An Orange Dry Fly & Bored Grown Children

The river is big but it's August so there is plenty of room to walk along the banks without having to brave the strong current. Both of my boys and my nephew, Telson, have come along to explore a place none of us have been to on the south side of Mt. St. Helens...


Of course, it doesn't take long and the boys are goofing along the shore while I'm still diligently fishing and trying to get a 50 foot cast to go 60 feet... This is one of those simple rivers and my fly selection is about as simple as it gets: orange Caddis, then orange Stimulator, then orange Humpy. They all work... The sun has been behind the sharp hillside for over an hour and we only have about 45 minutes of light left so I look to see where the boys are.


They are fifty yards down river, kneeling over a large, flat rock. My youngest has challenged his big brother to an arm-wrestling contest and for the first time in his life he wins. He yells upriver at me.


"Hey, Dad. I beat him! Twice!..."


"Nice." I return.


They come up to watch me for a while and then wander off to whittle marshmallow sticks for later. I thought these times would fade as the boys left high school and became men but here we are, giving me a deja vu moment that takes me back to when they were six and eight and playing in the rocks behind me while I fished. I guess some things don't change as fast as I think they do.


It turns out to be a good evening, with six or seven fish landed before I quit. And all on dries... It has been hard to see my fly on the water for some time now so I turn to shout and tell the boys it's time to leave.


They are downriver again, each bent over a stick, knives in hand.


"Hey!" I shout. "I'm not going to wait all night for you guys! Let's go..."


They grin and give it back to me just as good.


"Yah, Dad. Just one more cast, right?"


"We'll go when we see you actually go..."


I love fly fishing with my boys. Even when that's really not what we're doing together...

July in the Salt

Last Saturday, there were lots of boats launching with me, even at 6:00 in the morning, and it would be a busy day on Puget Sound with Salmon fishermen working the traditional spots and the first day of crab season inviting even more folks out for the day. I zoomed by all of them and snuck inside the crabbers working in 40 feet of water to fish in-shore with an intermediate sink line for Sea-Run Cutthroat in two to seven feet of water.

I was literally all alone in an urban setting full of other boats and fishermen. It made me chuckle to realize that even here you can come up with a strategy to avoid fishing elbow to elbow.

The tide started to move pretty fast and I used the trolling motor on my boat to maintain my position in fifteen feet of water. Casting among the kelp and sea grass along shore, I let the small gray fly sink and then stripped it out into deeper water. Every once in a while a fish would follow all the way back to the boat. But other times I would see a quick flash and I knew the tug on my line was another fiesty Cutt... I was quite content and when the tide started to go slack I ran back in and was home by lunch.

Easy and casual, just the way we always want it. I need to seek more of these simple experiences...

Omak Part Deux

A friend convinced me that I could launch my boat on the sand and gravel launch at the lake. I was pretty worried but the tires didn't sink at all and we had a motor boat to run up and down the eight mile lake. It was sweet...

Terry caught the big one of the trip: almost 23 inches and fat, probably around four pounds.

The water is warming now and the fish will be going deep but we caught the end of the action and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

More Bass!

Gary, Ryan, and I raced across the state to get to the lake before the sun got too low for fishing. We made it and had a decent evening, fishing Smallmouth for a couple hours before dark drove us off the water. Pictured above, Gary is battling the big fish of the evening. He'd made a great cast behind a large rock and been rewarded with a strong take. Ryan grabbed the net and got ready to land the bad boy but as Gary got him alongside the boat, he slipped the fly and left us wishing...

Oh well, others would follow. It was still an exciting fight.

Spring in the high desert is unsurpassed in its beauty. At least as long as the wind isn't blowing too hard and the rain holds off... It did and we enjoyed a warm weekend running the boat around the lake in search of hungry bass. I say we do it again in a couple weeks...

Spring Bass

Sometimes conditions align and offer a great day of fishing. When that happens with the Smallmouth then you know you've experienced something special. And that was the case this past weekend. The water temp was finally up, the fish were in the shallows staging for the spawn, the wind was light, the water clarity was good...

With everything in place we had what we needed to slay Smallies on the fly and we will not soon forget how many one to three pound fish were brought to the boat.

If you've ever fished in the high desert then you know how beautiful it can be. The clean air, the sound of the birds, the smell of Sage, sand, and wildflowers... It gets in the back of your brain and remains there, making it something you have to periodically seek out.

We started at daybreak and ended at dark. We ran the bay boat at top speed from cove to cove. We were warriors pitting skills against the feisty Bronzeback. What fun...

Aggressive Smallmouth will always have a place in my heart. And I will continue to seek them out in the spring when sunshine finally arrives to warm my moldy western Washington heart. And I will continue to bore my friends with tales of skill, which they will demote to tales of luck. And I will still grin, remembering the good days such as those experienced on this trip...

Amber Lake in the Cold Month of May

A gray, blustery day made for heads-down, determined fishing. It took a couple hours but once the water warmed a bit, the fish began to move and we found success here and there on various patterns - Adam scored first on Chironomids, then I picked up a couple with a black Sealbugger. We had to search to find fish but they came steadily, if slowly. In the early evening, just before we quit, I tied on two Boatmen in tandem and took the 17-inch fish pictured below on the first cast.

I love stripping flies for aggressive Rainbows.

It had definitely been an early season, cold-day experience. But it was still satisfying to weather the 15 MPH winds and come up with as many trout as we did...

Omak Reprise

After recovering from the loss of my pontoon boat, I spent a day running to Spokane to purchase a replacement and then I was back at it. The weather was good and bad. It only rained on me once during the week but the wind blew non-stop and made it tough to fish in deep water because I couldn't hold my position well.

On my last afternoon, I found some shallow water near the south island and beached my boat. I waded along the long ledge that ran toward shore and found fish cruising in the deeper water where the ledge fell away.

At one point I was stripping a white wooly bugger and pulled it all the way back to the ledge when I saw a quick flash of red. A nice fish had come right up to the surface in an attempt to catch my fly before it got away. I was already lifting the fly up in preparation for my next cast and, if I'd been paying attention, could have left the fly in the water a little longer and probably hooked that fish.

I worked my way along the ledge, switched flies, and worked my way back toward my boat. At the exact same point, I threw a #4 black Scudzilla into the deep water and stripped it back. I was now being careful to work the fly all the way back to me before lifting and this time it paid off. Another fish flashed right at the edge of the drop off and a soft take resulted in a hook up.

The fish turned and ran for deep water and I fought him on the reel for a good long while, eventually beaching a healthy 25-incher in the sand. A great fish and another great week on this underrated lake...

A return trip in May seems in order.