tracks on the south mountainside, a thousand feet above the road even then to clear the Hansen dam upstream and some mornings I would see a person or two walking upriver on the tracks. I would
see them stop and point at me, just as I would if I had someone to point them out to. We each wondered just what the other was about, I'm sure.
And once I caught, after the closing time, one of the work crews partying down on the river bank on a deep hole, drinking beer and soaking worms with spinning rods, leaving a mess actually. From that moment whatever twinges of guilt I still harbored were gone. This was poaching with a self appointed mission.
How good is the Upper Green? Good enough that for three summers, three days a week, I fished there and no where else. I learned to cast, mend, dry fly fish, wet fly fish, and nymph fish. I learned the rules of dominant holding lies and dominant fish, and took them, eventually, months after initially marking their position. The only time I was ever caught was one morning walking out I stopped to fish the pool under the bridge at the half way point, open and visible to the road. On my first cast I hooked the biggest fish ever to that point, just as a work truck appeared coming up the road. It stopped on the bridge above me. They all watched me land and release an 18 inch rainbow. At that particular moment I really would have considered two broken legs worth it. One man got out and walked down the bank to the river.
"You can't fish here", he said.
"Oh, O.K., I was just leaving," I replied. I'm sure he thought I had just walked in rather than was coming out after two hours of fishing upstream. That was it though, that one and only time. I like to think that catching and releasing that fish had a lot to do with his response.
Other than that I never saw another fisherman, never even saw tracks of another human on MY bank. Until the last time I ever fished the Upper Green.
The fourth summer I never got back home to the northwest until late in august. The evening after I arrived home I deserted the family and drove the old roads by heart, reaching the gate at 6 PM. The
crews would be gone and I could fish until dusk and walk out in the dark. Once I reached the crossing and began fishing, I found there was a caddis hatch that had every fish in the river on the prod. Starting at the Flat Rock, the traditional casting point for the first lie, I was broken off by three big fish on the first
