Fishermen

We caught fish. That was the thing we had wanted to do on five previous excursions, but they hadn't taken our bait, or lure, or fly, and we thought we were Oregon's most inept avid fishermen. Even at a miniature stocked pond on the first day of trout season, where drunken fools and little girls pulled them in, we had no luck.

And so we set out again, another opportunity in the mountains of southern Oregon at Hyatt Lake.

The first night, having just arrived an hour earlier, Nathaniel and I were fishing from the docks, dusk starting to capture the night. He had just thrown out a treble hook loaded with power bait and sat his rod down when a monster took in the hook, causing a thunder-strike. Nathaniel pulled the eighteen-inch whale of a trout to shore. I filleted it and we cooked it up in foil over hot coals, cold Hamms in hand while we watched.

The night grew cool and Hamms had become our defense to the cold. How to deal with the mountain air growing colder. "Just get into my sleeping bag . . . and hope I've had enough Hamms," Gnat said. He slept down by the lake. My southern soul sacked next to the hot coals.

In the morning, I woke and went back to the docks. Casting with my fly rod, I caught my first of the year on that sometimes-puzzling contraption. But that was only an introduction to what would come that evening. Back in the same spot hours later, I was getting hits from trout on my fly rod but hadn't been able to pull any in. Then after numerous tangles that left me curse-mouthed, I switched to my spinning rod. Threw out a yellow rooster tail. There was one trout. Get over here, Gnat, and pull these in, I said. And he was there, pulling another in a minute later. A few minutes later, I had done the same. It was a good run and thirty minutes more, we ended with seven between us. Trout for dinner, fried up with onions and garlic in morning's bacon grease. And we drank more Hamms.

Early the next morning, I woke early and went back. Two more trout. Bacon, potatoes, and trout for breakfast. Strong coffee to get the Hamms cobwebs out.

There were more fish. We caught more, like we knew what we were doing. Those two days, we were Oregon fishermen.