Pros and Cons of Fishing with Dave Kesey

Take a look at this:

That's Dave Kesey with a steelhead on the end of his flyrod. On one hand, I'm happy for him. Yay, Dave.

On the other 5,000 hands, I get just a little bit tired of seeing that happen, followed by this happening:

Dave Kesey holding a fish. I have to take ibuprofen to relieve the carpal tunnel I get from working the camera button, taking all those shots of Dave Kesey holding another fish he's caught.

It's just plain tiresome.

He'll let me take the first crack at a piece of water and I'll run my gear through, fish it real careful and get nothing. Then I throw a few grenades in there to make sure he has no chance of picking up a fish, but somehow the guy fishes the same water and just conjures steelhead out of the same drift I managed to do nothing with.

Ridiculous.

Here's our camp, down on the Imnaha, across from Lightning Creek. Photo taken at early morning. I was all bleary-eyed, but Dave had been up all night, sharpening hooks and cleaning the guides on his fly rod.


Here's a contorted view of sumac along the trail leading down to Eureka Bar on the Snake River. Not sure what I was doing with the camera angle on that one. But in my defense, I was delirious from hiking 10 miles in waders.

Dave had set out at dawn and hiked on ahead. Mike Baird and I stayed back at camp for the frivolous activity of having a cup of coffee and eating breakfast. Dave doesn't really eat when he fishes....just sort of draws sustenance from the air through some kind of osmosis.

And I passed him on the trail without seeing him, somehow, though I can't figure how. You can see the river the whole way down so the only explanation, really, is that he becomes invisible so the fish can't see him or whatever.

I can practice casting all I want, but some aspects of Dave's fishing technique I'm afraid I'll never be able to master. Like being magic. Nobody caught nothing that day. Except Dave. He caught a steelhead the day before, when nobody was catching steelhead. Caught another one the next day. Hooked a gigantic adult salmon that ran his line out to the backing before shaking the hook. Landed a smaller, five-pound jack salmon--on top of the steelhead. And then he yawned and said, "Ah, the fishing wasn't great...."

But the fish threw me a bone on the last day and I at least caught one. Pretty sure they just felt sorry for me.