THE IRIDEUS - NOVEMBER 2020
Safety First! Learning from our ter mistakes makes us bet fishers down the line By: Peter Burrows & Kirston Koths This is an article about probably the worst day of fishing I’ve ever had. Not because of the fishing, but because of some really bad planning.
from hell.
By the time I stumbled back to the car that afternoon, I was dangerously dehydrated and as physically exhausted as I think I’ve ever been. Who knows, maybe it was a mild case of sun stroke. Worse, I’d spent hours searching for my wife, worrying whether she was hurt or worse.
So here’s what happened. It was early September, and we set off before dawn for one of our favorite spots: The Middle Stanislaus, just below Beardsley Reservoir (it’s actually below the mile-or-so long afterbay). The three of us have shared many wonderful days on the 1.5 mile stretch below the dam over the past fifteen years, fishing for beautiful, wild rainbows and big browns in a beautiful, wild place.
Sounds like a fun read, right? Well, the reason I’m writing this article is to share some lessons from our very own Kirston Koths on how we – my wife Wendy Moorhouse, our fishing buddy David Harding and myself – could have avoided this mess. For reference, the three of us are in our late 50s, in average shape and clearly need to start thinking about our physical limitations when fishing. Many thanks to Kirston for taking the time on the phone to do a “post-mortem” on this day
Beardsley or bust
I think of the “Beardsley” as the McCloud’s slightly more hardcore sister. They’re similar in beauty, the variety of water types to fish, and at times the quality of the hatches. But in many ways, everything is just a bit rougher (starting with the brake-burning final stretch to the river after you turn off of Rt. 108 just past the town of Strawberry. The 2,000 ft decline in just ten miles is startling.)
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