Arizona Chapter

Apache trout are a fish unique to Arizona. Other exotic species planted in their waters were more aggressive in their eating and breeding habits, forcing the Apache trout into near extinction. The Arizona Game and Fish poisoned several lakes and rivers to rid them of the exotics and the Apaches were reintroduced. They are currently doing well enough to have a season to fish for them.

Christmas Tree Lake is on the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation in east central Arizona. It has a decent population of Apache Trout.

Chuck Zwit lives in Payson Arizona and he is a friend of a person who works with my son. Chuck fishes for Apache Trout

When I drove into Chuck's driveway, he was repairing the spare tire for his boat trailer. He explained, "Roads up the mountain are not maintained and washboard rough."

We went into his house to look at his mounted Apache trout and his fish photographs. His most interesting photograph was of a bird nest made entirely of fishing line, some of which still had hooks attached. Another was of his sister holding a trout, "Your sister fishes too?"

"No." He said, "This was her first time. This was her first fish. When she hooked it, it broke her line. She hooked it again and it broke her line again. I told her to hold the line above her head to keep the fish toward the top of the water. When she hooked it the third time, she held the pole above her head and ran away from the water. The fish came to the surface and hydroplaned all the way to shore. It had three hooks in its mouth with the bait still on them."

Chuck works for a golf course. For years he has worked for contractors who build golf courses. I asked how he got started in the business.

"After graduating from high school in Illinois, I went to work at a camp in Wisconsin. The owner of the camp built a golf course and I transferred from the camp to the golf course. I liked golf course work, so I went to school in Colorado to learn all about them. I got lucky and was hired as part of the construction crew building a course near the school. I stayed in golf course construction for eight years because I wanted to learn all the different ways they can be built. While working on a course in the Phoenix area I realized how important water is to golf courses, so I decided to concentrate on water systems."

Chuck has worked on golf course jobs in Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippians, Hawaii and other places. He used to work about a hundred hours a week, earning over a hundred thousand dollars a year. He says, "I'm single and I don't need that much money and enough traveling is enough traveling and... Well! I like to fish too much."

He talked about Christmas Tree Lake, "You have to use barb-less hooks and you can't use live bait or crank baits with treble hooks. You better not cheat either, because the Apache game wardens watch from the hills in the forest and when they find violators they walk out of the woods like the baseball players came out of the corn field in the movie, Field of Dreams.

Chuck said he had all the permits: the fishing permit, the boating permit, the camping permit and the road use permit; so off we went, caravaning to Hawley Lake campground, where we were going to camp and continue getting to know each other. At the camp site it was difficult to find a flat spot to set up the tents, so we decided to sleep in our vehicles... but first we had to make a fire, cook and eat dinner. While we chopped some of the fire wood he brought from home, he talked about the time his mom came with him to this spot. "We didn't catch any trout, but mom caught about seventy-five crawdads which we boiled and ate. They tasted wonderful, a lot like shrimp. You know how she caught them, Larry? She put a chicken bone on her line. When the crawdads grabbed the line she gave it a fast jerk and they came flying out of the water."

He threw some lantern fuel on the chopped Juniper wood and tossed a match into the fire pit, "I have a friend who went to survival school and he believes you should never use any fuel and you should only use one match to build a fire." We both agreed that is an odd quirk.

As we waited for the fire to turn to charcoal so we could cook, the Juniper wood crackled and the elk howled off in the distance. The elk were in their rutting season and they were probably sounding closer than they actually were. Chuck talked about Hawley Lake, "It's one of the few lakes in Arizona where you can ice fish. It's hard to get on the ice sometimes, because it isn't thick enough near shore. We have to walk over a plank to get to where it's solid enough to hold us. Sometimes the air is so warm; we can fish in a tee-shirt."

The fire warmed as the night air cooled. One side of me felt like it was cooking while the other side was freezing. As Chuck wrapped the potatoes in tin foil, I asked if he ever fell through the ice, "I fall in all the time. We use the plank to get on the ice, but at the end of a warm day the ice melts up near shore and we have to walk through water to get off the lake."

