Safety First

Learning from our mistakes makes us better 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.

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.

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 from hell.

Beardsley or bust

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.

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.)

Once you park the car, you’ve got to walk for twenty-ish minutes to get to the river. There’s a good main trail after that, and countless enticing places to fish. But there are relatively few spots have that are easily accessible. There’s more scrambling around boulders, more pricker bushes and more poison oak than on the McCloud. Fortunately, there are few steep embankments.

Usually, it’s more than worth the trouble. The fishing can be great, and you’re about as likely to see other fishermen as you are to see the otters that are famous for stealing hooked fish from the first big pool.

A day I never want to repeat

So how did things go awry? Most of our mistakes happened before we took our first step. It was already uncomfortably warm when we left the car at 9:00 AM, and the forecast said the temperature would rise to 90 degrees or more. Still, we decided to not only use our waders rather than wet wade, but to wear them for the walk in. We each brought a liter of water, the same as we usually did. And while we dutifully donned our walkie talkies and even checked the batteries, we didn’t actually try to call each other to see if they were working properly.

Things went downhill first for Wendy. Before she made her first cast, she tried to adjust her brand new (overpriced!) wading staff and somehow dropped it in the river. She refused my semi-sincere offer to give her mine and went downstream to see if she could find the staff. No biggie, I figured. She’s very careful and doesn’t take any wading risks. All would be okay.

After twenty minutes or so, I headed downstream to find her. I saw Wendy well off the main path down by the river and tried her on the walkie talkie. When she didn’t answer, I yelled her name, thinking she couldn’t hear the walkie talkie over the noise of the river. She yelled back that she hadn’t found the wading staff and was trying get rid of a tangle so she could finally start fishing. By now, it was uncomfortably hot, and she was already frustrated. I headed downstream.

I fished for two hours. At around 12:30, having tried repeatedly to reach Wendy on the walkietalkie, I started looking for her. She wasn’t where I’d last seen her, so I began walking back towards the car, calling her name and checking every path that led down to the river. At this point, I was more pissed than worried. Her refusal to check in was costing me precious fishing time!

Before too long, I was no longer worried about the fishing. I walked back and forth on that trail for maybe 90 minutes, still in my waders in the baking heat. I ate an apple and sandwich but was rationing what was left of my water. Who knew how long this search would take?

By 1:30 or 2:00, my mind was thinking all kinds of awful thoughts. Had she fallen and drowned? And yet I was becoming so exhausted that I had to stop every hundred yards or so to bend over and catch my breath. Maybe I was overreacting – it’s been known to happen – but I felt really worried and guilty.

At that point, I called David on the walkie talkie to enlist his help. We decided to head further downstream, farther away from the car, to as far as Wendy could possibly have gone. After a while, David became so concerned about my Tim Conway shuffle and frequent pit stops that he told me to start back toward the car while he After another half-hour or so of searching, Dave called with great news: Wendy was safe and at the car. She had texted us to say that she’d fallen (no wading staff) and broken her rod and lost her sunglasses on her second cast of the day. She’d looked for us, but after a while decided to call it a day. I’m glad she did. She was already feeling dehydrated, dizzy and overheated, and was so tired by the time she got back to the car that she slept for most of the day on a picnic table near the parking area. At least we’d remembered to bring the extra set of car keys.

Unfortunately, those texts did us no good because we didn’t have cell coverage – until Dave went so far down the trail that he picked up a signal near a cabin we had no idea was even there. It was dumb luck.

I was relieved emotionally, but physically still a mess. When Dave caught up, we were both down to a last sip of water. It took us almost 90 minutes to cover that last mile back to the car, due to all the breaks to catch our breath. After drinking

water and cranking the A/C, we compared notes as we headed back up the hill. All three of us felt similarly exhausted and miserable. We were fine after an hour and a Gatorade or two, but also depressed that we’d so badly managed the day. We agreed that our days of fishing the Beardsley were probably done. Lesson three: Get a whistle.

Kirston’s safety tips (not a comprehensive list)

Okay, so how could we have avoided this misery? I called Kirston, who wrote an encyclopedic article on safety while flyfishing a few years ago. While much of his advice came down to common-sense, he had some great information and tips garnered from his many years of fishing, gold prospecting and camping from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle.

Lesson one: Know when to not wear waders. If the temperature is 80 or above, only wear waders if you’re going to need to go up to your waist in cold water. Otherwise, the temperature inside your waders will soar as you hike. Pretty soon you’ll be losing more water via sweat than you can possibly drink.

And sweating only cools you if it can efficiently evaporate. So when it’s really hot, leave the waders in the trunk and wet-wade.

Of course, who knows what you’ll need in the course of a full day on a wild river? If you’re not sure and it’s already hot, carry your waders with you. It may feel like it takes more energy than wearing them, but it isn’t. Don’t depend solely on anything electronic to keep in touch with your fellow fisher-people. In our case, we discovered that Wendy’s walkietalkie wasn’t working properly although it appeared as if it was. Kirston likes the idea of walkie-talkies for communicating over relatively short distances, but also suggests getting a very loud, Coast Guard-approved whistle. “Nothing goes wrong with a whistle, and you can attach it right to your vest so it’s always there.”

Also, work out a simple code before you hit the river. Kirston recommends using one blast to say “here I am,” two blasts to say “let’s meet up” and three blasts to say “SOS; come get me.” If you’re near fast-moving water, move away from the river to hear above the sound of the water.

Lesson four: Take the time to be smart.

Lesson two: Stash extra water.

If you’re going to be hiking in for a long day, bring twice as much water as you think you’ll need. Hide the second canteen or container somewhere along the trail and leave a stonepyramid marker nearby, about mid-way to the furthest point you think you’ll reach.

And drink before you are thirsty, or you risk getting heat stroke.

This is the embarrassing one: take the time to do the obvious things, even if they seem like a hassle when you’re exhausted. Take off those waders. Head to the river and splash yourself. Kirston says to soak your hat and anything else you can until you feel almost chilled. The evaporation of the river water will decrease your sweating and slow dehydration.

On a risky river, if you lose your wading staff, find a sturdy stick in the forest to use as a replacement.

Lesson five: Bring a pen and paper

Wendy was right to head for the car, especially