Kalama River Steelhead

My sixteen year-old son was sitting on a large rock yesterday at the top of a deep run. A few casts later the line went tight in the current and he felt a bump. Recasting, he felt it again and then eventually set the hook on what had to be a nice fish. It pulled hard and flashed in the hole before giving the fly back. But sometimes providence is on your side and another cast resulted in another take and this time he had the fish hooked good.

After a long fight he eventually held up a thirty-inch, bright and fresh Steelhead. It had to be 10+ pounds. A real beauty.

Some guys fish a long time for a moment like this (me being one of them). Terry caught his two hours into the day. He doesn't know how good he has it.

Or maybe he does.

Idaho in the Fall

Well, a week on the road in September can take a lot out of you but there's no doubt that it was worth it. My oldest, Tommy, came along and we fished four rivers in five days throughout a large part of north-central Idaho. 1,400 miles on the Tahoe proved we'd gone a long way...

Monday started on the South Fork of the Clearwater River. Tuesday was the Lochsa River. Wednesday saw us hiking on the Selway River. Thursday and Friday were spent up the north fork on Moose Creek. These rivers are all part of the Clearwater drainage which covers 9,600 square miles of beautiful countryside. Seventy percent of the area is forested and most is undeveloped. Much of it sits as it would have looked when Louis and Clark came through this area 200 years ago.

Of course, our target was the beautiful Westslope Cutthroat, which I consider just about the prettiest fish on the planet. The last afternoon of our last day offers a good example of what our trip was like.

Tommy had just come back from a hike up Osier Creek and we were packing up camp in preparation for heading homeward later. First, we would hit a couple more holes on Moose Creek.

Parking on the shoulder of the one-lane, dirt road, we grabbed our gear and went down the hillside toward the creek. We made our way through tall scrub brush that was already beginning to show signs of fall coloring. Coming out on a gravel bar next to the creek, it was only fifteen feet across to a steep rock wall that made up the opposite shoreline and created a deep green hole. The riffle at the top of the hole looked perfect but obvious signs of risers in the deeper water got Tommy's attention right away.

I sat down on a rock and leaned my rod against a bush while Tommy shook out some line. He made a modified steeple cast to clear the brush behind him and put a small Caddis pattern at the top of the deep slick. The fly drifted along and then quickly showed drag. Tom lifted up and recast, throwing in a mend to extend the drift. His fly went down to the lower end of the hole and a fish rose up after it was well past and took something else just beneath the surface. It was apparent that the fly wasn't tempting anyone.

"Wanna try something else?" I asked.

"Like what?"

"Swap rods with me. I have a beetle tied on."

Tom stepped over and traded his 3-weight for my 4-weight. He cast to the top of the run, into the middle of that inviting riffle. The fly showed drag again and he recast. Throwing in a downstream mend, the fly went about a foot before Tommy quickly lifted the rod to the sky and set the hook on a fiesty trout. He played him for a minute and then beached him. I took pictures while Tom worked to get the fly back and release the fish.

"That is a good one." I said. "How big?"

"Thirteen and a half." He replied, obviously quite happy.

Fish on these mountain creeks don't tend to get any bigger than about 16 inches so this was one of the good ones.

Releasing the fish and standing back up, he blew water from the beetle.

"Ready to try one more hole before we go?..."

Summer Is Over - Shouldn't We Be Sad?

September in the Seattle area means shorter days and darkness by 8pm... The nights are cooler now and it leaves one with the feeling that fall will soon be here. This is usually when a lot of people become melancholy and regret how fast the summer has passed.

But not us fly fishers! The onset of fall means the fishing is about to amp up and we can't wait. For myself, I've already got a late September trip to Idaho planned that should include wonderful fall colors and hungry Cutthroat trout beefing up before winter arrives. Those are the components that make for a great trip and we are excited to go.

