Outlaw Reflections: Looking Ahead at Telluride’s Raunchy Past

04 Oct Outlaw Reflections: Looking Ahead at Telluride’s Raunchy Past

Editor’s note: I am reminded of the man every day. A talented sculptor, one of his mobiles sits on the coffee table in our living room. But I had not seen or heard from Oleh Lysiak for over 20 years. Ah, the wonders of social media. We rediscovered each other a few months ago, which was when I also discovered the artist is also a writer – at least nowadays – though making marks on paper is only one among a very long list of talents, some slightly sketchy.

 O.Z. Lysiak has from time to time worked as a reporter, editor, columnist, photographer, public affairs officer, restaurateur, festival booth owner-operator, ski technician, carpenter, sailor, smuggler, tree planter, fishing guide, truck driver, river guide, cook, wood-cutter, trash collector, marine gravity operator, reclaimed wood broker and sculptor. He has written for The Ukrainian Weekly, The Oregonian, and closer to home, The Aspen Daily News, The Aspen Times, The Crested Butte Pilot, The San Miguel Basin Forum – and The Telluride Daily Planet. Oleh’s poetry has been widely published and his is author of  several books, including “Neighborhood of Strangers”; “Art, Crime & Lithium”; “Scars In Progress”; “Geezer Rumba.” 

Given his street cred and the fact he wrote extensively locally in the bad old days, I asked Oleh if he would mine his files for past columns that might be of interest to our readers. I am thankful the man said “yes.”

This is yet another story about fishing. But it is also a story about living well and like swallows, getting what you need (if not exactly what you want) – and doing it with grace. 

SWALLOWS

Following swallows at daybreak, the first cast cuts through flat-water mists and lands the #20 pale dun midge on Miramonte Reservoir’s ripple-less surface.

The swallows feed on the hatch in an utterly joyful display flashing split black tails and tiny gray, yellow, orange chests and bellies. Honkers sound raucous warnings at my intrusion and swim off into the mist. A coyote choir wails on in elongated yelps and yips like Sunday morning gospel up a draw back of where I’m casting. Two pairs of mallard wings rip overhead. A swallow dive bombs my fly and veers away in a minute fraction of a second in search of tastier pursuits.

The water’s smooth as oil on a glass tabletop. The sun is up over the ridge and weekend fishermen are still in bed. It’s cold enough to make me put my hands inside my pockets between casts, not a trace of dust on the dirt road after the first rains in quite a while. Smells verdant, fresh and raw.

Each cast is effortless, elegant, fluid without wind to fight. Day-glow orange line pays out in sinuous perfection, landing the fly more lightly than a conspiratorial whisper in a touchy situation.

A hike along the eastern shore provides no clues to rising fish although the swallows seemingly are gone berserk. They land on sagebrush carcasses long drowned and recently exposed. And each few steps I take, the swallows jump and flurry off along the shore in search of drowned sage perches like feathered, breathing ornaments atop a graveyard full of memories.

The glitter of the frost along the cracked and caking mud disappears the closer I get to the inlet at the south shore of the reservoir. The sun is well above the ridge line and my hands come out into the warmth. Crawfish antennae, claws, carapaces in mottled reds, browns, creams and blues testify silently to the luck of the draw.

Still no rises. I cast on. The midge, tiny as it is, is hard to spot atop the glare. Blaze orange hunters’ caps dot the shore across the water. Bait fishermen set up along the west shore at the base of the peninsula.

Steve Steed and I caught plenty of Miramonte’s muddy tasting late summer trout in just the spot the orange caps are set up in. We’d hunker down below the bank and cast into the windswept and snarly void. We’d always bring a twelve-pack. It was impossible to talk Steve out of drinking Coors and drink real beer instead. Sometimes we’d bring a pint of downstream brandy because we knew it’d be a long and windy ordeal to wait the lake trout out into having a taste of what we hoped would be something a fish without respect would eat. We just as well might have tossed Twinkies out for bait.

In early spring we hiked to the southern inlet just as the ice came off the lake, as soon as the road was passable and fish in goose down jackets, wool trousers, caps and gloves, feet toasty in Sorels. The fish would bite on anything, hungry after a winter under the ice.

We’d get a fire going to keep warm and grill fish under 16 inches in a day-long hot lunch program while we whacked scores for the smoker. Our antifreeze of choice that time of year was mescal con gusano. The lucky one who got the last swig usually got the worm. I remember one of our pirate fishing crew in Muslim prayer pose on the floor of the shower after one of our infamous Miramante debacles while the rest of us fried trout and sent an emissary off to the liquor store in Sawpit for re-supply. We were younger and Sawpit had a liquor store then.

Steve helped me build the smoker the Miramonte trout were destined for. We found an old Kelvinator refrigerator, cut holes in the top and bottom for 6″ stovepipe, shot a few holes in the fridge with a .22 for ventilation, fitted the pipe with dampers, along with a cap on top. The bottom we connected to a 55-gallon drum used for a cooker. Dirk DePagter provided apple wood from an old orchard in Delta for smoking wood and Mike Baer concocted a brine divine. The smoked trout were legendary in the neighborhood and we took the opportunity every spring to catch a barrel full to smoke so everybody would get some. It never lasted though because the word got out and we were out of smoked fish in a less than a week.

Cold smoking took three days of constant vigil. The fish marinated in Baer’s Secret Brine overnight. Then they were lovingly hung in the smoker off the racks, seared with original flames and soothed in cool apple wood smoke until they flaked off the bone in moist, delectable mouthfuls.

Steed also turned me on to deer and elk hunting and the joys of bushwhacking the back roads of San Miguel County. Steve, Tom Spyke and I began the hunting season every year with dove, band-tailed pigeon, grouse and mushrooms before moving on to deer, elk, and later duck, pheasant and bunnies. There was never a lack of game in the freezers in our homes. We worked and played together; hauled our spoils out of the woods and onto the dinner table. We never had a lot of money but there was always something delicious to eat and plenty of everything worthwhile to share.

Steve died last year in La Junta, where he quarterbacked the high school football team. He’s buried with his own and we were lucky to have known him for the short time he was with us. I miss him. I miss Tim Woozley and Randy Higgason. Seems the only time I ever get to see my old pals anymore is when death brings us together, a sign of the age. Janis was right, you’ve got to get it while you can.

Emerging from my sentimental reverie I realize I’m up to my crotch in Miramonte, boats trolling, mists long gone, swallows explosive in alarming grace. I’m back from the past and wiping away tears, not a rise in sight. I roll up my rig and hike back to the truck.

While taking off my waders a white-haired old-timer approaches me on his way back from the crapper. He tells me he’s been camped here since Wednesday with some good hits on red and white spinners while trolling. The bait fishermen have been pulling in some lunkers, he claims, but he caught a 17-incher last night. The only time the fish are rising is at dusk, immediately before dark and only along the southwest shore of the island just off the channel by the dam. We talk for a while and I tell him I’m heading home because I’ve got a lot of work to do.

“Wish I could,” he replies and walks down to his trailer.

I pack my fishing rig into the Jimmy and concoct plans for breakfast, a lot of stuff left to do today.

Bluered, an original mobile by artist Oleh Lysiak