Joe the Fish Lake Guide

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 52, 1984, No. 2

Joe the Fish Lake Guide

BY LEA NIELSON LANE

THE MAN WHO "NEVER GOT SKUNKED, "Joe Nielson, my father, was a professional guide on Utah's Fish Lake for forty-five years. Getting skunked meant not catching a fish, and he was well known for finding the big ones.

It has been more than seventy-five years since Joe and a friend traveled on horseback up the hogback trail to the lake that had seldom been fished by white men. On a bright June day in 1908 they came to the legendary lake like mountain men of an earlier age, packing their bedrolls, their grub in saddlebags, and a scrap of canvas for shelter. Early the next morning Joe and his friend built a raft and went out onto the lake's dazzling blue-green surface. The air and the water were as pure as they had been the first day of creation. As Joe later described it, "In the shadows of the east bank mackinaws lay and looked as big as logs."

"There was no one else on the lake," he had continued his tale; "I was so eager I snarled my line the first cast." In the sparkling sunlight and glittering ripples they could see the small #2 Colorado spinner touch the surface and the fish would come up to it. "In those days it was no trouble to catch the eastern brook," he said. He was a man of few words, but his eyes would light up when he talked of fishing with his friends and mentioned the steelheads, natives, and rainbow trout. "It was a great day," he said. "It didn't take long to get a box full."

How big is a box full? How many pounds could a man eat and salt down to take home? There were no ice chests or refrigerators in those days. At night they strung the fish from a tent pole to a high tree to keep them safe from bears and other wild animals; in the day they hid them in their bedding to keep the fish cool and safe from flies. Or they put the fish in a gunny sack and anchored it in the cold, running spring water.

Joe started fishing when Fish Lake was a wilderness area. Soon after his first trip to the lake, people from more distant parts than the next ranch to Grass Valley, Joe's home, started coming to the lake for vacations — people with money in their pockets. And so my dad and my uncle, Sisson Hatch, decided to go professional. They put up a tent on the southwest edge of the lake near what they later named Doctor Creek, near Doc Easton's newly completed cabin. They hung out their shingles much the same as a lawyer or doctor did in those days: "JOE THE GUIDE." This simple sign was destined to hang for forty-five years at one of the resorts that grew up around Fish Lake. Sometimes he would explain to us, as we clustered around him, that he went to the lake to make money to pay the taxes on our home and farm, but I know that he loved to go and loved the people he met, and so he worked for more than just money.

As soon as the melted snows would let him through, Joe would haul his camp equipment up the twenty-mile-long hogback trail, set up camp, then take the team and wagon back home as he needed to put in the crops on the small farm in Grass Valley. He would ride Old Bishop, one of our big work horses, back to the lake, then turn him loose to come home by himself. In a few weeks or a month, when Joe could no longer stand being away from his family, he would walk the twenty miles home. I remember when he would arrive in the night with a pack of dirty clothes on his back, and mother would get up and cook a big meal for him no matter how late it was.

After eating, he would turn out his pockets for us kids to see the small gold pieces with which his services had been paid. I remember him telling us that some rich man he had taken out carried his gold in a leather bag around his neck, and I visualized the bag as being huge. He would count his currency and silver, then give us a few coins saying: "Take care of that, it's hell to be poor when it snows." He might when it was morning send us racing to the store to buy penny-pieces, or chocolates, or even ice cream, always with the admonition to "bring back the change."

When wagons and buckboards were being replaced by cars, the state built a dugway to Fish Lake to replace the old trail. From the valley we could see the dynamite blasts and, finally, the straight line cut into the steep mountainside. When we took our first ride to Fish Lake in a car we found the road was not straight as it appeared from the valley. It was full of curve after curve — hairpin hair-raising curves — a single lane of dirt, and if two cars needed to pass, one of them would have to back up to an inner curve that was a little wider. I was carsick and terrified. The dugway has long since been replaced by a modern highway, but the scar it left can still be seen from the valley.

