Sunday, April 10, 2022

Hunting for Redband and Snipe in the Big Quiet



 Fishing is another good reason to go to the desert. That along with snipe hunting. Hey look, I'll take whatever excuse I can find to hit the Big Quiet for a few days, and the Big Quiet it is. We were about 40 miles from pavement and while that doesn't sound like much in freeway terminology it would take two long days to hike out if you had to. Ok at my age it would take three days, stopping for a nap now and then.

Redbands? Snipe? This is something fishy you're thinking, and partly right you are. Redbands are an off-shoot of the rainbow trout and have the ability that evolved over eons of time, to live in a lot warmer water that exists in desert streams and ponds. 

The Big Quiet has streams and ponds that hold these fish, but the price of admission is very high. We always find parts of other vehicles that have broken down and with typically no signal it would make for  a rotten day. Trust me, I say a little prayer every time we go out to let us make it back. And if it's not the terrible lava rock roads you also have the weather, the wet stuff making mud, the worst of all. Snow by itself can stop or slow you down on an incline or off-camber road just like mud, but it's not as much of a mess. 

We started out heading for canyons south of Treasure Valley, there are three good size desert rivers that originate there. And quite a few smaller streams that are tributaries with nice canyons. The Big Quiet covers land from Southwest Idaho/Nevada up and into South East Oregon. That's a lot of Quiet.


So there we were, taking almost three hours to make 14 miles. And that was after 30 miles of good gravel.
Most of the roads and two tracks I post are good to go. On the really rotten terrible roads I'm too busy making new words out of thin air to bother with pictures. And while the 4wheeling nature of this area isn't the same as the southwest, the lava rocks and other rock fields are no slouch at making for slow going. Many times we could walk faster. If only you could buy a Polaris Razor with a camper.


It was hard to absorb the shock that someone had lost this.   Funny too is the fact that these are the most often found parts in the middle of nowhere. I found a break drum once and wondered about that. 






Ah but when we got to one of my favorite spots it was pretty nice with great temps. 


I typically post too many pics of the same things, iPhones make it all too easy. This trip report will be no different...hang on.

Lil Bailey is blind but her hearing is excellent, and she seemed to enjoy the red-winged blackbird that sang incessantly in the cattails next to camp. I think the blackbird appreciated the audience too. 






Evening is always special camping around water in the desert. All the birds were happy to see spring and the frogs were doing their thing, we both love the sounds of frogs at dusk. 


We also had the pump pellet gun for some "quiet"shooting. Hardly a "plink" comes out of it yet the fun of nailing a plastic water bottle is great. 


The small rocks here are pretty fantastic to see as well. I can hardly imagine the forces of nature that made these rocks with hundreds of layers, looking like artwork from a larger Hand.


My wife Lynn has recipes that involve veggies, sausage and tin foil she calls "packets." They work really well over charcoal. Personally I use the tin foil for hats. Then after dinner I put wood on the fire and we sat and listened to the animals of the desert waterholes.




But that night we ate and watched the new "Reacher" show downloaded from Amazon Prime before going camping. It's very hard to camp these days don't you think?


The next morning we headed upstream, to look for fish.


Right away I caught a duo canoodling in the pond. I enjoy catching things and always have, just know that I treat them with respect and let them go...most of the time. Frog legs were not on the menu this trip hah.




No Redbands yet, but more frogs. I hear they taste like trout.


A tree frog, like the brown one above, they can make a lot of noise all by their little selves.


Columbia spotted frog, from the Columbia River Basin, not the country. 


Ahoy, that selfie stick worked the first time I tried it that day, without the usual fussing that comes when "bluetooth cannot find it." It usually says the device is not within range yet it's a few inches away. 


Lynn fished this hole for a bit while I enjoyed sitting in the sun.


You can't quite see it in this picture but Lynn has her technique down of rolling her line, getting it to recast without actually moving her rod much, like her magic wand. She's gotten good and I always want to thank our friends Ben and Tory for turning us on to these fun fly rods, we sure enjoy using them.





We have yet to master a good technique of landing the trout, especially when Dave forgets the net. There is no reel to them, just a 13-14 foot rod and that much line from the tip. 

First Redband of the trip, she won the golden trout award. Well, we used to catch golden trout in the headwaters of the Kern River so I'll just give her the First Trout of the Trip award.


Then we had trout sandwiches for lunch, raw. Ok not so much, it was Subway that day, but I prefer PB&J...smashed.
It was a good place to have lunch tho, with good company. Lynn has a pack with a fold out seat while I took my little backpack chair. It seems to be harder and harder to get up off the ground as time goes on, sadly, and the chairs are great.


Looking down as we walked through water I saw this really weird looking thing squiggling around in the water. What the fugawi? There were two of them and I lifted them out of the water with my hiking stick to take a picture. The camera focused on the hiking stick instead so I was glad to have taken this video. Coming home to research, they are horsehair worms and quite prevelant in waters like those. We were glad to not be barefoot or swimming. They are parasites that live adult lives inside of crickets and such, taking over their brains and making them jump into water so the adult hair worms can escape and lay more eggs in the water. I doubt my wife will skinny dip in these streams with me anymore. Looking back I can say I've seen them before, much smaller in size, in small pockets of rain water on rocks while I was hiking the southwest. So make sure you filter that water before you drink, hah.










Getting back to camp we were greeted by friends of the desert, who were so unafraid they seemed to pose for the camera. We love those spotted frogs, and could listen to them every night...in small doses.


