The Day of the Eagle

Majestic or not, I hate this bird!

I am not an avid fisherman.  My father was.  My mother was.  That great genetic combination wasn’t passed on to me.  I don’t mind fishing, I just don’t live for each and every day when there’s an opportunity to run outdoors with a pole in my hand to do battle with creatures underneath the water’s surface.

That being said, when I do go fishing it’s usually at a small mountain pond or lake where trout can be found.  In particular is a small body of water called Tripod Reservoir that I accidentally found several years ago.  I had often seen the sign pointing this little pond out from Idaho State Highway 55 when we’d be driving up to McCall to spend the day exploring the town nestled on the south shore of Payette Lake.

The first time I actually turned off the main road and figured out where Tripod was hidden was a great day for fishing.  Or maybe it was just a set-up – kind of like in a card game when you let a sucker win a few hands to get his confidence up and then you take him to the cleaners.  So it was that Tripod lured me in.

It was a few days before the Memorial Day weekend, when every Tom, Dick and Fishin’ Harry head up to the reservoir to fish, camp and otherwise over-populate the small pond.  But on the day when I first went there, I was alone.  Blissfully alone.  I enjoy casting with a spinner in these ponds, and that day was no exception.  On my first cast, a trout hit the spinner and my adventure had begun!

After landing the fish and placing it on a stringer, I repeated the process.  On the second cast… another fish.  This went on until in fifteen minutes I had reached the daily limit and it was time to leave.  Wow!  This place was magic!

I had to return to this pond, which I did several times over the years.  The fishing was usually good, but never as good as my first visit there.  It puzzled me for the first month or so after my initial visit as to why I did so well, so fast. I found the answer to this mystery on the Fish and Game website; the pond had been stocked just a couple of days before I arrived… and I arrived just before the Memorial Day crowd did. 

While I never experienced the same alarmingly fast rate of success that I did on my first visit to Tripod, I almost always came home with a couple of trout for dinner anytime I went back.  Until thatfateful day: the day of the eagle.

There is a small wooden float on Tripod near the dam that is fun to stand on and allows you to either cast out into the pond or back toward the shoreline.  After a few minutes of casting the spinner out and retrieving it I got a strike.  And for a stocked pond, this fish was a decent size.  I then realized that I didn’t have my stringer handy, so I walked up onto the shore about 10 feet from the water’s edge and placed the fish down (so it couldn’t flip and flop back into the water) and then went back to the float to dig through my tackle box and find the stringer. 

As soon as I found the stringer, I turned around just in time to witness something brown with white trim swoop down and grab my fish with its talons and then fly off into the distance.  America’s national bird had just stolen my fish, and he pulled off this heist within about 20 feet of me!  All I remember of this incident was that the brown coloration of his feathers was brilliant, and the white on his head was dazzling.  This bird got all cleaned up and pretty for the special occasion of fish filching.

After a few minutes the bald eagle returned and perched in a nearby pine tree to watch and wait, hoping that I’d do the brunt of the work for him and leave the next fish out on the shore for another easy meal.  But I had learned my lesson and this mistake was not repeated!

I ended up talking to someone else at the pond who knew a little more about this bird.  This bird was a professional trout-taker, and had actually been witnessed swooping down and skimming the water along the shore – grabbing a stringer full of trout that hadn’t been securely tied to anything and flying off toward the sunset. 

We concluded that if you wanted to keep the fish you caught, don’t throw them on the shore and turn your back on them; don’t put them on a stringer without securely tying the other end of it to something solid and if you happen to have a Chihuahua or some other kind of tiny dog… LEAVE IT AT HOME!