Billy the Kid, Mogollon Cliff Dwellings & Gilas: My weekend
- This topic has 19 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated May 1, 2009 at 3:30 am by
.
-
Posts
-
Henry McCarty sold the butter he stole from a merchant in Silver City to the owner of this general store. The local Sherrif put Billy the Kid into lockup. And in his words, “To teach the youngster a lesson.” (Billy was only fifteen at the time) Many historians believe this was Billy’s first offense and the punishment is what pushed him over the edge, and lead to countless brutal murders. Niether the law-man or the outlaw ever knew, they were minutes away from Gilas. Thankfully for purposes of this report, we do.
Nine miles from our parked car, inside the Gila Wilderness, we came upon this animal, wondering around: much like us. We named him, Ed. Gave him our apple and moved on.
In an hour or so, the water started to look fishy. So we fished. If you’ve ever read a fishing report you can guess what happened next so I won’t fill it with worthless type-space. Just show some photos and move on to the next part of the story.
Pretty much every cast for the next.. oh six hours or so.. produced one of these little guys. I know, not much to look at for size, but spirit, they are a figher of sorts, unlike any other trout.
I’ll post more later. We have Cliff Dwellings to fish under and explore, Cave paintings from a 1000 years ago, and many-many more Gilas to catch on two other stretches of water.We hiked…
Hiked some more…
Allong the way we fished…it was groovy
Check out this Gila’s Sunspot – he’s got BLING
Gila Resting. Which was what we were about to do… oh so sleepy.
Then we fished some more…
We finally made the confluence… after hiking all day..
We were really close to final destination..
One more mile and we had reached the road along with the main branch of the trib we had just hiked.
We had to drop our gear and throw a couple casts before we ..yeah you guessed it hiked some more…
Did anyone catch the little man above Tara’s face-left?
The Ranger Station was nice enough to let us leave our packs with them for the short descent to an ancient apartment. It felt great not carrying all that weight for the first time in a couple days..
Only one more mile to go…
Not many places on this earth can you cast for fiesty little troots, while standing below an ancient civilization and their aprtment complex.
This marked the end of our trip. I will follow up with a summary of events later on today. It was schnazy…no wait.. super-schnazy couple of days.In summary:
We started here at this trailhead.
Another perspective of our starting point.
We hiked through this:
To get down to this:
We fished here:
and here..
For these- mini-troots.
To see some history:
Some Old.
Some Older.
In the end we had hiked close to 25 miles, caught many troots, and saw part of our southwest like few others, up close and personal. Reflecting on the trip, it’s hard to grasp the scope of things. The landscape is 1 million acres, with a population of 3000. Vast and open, with little human traffic. Almost perfect from our account.
I sincerely hope you enjoyed this little trip. Until next week. Hopefully we’ll have something else, rare to share with you. See you in five days CK.
Cool report Aaron. I enjoyed the history and explanation of the Gila. Nice pics. It’s like taking a mini vacation at my desk!
Those cave apartments are SO sweet!
Loved the report Aaron! Once again you show what an amazing place the SW can be to fish. The desert and fishing.. Doesn’t get much better. Fantastic photos! 🙂
Thanks all. Keep an eye out for this one. You never know where it just may turn up.
Until next week… look for a joint report, I’ll have to raise the bar to keep up with my photographic partner, this guy can shoot like no other.A
BAD A brotha! Your chick can stick too huh? Good for her!
Thanks mang! And, yes, she can. T is a casting freak!
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.