Hole in the Ground

Someone in Mill Creek village told me there was an even more remote fishing camp maybe five miles further into the wilds downstream called “Hole in the Ground”.

My good old Ford pick-up made it down to the camp, a very lovely, green, quiet, and best of all, free, Forest Service camp with a half dozen  parking places, tables and fire pits right on Mill Creek.

One lonely die-hard fisherman was there with his camper but he had his own camp and minded his own business.

I didn’t fish.  I didn’t have a license or any tackle.

About the second morning I was there, a tanker truck arrived and the Forest Service driver started transferring  big flopping trout from the opened top of the truck's tank to the river with a long-handled fishing net.

This was something new for me. There were more fish than I could count slipping into the river right at my feet. One big trout leapt out of the driver’s net before he got it to the river and landed, flopping, right at the feet of the die-hard fisherman who grabbed it with his bare hands and tossed it into the river to join its buddies.

“Man, you had that fish!” I exclaimed. “You caught it fair and square––why’d you throw it in the river?”

“Aw, that’s no fun,” he said.

I stayed on a few more days. No one else showed up and every day the fisherman would give me a couple of now plentiful and hungry trout for breakfast so he wouldn’t go over his limit.

I had discovered in Hole in the Ground: my very own quiet, private, perfect fishing hole.

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