He continued, "I fell through the ice once in Wisconsin and it was over my head. I was scared."

As he put the potatoes in the fire, I asked, "Did you go under?"

"My head didn't."

"How did you get out?"

"Luckily, one of the two guys I was with had a tow strap and they used it to pull me out."

He told another story, "When I was a kid my brother and I were playing on the edge of a golf course pond, removing sheets of ice and kicking them across the pond. I kicked my shoe off and it went sailing out on the ice, so, as a young stupid kid I went out to get my shoe and I fell through. When I got out of the water, I was all wet and I had to walk two miles to get home. My brother kept saying 'You gotta keep going. You gotta stay awake.' I got frost bite on my toes and now my feet get cold very easily."

Chuck started to talk about the golf course job he worked on in China.

"Mainland China?" I asked.

"Yes, it was mainland China, but the course was built for the people in Hong Kong. The workers only got a dollar a day, but that didn't really matter, because all their expenses were paid by the communist state. The ones who worked lived like kings and they deserved to, because they worked so hard. Here in the states, we have all this big equipment, but over there all the ditches were dug by hand. Two courses were built. The Palmer course was first and it took eleven years to finish building it. They dug the lake by putting dirt in baskets and carrying it out on their shoulders. Over three hundred people worked on the irrigation system, working from nine in the morning to seven at night with two hour lunch breaks, at which time they walked into the woods on the side of the mountain, 'cause that's where they all lived. They just disappeared. Two hours later, one walked out of the woods and then another and then another and within a couple of minutes time all three hundred of them were back at work. It was a very strange sight, "Chuck said with a laugh. He's fun to be with because he laughs a lot.

The Nicklaus course, started later, was built in only three years, because they had one back hoe and a couple of dump trucks. He turned the potatoes and was about to say more when a rock exploded in the fire and ended the China story.

After a little conversation about rocks exploding in fires, Chuck said, "Sometimes I wish I had a kid to take fishing. Some of my buddies don't have time to take their kids fishing, so I take their kids fishing. It's such a mystery what's going on under the water and when the kid catches a fish it's like a revelation."

I asked if he thought he would always be single. "Oh Yeah, I'm a loner. I come up here sometimes and I sit around the fire and I'm very happy to be here all alone. For five years straight I fished Roosevelt Lake every Tuesday and Thursday in February, because there were no people up there. I loved it."

He put the steaks on the grill and recalled his experiences in Thailand, "We were building a course near the country's only jungle preserve. The greens were grassed by old women kneeling on plywood sheets, plucking in one inch by one inch squares of Bermuda grass one piece at a time. It took about a month to make these greens, but when they were finished they looked perfect. That night I wasn't picked up and I had to walk through the jungle to get to where I was staying. I kept getting hit by nuts and berries and stuff. I found out later that wild monkeys were jumping from tree to tree and throwing stuff at me. The next day I went back to the job sight and elephants had walked across the greens during the night, leaving impressions eighteen inches deep. It looked like Herman Munster had played golf there. We had to tear everything out and start over, because the drainage tile had been crushed.

We sat around the fire the rest of the evening drinking beer and talking about all kinds of things like: littering, cousins who litter, cousins who don't litter, the deaths of our fathers and how we dealt with it, casino gambling, friends with gambling problems, friends with fishing problems, cousins who fish and an artist friend who makes three hundred to four hundred dollars a day playing the stock market.

Chuck talked about the Indians who worked for him when he had his own business. "It was hard to get them to stay with me, because they valued their freedom more than the material things they could get with money. Those that stayed quit when we worked in the Los Angeles area or any other place where we had to stay in motels. They'd rather camp out in a national forest. We did one job in Hawaii and I was the outsider. The guys who worked for me looked close enough to the locals that they got invited to beach parties every night while I stayed alone in the motel room watching TV. For six weeks they partied every night and came to work directly from the party places. It was quite the learning experience for me, being in the minority for a change."

