50th annual fishing trip is a tale of trout and men
Dick “Hoagie” Hoagland of Newport Beach tries to stay warm in the 28-degree air at Crowley Lake on April 30. Hoagland, 78, has fished for trout in California’s High Sierra on opening day for the past 50 years.
For the past 50 years, Dick “Hoagie” Hoagland of Newport Beach has journeyed to California’s High Sierra for trout fishing on opening day of the season. Without fail, on the last Saturday of every April since Lyndon Johnson was president, Hoagland has been aboard a boat, fishing rod in hand, eyes peering to the mountains and lake, angling for trout.
It began in 1966, when Hoagland, now 78, persuaded four other men to participate in what became an accidental tradition: Drive north, fish on the first day of the season. Repeat the following day. Head home with another chapter of fish tales swimming in their memories.
It’s a routine, come hell or freezing high water.
Despite distance and flat tires.
In the snow or rain, beneath sunshine or clouds.
In matrimony or divorce.
Three of the original five are still alive. Two are onboard this year for the 50th trip. One is not.
Hoagland, who over the years has rallied others to join the founders on the adventure, might simply seem to be an unusually dedicated fisherman.
But, he explains, this getaway has always been about more. These men love fishing, he says, but also, “They love each other. They love the outdoors.”
Why else, Hoagland asks, would any sane man lift his aging body at 5 a.m. to endure sleet and bitter wind for a few fish?
***
Four of eight travelers on the 50th annual High Sierra trout trip have arranged to meet at a house in Dover Shores in Newport Beach at around 7 a.m. April 29, one day before the season’s opening.
The home belongs to Greg Munoz, a retired Orange County Superior Court judge.
It’s been a ritual to convene at Munoz’s home before the nearly 375-mile drive. This year, like most of the previous 49, the men are going fishing in Crowley Lake, a reservoir at 6,800 feet elevation on the Owens River about 15 miles down the hill from Mammoth Lakes, where all eight men plan to stay in a Craftsman duplex.
This would have been Munoz’s 50th trip. But recent back surgery has prevented him from going this year.
That hasn’t been easy for the others to digest, but Munoz is faring well.
He’s still sporting the 50th-anniversary trip T-shirt. He’s talking about the weekend getaway like he’s about to throw his fishing pole in the back of Hoagland’s white Cadillac Escalade and venture north once more to make trouble.
He’s even wearing a silver belt buckle — his lucky charm — with an image of a trout at its center.
“That’s what we’re after,” Munoz says, cracking a sly smile.
The group chides him. By staying home, they say, Munoz is “staying a year younger.”
Everyone agrees it’s not the same without their rooster. Munoz has always been the early riser who forces the others out of bed, even after they had played gin until 2 in the morning and awoke at 5.
Old age has forever altered the 2 a.m. part.
“Now we go to bed at 9,” Munoz says. “We’ve progressed.”
***
The waitress at Jack’s restaurant in Bishop, about 40 miles southeast of Mammoth, calls the men “rascals.”
Hoagland’s group has been meeting at Jack’s for lunch on their way to Crowley Lake for 15 years or so. It serves traditional American fare with a kitschy bonus of antlers and cowboy gear attached to the walls.
Hoagland shares a chicken fried steak with his son, Mark, 56, of Laguna Niguel, who’s tagging along this year. Hoagland used to devour a whole steak; now it must be split.
The fishermen used to discuss girlfriends, former and current. Sometimes after trolling the lake, they’d troll the bars.
“Now it’s about our latest surgeries and the elections,” Hoagland says.
On their way out after eating, they walk under a sign above the exit.
“Through this door,” it reads, “pass the world’s greatest fishermen.”
***
Hoagland’s Escalade pulls up to Crowley Lake. It’s partly cloudy, about 60 degrees. A nice day to be outside.
That’s fortunate, according to Bob Watkins, who says it can be bitterly cold.
“Sometimes it’s hell,” he says. “So bad you can hardly move.”
Watkins, who moved to Huntington Beach in July after decades living in Newport Beach, is another 50-year veteran of the trout trip. The 78-year-old is a consistent wisecracker throughout the weekend, but all the men have jokes for every situation.
