Revive - A Quarterly Fly Fishing Journal (volume 2 edition 1) | Page 122

Even though the lake wore us down by day, we made the best of our time on dry land at night with grilled elk steaks, javelina chilli, and carne asada, although a charcoal grill and high winds don’t mesh real well. Once the homebrew ran out, we found that in a pinch, fresca and tequila comes fairly close to a margarita.

By day three, our fingers were cracking from the saline water and bitter cold, and no amount of superglue was putting the skin back together. To be honest, we caught our share of fish and no one was truly disappointed, but the big one never made an appearance. The realization that the trip was over began to sink in when the sun from the third day began to get lower in the sky, and we started talking about what hypothermia and frostbite really feels like, each wondering if what we were feeling (or not feeling) was the real thing. One by one, we started to pull ladders and the group of eight ladders dwindled until the water was empty.

A 25 pound cutthroat makes fools of us all, indeed. But we’ll be back next year.

Ben Smith is the man behind Azwanderings.com and has done a fair amount of catching awesome fish over the past several years. He is quite a writer and photog and all of his work can be found at www.arizonawanderings.com