Panguitch, Big Fish
Western Gateways: Magazine of the Golden Circle, March 1969.
[Editor's Note: This is Maurine's last published magazine piece, written for a small-circulation travel magazine, based in Flagstaff, Arizona. The article includes pictures she took herself. This piece is not included in A Craving For Beauty: The Lost Works of Maurine Whipple.]
So you don’t know a rod from a reel A fly from a night-crawler? Join the club.
Having spent my life elbow-deep in fish, boiled, broiled, baked, canned, frozen, and spoiled, I naturally shrink from a can of salmon. Yet my world teems with mad people who oftener than not don’t even eat fish, but are extolled from “The Complete Angler” to today’s Sunday supplements for their dedication to early-rising, mosquitoes, sunburn, and something at the end of a line: What is it?
One day last August I determined to find out. When my Ford balked, it was only the equal determination of two non-fishing fellow-sleuths (rock-hounds Brad and Betty Eutsler) who saved the day for posterity. But we were as nervous as three astronauts at countdown.
Speculated Betty: “To catch a fish, wouldn't you have to think like a fish?”
Brad’s eyes lit up. “And therefore hunt the biggest, deepest, coldest water?”
“Panguitch Lake!” I shouted. For in the vicinity of St. George, Utah, only one fishin’-hole is rated among the ten best trout lakes in the United States by National Observer.
Panguitch Lake (“Pang-witch”, a Ute-Indian word meaning “Big Fish”[1]) is mounted like a jewel at the red-rock heart of south-central Utah. . We had a choice of two routes: take highway 91 east of St. George 9 miles to off-ramp State 17, 9 miles to Hurricane, and north 3 miles to LaVerkin Junction with State 15 which winds for 56 miles through Zion National Park to Mount Carmel Junction on U. S. Highway 89.