Watkins relaxes on a chair at the stern of a 16-foot pontoon boat floating on Crowley Lake’s South Landing docks. Hoagland rented the single-engine boat and is at the bow, trying to prep it for the next morning.
Big problem: The engine won’t start. Hoagland diagnoses it has a dead battery.
“Better than a dead fisherman,” Watkins replies to no one in particular. He squints one of his eyes in the sunlight.
The group tells the proper authorities, who promise to take care of it by morning.
“Did you tell them who you were?” Mark asks his father. “Did you tell them it was a big year?”
Hoagland scoffs. “They don’t know,” he says with a slight smile.
Hoagland then drives with Mark, Watkins and George Brooks, 80, a 12-year trip veteran who lives in Desert Hot Springs, to their three-story Mammoth cabin. With four bedrooms and three bathrooms, it sleeps eight people, provided some don’t mind crashing on bunk beds.
Hoagland makes a wrong turn. Or two. The men’s memory of the cabin, which they’ve rented the past five years, has failed them.
***
That first evening comes with a trip tradition: a spaghetti dinner.
For an appetizer they eat sashimi from a 205-pound yellowfin tuna — a serious upgrade from the earliest excursions. The men note that the trip used to feature hot dogs and, one time, ham that tasted like tin.
Another year they feasted on beer and M&Ms.
Once the spaghetti is ready, the men gather at the dining room table below a chandelier made of antlers.
Hoagland starts the dinner with a prayer. It’s dedicated to Munoz and to John Burrows, a member of Hoagland’s original crew who died in 2013.
The boys loved Burrows – he was a terrible fisherman and an even worse card player.
***
On Saturday morning, Hoagland steps onto his pontoon boat for his 50th annual trip out on the water. He thinks of his old pal Munoz having to miss the journey for the first time.
“I wish he was here,” Hoagland says.
The two met through a mutual friend. Munoz, the eighth of 11 children in a Mexican immigrant family, was in law school at the time. Many years later, the first-generation American who once shined shoes and worked in fields echoed the success of his older sister, Frances, also an Orange County Superior Court judge.
“He’s really a quality human being,” Hoagland says.
But he can’t reminisce long. There’s the issue of getting the boat started. And now they know why it wouldn’t: no gas.
The Crowley Lake crews prepped some 90 boats for trout fishing opening day. Apparently, Hoagland’s was the only one they forgot to top off.
By 8 a.m., with the great gas question solved, Hoagland, Mark and Brooks are out on the water.
The five other men on the trip, including Watkins, are aboard two other boats.
Thus begins two days of looking for trout varieties including German brown, rainbow and cutthroat. The fishing style of the weekend is trolling: Throw a line over the side, putter the boat around and silently trust the lure will do the trick.
As it turns out, trolling involves a lot of idle time, lost in one’s thoughts or wondering about the weather, which on this Saturday is pretty lousy. Clouds, wind. Lows of around 20 degrees.
But the views of the snow-capped mountains to the east and west are stunning.
When a fish bites, there’s still the challenge of reeling it in, stuffing it in a net and transferring it to a secured basket that drags alongside the boat. Sometimes the fish frantically squirm out of the anglers’ grasp. Sometimes the fishermen get excited, thinking they have something hooked. But they don’t.
Sometimes — a few too many times — their lines get tangled and they have to spend several minutes dealing with the mishap.
Either they give you good weather or they give you fish. They don’t give you both.
— Dick “Hoagie” Hoagland of Newport Beach
***
Mark thinks he’s caught something.
He starts reeling it in. Could be a big one, he guesses — bigger than his first, a feisty cutthroat.
But in the distance, hauling up fast on the choppy lake, is a Mono County sheriff’s patrol boat. It’s showing no signs of slowing down. Mark keeps reeling in whatever he’s hooked down there.
But the deputies pass the Hoagland boat close enough to cut Mark’s line, ensuring the fish’s escape.
“That was my lucky lure,” Mark says, looking into the reservoir where the lure has fallen to the bottom, lost forever.
