Does anybody else feel an overwhelming urge to finish reciting Gunga Din every time Ura-Ki posts? Or is it just me?
Dad (Marine) wasn't much of a bedtime story teller. But we always asked to hear Gunga Din. I had it memorized before my tweens.
Gunga Din and @Ura-Ki do have a connection. Near @Ura-Ki 's old stomping grounds is the Clackamas River. I'd be utterly gobsmacked if he hasn't fished it for salmon, trout, and/or steelhead. Rudyard Kipling sure as hell did on his fishing travels around the world, and here is what he had to say about the Clackamas: "The race is neither to the swift nor the battle to the strong; but time and chance cometh to all. I HAVE lived! The American Continent may now sink under the sea, for I have taken the best that it yields, and the best was neither dollars, love, nor real estate. Hear now, gentlemen of the Punjab Fishing Club, who whip the reaches of the Tavi, and you who painfully import trout over to Octamund, and I will tell you how old man California and I went fishing, and you shall envy. We returned from The Dalles to Portland by the way we had come, the steamer stopping en route to pick up a night's catch of one of the salmon wheels on the river, and to deliver it at a cannery downstream. ..." He goes on to describe the journey having been invited by a Portland businessman to fish the Clackamas. He does confuse Oregon with California. There is a spot on the Clackamas called Kipling Rock named for his adventure. This part of the river is near where my paternal Grandparents lived when they first made it to Oregon. I can tell you that the upper Clackamas is also a fishing experience and in particular a tributary called the Collawash. The Collawash drops about 100 feet per river mile and the majority of it's access is steep and rocky. It's a fast river with a high volume, so it's basically small pools separated by rapids and waterfalls. American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: Ch. 3: American Salmon
Spent many a morning sick from school fly fishing the Clackamas River, from head waters to mouth, that was some of the best Salmon and Steal Head fishin to be had on the wet side! Out east, obviously it was the mighty Deschutes river, again, from mouth to the dam @warmsprings, and it's still some of the most incredible fly fishing to be had! I actually grew up a stones throw from both the south fork of the Santiam and Calipouia, and fished both as hard as anything, my record Silver Bullit came out of a hole just out of Crackerneck and CrabTree! Man I sure do miss fishing the Clackamas, but the state has absolutely ruined it, the Eagle creek fishery and pretty much everything else, even the mighty Sandy is but a shadow of it's former glory! Still,........I'm just a few miles north of the Santiam river, actually both forks if it and I got both a Boat and Plane, so access isn't a problem!
