COOKS’ GARDENS, THE GREEN

For Mother’s Day, Jan and I went to the Lochsa, that wonderful scenic whitewatersteelhead-cutthroat river west of us in Idaho. It’s been our tradition for several years to go to the Lochsa Lodge for their Mother’s Day breakfast buffet. Then we drive down the river, watch the whitewater rafters, (a few years ago we recued one who was ejected

Flyfishing with Chuck Stranahan

from the raft when it shot over a tumbleweed and sent her airborne – splash – the raft was well downstream when she landed) or if conditions are right, fish It’s exciting just to watch the Lochsa foam and flow and crash its way down its canyon through the car window. When you get out and walk a gravel bar next to the river you might find big beautiful cutthroats rising to a swarming hatch of mayflies, or in the evening, rolling on caddisflies. It can be exciting fishing. This year there was no buffet at Lochsa Lodge. Instead you’d order from the menu spread on a table inside, pay there for take-out food, and go sit at a picnic bench out back or a table on the deck where you can see the mountains and the trees and hear the river, and they bring you your food. Covid compliant takeout service. Several nice Mother’s Day concoctions were on the menu – I found what for me was a dietcompliant frittata with spinach and red peppers; Jan said she had a yen for a hamburger. For a late breakfast – at the Lochsa Lodge - on Mother’s Day. “Whatever ya want,” I said, half-laughing, “It’s your day… “ Her burger, when it arrived was an American folk art culinary masterpiece. It was as tall as it was wide, a healthy piece of meat stacked between layers of condiments and melting cheese and partially contained in an oversized house-made bun. I shot a picture of it with my old pointand-shoot camera. We looked at it and laughed. That burger was bigger than her face, but bite by bite, she managed to stuff it in. I shot a photo of that epic first bite. I’ll only share it with her sisters or close friends. It’s safer that way. About once every five years the Lochsa is low enough on Mother’s Day to fish. We brought our gear. We saw through the window on the way over that conditions, for this time of year, to quote Goldilocks, were just right: swift enough to push the trout into the calm water along the edges, but still plenty of gravel bar showing. No need to get your feet wet, even, as the river was still within its banks. We were eager to hit it. We visited my friend Mike who runs the Lochsa Lodge Store, and found that we couldn’t buy Idaho licenses due to Idaho’s covid regs. To us, the Lochsa in Idaho is just a neighboring river, over the hill in another direction from the Blackfoot or the Big Hole; our annual plunge for Idaho licenses is somewhere between a formality and an inconvenience. For this Mother’s Day it was a major inconvenience. Conditions looked perfect and we couldn’t fish. We decided to enjoy the drive down the river anyway. We found some spots to walk the bank, look at what could have been some good fishing water, run our ever-eager Aussie Shepherd, Sadie, and take pictures. I used the point-and-shoot, Jan used her phone and her Canon, a tweener between a point-and shoot and a serious camera. She left her two Nikon systems home. Serious photography is an interest of hers and she’s good at it. The day was picture-perfect. The river was plenty clear and blue-looking through the lens; the trees, washed clean by a spring shower just a couple of days before were sparkling green; the sky was dappled with just the right amount of clouds. Problem was, I couldn’t get the shots I wanted with the pointand-shoot. We walked past some greatlooking edges where trout had to be stacked off the high-velocity main current. We saw a few mayflies coming off, and a few caddis were in the air. But there were no rises. At one point I felt something crawling on the back of my neck, carefully removed it, and was surprised to find a salmonfly. I didn’t find any fresh salmonfly nymph shucks along the bank. “Now we know what’s going on,” I said to Jan. “They’re underneath, chowing down on nymphs.” At that point, oddly enough, I wasn’t that bothered by not fishing. I attempted a couple of shots

of the salmonfly as he crawled away. The images turned out OK, but not what I’d have gotten with a macro lens on a good DSLR. On the Lochsa my interest in photography emerged again, and a couple of days later I was in the process of shopping for a used digital camera to go with my cache of Nikon lenses, holdovers from the film era. I was spoiled, you might say, by the quality of my film photo equip

ment and the buy-in to digital for equivalent gear was out of reach. Today, good used cameras are surprisingly affordable. I was narrowing my choices on the internet, reading reviews, wondering what I could get by with. I was agonizing over whether pull the trigger, against my better judgment and taking a vow of poverty for the rest of the summer, on a used digital camera that would take my collection of old Nikon lenses. At that moment Jan appeared in the doorway, and spoke in soft and even tones. She told me that I was due for an early Father’s Day gift. She named a price point, and told me to get my choice of a good used camera within that range. To say I was overwhelmed – again – by something Jan surprised me with would be an understatement. When my friends remind me that I have a wonderful wife, I join the chorus in agreement. The new-used camera hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m like a kid before Christmas, eager and excited at its arrival and the opportunity to re-enter a writing market that is photo-driven. Once again, she’s given me something that gives me life. And for Mother’s Day, all I got for her was a cheeseburger. You might say, once again, that I’m on the lucky end of the exchange.

Author and flytyer Chuck Stranahan can be reached at chuck@chuck-stranahan.com or visit his fly shop at 109 E. Main in Hamilton.

Crossword Puzzle

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DOWN

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