When I was young, I spent my summers living in a campground on the southern Oregon coast. A small creek flowed through the campground, joined another creek and flowed across the beach to the ocean.
Myrtle Creek is the small creek and you cross it on Highway 101, just after you pass Prehistoric Gardens heading north.
I was six when I spent my first summer on Myrtle Creek. My brother and I quickly took to fishing the creek. Starting at the old logging bridge above the campground and working our way down to the lagoon at the creeks mouth.
Most of our effort, focused on the logging bridge which was the most accessible pool. Our first couple of summers, We spent many hours drifting salmon eggs and worms under the bridge in hopes of enticing a large trout to bite. These efforts were made in vane and it was my little sister who managed to pull the largest trout from beneath the bridge.
After a few summers, Ken and I had fished all of the lower pools on Myrtle Creek. In this time, Ken had become a fisherman. He had found the big fish in the creek and brought them home. Ken maintains this edge to this day. Whenever we fish together, he catches the bigger fish.
But one day, a little over thirty three years ago, I got the bigger fish.
That day, ended with this picture:
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But the story actually started the day earlier.
Against all odds, Ken and I decided to do something together. It was a tough decision. Ken was eleven and didn't want to be with kids. I was nine and after weeks of being left behind, I needed to be part of something. Somehow we made the decision to explore the upper reaches of Myrtle Creek.
As part of the agreement, we didn't bring fishing gear. We were simply going to explore. In addition, we added a member to our party, Ray, the cousin of one our father's field assistants.
So we walked up to the old logging bridge and started upstream. For the first mile things were pretty easy. Ken and I hiked along the stream sides and where necessary bounded across the stream. Then the stream turned in and up.
Around us the walls tightened. The banks disappeared, we were either in the stream or on rocks that sat above the flow. The stream deepened. We continued up.
Finally, the flow widened a little with a small riffle 10 feet wide, leading up to a deep pool between three giant boulders. You came up to pool on the left, against one boulder. Across from you the stream fell into the pool from a notch between the boulders. Ken and I had never seen a pool like this on Myrtle Creek. We looked at it and knew there were big trout there.
That is when Ray, 50 ft behind us, slipped on a rock, fell, and broke his nose.
Our exploration stopped. We turned around picked up Ray and headed home.
The next day, Ken and I returned with fishing poles and Mepps silvers. I had the first cast in and brought in a 10.5" trout. My next cast landed an 8.5" trout. They were my first big trout.
4:43:50 PM 
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