Some lakes here in the home state will also see fat trout going on a feeding spree and I hope to take full advantage. I am also dreaming of a way to again fit in Steelhead this fall.

The possibilities are almost endless and I'll post the successes and the failures...

August was a very Pink Month

When all was said and done, my first attempt to target the Pinks in Puget Sound was quite successful. I went out six times on trips that ranged from no success to great success. My first trip was all of 90 minutes. The first week of August, Tommy and I had a short window of opportunity and we were determined to scout out Commencement Bay so we would be ready and able when the run peaked. We found our way over to the beaches between Dash Point and Browns point and got the lay of the land but the little bit of fishing we did resulted in zero bites.

My second trip followed a couple days later and was almost as brief but there in the boat was my very first Pink Salmon. As I described in my prior post, it was about 3 pounds and I was grinning from ear to ear. After all, I own a saltwater bay boat. Catching fish in the salt was the very thing I hoped to accomplish and here I'd finally done it. I was quite happy. I was even using a pink and white Clouser pattern that I'd tied myself.

Two weeks later on my third trip, I was out with Tommy and Terry for most of the morning and we boated eight fish between us.

Then the next day we hit the peak. Terry and I had 7 doubles that day and we lost a lot of fish but still boated 16 Pinks in total.

Then it tapered off with my last trip taking me back down to zero during the first week of September. I tried for several hours that day but got not even a nibble.

So I called it and decided I was done. Done until 2011, anyways...

Gray Skies, Pink Fish

One morning on the water resulted in my first Pink Salmon in Puget Sound. My oldest son, Tommy, and I launched the boat at 7am and headed across Commencement Bay near Tacoma. Just down from Dash Point, we saw periodic fish boiling as they moved south along the shoreline, headed for the Puyallup River where they will eventually spawn.

We kept the boat in 10 feet of water and, on an outgoing tide, cast toward shore. We stripped pink and white Clouser and Shrimp patterns back to the boat with a medium-to-slow retrieve. At one point, I felt my line hang up and then I saw three fish boil at about the spot where I knew my fly was. I'd obviously got in front of a small pod and surprised them all when the hook set.

I stripped quickly and got the fiesty three-pounder on the reel. Tommy netted him as I grinned from ear to ear and he snapped a few photos. I've never targeted Salmon in Puget Sound and this was a victory for me. Across the bay were guys catching 30 pound Kings on down-riggers but this fish, taken on the fly, was all I needed and I couldn't have been happier.

As the run continues to grow we will come back and try again. 5 Million Pinks are supposed to make their way through Puget Sound so our odds should improve in the next week or so. Stay tuned for more...

One Man's Swamp is Another's Adventure

Recently, three teenagers and one middle-aged dad decided on some late evening exploration. My boys, Tommy and Terry, had their cousin over for a week and they wanted to take him bass fishing on the old pond in the woods where I took them several times during their gradeschool and junior high years.

This was no average pond. First, it was a pond I fished when I was in high school so there's some tradition involved. Second, this pond sits in the middle of a real life swamp. One of those places that most people just never go. When I was young the woods around it was logged and there was an old logging road that ran down to the edge of the swamp. From there, logs and old tires made a path through the mucky water out to where the pond sat in the middle of the small valley.

Of course, the years went by and the woods grew back up. When I took my boys back several years ago the old logging road was overgrown but we still found it and made our way down to the pond.

This time, however, the old signs were completely gone. Let's just say that you know you're getting old when you can remember a place being logged twice. We showed up at the usual spot and found all the trees gone, logged clear down the hill to within 50 yards of the swamp. The old logging road that we used to look for had been wiped clean and we knew it was going to be difficult to find that one access point that would get us out through the swamp and over to the pond. The boys began to immediately argue about where they thought the old trail used to be. I thought I knew, too, but I decided to stay quiet and told them they could figure it out. Such exploration and searching is a young man's game and there are far too few of our youth who know it. I would rather follow my boys in circles through the trees and brambles than let them grow up without knowing how to find their way, cut a trail, and read the woods and landscape. I would follow them.