By the time the steaks and potatoes were ready we were real happy to be here, camped by the lake talking about life.

The next day we drove the long slow drive further up the mountain to Christmas Tree Lake. It was a very pleasant drive. After all, it was October. It was autumn. It was beautiful. I made a note to take more time the next day to photograph the forest and the trees and the road.

The dam that forms Christmas Tree Lake was built just below the confluence of two valleys, thus the lake is horseshoe shaped. There were three construction workers and two pieces of earth moving equipment on the dam. We waved at the crew, rigged up our poles and launched the boat. The trolling motor wouldn't work, so my host started rowing toward deep water. I started casting and a huge fish followed the lure on the first cast. I was using an artificial bait I bought back east called Al's Minnow, an item that was going to be envied before the end of the day.

Here we were, in the middle of a lake in the middle of a forest in the middle of the mountains in the middle of nowhere where it should be real quiet, but two pieces of earth moving equipment were moving earth and beeping; sounding like a giant digital alarm clock. Chuck wondered out loud, "I hope they know what they're doing over there." We headed up the first arm of the horseshoe. A fish hit my Al's Minnow. While we were talking about the size of the fish, another one hit. Chuck changed his plug.

Another fish went after my lure, buzzing it four times without hitting it. A couple minutes later I had another hit but I wasn't able to hook the fish. Chuck examined my hook to see if it was sharp. It was sharp. The dam construction crew took a break. The silence was nice. We fished.

When the construction crew started working again, Chuck wondered out loud, "Do you think we will get a refund on our fishing permit if they break the dam?" My line twisted and turned into a great knot. Chuck suggested it would make a good bird's nest. I cut the line, but still had enough left to continue fishing. I had another follow up, a Brown. Chuck had his first follow, an Apache. It followed his bait a second time. He dropped the hook in the water by the boat and the fish hit it. He dropped it again and the fish hit it again. When the fish swam away Chuck thought it was because we were laughing at it, "They are real sensitive fish, you know."

A couple of casts later, I caught a fish and yelled, "I caught my first Apache trout."

"You drive 4,000 miles to catch an eight inch Apache."

"Hey, it was bigger than that!"

He laughed, "I was only kidding. It was about twelve inches."

On my next cast I caught a fish which broke my line as I lifted it out of the water. It fell into the boat with my Al's Minnow still in its mouth. Chuck asked, "How'd you do that?"

It was only fifteen and a half inches long, a half inch short of being a keeper.

Within a couple of minutes I had another hit and we were both pretty happy, laughing at just about everything. Chuck told me one of his fishing theories, "Fishing is better when there's enough wind to leave a chop on the water. It muffles the sound of the lure hitting the surface. There's also a lot more movement of baitfish when there's a chop, making more food available for the larger fish thus causing more activity."

The captain decided to make another change, looking in his tackle box and he wondered out loud, "What looks like Larry's lure?"

He told a funny story, "At Wood's Canyon Lake the Arizona Game and Fish throw in a bunch of eight inch trout every weekend. A friend of mine took his kid up there and they fished with salmon eggs and power bait and they went through the ritual of changing lures without getting even a bite. The kid was bored and walked down stream a little ways. It wasn't long before he caught a fish. The father was surprised. Then the kid caught another fish. The father asked, 'What are you using for bait?' The kid, too young to know that he had a powerful bit of information, answered, 'Jelly beans'."

For the next hour and a half I had several follows, some hits, but no more fish. The competition had some follows, no hits and one comment, "There's no home court advantage in fishing and besides that, you have an Al's Minnow."

I heard fishing reel drag noise and asked, "You got one?"

"Yep!"

"He hit it just as you were pulling it out of the water?"

"Yep!"

"Looks like you got him by the tail."

"So it does."

"It's an Apache, isn't it?

"Yep!"

"It's not quite big enough is it?"

