photo from noehill.com

Beginning at Putah creek, I’m traveling south through a narrow valley in the Pacific foothills. Along the way I’m passing through groves of oak trees interspersed with the “digger” pine. The hills on the west are covered with “buckbrush” and chemise, along with more oaks and pines. Continuing along, a variety of wildlife is spotted. There are wild turkeys, valley quail, an occasional gray squirrel, and black-tailed deer.

I finally end up in a large valley and come upon a monument  commemorating  a couple of young men who had come up from New Mexico with their families and settled in the area.  With promises to improve the land, they were given a Mexican land grant of approximately 40,000 acres which was called the Rancho Los Putos, a name  taken from the previously mentioned creek.

Nearby there is a restored “adobe” built by one of the men by the name of  Jaun Filipe Pena.  Standing at that spot the imagination is stimulated,  and it brings up images of ” fandangos”, and wild roaming grizzly bears that were once native to the area.

Now, interstate 80 cuts across the northern edge of the valley, and I find an on ramp heading east back to civilization.

I recently planted a new herb garden.  It’s in a small area on the east side of the house.  It only gets the late morning sun, but it can get pretty intense.  I hope not too much so!

There’s Italian parsely, cilantro, spearmint, tyme, and sage.    Much of this is supposed to do better in the ground, rather than in pots.  I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.  And I’ll be making irregular updates.

Fish on!

Maybe it was two years ago that I had the idea to do some fishing again. I hadn’t been fishing in quite a while, and so I planned a little trip to Putah Creek. But now it looked like a dumb idea; the sky is overcast and threatening to rain. I head out anyway. I don’t even know what I’m going to fish with; I’m bringing a spinning outfit and a fly rod.

I arrive at my destination and the weather is no better; in fact the clouds appear even darker. None-the-less I attack  the water with my spinning rod; I’m using a Mepps #2. No luck! Over and over again I cast, but still nothing. The water seems to be a bit murky. Then I remember a successful fishing trip to the Walker river with my friend Sarge. There he introduced me to the technique of “dead drift nymph” fishing. I switch to my fly rod and tie on a nymph ( probably tied by Sarge ).

I cast upstream and let it sink, drifting downstream naturally in the current. I see hesitation in the floating line and pull the rod up smartly. Fish on! After a good fight I managed to net him; a beautiful rainbow trout! And now the sun is coming out. and I’m feeling much better about the day.

Mergus merganser

I saw three mergansers swimming rapidly downstream in the creek the other day. In fact they were moving so fast that I only managed to snap a photo of  one. They were diving and popping up unexpectedly downstream. It looked like the fishing was pretty good!

 The common merganser in a large diving duck, with a long bill for catching fish. Apparently this is a wintering area for them.