The Reno Bottoms comes through ~ July 14, 2004

David Heiller

We pushed off the grassy bank and into the dark waters of the Reno Bottoms on Saturday morning, heading for parts unknown.

A good canoe trip is like that, and there are definitely parts unknown in the bottoms. We had a couple fishing poles and a couple hours. Is there anything in life sweeter than that?

My nephew, Alex, sat in the middle, behind his girlfriend, Laura. I was in the stern.

View of the river on the way down to the spillway, 
which begins the Reno Bottoms adventure.

As we worked our way along the eastern shore of Running Slough, the feeling of freedom that comes from being in a canoe hit me. No worries about getting hung up. When that happens, and it did many times that day, you paddle over and retrieve your lure. It almost always comes free from the right angle. No worries about making the perfect cast either. It’s hard not to make the perfect cast when you can paddle to the perfect spot.

Alex did just that, and had a nice tussle for about 30 seconds before bringing in a large-mouth bass.

“Must be over two pounds,” he said as Laura did an appropriate amount of oohing and ahhing.

“No way,” I said. My pride was at stake.

We settled at two pounds, where it will remain until someone else catches it and proves us wrong.

We paddled south, past an island, then along the right hand shore. It was swept clean by the river, except for one gnarled tree. Was that the same one where Danny and I used to catch bull-heads in 1967? Probably not, but it brought back some fond memories, which I shared, though sparingly, lest I bore these two youngsters.

“Look, there’s an eagle,” Alex said, pointing to the left. “Behind the trees?”

I caught a glimpse of movement, a flash of white. I’m always a little late spotting birds, and Alex is always a little early. But it was still fun to share excitement, which was bubbling just below the surface of us all.

I spotted an orange bobber hanging from a stick in the water and retrieved it. It was in good working order. “A sign of good luck,” I said, which is not true, but it sounds good in a canoe in the Reno Bottoms. It prompted another story, about the time I found a spinner in Glacier Lake, then caught a 22-inch rainbow trout with it before losing the lure a few casts later.

The channel took us further and further south. Two deer took off ahead of us on the right shore. Herons flew up at almost every bend. We must have seen 50 on the trip. Sometimes they scolded us in a prehistoric voice.

The water was low. We could usually stick our paddles down and hit the bottom. You could see by the debris on shore that the water had been at least three feet higher only a few weeks earlier, a testament to our very wet summer.

A flash of silver caught my eye in a tree branch. We paddled over, and I retrieved a Wally Diver, a great little trolling lure. My dull old rainbow trout story had new life. I put the lure on my line.

Ducklings led the parade

As we came around another of the endless bends, a flock of young ducks joined us. More accurately, we joined them. The mother and father flew off in a huff, but the ducklings, which numbered at least 10, weren’t quite ready for that. They didn’t know what to think of us, and paddled ahead like the color guard in a parade. Maybe that’s what mesmerized us, watching those ducks, and the eagles that Alex kept spotting and I kept missing, and the herons, and the ever-changing maple trees and beaver dams and jumping fish. Because at some point, maybe two hours in, we realized that turning around was not an option, that we should just keep paddling, hook up with Pickerel Slough below the second spillway, go north, and paddle home on the big river.

And that’s what we did. I made the announcement, in the form of a request, but Alex and Laura trusted me, mostly. An expression of doubt in the plan would have been as shocking as seeing a moose step out of the woods in front of us.

The ducklings left us at about hour number three. We had slowly gained on them, and we were wondering what their next move would be. It came like a burst of fireworks, when they all churned their tiny legs at the same time and exploded down the channel ahead of us, going in all directions. I didn’t know something that little could move that fast. They formed their flotilla again, a long way ahead of us, and finally gave us the slip in a side channel.

The river above the Reno bottoms

I kept casting with my new lure, and finally had a strike. What a fish: a channel cat at least nine inches long! It caused us all to smile. Not the stuff that legends are made of.

We hit the channel from the second spillway and started paddling north, against the current. We passed a couple fishing boats. “You guys are going in the wrong direction;” one guy said.

Alex started to worry. “Maybe we should ask directions?”

“You never ask directions when you are fishing,” I said, then added a bit later, “I think it’s just around that next bend?”

I should not have said that, because the destination is never around the next bend, especially in the Reno Bottoms, which seems to have more bends than an old garden hose.

So we paddled hard, and didn’t say much. Every good trip requires a struggle, and that was ours, wondering when (and for Alex if) we would ever get to the spillway.

Then there it was, the roar of water, the spill-way, and a couple fishing boats to boot.

It was a good feeling, hitting the shore, stretching our legs, and feeling that we had reached our goal.

The last leg home was all downhill. Seeing the huge river to the north, and the big hills on both sides, lifted our spirits after the closeness of the slough. We started talking again, and we paddled with the energy that comes when the end is in sight. Half an hour later we were back where we started, ending a good trip, and on the receiving end of an unexpected gift from the good old Reno Bottoms.