My truck is loaded for bear. Some may call it hoarding. I have a metal detector, shovel, four fishing rods, a backpack-style tackle box, waders, wading boots, and a DJI Mini 3 drone. I’m sure there’s some other stuff in there but I can’t remember the details.

I pull up to the dam parking lot on the south west corner of Tinemaha Reservoir, get out, and survey how the breeze plays with the lake. The south wind jumps off the east to west impoundment as if it were a ramp, leaving ten yards of glassy water for me to cast as I walk the riprap dam next to the water’s edge.

I walk the road on top of the pan flat dam until I find a spot that I feel holds some fish. The closer I am to the parking spots, the more travelled the steep access trails down to the water’s edge. The further away I get, the more adventurous the descent becomes.

This time, I walk a bit toward the middle and then drop in. When I can’t go any further without getting wet, I start casting. I focus on the edge where bass are feeding on crayfish. I make a few casts, hop a few rocks to the east, make a cast, hop a few rocks—always on the move. There are all sorts of flotsam wrapped up in the riprap. I imagine that anything buoyant that found its way into the Owen’s River upstream from here would eventually make the float southward and wind up shipwrecked on this strip of rocks.

There’s also plenty of crap left behind by fishermen. Lines of all strength: braided, monofilament, fluorocarbon, and blends. Lures, hooks, weights, bobbers, and dozens of those godforsaken styrofoam worm containers. Plastic water bottles and aluminum beer cans. I do have a bone to pick with Mr. Michelob Ultra—you sir, have a littering problem and need to clean up after yourself.

It’s not all garbage. Driftwood of all shapes and sizes collect in the crannies between the rocks. A few of the logs show beaver sign. Many spiders set up shop and get more than they bargained for when the ghost midges pop off. Dragonflies and Damsels patrol the skies. Mallards and Grebes ply the coast, while gulls and terns own the heights.

Between casts during a move, I see something blue. It is as well-worn as a piece of beach glass but as buoyant as a bobber—the sole of a flip flop in amongst a pile of long dead tules. Then another and another. There must be hundreds of them spread across this levee—all the same shape, but different sizes. Their stories flood out into my head as I retie my bass jig.

A tuber back flips as a bit of showmanship to his friends but his footwear takes flight.

Another youngster stands for a mid-float break but her feet sink, and the deep Owen’s mud claims another prize.

“Get it! Get it!,” laughs another as his flip-flop decides to go it alone. The shoe hides in a dead tree until the laughter is long downstream.

A mom slips her shoe off her foot and holds it high over her head. Her kids immediately settle down while the shoe slips from her fingers.

Everyone hobbles with a bare foot back to the car.

All the stories are similar but distinct with at least part of their endings winding up here at the foot of a dam, south and east of Big Pine, CA—lost soles.