I’d been in the Navy for all of about 4 years when I first started fishing the California aqueduct. I was married and living in Hanford, California and my son Derek had just been born. We drove an old Mazda Rx3 wagon with Derek in the back, in the car seat at less than a year old. The car below wasn’t actually our car, but the picture resembles it right down to the color. It had a rotary engine under the hood and boy did we put some miles on that car.

One of the places you would frequently see the old blue wagon was on the side of the access road along the aqueduct. It wasn’t uncommon for fishermen to park right at the edge of the aqueduct and fish right outside the car. The bait of choice was usually cut frozen anchovies and we usually set out a rod apiece with a 2-bait rig and a 1–2-ounce weight. There was usually some current in the aqueduct and you needed to get the bait down on the bottom, out around the middle of the concrete channel, the further the better, so to speak. If you didn’t have a sufficient weight, the current would just wash your bait to the edge and back into the shallow water. We would usually bring the playpen and set it up so Derek could play, and we would fish right beside the car. My neighbor told me all about the aqueduct and places we could fish, as he was a fisherman also, but much older than myself. He was retired and I can’t recall visiting with him much, but I was a younger and very busy with life at the time. He did share a good fishing spot with us, where the channel took a turn, and we fished that spot along the aqueduct often for stripers and catfish. The paragraph below is from Wikipedia and gives a little more of an explanation on the aqueduct that I thought was helpful. I believe you can click on the links for more info.

The aqueduct begins at the Clifton Court Forebay at the southwestern corner of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The aqueduct then heads south, eventually splitting into three branches: the Coastal Branch, ending at Lake Cachuma in Santa Barbara County; the West Branch, conveying water to Castaic Lake in Los Angeles County; and the East Branch, connecting Silverwood Lake in San Bernardino County.

There was one time in particular that I made a visit to my favorite fishing spot along the aqueduct very early on a Saturday morning looking for a few catfish and if I was lucky, a striper or two. I pulled off the highway and onto the access road that ran along the edge of the aqueduct. I could see my favorite fishing spot was occupied by a small Winnebago type RV camper along the edge of the road. The access road was wide in that stretch and there was plenty of room to get by the camper, so I decided to go on downstream a quarter mile or so before stopping and setting up shop. When I stopped and started unloading gear, I could see the camper just up the road to my right and an open stretch of road to the left, so I had the whole area to myself that morning. I had a small cooler with ice, and I kept my frozen anchovies in the cooler until I cut and used them to bait my hooks. I had 1-2 rods out at one time, and both were baited with cut anchovies and anchored to the bottom with a 1–2-ounce weight after a long cast out into the middle of the channel.

It was very peaceful in the early morning hours and almost immediately I caught a 4-5lb catfish which was perfect eating size, so I put it on ice in a larger cooler in the back of the wagon. A few minutes later another rod doubled over, and I had another very nice catfish to add to the bounty. As soon as I reset the rod, I caught some motion to my right and when I looked towards the camper up the road, I saw a blonde lady in a robe come out of the camper and start walking around as if she were looking for something. She glanced down the road towards me and then went back into the camper. I didn’t think too much about it and I went right back to watching the rods. Soon after another rod doubled over and this time it was a striper that was about the same size as the catfish already in the cooler, so I added the striper to the mix. It was turning into a very prosperous morning, and I was thinking about how good those fish were gonna taste after taking a dip in lake Crisco.

It wasn’t long until I heard a noise up the aqueduct where the camper was parked, and I saw the blonde lady come out of the camper again only this time she was fully dressed. She once again wandered around the camper a bit and then she started walking my way. At that point I kinda knew something wasn’t right because she seemed so out-of-place in that area. She looked to be in her late 30’s or early 40’s, very pretty and dressed in attire a little too nice for aqueduct fishing. As she approached, we greeted each other and then she asked if I had seen an older gentleman in the area since my arrival. I hadn’t and I let her know that there was no one in the area that I had seen since pulling up, so she thanked me and slowly made her way back up the road to the camper. I continued to fish but I knew that something was wrong, and I started putting the pieces together. The aqueduct can be dangerous in certain areas, and this stretch of the aqueduct was one of those areas. The reason being is that just below the waterline there is a very thick and very slick moss that sticks to the steep concrete bank. If you have the misfortune of falling into the aqueduct it is not easy to get out, as it is maybe 10 feet deep and there is current that will sweep you away. There are no structures or cables running across the channel for a person to grab ahold of and you are at the mercy of the aqueduct. If you can’t swim and you fall in while by yourself, it’s game over, so it can be very dangerous for some. After putting the pieces together, I kinda knew that someone was missing, and I contemplated leaving but the fish were biting, and curiosity was getting the best of me so stayed and kept fishing.

