I was considering cutting my losses, packing up my gear and heading home with my tail tucked between my legs when I saw the park ranger turn into the motel parking lot. I eagerly approached him, explained my predicament and pleaded with him to be merciful on this misguided Texan. He indicated that there was little he could do. He was ordered by higher-ups to close the park. The area was very dry and the fear of the forest fire spreading was at an all time high. He finally gave me a miniscule window of hope when he said that if the wind didn’t pick up or change directions during the night he would ask if he could open the park the next day. No guarantees. There was only a small chance of things falling my way but I decided to wait it out and see.

The next morning, bight and early, I walked to the hotel owners desk with my fingers and toes crossed. “Great news” the owner said, “you can fish.” The park ranger called the hotel and told the owner to go tell Tex he can fish. The ranger opened the park to fishing only. No one could camp, hike or picnic. Fishing only. Best of all, he left all of the barricades and Park Closed signs up. My head began to buzz with this scenario. Could it be true? Is it possible that any where in this country there is a stream that is full of big browns, full of fish eager to slam dry flies, has had no fishing for five days, has Park Closed signs on every other tree and has bright yellow barricades at every pull off? Is this really happening? And most of all… is this really happening to me? YES… it was!!!

I almost broke a leg and a fly rod getting to river so quick. I was the only person fishing this 12-mile stretch of quality trout water. The ONLY person. The river has had no fishing pressure for five days. None. Notta. Absolutely zero. What a magnificent opportunity. I hit the water at 8:00 am. Knowing that the stonefly hatch would began at a bout 9:00 am, I tied on a size 16 yellow Stimulator with a Copper John dropper on my 2wt rod. For the next hour, the catch was 50/50 on the dry and nymph. When the hatch started, I removed the nymph in order concentrate on the dry. My stimulator was repeatedly demolished by hungry trout. The hatch started around 9:00 am and eventually tapered off around 2:00 pm as the day warmed. During that time, I landed more than 40 nice brown on a dry. Most of them were in the 10 to 12 inch range. Some a little smaller and some a little bigger. The whole time, I saw no other person on the river. I was in total fly fishing bliss. Later that afternoon, as the temperature began to drop, they started hitting hard again and did so until just before dark. I lost count of the total number of fish that I caught that day. After a while you just quit counting. The fishing was phenomenal and the solitude was even better.