"It might be big enough. It's close." He said as I worked at netting the fish. I must say it is difficult to net a fish that's been caught in the tail.

It was only fifteen inches. "You couldn't keep it anyway since you caught it in the tail. Ha, ha, ha."

I wasn't going to let Chuck get the best of me, so I told him about the time I caught a ten pound carp in the tail using my ultralite and my Al's Minnow on four pound test line. "It took me over a half hour to land it." I think he was impressed. He said, "I think if I were working on that dam I'd be fishing during my breaks and my lunch hour."

We fished by the dam for a little while without any action, so we took a break. While lunch was being fixed, I fished the shoreline. I got bored and told the cook I don't always like fishing. He said, "When I worked the job where I had three months off, I actually got tired of fishing. You can only fish the same hole so many times and even if you're catching fish it just doesn't seem exciting. It's when you work and you get little time off and you cram some fishing in; that's when it's really good."

There was a long silence after which the cook said, "Well, a whole morning of fishing and no keepers. It looks like chicken for dinner tonight."

After lunch we took the trolling motor apart and did a temporary fix on it then went fishing again. Four fish followed my fish magnet on my first cast and for the first twenty or so casts there was a fish follow every time. "I'm casting toward the middle of the lake and you're casting toward shore and the fish are following every time."

I was given lessons on how to catch a fish in the tail. "You slow the lure down and when the fish passes it up you start reeling again and hook him in the tail."

My comment, "It sure doesn't take long for someone to become an expert."

The dam crew left for the day and it was real quiet, except for the trolling motor and the over and over sound of one of us saying, "Ah, I got one! Oops, I lost it." He turned off the trolling motor and the only sound was that of waves slapping the metal boat.

There didn't seem to be any place in particular where the fish were hanging out; in the deep water, on the edge of the weeds, above the weeds, absolutely everywhere. "So why aren't we catching any?" Chuck asked. This was a question I wasn't able to answer.

We worked our way over to the leeward side of the lake so we could drift along the dam. As soon as the motor was turned off I yelled, "I got one. It's a big one too. I lost it. I just don't believe this. I lost another fish."

"Cast over there again."

As I was saying, "I don't think he's going to want to do that again," I hooked it again and lost it again. It was suggested that the barb less hooks were the problem. I dropped the heavy metal an inch from shore and had another hit, "It's probably illegal to have this much fun."

My host agreed, but added, "Maybe we should go to the nearest phone and call Al to have him ship us some more Minnows. Maybe we could have them faxed."

Chuck caught his second fish while he was talking about the weather and the weeds, "We're real lucky to have this good weather. By Halloween this place will be covered with snow. ‘And the weeds...’ In the summer you have solid weeds in this lake. This is nice, fishing above the weeds."

I learned about state fish records. "Last summer Arizona's northern pike record would have been broken with a fish that weighed 26 pounds on an uncertified bait shop scale. The guy didn't get the fish to a certified scale in time and it dried up enough that he didn't get the state record. The state record for yellow perch is kind of odd. It's actually a tie between two fish that weighed exactly the same amount and were caught only one day apart. The state record for Apache trout is 5 lb. 15.5 oz. It was 24.0 inches long... caught in Hurricane Lake on June 10th, 1993. Hurricane Lake is the next lake upstream from this lake."

"They should have called this Horseshoe Lake. The lake that is called Horseshoe Lake isn't even shaped like a horseshoe. We should get something along here, don't you think?"

"I just hooked a weed."

We worked our way into the other arm of the horseshoe speculating all the way we would be eating chicken for dinner. I caught another fish. "That's a nice one," Chuck said as he netted the fish. "I think you did it, Larry." Out came the ruler, "It's a seventeen incher. It's a keeper. It's an Apache. It was caught on your Al's Minnow. What are we going to do with the chicken?"

I suggested, "We might need scuba equipment in case I lose my lure."

"We used to bring saws."

I asked, "You make lures out of wood?"

