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My brother, Neal, fishing Hatch Meadow in 1984. |
In 1981 I left public
accounting for good to start a new career with EG&G Energy Measurements. EG&G was a 40-year contractor at the Nevada Test Site, or
NTS (now the Nevada National Security Site).
At that time, late into the Cold War era following World War II, the
primary mission of the NTS was the testing of the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile
as well as new weapon development, from both weapon physics and weapon effects perspectives.
I envisioned this was to be a long-term career change.
Shortly after responding to
a job ad for Internal Auditor, I was interview by Jim Jones, the EG&G Audit
Manager. I was just 25 years old, married with no children yet (although my
wife and I had lost our first child, Melissa, in September of the previous
year). I believe Jim was 60 years old. I
could tell from the interview I would like working for Jim. Although a little crusty, he was
lovable. It wasn’t until later that I learned
he was prone to drinking cheap wine and dispensing snippets of sarcasm.
Ironically, he was just what I needed at that time in my young life. My own
father died when I was but 3, mother never remarried, and so Jim was one of several
father figures in my life.
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A twenty-six old
FisherDad, with Jim at his Yellow Pine cabin, circa 1982. |
Jim might not have been a
technical financial auditor, but he was an old-school operational auditor. He once
tested property controls by stealing a typewriter right past Wackenhut’s armed security
guards during business hours. This preceded the advent of personal computers,
and the bulky IBM Selectric weighed about 35 pounds. He was, surprisingly, a
licensed certified public accountant (CPA), which was a source of aggravation
for his boss, Jack Humphrey, who was himself an accountant but who could never
pass the CPA exam. Jim taught me a lot about patience and perseverance (grossly
lacking in all men in their twenties), but he also had a gift for writing, even
if they were business reports. He loved to read; you often find that readers
are decent writers too. While reviewing my draft audit reports Jim imparted
upon me the importance of choosing the right word to convey the intended
meaning. I worked for Jim for about 30 months, after which time I transferred
into the Finance Division, eventually succeeding John Fisk as Treasurer and
Director of Finance. There are quite a few stories worth telling about those
EG&G years, but they don’t have a thing to do with fishing.
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Interior view of the cabin's lava-stone fireplace. |
Jim had purchased a lot in
the Yellow Pine district along Mammoth Creek. For reference, Mammoth Creek
drains the eastern slope of southern Utah’s Markagunt Plateau into the Sevier
River just south of Hatch, Utah (at 279 miles, the Sevier is the longest river completely
contained within Utah's boundaries). At the time I
started working for Jim, he had just hired a cabin builder to construct a
functional cabin with water, sewer, and electric. It was a one-bedroom, one-bath, full kitchen
cabin with a loft and large roofed deck. He invited me there often,
particularly in the early spring to help him open it and in the late fall to winterize
and close it. Some might assume I was simply
cheap labor, working for time on the trout stream, but I think Jim liked having
me around, and I think he saw an opportunity to provide extra mentoring. Through
his generosity, I was allowed to use the cabin often, which my young family,
including Nick, Doug, and grandma Nanny, really appreciated.
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FisherDad splitting wood for time on the creek. |
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A badger caught crossing the road to Hatch Meadow. |
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Nick, age four, overlooking Mammoth Creek in Yellow Pine subdivision. |
Jim and I shared an
interest in fishing. He often talked
about fishing Panguitch Lake in a rented boat, but I was captivated by the
creek. In my early fly angling history I snobbishly believed creek fishing
required a higher technical skill than stillwater fishing. Stream trout were
easily frightened because the shallower water seemed to expose them to more
dangers, and their feeding lanes were easier to spot which made fishing more
productive than on a lake (or so it seemed at the time). Casting skills were at
a higher premium on streams because the targets were smaller and the moving
water came with all sorts of tricky currents and eddies that disrupted the
fly's path and alerted the trout that it was indeed, unnatural. Casting
blunders resulted in frightened trout or tangled casts. Stream fishing also
came with the added bonus that most folks didn’t explore creeks which left more
of them to strong, young men like me. In the 1980s I was mostly fishing Beaver
Dam Creek near Caliente, Nevada. Mammoth Creek was a new challenge because it
was at least twice the size and known for holding decent sized brown trout. I
had caught a few brownies with my brother Neal at Cave Lake outside Ely,
Nevada, so I was already bitten by the brown-trout bug. In fact, Neal had told
me about a fly angling friend who caught an eighteen inch wild brown trout
underneath the bridge at the end of the large Hatch Meadow stretch of Mammoth
Creek. That story made me willing to do any hard labor just to get the chance
for one of those wild brown trout.
