stretch, and crashed my way down through the poison oak and water hemlock. This was also in the days before there was a well defined trail leading down to each and every casting point. Once I stepped in the water and dipped my torso down to cool the burning seal-dr waders, I saw that the apparent fishable stretch was short, but intriguing. I gooped my salmonfly pattern and the line with flotant and took a short cast to test the tailout. A big fish struck immediately and took me into the backing twice before I got my fly back. I held it up against my hunger, which was considerable, and realized I couldn't eat the whole thing, so I released it. I took another cast to the same spot, and repeated with another fish of equal size. Further up into the hole I caught an even larger fish, then a fourth the size of the first two. All this was taking some time and the sky was showing signs of evening and I began to be worried. I was really hungry, but the fish were JUST TOO BIG. Finally, the sixth fish was small enough that I thought
I could eat it, so I killed it and reluctantly began the walk back to camp, thinking I had totally missed dinner, leaving behind the best 90 minutes of fishing I had ever experienced.
But camp was empty, with a magnificent roast still steaming untouched on the Coleman stove. I was sitting alone, wondering where everyone had gone when John came up and collapsed, explaining part of the mystery. Everyone, it seemed, was experiencing fishing just as good as I had left, but they weren't
leaving. Except for John. He was, I didn't know it then, suffering from REDSIDE POISONING. At that moment I was sorry I had rushed back to catch dinner when they had called it off.
John pulled his waders down around his legs, too tired to take off his boots. He sipped at his drink. "I'm just exhausted", he protested again. We sat and looked out over the river. The view
from this camp is rather spectacular, and the sun was setting, setting up shadows and depths across the river on the Indian land. Peter Kramerus then appeared, as tired and exhausted as John, and the three of us watched the color change as the sun dropped on the horizon.
Then we heard a truck, grinding irregularly over an uneven track . But the sound came almost impossibly from the Indian side of the river where there were no visible roads. The sound stopped and a man and a woman appeared walking toward the river. From our distance I could make out the man of heavy build and dark complexion, obviously Indian, carrying a fishing rod. The woman bringing up the rear was dragging a gunny sack. There would be, apparently, no such thing as a fish too big. Since this was the very first sign any of the Indians on the reservation side really fished for trout at all and given our
