ARIZONA'S DESERT FLY FISHERMEN

For many fly fishermen, the idea of accomplished fly casters going down to the Gulf of California to practice their art is offensive enough almost to be sacrilege. The popular image of fishing in the upper waters of the Gulf below Arizona is close to that of Chicago's pigstickers working at their trade in a southside slaughterhouse the laborious hauling of lunkers from the bottom on hand lines the size of hawsers, or employing rods that fit Doctor Johnson's definition of their being “sticks with hooks at one end and fools at the other.” But there is a small band of Arizonans who do go down to Arizona's salt water playground in Mexico and who are worthy of Sir Izaak Walton's respected designation as “compleat anglers.” The results of their efforts, however, hardly qualify for Walton's characterization of angling as “the contemplative man's recreation.” Fly fishing on the Gulf of California is one of two things, neither of them being tranquil. On most occasions it is exhilarating exercise, punctuated with moments of high drama. On other occasions it can be downright exasperating.Arizona's salt water fly fishermen (and women) are estimated to number about sixty, and the route they must take to the fishing grounds is one of the most improbable that could be imagined. Four hours' swift driving from either Phoenix or Tucson takes them not through snow-capped peaks and lush evergreens, the usual backdrop for fly fishing, but through one of the world's hottest wastelands, a desert through which the old Mexican road carried the name, “The Devil's Highway.” On the surface of it, the idea of dedicated fly casters taking out through a jungle of cactus and having to cross a sea of sand to go fishing seems ludicrous at first. Yet, when they have crossed the Sonoran desert, the fly fishermen find themselves on the shores of one of the world's great fish traps, where trophy specimens can be the norm rather than the exception. Actually, the best Gulf of California fly fishing is on the traps within the trap the vast estuaries that slice back into the ruler-straight beach east of the fishing community of Puerto Peñasco, Sonora. Four times each day, when the tides are active (and they usually are, with twenty-four feet the maximum), a calculated 350 million cubic feet of fish-laden water flows in and out through channels that vary in width from about half a mile at high tide to twenty feet at low. Roughly, this presents an average stream flow of seventeen thousand cubic feet per second, a roaring good river in any any fisherman's paradise. There is nothing startling about the phenomenon of the estuaries of Puerto Peñasco attracting fish. Shakespeare noted the reason some years ago when one of his characters explained how fish live in the sea: “Why, as men do aland; the great ones eat up the little ones.” As the water flows into the tidal gaps, it affords ideal feeding conditions for small fish. The larger fish, not unaware of this, follow on. When the tide changes to outflow, the large fish station themselves in the strong currents of the channels, gobbling up their smaller brethren as they stream back to the sea. Not particularly concerned with the fate of the smaller fish, the fly fisherman stations himself at the same spots, and his skill is so to titillate the voracious appetites of the plunderers of the deep that they will impale themselves on hooks.

Arizona's Desert DRY FLY FISHERMEN

A popular theory is that little fish get to be big fish by being smart, but the Gulf of California fly fisherman's attitude towards them is scornfully insulting. Convinced that fish are so dumb they don't even have sense enough to come in out of the rain, Gulf fly fishermen simply tie a couple of inches of black and white deer hair to No. 2 stainless steel hooks, set them working in the current, and stand tight for action. There are many more colorful salt water artificial flies, but this plain black-and-white bucktail streamer is the uncontested champion. Why such a prosaic lure should work so well is an enigma. “Sure, it's got good wet fly action,” says one fisherman, “but that doesn't explain why you can cast it into a boil of bait and the big fellows take the fly in preference to the real thing.” It isn't this simple, of course. A formidable amount of technique and brute strength go into getting the fly out into the current so it can perform with its fatal fascination. The rod preferred is the same used by many fisherman on the big, fresh water streams of the West - a slender nine-foot fiberglass-epoxy model, weighing in at a lithe four and five-eighths ounces. The experts claim that any good fly rod will do, but the fiberglass type withstands the effects of salt water and it has the tip action necessary for casting out a minimum of seventy feet of line against a stiff breeze, an accomplishment comparable to a pole vaulter topping twenty feet.On fresh water streams, the quarry's capabilities usually are quite predictable, but on the Gulf the fly rod must be able to handle anything from the hook-tearing gyrations of the Roosterfish to the hell-for-blue-water runs of powerful California Yellowtail. Like Daniel Defore's well-bred woman, the rod must be “all softness and sweetness,” and yet it must possess great strength of character. A top Gulf fly fisherman put it this way: “The secret of casting is to let the rod do the work. Same with fighting the fish. So many people just don't realize the strength and ability of a good fly rod.” The secret of casting may be letting the rod do the work,but it takes timing and power to unlock that secret. This is what the four and five-eighths ounces of slender rod has to get out onto the water, at times the rod butt only inches above the water, leaving precious little space for the line to work: Attached to the fly is nine feet of ten-pound-test monofilament tapered leader. This is joined to what is known as the shooting head thirty feet of heavy, high-density fly line that will quickly sink the fly to the desired depth. Behind this is one hundred feet of fine monofilament, called the shooting line. Backing it all is four hundred yards of flat dacron squidding line.

