The best fishing trips are dirty like that. Someone gets on the phone, and, two days later, you’re building a campfire. Fishing means old trucks and dirty coolers, not destination trips and aesthetically ornate magazine spreads. No one said fishing has to be about exotic locations and a second mortgage. Or even about the fish.
We were out for the peace and quiet only found on lonely gravel roads. These are the trips that help you recover from the chaos of jobs, families, or whatever it is that pulls you off center. What we needed was the spiritual rejuvenation found in a shiny can of beer sitting on the lichen-coaster of a rounded boulder. When it came down to it, we were just out to cut loose and get crapulous. The kind of drunk that replaces stress with a hook in your neck and crap in your waders.
Brett had just broken another fly off in the overhanging branches that choke this small stream off from the world. He’s a fairly experienced angler, but these woods are an angry mistress. The rhododendron will reach out and strangle your fly like a serpent with a simple flick of it its green-forked tongue. He sat down on a rock to tie on yet another fly and was quickly lost as we scrambled up a small series of falls and plunge pools.