Before dinner I was trying to get more pictures of the resident red-winged blackbird, who kept turning so I couldn't get the red shoulders of it's wings. In fact it started chewing me out with irritated chirps. In between the meadow lark singing and the blackbird chirps, it would make its distinctive song.




Quite boring actually, this video was trying to catch the sound of something, we were pretty sure it was a bird. If you choose to watch for a sec you'll have to turn up the sound. Sitting at the fire in near darkness I swore I saw a loon land in the pond, then fly away. This sound started up right away and I swore it was the loon, flying back and forth. Lynn thought there were several of them, whatever it was, because of how the sound was covering a large area. Of course when I started recording, the sound tapered off and wasn't near as loud as it had been, the frogs had quieted as well. Getting home more research still had me confused. I found a loon sound online exactly the same and yet Lynn had a friend that told us it was a Wilson Snipe, which sounds just a little more like the sound we heard. Plus, the female makes that sound while flying, using tail feathers! It's called "winnowing." So there you have it, a Snipe! 

It was almost total dark yet the iPhone video tries to lighten the video, adding a lot of grain to the shot. 


Poor little "B", her cataracts sure show up at night when here pupils dilate. She still does a fantastic job of following footsteps, every now and then bumping into rocks or brush. 


We loaded up and left the next morning for another favorite spot. Looking back I couldn't tell you where we had been. I like it that way, so when I'm bribed in the future for the locations I won't be able to tell anyone. 




Crawling over rocky roads in the truck and throwing newly minted 4 letter words out the window must have been amusing to the locals, they were all ears.


An hour and a half later, after going only 7 miles we pulled up to another place. I always worry we'll find someone else here since there isn't room for more people. Well there is one more spot for a camper but it would be camping too close. We don't like to see or hear anyone else when we go out there, to the desert. It is the main draw for us, and if there was someone else we couldn't call it the Big Quiet.


Plus, it was the end of the road.




Lynn jumped right in to fish with her Tenkara while I set up my spinning reel with a Super Duper. I won the fish of the day award, my second cast was a two pounder.




You can see why they're called redbands, some have red gills as well.


Lynn nailed it too. Coming out of winter and with newly hatched bugs flying around the fish were biting. 




When Lynn throws her line around I hear Devo singing "Whip it, whip it good." Were they singing about fly fishing? Look close to see her line in action, left handed to boot.




Catch and release, it's all part of the fun. We only keep what we eat out there.


Not a great picture trying to show the swallow nests on the wall.






Did I say something earlier about a price to pay for entry to heaven? And since we both had to climb under the barbed wire fence you might ask why there are no pictures of my wife doing the same thing. There is a good reason I've made it to 68 years old and 42 years of marriage, I hope to continue using good sense.


The mosquitos were out too, about time for the citronella candle. I still itch a week later.


That night chef Lynn was at work inside my camper...






 I call it "an explosion of flavors."




The sound of wet stuff hitting the roof of the camper woke me up about 3am. How much will we get is the big question, I have 40 or so miles of dirt to get out. 




I was optimistic as we headed out, soon to turn into despair. Getting up on the plateau it seemed to have rained more than in the canyon, mud. If a three letter word could be considered a four letter word I'd nominate "mud." How about I go with mudd, that fixes it, a four letter word.


Leaf springs, somewhere.


While 4wheeling ever so slowly since wheels don't go where you point them, I heard a noise. It's typical for disc brakes to get some dirt and mud up against the disc but I'd never heard it so bad. It was driver side rear and sounded a bit like wheel bearings going south while we drove, north. I can usually clear the brakes with a soft pedal or a little emergency bake application but the sound never stopped. I kept getting out and touching my wheel at the hub to check for heat, nothing but cool. Still I/we worried. It would be pretty catastrophic to have bearings go out here on a good day much less total mud. And every time I got out, muddy boots. You know the kind, it sticks and picks up more with every step so just a few feet of travel and you have 20 pound boots. No pictures of boot mud were taken, my mouth was too busy cursing, MUDD!


The infuriating thing was that one inch below the mud was dry, dusty dirt. Getting out to open gates ended up being a weight lifting event for feet. Look close where the tires roll over and you can see dry dirt.


Even so, it was a beautiful day and birds were singing.


Making it back to a larger dirt/mud road was brief relief, that road was just as muddy and had gravel here and there. I asked my wife if she knew what gave cement its strength as concrete, gravel. So with mud as cement and gravel as...gravel, I was in trouble if it dried.


Lynn always asks why it hits her side the most. Back when we had a dune buggy she'd get hit with the most sand too. I have no answer!


This was Lynn's view. I couldn't run my wipers until I'd wiped away the mud and small rocks with a rag, my windshield already has enough scratches.


Years ago when this happened after 65 miles of mud we happened to drive through a stream. I backed up and did that maybe 10 times to wash off mud, and so now I look for a stream. This time was awesome with a stream not too far off course and hey look, it was fun too.


We lived in Phoenix for 22 years and I always geared our outings around water. It was amazing how many streams we found in the desert there. It's no different now, we gravitate to water. 


After all those stream crossing, ok splashing, we did get rid of a lot of mud. Yet I still dropped $32 at the self-wash trying to get that mud/concrete off. It's true, the spots of mud that dried with small stones and gravel in it had to be scrapped off with a metal scraper. We love the Big Quiet but sometimes hate that price of admission.


In the meantime I'd like to mention that our Outfitter Camper and truck are now 15 years old and going strong. They are the best of everything camping and 4wheeling in the Big Quiet.




And for riding along with us in The Big Quiet.