letting it dead drift, then swing and hang on a tight line. Once, the fly happened to swing below a small rock showing on the crest of the bar in only 4 inches of water, and I got a pull. Moving slowly from rock to rock, I found there were fish behind many of the small rocks that studded the bar, nice foot long native rainbows holding in an unusual pattern. It felt good to be catching fish, to concentrate on the cast, the swing, the hanging question mark as the fly would tuck in below a rock. Anyone home? After an hour, I was exhausted, and it took me almost another hour to get back out of the water, up the bank, and back to the motor home. We fixed a brunch, talked, and swapped stories as other club members returned from their fishing and stopped by to say hi. I was running low on that fly pattern and dug out my tying box. That is when I discovered I could no longer tie flies. My fingers were now obviously weak as the disease was progressing into my arms. The dam backed up behind my eyes nearly broke then, as I put away the fly box. There were plenty of offers of flies. The afternoon was dead, the water high, and the fish had moved off the bar. There was nowhere else I could fish, but no one else was catching anything anyway. The water had been scheduled to be low, therefore the outing, so there was disappointmnt as well. We drove back up to the dam and fished above the powerhouse flume in the clear, low water. It looked promising but I took only a few small fish, unable to negotiate the large boulders. That evening the outing really got going with a camp dinner and club beer in excess. Even then the proposed Salt Caves Dam was the major topic as the Klamath Country Flyfishers were just beginning their epic, and, to date, successful struggle to trump the Salt Caves Project. In the light of the evening bonfire I met for the first time an eloquent Jim Garvey, who I rememberd then as the drunkest man I had seen still standing since my freshman year in college. He was introduced to me among ten other people, and amazingly remebered me by name four years later. I turned in for the night sadly, regretting that I had come. After my weakening fingers would be my grip, then the arms themselves. The next morning I awoke to a new sound, .....silence. It took me a minute to realize the river noise had stopped. Jesse Ulloa alone in the whole camp roused from the night's revelry for the morning fishing, closing the door to the motorhome quietly. I waited awhile, then decided I might just as well get up. From the sounds around me, and the full sunlight now outside, it seemed obvious that the partying the night before had dissipated the fishing frenzy of the group, and it would be hours before I had any company to talk to. I dressed and slogged slowly down to the river.
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