They have instinct, you know. You hear that all the time, that animals can sense fear and storms and sometimes if a person is sick. But in 95% of dogs I've ever been around, those senses are rendered useless by two overpowering dog thoughts ...

No. 1: "IS-THAT-FOOD?!, IS-THAT-FOOD?!, IS-THAT-FOOD?!, IS-THAT-FOOD?!, IS-THAT-FOOD?!"

And No. 2: "WHERE-WE-GOIN?!, WHERE-WE-GOIN?!, WHERE-WE-GOIN?!, WHERE-WE-GOIN?!, WHERE-WE-GOIN?!"

So to me, when a dog can put those two thoughts aside in order to make a rational decision, that's a powerful statement. What do I mean? Let me begin the story. I am not a good fisherman. I can't catch bass, or trout, or catfish, or salmon, or even goldfish. If I worked at a pet store, where it was my job to scoop future pets out of tanks with a net, the place would go bankrupt.

At the grocery store, I could order two pounds of halibut, the guy behind the counter would weigh it, hand it to me, and then I'd drop it and it would slide under a display, out of reach. Since moving to California in January of 2006, I'd had fishing licenses two different years, gone fishing at least 10 times, and still not caught a single fish. I'd fished in streams in Yosemite where there are nothing but rocks, and I'd fished in ponds so full of fish they looked like the mall the weekend after Thanksgiving. I'd fished downstream from a dam where they recently stocked fish, which I imagined were starved for a week before they dropped them in.

I'd fished near Fresno and I'd driven for two hours into the mountains. Is this starting to feel like a Dr. Suess poem? I'd hiked an hour to go fishing at the Lower Twin Lake and then the Upper Twin Lake*, or maybe it was the other way around. The hike was exhilarating. The scenery was came with violin music. The upper lake had a rock cliff and an island in the middle. You would think that eventually mountain scenery would get old, but it just never does. It wasn't easy hiking, but I'd have glady lugged Emilio Bonifacio out of there on my back just to say I caught a 120-pound Marlin. But again, no fish.

*More on this trip in a future "great outdoors" blog in which I answer the age-old question, "What happens when you bounce an I-phone off a boulder?"

On a related note, one of the best friends I've made since I moved to California is a guy named Brian. He's a real-life McGyver, and that isn't an exaggeration. He's the person you'd call in any situation. If your car breaks down. If your toilet stops flushing. If you need a home-made saddle. If you need a rudimentary guitar or drum lesson. If your motorcycle seat upholstery cracks. If you need a smoker, he'll build you one out of a barrel that once held roofing cement. Now a lot of people have made meat smokers out of old barrels, but Brian makes his with hanging racks and adjustable ventilation and a thermometer. And he does it in a couple hours. He's the only guy I know with a cutting torch and a welder, whose job has absolutely nothing to do with welding or cutting or torching. One second you'll be sitting there thinking, "Man, I should really go shopping for some kind of grill for my barbecue," and you'll turn around and he's already built it for you. He's also a mind-reader. That's Brian Fischer.

He once bought a junk tractor on the side of the road and had it running that day. It's unbelievable.

I'm convinced that if I have kids someday, or children just show up at my door looking lost, I'll send them to Sierra High School, because pretty much everyone I know who graduated from Sierra High has rock-star tendencies. Or is at least really self-sufficient, which is pretty close to the same thing.

Anyway, Brian's nickname is "Fish," because of his last name, of course, and you are probably starting to see the irony of me hanging out with a guy like that, especially with that nickname. It's like John Wayne being pals with Rob Schneider. It just doesn't make sense. I really think he was taking offense to the fact that I hadn't caught a fish in his home state. I mean, he walks up to the lake and fish jump out of the lake. Fish eat healthy food their entire lives, just hoping to be extra tasty for Brian Fischer. Perhaps you think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. The fictional character Chuck Norris was based on Brian's life. OK, I'll stop.

