Last month, Chi asked me, What is your favorite holiday? Without hesitation, I replied, Andy’s birthday. The answer came easily because earlier that day, I had been tying some perdigons to give to Andy as a birthday present.
Andy’s birthday is in early November, so the first weekend of that month, Andy and I go fishing on a three-day-two-night camping trip. The full-day is usually spent on Pit 3, the Upper Sac, or somewhere below the dam on the McCloud. The first evening is Hat Creek, Baum Lake, Burney Creek, or one of the mainstays mentioned earlier. The last half-day of fishing is wherever Andy wants to go. It’s his birthday weekend.
Late fall is both a beautiful and practical time to go fishing. The deciduous trees add brilliant splashes of colors to the hillsides covered with evergreens. The brambles are sparser making paths to the well-travelled holes more obvious and movement a little less dangerous for the waders. At night, the stars, satellites, and the Milky Way are vividly visible in the cold, crisp air if the clouds move aside and the moonlight is dim.
Our trips started innocuously in 2013 with an outing to the Upper Sac hosted by The Oakland Casting Club. That year, I had asked John Schueller to take the club to the Upper Sac, and we experienced an October Caddis hatch unlike any other. We stayed at Castle Crags – on the opposite side of the highway – where it feels like the night trains crash through the middle of your tent.
John had been coming to those campgrounds his entire life. As we passed an abandoned gas station and store along the old highway leading into the campground, he reminisced aloud about going into those buildings as a kid. Even the campground host on the river-side of Castle Crags, an elderly woman, seemed to be a long-time family friend.
John was a generous, genuinely nice gentleman, and the club lost a great friend when he passed peacefully in his sleep several years later.
In 2013, Andy had just started fly fishing. I remember because I had to warn him to buy wading boots for the Lower Yuba trip: Andy, the rocks could ruin the neoprene booties on your brand new G3’s.
That’s the trip that Andy was baptized in knee deep water fishing the Salmonfly hatch. He got wet, but fortunately, he wasn’t swept away. Andy had such a fun time that, subsequently, he sent Charlie and me an excited email with an attachment about how to fish the Yuba. Andy didn’t know that Charlie fished that river almost every day with Phil French.
I didn’t know Phil very well, but he must have been a good person for Charlie to choose to hang out with him. As I’ve written in other posts, if you were cold, Charlie would take his shirt off to give it to you. Birds of a feather….
When Phil lost his battle with cancer, Charlie was understandably devastated. Finding a good fishing buddy is hard enough. Losing one… I can’t imagine.
The following years, Andy would want to go fishing and camping, or I wanted to go… and a trip materialized. In the early years, I didn’t know that it was Andy’s birthday.
Weather in northern California during the first week of November can be unpredictable. Over the years, we have been rained on. The worst rain was probably 2015. The water came down so hard and so long that it soaked through our rain jackets as we fished. Both of us bought new rain jackets after that trip.
That year, George joined us. George, Andy, and I are the three amigos. We own a drift boat together. We go fishing together. We get together for meals. As our responsibilities at work and at home have increased, we’ve had a tougher time coordinating trips together. More and more, it’s two of the three of us who go fishing. Lately, there’s been several trips where we go fishing by ourselves with our significant others. Life. That’s why George couldn’t join us this year.
The pandemic interrupted our trips to celebrate Andy’s birthday. We just didn’t know how safe or not safe it was to drive in the same car for four-plus hours. On the way up, we would catch up, share our frustrations at work, discuss flies that we had tied, places that we wanted to fish. On the way back, we would talk about the fish that we caught, the fish that we lost, the fish that we saw, the people whom we met. We would marvel at the hundreds of migrating ducks in the air in their “V” formations flapping their wings so vigorously, the colors of the sunset, the shape of the moon.
The car ride is part of the fun.
Another part of the fun is our meals. I bring a thick ribeye from the butcher shop in the Castro Valley Marketplace, salted butter, thyme, and an iron skillet. That’s the entrée for dinner on the second night. This year, I forgot to bring my meat thermometer. But I have been doing steaks for a while so I was pretty sure that I could do it by feel.
I started heating my iron skillet on Andy’s camp stove. Patted the steak dry with paper towels. Andy helped sprinkle salt and pepper generously on both sides, and then I pressed the edges of the rib eye against the butcher’s paper to pick up the remaining salt and pepper that had fallen to the side. Once the pan started to smoke, I added some olive oil and then placed the steak in the center. The sizzle confirmed that the temperature was good.
I seared one side for three-and-a half minutes. Then, the other for another three-and-half minutes. I also stood the steak up to sear the four ends. Once done, I added butter and thyme and basted each side for approximately 45 seconds.
Before I started the meat, Andy had already rinsed some baby potatoes, placed them in a pot filled with water, and started boiling them. Once they were cooked, the water was drained, the potatoes were salted lightly and then slathered with butter. The rib eye, which turned out to be pink in the middle, rested.
As we plated the food, I cut the ribeye so that each person would have half of the various parts of the steak. I also placed a slab of butter on each steak. Andy put the potatoes beside it. We scooped some orzo salad from Berkeley Bowl next to the steak and potatoes, and we sat down by the fire. Delicious. It had to be one of our all-time best meals.
Breakfasts are instant oatmeal with flax seed. We shake in some candied ginger, some nuts, some dried fruit. Andy makes coffee with his AeroPress, and I brew some decaffeinated tea adding sugar and Andy’s half-and-half later. Lunch is peanut butter and rhubarb jam sandwiches with untoasted bread – sourdough this time around.
On the final morning, we would normally be eager to break camp and hit the water before driving home. This year, however, we lingered at the campfire. It was cold with temperatures hovering in the thirties. Earlier, I had found five charred logs in an adjacent fire pit as I searched for a place to dry my tent’s footprint. As the embers glowed and persistent flames tried to consume the prized logs, we talked about our past trips and the people we miss.
Good times.
Since the Pit River is such a challenging and dangerous river to wade, after every trip, I wonder, How much longer will I be able to fish the Pit with George and Andy? I’m not sure, but I am starting to make a realization. Our trips are not entirely about the number and the size of the fish. It’s not all about the fishing. Thank you for that gift, Andy, and I hope that you had a happy, Happy Birthday.
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