A Fishing Trip To Remember

In nineteen eighty three I was living and working in Phoenix Arizona. I had been raised in Michigan with all of its lakes and streams, and oddly, I didn’t fish very often. So after moving to the desert, of all places, I decided to take up fishing. Who would think of such a thing in the desert? But, the truth is, that within a short distance from Phoenix, there were several great fishing lakes, all man made from damming, either the Salt, or Agua Fria Rivers. My favorite was Lake Pleasant. It was just thirty miles north of Phoenix.

In January, I invited a friend to go on an overnight fishing trip. He had never been fishing before, and had not been camping in a long time. We packed up on a Tuesday morning, and drove out through the Giant Saguaro. It was a cold overcast gray day. The temperature was in the mid forties. This was typical of Phoenix winters, and this particular year had seen an exceptionally heavy rainfall. The lake level was very high.

Jeremy was my best friend, and while we had worked, hiked, bicycled, socialized together, neither of us had been camping in years. I had recently bought a tent and so it was set; we were going to fish and camp and have an all-around good time or else.

It was an uneventful trip traveling to the lake. There was absolutely nothing that would suggest the events that were about to happen. Finally, off the paved highway, we were traveling down a gravel covered two track that encircled the lake. The gruel gray sky, the tan and brown colors of the earth and the chaparral made the lake look exceptionally blue grey. The land surrounding the lake gave way to rock ledges that made for convenient shoreline fishing. The rocks dropped off into the water so the lake depth was immediately deep right at the shoreline. One did not have to cast his or her line far to be in fishing water.

We found a clearing designated for camping within fifty yards of the lakeshore. We pulled the car into the clearing and began to set up camp. The shore was down a hill that descended at a steep angle and then leveled off to a rock ledge that was twenty-five or thirty feet wide. You couldn’t see the ledge from the car and camp. This was the place of focus. This was where we would catch the fish.

We fished without incident all day long. We were fishing for large mouth bass using “waterdogs” (baby salamanders) as bait. We would cast the line in with a sinker and a bobber and would then wait patiently for a bite or an nibble. There were none. We sat there in folding camp chairs watching our bobbers and discussing everything from fishing rods to women and business investments.

Along about four pm, we decided to go up to the tent site and cook our evening meal. This is when the unexpected would begin. Yes, it would begin with a surprise and it would culminate with and even bigger surprise the next morning.

We cooked hotdogs and chili and settled on the picnic table to eat and carry on more conversation. I hadn’t been camping for at least ten years and never in the winter. The reason is that no one in Michigan went camping in the winter time. It was way too cold and snowy. I had not stopped to consider what time it would get dark.

Well, we had barely finished our supper, when it began to get darker and darker. We were stuck out in the wilderness with nothing to do except talk, no radio or anything for entertainment and it was getting very dark. This was poor planning on my part to be sure. At about seven o’clock pm, we decided that we would try to go to bed early, get some sleep, and get back to the fishing the next morning.

We crawled into our sleeping bags to settle in for the night and all at once, we heard a blood curdling scream!
“Oooouuo Oooouuo Oou”
“What the heck was that?” Jeremy whispered?
“Coyotes” I replied

Sure enough, all night long we heard that same sound. There must have been a pack of them close by. I would shine my flashlight to look at my watch and then Jeremy would shine his to look at his watch. I could not imagine that a night could last so long, 9:00, . . . 10:00,. . . 11:00, . . .12:00, . . . 1:00. . . I think that it was two am before we finally went to sleep, but still there was to be a finale.

The morning brought another overcast, chilly, day. We heated the water for coffee on the Coleman Stove, and cooked some eggs and bacon in an aluminum frying pan. It was good to see daylight and I was thankful that we were going back to Phoenix before it turned dark again.

After breakfast, I decided to go down the hill to the fishing spot and try my luck again. I had put the line in the water and was waiting for a bite. Jeremy stayed at the camp site for a few minutes. It seemed as though my line was caught so I walked close to the edge of the rock ledge and was pulling my fishing rod pulling on the line holding it out over the water. I was stepping sideways slowly. As I went to take another step, I looked down at my left foot to make sure that I was not missing the ledge and then I saw it. There, coiled up, not more than six inches from my left foot, was the biggest Diamond Back Rattle Snake I had ever seen. He was coiled at least three times around, and was at least three inches thick in the big part of his body. He wasn’t moving at all.

I screamed, threw my fishing pole on the ground and ran up the hill as fast as my feet would carry me. I have always been afraid of snakes. This one scared me so much that it had put me to flight.

I hollered to Jeremy, “I almost stepped on a rattler!”
“Naw you didn’t”
“Yes I did Jeremy, go down there and look.”

Jeremy went down the hill to the to check it out for himself.
I stayed at the top of the hill by the campsite and the car. I was on the picnic table and looking all around that the ground. Suddenly I heard Jeremy.

“You aren’t lying Machuta”
“Holy Moley that’s a big rattler!”

On the way back to Phoenix, we discussed the incident. I was still frightened. We reasoned that the rattler was hibernating in a crack in the rocks. The rain had caused the water level in the lake to rise and so the snake crawled just far enough to keep from drowning but was too cold to move. That’s why he didn’t strike. I am really glad about that.

We never caught one fish the entire outing, but, still, that is a fishing trip that I will never forget!