Since a fly rod is not a pole for killing fish, but a precision instrument for defeating them, it is not unusual for heartier Gulf fish to run off with three hundred yards of squidding line before they can be turned around. Unfortunately, a fly fisherman standing on loose footing in fast-surging water up to his chest can't shout at the boatman to give it full speed ahead and pursue the fleeing fish. Yet Gulf fly fishermen have taken just about every sporting variety, and, says one of the more stalwart of them, “Given enough patience and a little luck, I believe I could land a sailfish on a fly rod.” Whereas “patience and a little luck” may be the keys to getting in the big ones, a superior sense of touch and timing are essential in getting the fly out to him in the first place. The initial task is to retrieve the previous cast, getting the thirty feet of heavy shooting head out of the water and up into the air. Usually, the shooting head is brought back and to the side with the rod, then rolled out on top the water, and immediately snatched up into the air. For this first operation, the shooting head has been pulled about two feet onto the rod. A false cast gets it out and the rod tip working on the light monofilament. When the monofilament is released on the final cast, it sails swiftly out through the rod guides on the momentum of the heavier shooting head. A good caster should be able to drop his fly eighty feet away. An artist will lay it out one hundred and twenty feet.

The touch in this style of fly casting is in the caster's knowing instinctively when the line is whipped out to optimum length on the back cast, so he can snap it forward and shoot it. Timing is most important in coordinating the back haul with

Sonora Sand Buggies Old and New

the rod tip, that is, stripping the line forcefully with the free hand for added pressure at the precise moment the rod tip begins to bend into it. Double hauling, stripping on both back and forward casts, will add twenty to thirty percent more distance to the shooting cast.

This may not seem very difficult. Perhaps for some it isn't. But it most certainly can be dangerous. A talent the neophyte often develops, along with skill in the shooting cast, is a proper method for removing fly hooks from his ears and cheeks, even his scalp, with a minimum of bloodshed and pain. Another danger, not in casting, but in this sort of fly fishing, is getting a finger snarled in a coil of monofilament shooting line. Working the fly in the water, the fisherman will gather many feet of spiraling monofilament, either coiled in his free hand or floating from it in the water beside him. Many a fine white scar on Gulf fly fishermen's fingers indicate that fast-running monofilament snaring a finger can slice it to the bone like a razor. This misfortune can and does happen to the best fly fisher-men, most often when working schools of light fish in the channels, threeto four-pound Sea Trout or two-pound Sierra Mackerel, for example. (It is not uncommon under proper con-ditions for accomplished salt water fly fishermen to land and release nearly one hundred fish while standing in one spot.) Complacency and carelessness can set in when consistently striking smaller fish. But suddenly, POW! A big Yellowtail or King Mackerel or Skipjack will strike and take off with more determination than a politician after a loose vote. If a coil of monofilament should happen to catch a finger, the fisherman truly can be thankful that it cuts so cleanly and so easily.

But this risk, or rather the cause of it, is the main ingredient for making fly fishing on the Gulf such an attractive sport the expectation of the unexpected. On a trout stream, the fisher-man knows pretty well what he is going after. On the Gulf, his adversary can range within a few minutes from a one-pound Pompano to a twenty-five-pound Dolphin. The strike at the end of the line occasionally can be so unexpected as to be ridiculous a Diver Duck or a Pelican, both reported as tenacious fighters.

