Stogies in the Stream

Perfect fly and local ritual can’t save the day.

        “You may want to get down hill or up-wind of this.”

        “Is it that bad?”

        “Naw. Not if you’re used to ‘em.”

        “Whoa! That DOES stink!”

        Doug Camp, my friend and fishing buddy, had just set fire to the worst smelling cigar I had ever encountered. “That thing is supposed to help us catch fish? In this weather?”

        “No” he replied. “But offering it to the river will.”

        “Listen, the only thing that’ll help us today is for the wind to drop and the temp to rise. I can handle the snow, but that smudge-pot in your mouth, I don’t know?”

        “You’ll see.” Doug said, snuffing out the offending, half-smoked stogie. “Dr. Keith and I do this all the time. It never fails.” Keith Eggert, a local veterinarian and Doug’s regular fishing partner, had wisely elected to stay in town.

        It was April 25, 11:30 am and we had just started into the canyon at New Mexico’s Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River National Recreation Area. This recreation area, 40 miles north of Taos, was the first of its kind in the country. Celebrating wild and undammed rivers everywhere, the area offers itself up to hikers, bikers and river-runners from all over the globe. Today, we were just hoping it offered up a few trout. All it was giving us right now was a long hike down a muddy, slippery trail. Heaped on top of that, I had to walk fast enough so I didn’t die from second-hand cigar. But, this was a local ritual, and when in Rome...

        My wife and I had hiked this very trail a day earlier in shorts and tee shirts. An almost blizzard hatch of gray caddisflies had greeted us at river’s edge, dancing in mating flights above the clear, tumbling waters of the Rio Grande River. Finding pods of rising trout while Kath searched for petroglyphs was easy enough, and my bug was close enough to the hatch to provide an hour’s worth of active catch and release fishing. “Tomorrow,” I thought, “we’re slaying them.”

        That evening at the Willows Inn in Taos, where Doug and his wife Janet are the proprietors, Doug showed me THE fly to use. One of his own creation. It looked like a perfect match for the ones I had seen on the river. We agreed to fish this fly the next day on the same stretch of river. I started tying THE flies, Doug started stocking THE cigars.

        These were no ordinary cigars, but the vilest, smelliest ones that the domestic market had to offer. They weren’t meant to be subtle, they were meant to summon the fish gods.

        That next morning, Inn duties behind him, Doug and I headed for the park. Last night’s weather prediction was for cold, wind and snow, lasting all day. Eight to12 inches in the high country, 4 to 6 inches down low. Temps in the upper 20’s, lower 30’s. The weatherman had nailed it.

        So there we stood, looking at a one mile hike and an 800 foot descent to a river that looked much higher and dirtier than the day before. At the bottom, sure enough, the river had risen at least 2 feet and, as they say out West, was a bit off-color. It looked muddy to me. And not a caddisfly in sight.

        I heard a yell from a jumble of boulders by the river, “I found those bugs you saw yesterday. They’re all under this rock. Shivering.” Ha-ha, just perform your ritual and let’s go fishing.

        Doug retrieved the half-smoked, chewed-up butt from his jacket, said a few words under his breath, and hurled the remains into the murky, churning froth. He spun around a few times, danced a little jig, and proceeded to catch a nice rainbow trout on his second or third cast. That fish turned out to be the only one of the day.

        After exploring and blind casting for several hours, we finally split up, vowing to find each other if anything started happening, or meet at the truck at 8:00 pm if it didn’t. Doug headed downstream for Little Arsenic Springs. I went upstream to Big Arsenic, where I had caught fish the day before.

        By 6:00 pm, I would have smoked my socks and danced naked on a rock if I thought it would have helped. Not one fish did I see rise to my fly. Not once did I feel a life-form at the far end of my leader. At 7:00, I’d had it, and started the long trudge to the canyon rim.

        I topped out just as it was getting dark. Good thing too, my flashlight was locked safely in the truck. I figured Doug had found fish working right at dusk and was a few minutes behind me. By 8:15, I was starting to wonder. By 8:25, I was worried. What would I do if he didn’t show up? What if he fell? Got lost or took a wrong trail? By this time, it was seriously dark and cold.

        At 8:30, I heard a car door open, spun around and saw Doug stumble from the truck. “Sorry, I was taking a nap. Been back since about 6:00.” About the time I was ready to start smoking and dancing. “Figured if it hadn’t happened by then, it wasn’t going to.”

        I dived for the cab to warm up before peeling off boots and waders. Doug had been up on top all this time, keeping the truck’s heater going.

        “Got any more of those cigars?” I asked.

        “Nope. All gone.” he replied.

        “What were they?”

        “Cheap somethings.”

        “Not Cuban or Honduran?”

        “Nope. Why?”

       “I’d have really been mad if they were Cuban and we hadn’t been catching tarpon all this time instead of not catching trout.”