All Fishermen Are Liars (23 page)

We broke camp that afternoon, determined to find a route that would take us on south toward those Bonneville cutthroats without going all the way back the way we came. We backtracked a few miles down the drainage and turned east along a little feeder called Sheep Creek. By staying on what seemed to be the most heavily traveled road, we threaded our way up a narrow, one-lane pass and then gradually down the other side, out of the cool spruce and pine through descending foothills and onto a high sage bench. We weren’t entirely sure where we were, but we had half a tank of gas and were tending generally in the right direction on an unmarked but serviceable dirt road that was bound to lead somewhere sooner or later.

The first vehicle we saw was a pickup going in the opposite direction and the driver flagged us down and asked for directions. We said we thought we were still on a certain-numbered Forest Service road, but that we’d passed enough unmarked and unmapped forks that we couldn’t actually swear to it. I’d been studying the map while Doug drove, so I went on to say that the watercourse along the road was probably South Cottonwood Creek, although it could be
North
Cottonwood or, if we’d strayed farther south than I thought, maybe
Apperson or even North Piney. Once I said this out loud, it didn’t sound as helpful as I’d intended.

We were stopped side by side blocking the road in the fashion of rural Wyoming with the compass and map spread out on the guy’s hood. His wife and young daughter were still sitting in the cab acting either patient or bored—it was hard to tell—but his dog, a large brown mutt with a hint of pit bull, had jumped out of the open pickup bed and was doing his best to scare up a rabbit.

I pointed to where I thought we were on the map. The guy nodded thoughtfully and pointed at a different spot where
he
thought we were. That seemed to settle it for both of us. He whistled up his dog and we parted amiably, agreeing that one or the other of us was lost.

ALSO BY JOHN GIERACH

No Shortage of Good Days

Fool’s Paradise

Still Life with Brook Trout

At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman

Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders

Standing in a River Waving a Stick

Fishing Bamboo

Another Lousy Day in Paradise

Dances with Trout

Even Brook Trout Get the Blues

Where the Trout Are All as Long as Your Leg

Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing

Fly-fishing Small Streams

The View from Rat Lake

Trout Bum

Flyfishing the High Country

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Copyright © 2014 by John Gierach

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2014

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Designed by Akasha Archer
Jacket design by Daniel Rembert
Jacket painting by Fred W. Thomas
Author photograph © C.D. Clarke

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gierach, John, date.
All fisherman are liars./John Gierach.
—First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
pages cm
1. Fly fishing—Anecdotes. I. Title.
SH456.G579 2014
799.12'4—dc23 2013012784

ISBN 978-1-4516-1831-0
ISBN 978-1-4516-1833-4 (ebook)