705 miles, 4 hours of fishing, 4 hooked species

With the Wrinkleneck trip looming just over the booze-laden horizon, my buddy Roger and I took a 24hr trip up to the White Mountains to do a little pre-neck recon mission. I basically knew where we were going. And I learned a valuable lesson: If you ever plan to drive to somewhere which involves navigating 30 miles of mountain fire roads at night, it would be nice to have a more than a basic idea where you have to go. At 2am we were very near the point of no return, and heading the warning of the gas gauge we decided to make camp. Carl's Jr burger wrappers, semi-used TP, and a granola bar box (the manly peanut butter kind, none of that sandal wearing hippy crap) quickly brought the Ents to their crackling knees, bringing warmth and happiness to all.

Wind is a dirty bitch, and spent the next day punching us in the testicles, and after finally getting to the lake we had driven all this way to scope out, mother nature giggled and turned the dial from ‘sub-light speed’ to ‘ludicrous speed’ and we decided that being drop-kicked to the opposite shore and having to carry our tubes back was not what a couple of sleep-deprived clowns thought of as a fun idea, we decided to GTFO and find something more promising.

Driving, turning, driving, stopping, looking, picking dust boogers (carefully on bumpy dirt roads); we pushed on. Then a sign: 10 miles to Black River east fork. Shit, why not? After receiving a tip from a nutball turkey hunter named Rom, we ended up at the west fork.

I knew that the Black River at lower altitudes is great smallmouth water, but at close to 8,600 feet, I was unsure about the population of this portion, so in my not-even-close-to infinite wisdom, I shrugged and tied on a stonefly and a hare's ear and waded in.

5 steps later I surprised a fish that made some chocolate milk and left. A sucker? Hmmm.....

(5 minutes later) Well would you look at that! I guess sometimes a guy just gets lucky. Over the next couple hours I also netted a brown, a rainbow and answered my earlier uncertainty by hooking a nice smallmouth that was apparently not impressed by my angling ability or by the size of my tippet and quickly broke off all my crap and took it with him. Well, at least now I know, and I think hooking 4 species of fish in a 100 yard stretch of river is the kick-ass.

We ran into a few other locals on way home, who seemed a little weary about our presence and didn't want to share any fishing tips. Buncha jerks.

-Alex