Okay, well I’m getting ready for Fish Camp next week and I had to tie up a few loose ends at the house. One of those dangling chores was to rack a batch of homebrew into a secondary fermenter. All was going fine until the very end when I was cleaning the primary fermenter. I turned it upside down to drain it and it slipped out of my hands, hit the concrete at my feet, and shattered. The result: 6 stitches in my middle finger of my left hand. Crap!
I’m hoping the bandage can be at least streamlined before Friday, so it’s not so cumbersome. The real issue is that this will put a damper on my rock climbing for a while. Crap!
Fish Camp is held by the White Mountain Apache Tribe at Christmas Tree Lake. You can show up as early as 1:00pm of your first day and fish until whenever you want. You leave by about noon on your last day. They provide all the food, heated tents, cots, and of course fishing on the lake, which is renowned for holding very large Apache Trout. The cost is $225 per day, so I paid $450 for a really cool weekend with folks that might be interested in a custom fly rod. The guy that organizes this thing for this particular bunch of fishermen likes to hold give away raffles, so I’m donating my labor for a custom fly rod to the cause.
The Federal Fish and Wildlife Service has two hatcheries in the area, and they plant the lake with some of the older (and larger) brood stock in their hatcheries. Before I knew about Fish Camp, I had to wait until June for the lake to be opened to the public (for a fee). It seemed when I fished Christmas Tree, there were always a couple of guys really intent on catching the Apache Trout world record. It certainly is possible.
I have a friend, who is now retired from the USFWS, who was working at one of the hatcheries that raise these fish at the time I met him. He invited me to come up and help the crew “spawn” the fish. We corralled the males and females, stripped the males of sperm and “mixed” it with the females. We handled numerous world records that day – and those are the fish that get planted. The problem is that once they enter the lake, their steady food supply is gone and they begin to lose weight. If you want a world record, you have to catch one soon after it has been released.
Lee Lynch is coming to get me Friday (May 11) morning early and we’re going up to the White Mountains. We’ll fish Horseshoe Cienega until noon or so, and then we'll head into Christmas Tree. Sunday morning (May13), we’re getting up early again and heading back home for Mother’s Day activities. Nearly two full days of fishing and I don’t have to plan a thing! Heaven! And, I could get a customer or two out of the deal.