wondered) is little more than “hydraulic hunting”, a point of view shared with sporting writer, Steven Bodio, who Petersen quoted in his seminal book, Heartsblood.  In that book, Bodio talks about “the occasional killing and eating of trout as a means of reminding ourselves of the ancient visceral connection between human and fish, predator and prey…” 

This connection with ancient food procurement, buried deep in my genome, is important to me.  It’s why I hunt elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, dusky grouse, snowshoe hares, Merriam’s turkeys, and cottontails.  It’s also why I hunt and fish in the some of the most strenuous ways possible, backpacking and burro-packing deep into Colorado wilderness, far from any bail-out my pickup could provide.  It’s a hard life at twelve-thousand feet.

Brook trout, pine squirrel, rice, and tea.  Living off the land!

Second, the fish I kill and eat the most are brook trout, with exceptions in canyons where there are so many brown trout it could make your head spin.  The brook trout in Colorado’s streams need to be killed and eaten.  The fact that there are hundreds of miles of brook trout streams in Colorado, all filled with 7-9” fish, make it a literal buffet for the backcountry angler, since Colorado Parks and Wildlife offers liberal daily limits on squaretails.  Non-native brookies can put the hammer on native greenback cutthroats and, as nature writer Ted Williams has said (quoted by Petersen in Heartsblood) regarding the problem with brook trout in Rocky Mountain National Park, “Biologists there are trying to eliminate non–native brook trout to aid the comeback of threatened native greenback cutthroats.  Releasing a fish that needs to be removed from the ecosystem is worse than Zorba the Greek’s unpardonable sin of not going to a woman’s bed when called…”

A nice 12" rainbow from a tiny creek.  This one lived to swim another day.

Third, size matters.  I simply won’t kill a trophy trout, and “trophy” is subjective.  In the brook trout streams I frequent, a “trophy” fish is anything over nine inches.  The lower elevation semi-desert canyons I call home hold some amazingly big brown trout, and any fish there over a foot long lives to swim another day.  I’d rather chew cold elk jerky for supper than grill a ten-inch brook trout.  The big ones stay.

This one stayed in the canyon, as most of them do.

So, there you go.  That’s my take on “catch and munch” versus “catch and release”.  It’s a moving target, but it always boils down to letting the trout call the shots, and staying true to your ethics.  If those trout happen to be nine inch brookies, build a small fire, get out your grill or pan, and live off the land!