Fishing Report 8-22-05

My last trip turned out to be something far from ordinary. One of those experiences that actually define the saying "Small world." This even went beyond that but I will let you decide what the odds are of something like this happening.

I had gotten a call from Ray Hobart at Sunriver Hammertime Home Center a week before the trip. As soon as I answered he said, " I've got someone here that was asking about talking his son out for the day and I thought of you." "Great!" I said, "Put him on." He gave his name as Tom Houser and said he wanted to take his son Adam out for a half day at East Lake. We agreed on the next Monday and I didn't give it another thought until the morning of the trip on the ride up the hill. I was thinking that the name Houser stood out but at the tender age of 56 couldn't remember if it really meant anything or not.

When I got into the parking lot, I saw him getting out of the truck and as he and his son were making their way to introduce themselves, I knew that we had met before. They followed me down to the ramp and as we were making small talk I mentioned that I had moved up from Central California years before. He said "Oh really, I lived in a little town called Porterville for part of a year in the early 90's." Just then, the neutrons started firing and I looked him right in the eye and said "Tom Houser, your wife is named Chris and I plumbed your house in Westwood Estates around 1989-90." He gave me a startled look and said "I can't believe that you remembered us." I had the memory advantage since I worked with each homeowner on those custom homes and the whole building process took about 60-90 days and we had three phases of plumbing that went into them. We were both fairly startled since that was over 15 years ago and he only lived there a few months. He moved back to Oregon a few months later and I moved to Bend in 1995 and 10 years later we meet on a guided fishing trip. It really blew our minds!

The fishing wasn't all that good at East that morning but it was great to get re-aquainted with someone from the past. We shared a lot about what had gone on in the years since. We only ended up with 4 browns that morning that went to 18" but Adam said that was the biggest brown that he had ever caught. Almost as big as his 21 in. rainbow that stood as his biggest trout to date. As we were heading in at noon, I felt compelled to ask them to join me "off the books" for the afternoon at Wickiup. I was planning to go anyway by myself and thought that maybe we could get into some bigger browns that evening.

They met me at Gordies Truck Stop after my lunch and nap and we got on the "Wick" around 4:00 p.m. As things turned out, we ended up with a few more nice browns and one that went 6 lb. Adam was pretty impressed with the 25 in. hen and said that was the biggest trout he had ever seen. It was a great ending to a very unusual day. Tom and I promised we would stay in touch.

Tight Lines, Rick