"No! To cut trees down to get our lures out.

We fished for another hour or so, with very little action as we worked our way back to the boat landing. We loaded the boat on the trailer and drove back to our camp site on Hawley Lake. We cooked and ate the fish. Because we had spent the day in the sun, we were tired, so, other than a few comments about how great the trout was compared to chicken, we had very little to say.

In the morning, after breakfast, we headed back to Christmas Tree Lake. Chuck had to drive slowly because he was pulling the boat trailer. I drove fast and kept stopping to photograph the trees in their bright autumn colors. It reminded me a little of the turtle and the hare. Chuck passed me up when I was stopped and I passed him up after I took some pictures. This happened over and over until I used up two rolls of film.

Eventually we arrived at the lake and started fishing again. My new goal was to catch one of these special guys on a fly rod. First we fished the shallow waters by the spillway. Then we decided to troll over to the spot where we had the most action the day before. My partner switched to his fly rod and I switched between the fly rod and the ultralite with the Al's Minnow. He said, "Al would be proud of you."

"Yes! Maybe I can get a grant from him to catch a fish on his lure in every state?"

"You know Larry; we're probably in the lake that holds the next world record Apache trout. Wouldn't that make Al happy? You know that all the pre-made survival kits have a Rapala and some line in them?"

"I didn't know. If they hear about our trip they'll use an Al's Minnow instead."

Chuck asked me, "Did you notice the picture guy holding the trout on the cover of the regulations booklet?"

I laughed, "You mean the way he's holding the fish?"

"Yeah, it cracks me up how people almost always hold the fish out in front of them to make it look bigger."

"I do it too, but only to spoof the way other people do it."

It wasn't as nice a day as the day before. It was cloudy and the fish weren't as active. For me the thrill was gone. I was thinking about the upcoming drive to Louisiana and the rain or snow storm that was likely to hit before the end of the day. The fisherman who organized this trip still seemed excited and it wouldn't be right for me to quit with more fish than him, so I stayed.

Before long I caught another Apache, another keeper, not on the fly rod, but with Al's Minnow once again. A couple of pictures were taken of me with the fish; one with me holding it way out in front and the other with me holding it up close. "He gave you a good fight."

"Yeah, I haven't any complaints, other than I wanted to catch it on my fly rod." I switched back to the fly rod with a wooly worm. There wasn't much wind, so I was able to put the line right where I wanted it. One of the really nice things about fishing this lake on a calm day is the clear water and the way you can see the fish chase the lures, if and when that happens.

A change from a wooly worm to an artificial fresh water shrimp was suggested, but I was too lazy. The dam crew spent most of the day looking at what they had done the day before, so they didn't make much noise. The ravens were the main source of sound and they were pretty noisy, but that kind of noise is different. We saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree near the edge of the lake. A bald eagle sitting in a tree near the edge of the lake always makes you more aware of where you are.

The wind came up again, so I switched to the ultralite and we trolled some more. The trolling motor died again. A couple minutes later it was running. Five minutes later it was dead. It started one more time, but it sounded like an out of control jack hammer. With all this noise I was surprised when I caught another fish. The motor was turned off while I landed the fish and that was its end, it wouldn't start again. We drifted back and forth as the wind kept changing direction. Chuck caught another fish which measured seventeen inches, a keeper. It was a female full of eggs, so we let it go. If it had been kept, we would have been at our limit and thus, through fishing. It didn't really matter, because we didn't catch anymore fish and it wasn't much later that we decided to "Call it quits."

We loaded the boat on the trailer, changed our minds about quitting, walked over to the dam and fished from shore for awhile. No luck. We were checked by the game warden who arrived by car, not by magic. All in all the first day was much better fishing, much better weather. We cooked and ate the rest of the bacon and eggs. We cooked the chicken so I could have something to eat while driving across New Mexico and Texas. I also took the Apache trout. A couple of days later, I was in Louisiana, eating Apache trout and fresh catfish, but that's a whole different story.