The blonde lady went back to the camper but this time she didn’t go back in but stayed outside the camper milling about. It wasn’t long till a big white work farm looking truck came into view beyond the camper to my right and I saw the young lady wave the truck down. There were crops growing in the fields adjacent to aqueduct and sometimes the workers would drive the access road to look at their crops. I saw an older gentleman get out of the truck and have a short conversation with her. They walked to the edge of the aqueduct and looked up and down the bank. The man saw me, got back into the truck and came to where I was. He again asked the same line of questioning that she had asked earlier. He told me that a man was missing from the camper, and he was going to get help. At that point he went back to the camper and the young woman jumped in his passenger side. They left together, heading for the main highway and I knew things were about to get busy, I just didn’t realize how busy it was going to get. Another half hour and one nice striper later I saw the white work truck return with a California Highway Patrol in tow. Both the vehicles stopped at the camper and there was a 3-way pow wow next to the camper. All three of them seemed to be looking at something down at the water’s edge and I wondered if there was fishing tackle down there that was hidden from my view, but there was definitely something they were all interested in down near the water. A few minutes later a local Sherriff’s car showed up and 2 uniformed deputies got out and joined the group. I watched as they all looked down the road at me and one of the deputies headed towards where I was fishing.

I thought that I was going to get asked to leave the area by the deputy, but to the contrary, he asked about how the fishing was going. After I told him that it was going great and I was having a good day, he told me that a man was missing and once again he asked if I had seen anything. I gave him the same answer as before and he basically told me to have a good day as he headed back to the group. I probably should have left but I was fully committed to the mystery at that point. It wasn’t long before a few more Sherriff vehicles pulled up and then another on the other side of the aqueduct directly across. Pretty soon a Sherriff’s helicopter landed on the other side of the aqueduct and shut down. There was a conversation between the pilot of the helicopter and the Sherriff’s deputy from the car and then the deputy got back in his car and drove away as the helicopter took off from the opposite road. There was a big crowd gathered at the camper by now and at times I could see the group or members of the group looking down at the water’s edge across from where the camper was parked. There was definitely something down there that piqued their interest and I saw one of the deputies pull out a 35-millimeter camera and start taking pictures of whatever it was that they were looking at.

This is where it got weird, but if I’m lying, I’m dying. A churro looking cart or some kind of small ice-cream truck showed up out of nowhere. The next thing you know, there are a least a dozen people, 6-8 vehicles, a helicopter flying overhead and a small ice-cream truck all around the camper area, with me down the bank a quarter mile watching the show. I may have caught another fish or two during all the excitement but after another hour or two, one by one they all started leaving. Pretty soon the helicopter left as well as the vehicles and that dang churro ice-cream truck disappeared as quickly as it appeared. I watched as the young lady got into the car with one of the deputies and they pulled away leaving the camper all alone sitting by the side of the road. I fished a bit longer, but curiosity was getting the best of me, so I packed everything up to leave. While no one was around I wanted to see what it was that everyone was looking at down at the water’s edge, so I stopped right by the camper and looked around the bank in the area they were all looking. At first, I was looking for something in the water at the edge, but I quickly realized what they all were looking at, it was finger-like marks scratched deeply into the green moss. It was as if someone had taken both hands and dug deep scratches into the moss, in a clawing fashion. It was clearly the clawing marks from the fingers of hands just as plain as day and there were a few in a 4-5 foot span. I kinda got a cold chill down my spine when I saw that, and it kinda hit home at that point, as I got back into the wagon and drove away. This was way before cell phones, and I was really anxious to tell my wife when I got home. As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that 2 Sherriff’s vehicles parked in front of the neighbor’s house along the curb at the street. I thought that it was weird because they were older folks, and I wondered what was going on over there. When I went inside the house, I asked my wife what was going on at the neighbor’s house and she told me that my neighbor was missing and presumably drowned in the aqueduct in the overnight hours.

That was the second cold chill I got down my spine as she shared that with me. I told her that I was there when it all happened, and I told her about the younger looking blonde who was in the camper. My wife said that according to our neighbor’s wife, he was alone when it happened and there was no one there to help him. She said that according to the Sherriff he may have got caught up in the current and swept away, as he was older and not a good swimmer. At that point we decided to keep the part about the mystery blonde lady to ourselves and be good neighbors in a tough situation. Eventually they recovered my neighbor’s body from the aqueduct and if memory serves me correctly it was 2 days later and 7 miles down the aqueduct from where he fell in. Sure enough, he had drowned in the aqueduct. There are big “DANGER” and “PELIGRO” signs up and down the aqueduct, calling out the dangers of the swift current, but it seemed like every year we would hear about drownings.

I continued to fish the aqueduct for a few more years while I was stationed at the air base in central California before moving on in my military career, but I’ll never forget fishing the aqueduct and that morning.