During the roaring twenties Joe bought a second-hand Model T Ford to drive to work and back. He seemed to have a lot of trouble with a leaking radiator, and he tried to stop the leaks with cornmeal, eggs, potatoes, or anything else anyone might suggest. When the old car would heat up on the steep hogback road that he still used, the steam would blow several feet high and spew forth a noxious mixture smelling like rotten eggs. He had trouble starting the car, and if he used it in winter it was the devil's own problem. I remember him building a fire under the engine and cranking like mad. He put wheat in his tires instead of using inner tubes and air. He would mount the wheat-filled tires and pour them full of water so the wheat would swell and tighten them up, making them blowout-proof. I remember one wild ride down when the brakes gave way. Rocks, scrub pine, and underbrush made a poor road as we screeched by, and only gravity held us on the earth. The wheat-filled tires did not blow out!

Resorts grew up around the sapphire blue lake and the sportsmen came from farther and farther away. People from every financial level came and asked Joe to take them fishing, from Wallace Berry to the service station attendant. Both movie stars and service station attendants were new kinds of jobs, and Joe's was a new kind of job, too, all with new skills. Such men were signs of a new age.

In 1922 Joe moved his guide service to Skougaard's Resort a few miles north and lived in a cabin with two small windows that had no glass but sliding wood shutters, two built-in beds, a few rough wooden shelves, and a small wood-burning iron stove. There was a porch where they could hang their fish high enough to be safe in the night. Surrounding the cabin were quaking aspen, wild roses, gooseberries, and icy streams.

When I was old enough to go and spend an enchanted week with Dad, he had a nine-foot, flat-bottomed wood boat that he had made himself, a small Johnson outboard motor, and two buckets with holes in them like sieves. They were tied to the gunwales ready to be thrown over the sides in order to slow the boat down to the right speed for trolling. At this time he was using a Davis spinner. After buying the first one he made some of his own; after all, they were not patented, or if they were, no one knew much about such legalities. I have seen him cut the spoons from sheets of brass and hammer them into the right shape to make them spin. He used at least three sets of red glass beads alternating with several spinners. I can almost see them yet as he lowered them with loving care into the clear greenlooking water; in the sun's brilliant rays they cast their reflections in a whirlpool of light. I have seen him make other lures with feathers, colored threads, hand-carved wood — painted and daubed, all combined with beads and metals. He was an artist with these lures, and they were big secrets for a long time, the assurance that Joe the Guide would catch fish when none of the other guides who came later and tried to imitate him could find any.

Every summer, when my brother and sisters became old enough, each child would get a week's vacation at the lake with our dad. Although I was a girl, my father called me his Danish Boy, or Tick-Miern which meant fat Mary. I was treated like a boy until the boys started to follow me around and someone — my parents together, probably — decided I was too old to sleep with my dad. I remember many nights sleeping with him on the thick straw mattress under several wool-filled camp quilts. At the almost 9,000 foot altitude, it got very cold at night. Even now, so many years and miles away, I can still, almost, hear my uncle talking about the day's fishing. He talked all night, it seemed to me; he talked as fast as he ate dried-up chocolate cake soaked in milk. He would still be talking when I would hear my father say "Um-hum" a few times, then start to snore.

I remember pleasant days of wandering around the resort alone, or finding a new acquaintance, or entertaining myself by following the creeks to their source and going through the small fish hatchery on one of the Twin Creeks. Sometimes, if my father was late in returning, I would worry about him. (After all, several men had drowned in the lake's icy waters. I would recall such tales — stories my own dad had told and I knew he would not lie if it killed him.) I would want to do something for him, so I tried repeatedly to make a fire in that cute little stove that never worked for me. I remember hearing people say, "That's Joe the Guide's girl; he sure couldn't disown her," and I'd almost burst with pride.

