I often write about locations I deemed successful, or about the fish, I caught on a given day. In many ways, it is easier to write about or tell a story if something happened. But the more meaningful stories can be found in blunders or failures. It is, after all, how we grow. We need to make mistakes to learn from them. There is one particular skunk-filled trip to the Colorado River that might just make the cut. The picture displays the bridge connecting Nevada and Arizona just below Hoover Dam.
To get to this portion of the river, you need access to some
form of watercraft. High canyon walls and sections of river with no banks to
stand on is the norm here. We were fortunate enough to experience this trip
with some friends on their boat. Traveling from Willow Beach upriver, you are
greeted by many sites of interest both natural and man-made. The clear emerald-green
waters offer up a great opportunity for scouting for fish as one progresses
towards the dam.
I know this area has rainbow trout, striped bass, and more,
but the only fish I could make out in the deep waters were carp and some big
ones at that. Nevertheless, every time we stopped, I had to get a lure in the
water. The main focus of this trip was to soak in some hot springs, thus I had
limited gear and lures with me. Not knowing if the inline spinner I had would
even work, I still made a couple hundreds of casts with no fish. The fish are
there, but it will take more time and effort to find what they want.
Why then tell this story? The journey and experiences I
have, that is the true story. And this one was not devoid of tragedy. On our
way back, late in the afternoon, the motor on the boat stopped working. After a lot of paddling, we eventually got a
tow-in from a good Samaritan. It is still a sore subject as the motor is a
total loss. But it is the mixture of the good with the bad, that bittersweetness
that makes this story stand out. Not all stories contain fish or success, but
that does not mean they don’t carry significance.
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