So we went fishing a couple times and Brian and I both struck out. That's how deep my fishing curse runs. And that's when Brian started planning the day trip to Mirror Lake. The way he told it, Mirror Lake had so many fish in it you didn't even need bait. The secret to fishing, apparently, is to go where rational people won't go. I'm not talking about the Mirror Lake in Yosemite National Park. That's for European tourists with fanny packs. I'm talking about the tiny little Mirror Lake in the Sierra National Forest you can only get to by foot or parachute or over-sized recreational vehicle on a trail. Actually, the word "trail" is sort of being generous.

Four of us went on this trip: Brian, our friend Matty-Don't, Brian's dog Maggie, and yours truly. We left on a Sunday morning and before we'd even gotten to Mirror Lake, Maggie ran off. I'm not kidding. This dog never runs off, and by the time we got to this trail head, she must have just figured that whatever was ahead was a bad idea. It was pretty intimidating. We crawled up this one-track path in a four-wheel drive Dodge truck, pulling an old Toyota Land Cruiser. It got steeper and rockier. We drove slower, crawling up one rock at a time in places. When we finally got to the trail head, where we'd park the truck and take the drive Land Cruiser the rest of the way, Maggie jumped out, pooped behind a tree and was never seen again. (That may be a lie. Wait for the happy ending.)

We were actually in the Land Cruiser on the way before we realized Maggie wasn't following. We went back. Looked everywhere. Yelled in every direction. No Maggie. Eventually, we just had to trust that she knew what she was doing and hope someone saw her tags. In retrospect, we probably should have been more worried about us. There were plenty of red flags as we made the last 20 minutes to Mirror Lake. The front wheels didn't seem to be doing much of the work, for starters. And just before Mirror, there is a mighty steep downhill, and we had a brief debate where we talked about leaving the Land Cruiser on top of the ridge and hiking the last part. But seriously, why would you hike when you can drive down a ridiculously steep rocky ridge in an old 4-X-4? You know when you look back at a situation and go, Man, we should have known right then we were making a bad decision. Well this wasn't even like that. We all knew it was a bad decision. We talked about it. We just couldn't help ourselves.

The photo at the top of this blog is the Land Cruiser, which Brian bought and fixed up. It's an antique, you might say. That was the one man-made part of the trail, a little bridge right before our battery went dead. (Oh, wait, have I said too much?) That's Matty-Don't standing up and Brian in the driver's seat. I was taking the photo. I almost forgot to explain Matty's name, which is probably just as well because I can't really remember the story anyway. Obviously it doesn't say Matty-Don't on his birth certificate. I'm pretty sure if it did, it wouldn't have a hyphen in it, but that's how you say it, like your friend Matt was reaching for a bug zapper or about to double-down on 12 against a king showing.

So yeah, we stalled going up a little hill right after the picture was taken, and when we tried to re-start it the battery was completely dead. And the back-up battery was dead. The thing about being Brian Fischer is you don't really have to plan that well or come foresee worst-case scenarios. You just do stuff, because you're Brian Fischer, you can build a boat with rope and chicken wire, and really, what good is being McGyver if you never get into jams? That's half the fun, you just never know what could happen.

And there we were, three guys stranded miles from civilization or any house or any other human. We'd already lost the dog and now the Land Cruiser was broken down, completely blocking the trail. The closest mammals were probably black bears and mountain lions. What do you do in a situation like that? That's right, you go fishing. We walked the rest of the way to Mirror Lake with poles and Power Bait, grinning like idiots.

That photo is why you go to the Sierra Nevadas to fish. There are a thousand little lakes and they're all beautiful. When you see a view like that, you don't even need to catch fish. Brian, of course, caught a trout after not too long. An hour later or so, Matty-Don't caught one too. Yours truly managed to fall three times, once on ice, once climbing over a fallen tree, and a third time into the lake. That time didn't actually hurt like the other two, but shin-deep in cold water wasn't exactly my plan for the afternoon. I wasn't necessarily expecting ice, either. When you live in Fresno and it's 75 degrees you don't really think about seeing snow that day, but Mirror Lake is somewhere around 9,000 feet. The sun was shining, but you certainly wouldn't want to spend the night there in your underwear in October.

