All Fishermen Are Liars Read Online Free Page B

a grayling to go with this?” he asked, pointing at the fish withhis fillet knife. I said, “Sure,” stepped back into the river and had a two-pound fish on my first cast. In this part of the world, backcountry travelers refer to grayling as “river hotdogs.” “If there’s nothing else to eat,” they say, “you can always catch a grayling.”
    Frank hadn’t landed his record fish. He’d hooked a large lake trout on two-pound tippet that would have qualified, but after he played it carefully for over an hour, it threw the hook. He seemed more amused than disappointed. A record fish would have been fun, but he wasn’t about to let it ruin even a single morning, let alone the whole trip. The fire was cozy and smoky and the air was redolent with the aroma of cooking fish and beans. Frank looked around and said, “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”
    After lunch I offered to go back downriver to stay out of his way. I thought I’d explore a little, look for more wildlife and maybe see if I could get a grayling to take a dry fly, just to mix things up. But Frank said he’d taken his shot and now he was just fishing. “String up your 8-weight and catch some of these lake trout,” he said. So I did.

3
    K BAR T
    As I was driving west across Colorado on Interstate 70, there was a specific quarter mile where the public radio and classic rock stations I’d been grazing through all faded to static and were replaced by country and western, and preachers. The exit for the town of Silt was in the rearview mirror and the Colorado River was off my left shoulder. I’d crossed the Continental Divide some ninety miles back and could have made the Utah border in an hour, but it was only then that I felt like I was officially on the West Slope, where the airwaves arefilled with pain and redemption plus livestock reports on the hour.
    This was one of those rare times when I’d allowed myself to get too busy for someone with my lazy temperament and was consequently feeling a little sorry for myself. I’d just gotten back from a long trip to northern Canada and had spent days mowing through the mail, messages, bills and chores that had accumulated while I was gone: the boring adult obligations that are all important in one way or another but that add up to drudgery when there are too many of them at one time. In two more days I was supposed to be at the Fly Tackle Retailer Show in Denver, where I had what I’ll describe as “business,” although to an independent observer it would just look like a bunch of people standing around talking about fishing.
    I know, it doesn’t sound that bad (you’re probably busier than that on your average weekend), but for most of the year I live the kind of slow-paced sporting life where being rushed means not having enough time to loaf between fishing trips.
    In the meantime, my friends Mark Weaver and Buzz Cox had invited me to come over and fish with them on the K bar T, a small fly-fishing guest ranch they operate on the White River near the town of Meeker. The scheduling could have been easier-going for my taste. I had a scant two days with a five-and-a-half-hour drive each way, leaving barely more fishing than driving time, but these were the only two days for weeks in either direction when they weren’t booked with paying fishermen and could accommodate a freeloading friend.
    I’d heard a lot about the place, mostly from Mark. They had a refurbished hundred-plus-year-old ranch house, two miles of the White River, a mile of spring creek and maybe half a mile of a small freestone stream flowing across a hay meadow. The place could handle as many as eight fishermen at a time, although they were more likely to have between two and four, which sounded like a more reasonable number, even if it cut into the bottom line. I was eager to see it and I think Mark and Buzz were just as eager to do a little fishingthemselves. Contrary to what some think, guides and outfitters don’t get to fish