Little Nunya

I just love this place! Sure, it is a small stream full of beautiful little trout, but I know lots of places like that. Somehow, though, Little Nunya is unique for me. I think it is the incongruity of driving for miles and miles through rolling hills of dryland wheat, with no mountains or trees anywhere in sight, knowing that just ahead, invisible from the wheatfields, is an oasis of a coulee carved into the earth by ice age floods decades of millenia ago. And that in the bottom of that coulee runs a small, cold creek teeming with trout.

After miles of wheatfields and shortly after passing an overgrown pioneer cemetery, the road dips suddenly into the coulee, the wide bottom opening before you. The clumps of cottonwood trees in the distance mark both the stream and an old homestead long since abandoned. A slight bend in the road hides the pullout at the bridge until the last moment. You round the bend and the empty parking area brings a sigh of relief - you have the stream to yourself. One last moment of worry as you get out of the car and immediately hear the sounds of tumbling water - will the stream be clear? (Runoff from the surrounding fields occassionally turns the water chocolate brown). You walk out on the bridge and peer over the railing, just in time to see a dozen or more dark shapes in the gin-clear water below you dart out of sight into the faster water upstream. Yes! This is going to be a good morning!

Well, this morning it was a very brief, but very good morning on my way to Michigan via Spokane. After dropping Melinda off at her before-school orchestra practice, I was left with a little over an hour of extra time on my way to Spokane, not enough time to hit Nunya, but just enough for a quick visit to Little Nunya, although for only 45 minutes of time on the water. But 45 minutes well spent, with 33 fish to hand, fishing the size 16 psycho prince (what else!). I caught 15 just above the bridge, 15 in the little run above that, and had just enough time to pull 3 more out from down below the bridge.

Most were 6" to 8" like this gorgeous little guy here.

And a few nicer ones like this guy below thrown in to make things more interesting. The bigger ones love to dive into the grass on the banks, where you sometimes have to reach in with your hand and untangle them (or more often your fly because they are no longer there).

Wish I'd had more time, but I'm grateful to have had even just a few minutes at this beautiful little treasure.