Occasionally, if Joe the Guide had only one or two people to take out, he would let me go on a trip with him. I seldom fished, preferring to watch the clouds and their reflections in the water, or look for the tantalizing gold and red Davis spinner and be the first to see the fish at the end of the spinner as the line was pulled in. I had never heard the word boredom. Sometimes I would row the boat, and then Father would not use the motor or the buckets. I loved the motion and rhythm of rowing and the speed I could make this isolated, minuscule world move across the water. At times Dad allowed me to take the boat out on the lake alone. Then I would feel like the center of the universe. I loved the silence and mystery of being by myself and in control of my life on the lake, but I knew he watched me because once a storm came up suddenly. I rowed as hard as I could, but I could not move the boat shoreward. The waves slapping against the boat terrified me. I could see little people on the pier, waving their arms, and I supposed they were trying to help me; but all I could hear was the wind and the splash of the whitecapped waves all around me that drove the boat harder than I could row. In spite of my greatest effort, I seemed to be drifting farther and farther out. Then I remembered the talk about the men who had drowned in the lake, "Got a cramp and went down like a rock . . . ," or my dad saying, "You can't swim in that icy water — I've never tried" or "He stood up in the boat, must have been drunk. . . ." Before I lost control of myself and stood up in the boat or went down like a rock, I saw my dad. He had jumped into someone else's boat and rowed out to rescue me.

In the 1920s when I vacationed with my dad at Fish Lake, he charged $3.50 for a limit, or so much an hour — I do not remember the hourly rate. If the fish were not biting he would stay out as long as his customers could take it, trying to give them their money's worth or even agree to try it again tomorrow for the same price. The price was always agreed upon in advance, and he never reneged on an agreement.

The resorts flourished during the 1920s and my father did well. Sportsmen came from far and near and told their friends about my dad and his intuitive ability to catch fish. Joe the Guide became famous. Not only did old customers come back, but new ones were swelling his list all the time. The fish in the lake were rapidly being reduced in number and becoming harder to catch. The Utah legislature passed laws to protect the fish, reducing the limit and forbidding the guides to fish.

My father had a great respect for the laws of nature and the nation, and in particular for the Utah Fish and Game laws. When the fishing and guiding law was changed, forbidding guides to fish, my dad accepted the restriction. He talked about it, so we all knew of the change. He did not like it as it made his job harder, but for the survival of the fish he felt it was right. He was ahead of his time as an environmentalist and was careful to catch no more fish than the limit in pounds and length. Honesty was his religion.

I was married and living away from home when I heard that Joe had been arrested for fishing while guiding. I said I did not believe it and became angry when I was laughed at. Joe was taken to court. He pleaded innocent and explained that from time to time it was necessary for him to touch a customer's line in order to know what was going on. Sometimes the fisherman would not know if he had caught a fish and might drag it to death, or he might get moss on the hook and drag that. I knew it was true, for I had seen him do that very thing many times. Simply by taking the line in his big, calloused hands he would know if there was a fish on the hook. The judge believed him too, and Joe the Guide won the case.

Tourists and fishing enthusiasts continued to come even during the Great Depression, and Dad never missed paying his taxes on our home and farm.

Nowadays foreign cars, mixed with Chevrolets and Fords and all manner of recreation vehicles, overrun the Fish Lake Forest. Fishermen come with all kinds of lures and bait imaginable. Fish are planted regularly in an effort to fill the public's appetite. Some of the fingerlings may be hooked the very day they are released, and it is rare for one to survive many seasons or grow to a remarkable size.

Old cronies and their sons came occasionally to visit Joe the Guide in the last years of his life, and they still talked about the "big ones" he had helped them catch. A sign has been posted in his memory beside a bush he used as a mark for the beginning of the mackinaw run, "Joe's Bush." Watch for it next time you are driving around Fish Lake.

Not once, and I would wager more than my income tax rebate on this, did he ever take someone fishing who did not have a Utah license, or ask an unlicensed kid who had not fished to carry some of the fish as if they were his because the adults had caught far more than their combined limits allowed. Not once did he ever use this ploy to fool a game warden if they chanced to meet one. Sometimes I went on trips with another guide, a distant relative, and he set up this trick — having me carry some of their fish. I never trusted that guide again, and I wondered if he might not have been the one who suggested to the game warden that Joe was breaking the law by fishing.

"If I don't hit a stump, I'll be up there next year," I can hear my dad say, as I dream today under the twinkling leaves of the quaking aspens. "I'll be up there next summer. Come up and say 'Hello,'" he reminisced in 1954. He guided two more years, forty-five in all, and died when he was eighty-six, still remembering and still remembered. He outlasted all the guides.

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