Meanwhile, Brooks has broken three fishing lines. Then, finally, he hooks a rainbow trout.
He credits his success to his “hot lure.”
Hoagland makes the men’s victories known on the radio.
“The skunk is off,” he declares.
***
Hoagland isn’t having success with his trolling. Mark and Brooks have hooked some.
But not long after the fishermen decide to retire to the “barn” — their nickname for Crowley Lake’s South Landing docks —Hoagland yells, “Hookup!”
The boat halts so he can pull his jostling line to the surface.
It turns out to be nothing, though. He surmises he caught his line on the reservoir bottom.
On the way to the docks, the smell of gas permeates the air as the pontoon boat picks up speed. Hoagland looks to the snow-covered mountains due west as the weather starts to clear and warm up ever so slightly. For the past few hours, the men have been hunkered down in the chill.
“It’s starting to get nice out here,” Hoagland says quietly.
***
The tradition of the second evening is eating whatever the boys caught that day.
Among the eight of them, they got plenty. No one goes hungry.
Hoagland again prays for Munoz. He thanks God for the beautiful Sierra mountain range and “acceptable” weather that day. Watkins mock snores through grace.
***
To start the second fishing day of the trip, there is gas in Hoagland’s boat.
Better yet, the weather is clear, the skies blue, the temperature 30 degrees higher than the morning before.
Instead of wind in their faces, sunshine reflects off their sunglasses.
“Either they give you good weather or they give you fish,” Hoagland says. “They don’t give you both.”
Brooks and Hoagland sit at the stern as Mark pilots the boat onto the lake.
“Kinda nice, eh George?” Hoagland says.
“What a difference a day makes,” Brooks replies.
“But remember, it can change up here quick,” Hoagland says. “Enjoy it while you can.”
***
By noon, the clouds above Crowley Lake are looking more ominous.
“Hookup!” Hoagland yells.
Somewhere below the water, he’s hooked something.
But with that comes worsening weather. In a cinematic moment, in sync with the old fisherman patiently reeling in his catch, the wind picks up and rain starts to fall.
Hoagland drags the trout closer to the boat. It gets within a few feet, squirming up to the stern. Mark, net at the ready, bends over to scoop what would be Hoagland’s first catch of the weekend.
But then … fail. Loud four-letter word.
What happened quickly becomes a matter of dispute. Hoagland thinks the fish made it into his son’s net but he didn’t lift it out of the water fast enough to prevent its escape.
Mark’s version is that the trout never made it into the net.
That’s too bad, Hoagland says. He had a jackpot in his grasp.
***
The boat heads back to the “barn.” It looks like Hoagland won’t catch anything the whole weekend.
Until he does.
“Hookup!” he proclaims. It’s 1:46 p.m.
By 1:47, out of Crowley Lake pops a 12-ounce German brown. Mark snags it in the net.
“Reprieve, baby!” Mark says, his skills redeemed.
The boat pulls in at 2:30. The weather, which started nice, got bad and then got a bit nicer, turns bad again while the vessel pulls up to the fueling station.
The wind starts to howl. AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” plays on the station’s radio.
***
Sunday’s dinner isn’t fish. It’s steak, potatoes, wine and ice cream.
Despite all the jabs everyone launches at one another, Watkins says he savors each year he is able to go on the trip.
“Most people don’t think we like each other,” he says. “But you have to understand the relationship.”
Watkins takes a moment to think about Burrows. He is remembered for the time he used a 3-foot pink Barbie fishing pole and, to everyone’s surprise, including his own, caught a 3-pound trout with it.
The next year, Burrows died of cancer. Watkins was a pallbearer at his funeral in St. Louis.
Burrows took a memento of his High Sierra fishing adventures with him to the grave. He was buried with the pink Barbie pole in his casket.
***
The group had thought about going to breakfast together Monday morning in Mammoth before leaving.
Hoagland takes stock of who wants to go, but he soon realizes it isn’t needed because they aren’t hungry. Some of the boys had already eaten enough cold cereal. So they go home.
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Twitter: @BradleyZint