“Let me tell you something,” an old hand at fishing the estuaries remarked to a trout-fishing buddy. “If a man isn't care-ful, this fishing down here can ruin him for fresh water. I make a point not to do too much of this. I like fishing up north, too.” A problem Arizona's salt water fly fishermen haven't licked is how to prevent certain Gulf fish, like King Mackerel and the Groupers, from cutting leaders with their teeth. At present, in order to land this sort of fish, they must be hooked at the edge of the mouth or struck on the side of the head, both circum-stances matters of luck. Various wire tippets have been tried on the flies, but one has yet to be found that doesn't destroy the flies' action and discourage the fish.

A tough problem that has been solved, though, is the reel. A fly-casting reel presents many demands. It must be light enough to be in balance with the rod, yet on the Gulf it must carry enough line to handle big, hard-running fish. It must be non-corrosive to salt water and tight enough to prevent infiltration of fine sand. It should have relatively free action for strip-ping line, but sufficient braking to prevent back-lashing on fast runs.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN T. MCCHESNEY

Salt water fly fishing, like higher mathematics, will never be so completely mastered that there will not be new challenges for the smart angler.

It has to be thin for handling in casting, yet it must also have the strength not to expand and bind when so much line packs tightly on it against big fish. A couple of mechanically talented Phoenicians, Ed Adams and C. W. (Doc) Jones, have come up with a solution to the big ones that got away due to reel failure. Their reel looks much like the old Nottingham reel of the 1840's (the "new" black and white Gulf fly isn't much different from those described by the Roman poet Aelian in the Third Century A. D.), but it is made of hard-anodized aluminum; has sealed bearings; and all friction parts are of stainless steel. An adjustable dual click provides ordinary reel tension, but for braking against hard runners a simple nylon plug spot brake, operated by direct finger pressure, has been found to do the job effectively and without burning.

So far it sounds as if Arizona's salt water fly fishermen have everything as well organized as the crocodile in Alice's Wonderland verse: "How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws." Tain't necessarily so. There are those days on the Gulf, when all the perfect one hundred-foot casts merely fill the air with flies. And there are the days when Cortez's Vermilion Sea is churned to a murky gray by winds that seem to come from the four corners of the compass at the same time, and, even if the fish could accidentally find the fly, there is not the slightest chance of offering it to him. These are the days that make Mark Twain sound like a philosopher, when he comments that there's no use going to all the trouble of going fishing when one can be just as unsuccessful staying home. But, without the bad days, or the difficult days, when the fish would rather frolic than fight, the game wouldn't be worth playing. If every trip to the Gulf held one hundred fish an hour and the occasional interruption of a forty-pounder threatening to take the angler out to sea, the salt water would lose its savor. Consider the frustration of the angler, if every time he returned from the Gulf, all he had to report was, "Another wonderful day's fishing." That would be hell, and not because Arizona's salt water fly fishermen take The Devil's Highway to get there.

Angling is a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procuror of contentedness; and begot habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it. Indeed, my friend, you will find Angling to be like the virtue of Humility which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other blessings attending upon it. Doubt not that Angling is an Art worth learning: for Angling is somewhat like Poetry, men are to be born so; I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by practice and experience; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but Angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove like Virtue a reward to itself.

IZAAK WALTON

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IN NAVAJOLAND

The mesas have skirts flounced and pleated like those Navajo women wear.

NATURE'S OLYMPICS

Day started off down the road Through the hollow, Shouldering the sun, A Hercules load, As if it were a swallow.

Surely he must rest, I said, By that Joshua, stooped and gnarled As the Witch of Endor But on he sped With his fiery splendor.

And not until he reached the edge Of evening Did he slacken pace! There, almost breathless, Red of face, He set his flaming burden down On the hilly knees Of a mesa town And watched night throw the discus-moon Through space.

SEASON'S SECRETS

I wish I knew the secrets of The seasons of the year; Last night the snow was drifting down; Today the Spring is here.

SUN-KISSED

The ripened fruit falls to the ground Pyramids of yellow apples. Through thinning leaves of staggered trees Sunlight plays and slyly dapples Small brown spots upon their skin Freckles on a youthful face. And like a maiden's countenance Try as you may, they won't erase!

