Fishing Trip and a Mud Rescue

View from the lower end of Paddock Reservoir looking toward the upper end. The reservoir is a private reservoir established by ranchers and farmers along the Little Willow. The water is for their usage and so maintaining fish populations is not of concern. The Idaho Fish and Game has worked out an agreement to allow fishermen to use the reservoir and two boat ramps have been estabished along with a brick outhouse. Some years the reservoir is drained dry and all the fish are lost. This year that may happen. Yesterday one could not take a boat from the lower end to the upper end because the water level is so low. It is as if there were two lakes. There are some large bass, crappie, bluegill, even some planted trout, and bullheads. It will be a shame to lose these. The F and G just restocked the reservoir three years ago.

Perry and Jim from the fly fishers club and I went to try our luck Wednesday. Wednesday happened to be J and my 42nd Anniversary. [Pretty understanding wife, huh? We had a nice dinner at Murphey's the night before and used that trip to attend an owners' education class for WorldMark Wyndham (timeshare ownership association).]

We caught several crappie about seven inches long and a few blue gill about six inches. We could not locate the schools of the bigger fish. We were fly fishing with sinking lines.

We returned to the ramp to load our kick boats and saw a white Tundra pickup parked to the side of the ramp. A little girl crying caught our attention. A 25 year old member (Justin) of the Air Force out of Mountain Home had taken an exploratory drive for the day with his 4 year and 2 year old daughters. He had driven near the shore line and got himself hopelessly stuck in the muck left by the receding water level. It was not a smart thing to do, but then all three of us didn't express any criticism toward him remembering our younger days of doing some foolish things ourselves. I remember coming down out of Florence, Idaho (a ghost town that I have not been to since) on what I thought was the road along Allison Creek. Wrong! It was a double path jeep trail that was not meant for two wheel drives...and it had a BIG bog hole for entertainment. Tim and I had to cut uncountable small trees down to make a corduroy road to eventually get the truck through the bog. There was no turning back with the two wheel drive on a road that was so rugged and steep. And there are more stories.

Anyway, we unhooked the trailer. Justin had a tow strap. Good thing, I had no chain or strap. We tied off to the hooks on the front of my 2007 Dodge Ram 1500. We were both in four wheel drive, but I could not pull him out. So I drove around in front of him (keeping out of the muck) and we tied off to my trailer ball and to the brush guard on the front of his pickup. That worked easily. Whew! He was very relieved and I expect the four year old was more relieved. I told him that I needed to get one of those tow straps. He handed the strap that he had just wound into a roll and said, "Here it is yours. I have two others and have access to hundreds." I am thinking I may be the recipient of stolen government property, but have not made a close inspection of the strap yet. We were the only people on the lake. There were two pickups at the dam, but I don't think there was anyway that Justin could see them and he did not know they were there. He will probably be much more cautious about pulling up near the shore of a reservoir in the future, but we all tend to learn those lessons by experiencing the pain. Oh, but aren't we fools. As in the fool learns from his own mistakes, but the wiseman learns from the mistakes of others.

When I delivered Jim to his house at 10:30 , his wife was not too happy about our late arrival. i told her that if Jim was going to be going with me, that she had better prepare herself for some late arrivals. That California city girl recently retired to this small western town did not seem too happy with my warning. She had already called mywife. J could not see the urgency--heck it only had been dark for an hour. Jim launched right into the story about our saving a four year old, a two year old, and their daddy. He did not say anything about the mud and the stuck truck to start and left her dangling for a few seconds with images of us brave guys pulling the family from the clutches of the cold, gray waters of Paddock. His wife seemed to accept that we had good reason to be late. Hmmm, I did not think we were late. There was still an hour of daylight to fish and I only had kept four crappie. Oh, well, J and I enjoyed a late breakfast of filleted crappie. We had fish sandwiches. Yum.

Time to go read a book.

Yeeeeoooooowwwww,

Papa Coyote loves you all.