Ed Ragsdale sent us a copy of the email he
sent to Ernie Cowan, the outdoor writer for the North County Times:
Dear Mr. Cowan,
This is the 1st time I have ever
sent an E-mail to a newspaper in my life, so please bear with me on punctuation,
spelling and grammar.....
I’ve been reading your articles in the
North County Times for quite some time (especially the High Sierra
Trout stories)......and I’ve been telling myself that one of these
days I’m going to go Fly Fishing.....The key words here..... (one
of these days).....Well, one of these day finally arrived. On Monday
Nov. 22nd, 1999. First let me start out by saying, I’m over
50, have never had a fly rod in my hands in my life let alone tried
to catch a Trout using a fly. With that said, I contacted Tom Loe,
who runs a Drift boat guide service (Sierra Drifters) out of Bishop, on
the Lower Owens River. Upon calling Tom I told him I knew (nothing) about
how to fly fish, but I would like to take one of his drift trips
down the Lower Owens River. The first thing he said was, "no
problem".....That sounded pretty good to me...He was not afraid to
take a rookie.....I met Tom a 9am, walked to where the boat was, got in
and shoved off. We went down the river for approx. 5 minutes, Tom set the
anchor and proceeded to instruct me on how to Fly fish the river. Due to
the narrowness of the river he taught me the Roll Cast. Tom uses a tackle
which is provided by Brock’s. A forward-sinking fly line with a streamer
that resembled sculpin, carp and squaw fish. Within approx. 15 minutes I
was ready. We went a little farther down stream, I did a roll cast and
after about 3 casts......Yes.....I caught my 1st ever Trout on a
fly.... Yes, needless to say I was pretty Jazzed!
At the end of the day.......I had 30 solid
hook-ups, 15 fish were brought to the boat and released. IOf the 15 fish,
one was 3-1/4 pounds, three in the 2 to 2-1/2 pound range......Now
for what everyone will say is a
(fish story).....At approx. 1pm I hooked what Tom says (was) an Alpers
trout....He saw it on the surfaced.....It was a 6 to 7 pound trout. I
battled it for 10 minutes (the closest it got was within 9 feet) at which
point I lost it..... So anyone who tells you.......Trout fishing
season is over, it’s too cold,
too windy or I’ve never fly fished and (can’t) do it, (they are wrong,
wrong, wrong)...By the way the weather was middle 60’s, I wore no
jacket....A drop dead gorgeous day. The
fishing started at 9am and we got off the water at 4pm. Do you know how it
is when you’re reading a good book and you never want it to end? That’s
how perfect a day it was...I never wanted the day to end....I will never,
ever forget Monday Nov. 22, 1999.
Thank you Ernie for your articles, because
if not for reading your stories I would probably still be dreaming about
fly fishing instead of experiencing it...........
Have a great day,
EDWARD RAGSDALE