FAWN

Caught in the glass fire Glaring on the moon road, Halted by the horn blare, Staring, dumb he stands, Bone-bound, blind - Spins, crashes in the brush, White tail flashing. Moon, air and road Are hushed, his fear Engulfed by the wood.

MOCKING BIRD AT 6 A.M.

How can he face the sun with song With cascading flute and bright tympani Of his pulsating, feathered throat?

When he's practiced all night long On telephone pole, from tangerine tree Whose bloom is his frozen note.

THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT:

Mr. Weldon F. Heald's story of the Sonoran Desert and Organ Pipe National Monument which appeared in the Novem-ber, 1965, issue of your magazine, was of great interest to me. I am a native-born Australian who has travelled widely through my own country, often by car, and, like many of my fellow Australians, seen for myself the wonders of our own Australian desert, and have marvelled at its beauty. In the center of Australia is a large desert, called by us the "Outback," and it is in many ways beautiful and stark and rugged indeed, and often has the same Arizona landscape, but inhabiting it is a different flora and fauna found only in this country.Much of it, fortunately, is protected by law, and some areas, especially the area in which our own national monument, Ayer's Rock, is situated, have been set aside for a national park.

Ayer's Rock, as its name implies, is a huge red rock that stands out in the middle of the Central Australian desert. It is a famous landmark and popular sightseeing spot which draws tourists from all over the world. After rain, which is rare, the Central Australian desert reveals a beautiful carpet of wildflowers. Here, the bright red flowers of Sturt's Desert Pea burst into bloom, and native daisies create a bright yellow carpet.

In other desert areas, one may come upon an Ooldea Mallee covered with pink flowers. This grows in the dry northern region of South Australia. Elsewhere, the golden flowers of the Wattle show themselves.

The desert is the home of the Red Kan garoo and flightless Emu, and the Red Kangaroo is hunted by the Aborigines for its flesh and hide.

As I have told you, the desert is not dead, though we often call it the "Dead Heart" of Australia. Few Americans know about my country, and even fewer would guess, indeed, that Australia is a country like yours, with large cities on the coastline and wide open spaces in the interior. Our climate, like yours, varies. The east of Australia has a temperate climate, the south is cold, and the north is very hot, and in the mountain ranges, it snows in winter. I know of America and your State by reading American magazines, which are easily obtainable here, and perhaps one day,

Yours sincerely

I will visit Arizona, whose people wisely protect and conserve its own unique flora and fauna, so that it can be seen by future generations to come.

SAN IGNACIO DEL BABACOMARI:

Your article on the Babacomari Spanish Land Grant in your September issue was most interesting to me. Mr. Brophy is a fine writer. What a thrill it must be for him to own a ranch so filled with historical lore!

FROM AFRICA:

It has been most rewarding to receive ARIZONA HIGHWAYS in such a far-away country as Upper Volta. Thanks to a very considerate and thoughtful Aunt who has been sending me the magazine for thirteen years!

I was especially moved by the issues of August and September, 1965. The Santa Gertrudis pictures and story is tremendous propaganda for us who are trying to establish a Western type ranch in this part of Africa. The September issue brought me close to home. As a Conservationist on the Navajo Indian Reservation, I have worked with Apache County A. C. P. Manager Wayne Davis on many occasions and the moody little Colorado River is also well-known to us who have lived on the Navajo Reservation for eight years. Then, to top it off is the article by Evelyn Measeles with whom we shared a roof in the duplex during our four years' stay in Chinle, Arizona.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"WHEN AUTUMN BECKONS" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. This photograph was taken a short distance east of the Reese Tank Road along the eastern slopes of the San Francisco Peaks not far from Flagstaff. Generally early October is the time when autumn foliage is at its richest in this area. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.24 at 1/25th sec.; 127mm Ektar lens; October; bright sunlight; Weston meter reading 300. Hint to photographers: one of the difficulties in photographing golden aspen is that even the slightest breeze will cause movement of the leaves. Hence, a fast shutter speed is desirable.

BACK COVER

"AN AUTUMN VISTA" BY GEORGE McCULLOUGH. Photograph taken just east of the Arizona Snow Bowl on slopes of the San Francisco Peaks looking south over Fort Valley. Photo taken in mid-afternoon on a bright, sunny day in early October. Hasselblad camera; Ektachrome; f.16 at 1/10th second; ASA rating 35.