The crazy part is that I was able to check my fantasy football team on a Blackberry while I was up there. Crazy, huh? Cell service in the wilderness. Yelling into a phone for Donovan McNabb to throw touchdowns is a nice distraction from not catching fish, though. In the afternoon, Brian decided maybe we should at least acknowledge the lack-of-transportation issue, so he hiked all the way back to the pickup, took out the battery and hiked all the way back to the Land Cruiser with it in a backpack. Problem solved, right? Not even close.

Matty-Don't and I kept on fishing, mostly just feeding the nibblers and making circles around the lake. Because the key to fishing is to move around a lot and make lots of loud wise-cracks. Brian called periodically to see if the DiMaggian streak had ended yet, then finally arrived back at the lake to fish a little more. When it finally started getting later in the afternoon, we walked back to the Land Cruiser, put in the new battery and it fired right up. It soon became pretty apparent that we had other problems. When we tried to climb up the first ridge, the front tires slipped. The hubs weren't even locking in.

Ah, but there's a wench on the front of the Land Cruiser, and if you're not familiar with wenches, it's just a cable attached to a motor, bolted to the frame of the vehicle. You pull out the cable, wrap it around a tree, and then push a button that pulls in the cable. Basically, it pulls the Land Cruiser toward the tree, up the steep rocks. It worked nicely, until we* untied it from the tree and started to reel it in. The motor just quit. I'm still not sure whether the remote shorted out or the motor went bad, but it was done, kapoot. Now we had no 4-wheel drive and no wench and we had some dastardly rocks and climbs ahead. Those ones we were going to skip by leaving the Land Cruiser at the top of the ravine. Oops.

*I say "we," but I really just sat in the back of the Land Cruiser, thinking back to every comedy that has an animal attack in it, contemplating what to do in such an event. Not a good sign when you're taking your wilderness safety tips from "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle." I should also mention another thing about the Land Cruiser. In the front seats, there are NASCAR type seat belts. Double straps and buckles everywhere. In the back seat, there is a bench seat. Nothing else, not even one of those little wimpy one-strap seat belts they put in the middle seat of a little 1988 Mazda B5200 pickup. Guess who sat back there? We climbed a mountain with Brian and Matty-Don't looking like they were entering the Brickyard 500 and I'm in the back seat flying from side to side, tackle boxes and coolers bouncing off my face. In the event of a roll-over, I'm 98% sure you would not be reading this blog.

After several valiant charges -- with Matty-Don't and I out of the Land Cruiser just in case things went really wrong -- we finally gave up trying to climb out of there. With two wheels, there was just no way. It was getting dark. By then, all we could do was load up everything we could carry and hike back to the truck. You've never lived until you've hiked out of a remote lake in darkness with two buddies. Under my breath, I kept saying, "Please don't eat us, Mr. Mountain Lion." I know animal attacks are pretty rare, but it was kinda freaky. We had a gun, although I'm not sure which I was more worried about, a bear eating my liver or one of the three of us getting sprayed by poorly-aimed shotgun pellets in the dark. Since I wasn't holding the gun, I didn't like my odds on that one.

This story has gone on for far too long, so I'll wrap it up. I caught a fish. It was a fairly small trout. It was right before we left, and I was so scared of losing it on the line that I waited until it was almost reeled to shore to hollar, "FELLAS, THE STREAK IS OVER!!" And when I got it over land, it fell right off the hook. I never even touched it, the fish just fell to the ground, like Mother Nature felt sorry for me and let a fish get its lip caught on my hook as he swam by. I don't care. Twenty years from now I'll have fought that massive fish for an hour and it'll have been so ferocious I had to stab it with a sharpened railroad tie when it went for my jugular. It's a fishing story. It can only improve.

This is our proof, right to left, Brian, Matty-Don't and I, with our catch. One each, which is not necessarily what we'd imagined or the California state limit, but we are greedy fisherman, just persistent.

Oh, you want to know about Maggie? Well, funny story. She walked all the way back to Hwy. 168, several miles, where some nice fellas did indeed read her tag and called Brian. Maggie was waiting at their house in Clovis when we finally arrived back in town late Sunday night, looking battered and wet and cold and smelling like a shoe. When we picked her up, she looked rested, well fed, happy to see us.

And she didn't even say "I told you so." We all appreciated that.