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A favorite photo of a twelve-inch brown trout laid on the grass in a Mammoth Creek sunset. |
Over the course of the next
ten years or so I explored quite a bit of Mammoth Creek from Hatch Meadow on up.
Ironically, the first trout I caught on Mammoth was a cutthroat. I caught it in
the meadow stretch on a dry fly. Totally unaware cutthroat were ever stocked in
the creek, I expected it to be a small brown trout. In my exuberant naiveté I
imagined it was a wild Bonneville cutthroat (indigenous to Utah), but my
inquiry with Utah Department of Wildlife burst my bubble when they responded it
was a stocked cutthroat of the mere common variety. Still, it was a cutthroat,
and it was my first ever. For a few years I caught several more cutthroats in
Mammoth.
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FisherDad’s
first ever Mammoth Creek trout, a cutthroat with signature
orange slash on its lower jaw.
|
But it was the wild brown
trout that really motivated my desire. While brown trout are known for their
propensity to rise to a dry fly, they are also known for their selectivity. If
one were to rank the difficulty in catching the four major species of trout and
char, I would think the order of increasing angler frustration would be
cutthroat, brook, rainbow, and then brown. Being a competitive twenty-something
year old male, the lore of fooling a brown trout to accept a fly I tied myself was
more than I could stand.
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Here's the sixteen-inch
brown trout laid on Mammoth Creek clover. |
Fishing the meadow section
of Mammoth was not easy. There was no cover for the fish, just deep cut banks
as the creek meandered through the grazing pasture. I never caught more than
one or two fish during a two-hour fishing session, and they usually were ten to
twelve inches. However, there was one memorable trip when I was fortunate to
catch a very healthy sixteen inch brown trout. I was casting upstream using a
nymph pattern I tied from fur I had raked off Buffy, our gray calico cat. I
think the fly resembled caddis fly larvae in a stone casing, but who knows what
the trout thought it looked like. I cast blindly upstream from the left side
just below where the creek cut deep into the bank as it switched directions.
From my position I couldn’t see the fly or my line, so I was simply stripping
line in as it drifted back down to me when I felt the line go taught. The trout
fought stoutly; it was the largest I had ever caught at that point in my
fishing experience. It was beautifully and traditionally colored for a fall
brown trout. It was a female full of roe, and I felt very guilty for killing it
because the opportunity for her to spawn new wild trout was lost forever.
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A crass photo of the same sixteen-inch brown trout. |
So yes, the competitive
streak during my early years often caused me to kill the fish I caught;
otherwise who would believe me without the evidence? Jim spurred my competitive
spirit as he saw that I had an arrogant fly fishing streak, and he frequently
used sarcasm lubricated by Petri labeled wine to challenge my fishing prowess. In
the moment I knew I had to kill that sixteen-inch spawner to save face with
Jim. Perhaps my current propensity to count the fish I catch is driven by that
old geezer’s banter about the performance of worms vs. flies. Looking back, I
know he meant no harm other than to knock me off my self-ascribed pedestal.
Still, I’d love to fish with him on Panguitch Lake today and see who’d catch
the most and largest fish!
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The southwestern view of Jim's Yellow Pine cabin, circa 1983 |
Within a few years after
Jim retired from EG&G he could no longer enjoy the cabin. Age and a failing
heart deterred him from trips to the cabin, and when he did go they were
punctuated by a sort of perpetual inebriation that made the whole experience
somewhat vacant for me. In the early 1990s Jim reached the point where he
wanted to sell the cabin and retire to San Diego to be near his children and
grandchildren. The cabin was paid for with EG&G stock options and 401k funds,
and so Jim was willing to sell me the cabin for $45,000, owner-financed over
ten years at 6 percent. That resulted in a monthly payment of about $500. At
that time my family was still growing, and although our family budget could
have swung the payment I really didn’t think we’d use the cabin often enough to
get any real benefit. I declined his offer. Today that cabin is probably worth
$250,000, which would have resulted in a 10% annual return on investment. So
much for being a financial wizard, eh?
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A very young FisherDad, September 1982 |
Although it’s been a couple
of decades, I still have warm memories of Jim and the cabin. He enjoyed bestowing
fatherly advice about everything from marriage and children to career development.
I honestly appreciated all that he shared with me, much of which I took to
heart. Sometimes I wish I had bought his cabin just to keep more memories
alive. I will visit Mammoth Creek again, probably drive by the old cabin, and
cast a line out in memory of Jim Jones and his beloved cabin.