I want to tell you a true story that happened in the canyon about 15 years ago. This isn't a fishing topic but sort of is because I was fishing the day this happened. I thought about posting it in the "Off Topic" section but I think it will get more attention here. This is a lesson we anglers can use.
My favorite starting point is just above the rough and tumble section in the upper section a short distance downstream from the second bridge below the dam. It's where the sign on the other side of the river warns not to float the next section.
I was fishing across from the sign when a family of four consisting of mother, father, son in his early teens and a daughter came down the river in inner tubes. They went down that terrible section below the sign, which I call the Fairchild section. A while later, I worked my way below the Fairchild section and was fishing in the river in the steep canyon below when I heard a siren coming up the canyon. I later learned the son wanted to do the Fairchild section again so he walked up to my starting point and launched his tube. He didn't make it. He hit his head on a boulder, which knocked him unconscious, which caused him to drown. They couldn't find the body and didn't for several years.
The year they found it, I was in the area below the Fairchild section and again, I heard a siren coming up the canyon. What I learned later that day is I fished just a few yards from the skeleton of this young boy but didn't see it because it was jammed under a large boulder. Apparently, another angler found it.
Authorities weren't sure where they would find the boy so to possibly catch the body, they stretched a net across the dam at the mouth of the canyon in that section just above the deep plunge pool near the pay booth.
It was that incident that prompted the Forest Service or perhaps the Water Board to place the sign across from my starting point.
I think about that boy every time I fish the canyon. I can only wonder how much grief the family must have suffered all these years.
For your information, I call it the Fairchild section because a very good friend of mine, whose surname is Fairchild, fishes that section diligently and catches a lot of fish. I used to fish that section too, many years ago, but that was when I was older. I'm younger than that now.
My favorite starting point is just above the rough and tumble section in the upper section a short distance downstream from the second bridge below the dam. It's where the sign on the other side of the river warns not to float the next section.
I was fishing across from the sign when a family of four consisting of mother, father, son in his early teens and a daughter came down the river in inner tubes. They went down that terrible section below the sign, which I call the Fairchild section. A while later, I worked my way below the Fairchild section and was fishing in the river in the steep canyon below when I heard a siren coming up the canyon. I later learned the son wanted to do the Fairchild section again so he walked up to my starting point and launched his tube. He didn't make it. He hit his head on a boulder, which knocked him unconscious, which caused him to drown. They couldn't find the body and didn't for several years.
The year they found it, I was in the area below the Fairchild section and again, I heard a siren coming up the canyon. What I learned later that day is I fished just a few yards from the skeleton of this young boy but didn't see it because it was jammed under a large boulder. Apparently, another angler found it.
Authorities weren't sure where they would find the boy so to possibly catch the body, they stretched a net across the dam at the mouth of the canyon in that section just above the deep plunge pool near the pay booth.
It was that incident that prompted the Forest Service or perhaps the Water Board to place the sign across from my starting point.
I think about that boy every time I fish the canyon. I can only wonder how much grief the family must have suffered all these years.
For your information, I call it the Fairchild section because a very good friend of mine, whose surname is Fairchild, fishes that section diligently and catches a lot of fish. I used to fish that section too, many years ago, but that was when I was older. I'm younger than that now.