Tommy took us down the edge of the clear cut and headed into the small strip of woods along the edge of the swamp. It was immediately apparent why we'd always headed for that one trail. The brush, trees, and briars grew thick in the swamp and at the first point where we came to it's edge we saw that it would take hours to hack our way through the vegetation, not to mention wading in filthy water that would have mud holes and other surprises waiting for us.

We conferred for a bit about what to do. From experience, I told the boys that it was 7:30 and the Black Bass in the pond would stop biting around 8:30, thirty minutes before it would get dark. That meant we weren't likely to find the trail and get out to the pond in time to catch some fish before they stopped biting. They agreed it didn't matter - they wanted to at least see it.

They asked me where I thought the trail was and I said my old compass was telling me that we were about 300 yards too far down water's edge. I suggested we just head in the general direction I was thinking and see if we cut across anything that might look like the old logging road. Everyone agreed and my youngest led off, taking an obvious deer path along the edge of the treeline.

After a while, Terry called out.

"This looks like an old road!"

I caught up with him and saw the low ground cover, sword ferns, and vines that were obviously covering an old road. Vine Maple hung over it from both sides. We looked at each other excitedly and took a ninety degree turn toward the water. Thirty yards later we were standing on the water's edge, looking at an obvious path through the thick growth.

"Looks like we came about 300 yards." Tommy said to no one in particular.

That was all the acknowledgement the old man was going to get for getting it right. Of course, I shouldn't think too highly of myself. If I'd only taken a look at the satellite photos on Google before we left, this wouldn't have been a problem. But then solving these issues the old-fashioned way by using our minds and our sense of direction was a lot more satisfying...

About then we realized we had another issue. This had been a hard, wet winter. The swamp was two feet higher than I was used to seeing it. That meant all the old logs and tires were submerged and we were going to get wet, not to mention muddy, navigating this path. I asked the boys what they wanted to do and everyone agreed we had come too far to let a little water hold us back so into the black water we stepped...

The boys had been trying to scare their cousin with stories of the pitfalls to be found in this swamp. The first unique characteristic of the pond is that the shoreline is made up of tightly woven grass, moss, and bushes. The entire shoreline around the small lake floats on top of the water. As you follow the trail out, you walk across muddy, submerged ground until you get near the pond and you step up onto that blanket of vegetation. When you walk out to the edge to make a cast, you see that your weight is causing the grass beneath you to begin slowly sinking into the pond. It holds your weight but it will continue to sink and soon you are standing in a foot of water.

Second, this floating shoreline is peppered with sink holes. When the boys were junior high age, we were walking the last few yards of the trail and had stepped up on to the vegetation. I stepped in a muddy spot in the trail and instantly sunk into the mud and into the lake beneath. fortunately, only one leg went into the hole so I fell forward and caught myself but in that heartbeat that entire leg had sunk clear up to my waist. The boys were young and already freaked out a little by this creepy place. That brief episode merely cemented their opinion that this place was dangerous. Of course, dangerous like a scary movie. You don't like it but you like the challenge and the creepy feeling you get being there. They would go on later to complain about how much it scared it them and beg me to take them back...

We carefully waded our way along and it only took a minute for the lead boy to bump a foot into the first log. We were then able to step up out of two feet of murky water and feel our way along the logs that were a mere foot under the water. We held onto the brush that grew tightly along the edge of the path so that we wouldn't slip off the logs and into an unseen sink hole. Of course, mud, water, and old logs make for slippery going and the boys would periodically slip off a log. Everyone would look to see if the unlucky guy was going to catch his footing in two feet of water or disappear up to his waist in a mudhole.

We were almost through the swamp and up to the edge of the lake when the boys pointed out the very sink hole that I'd gone into all those years before. Their cousin looked at it as we walked around it. He stepped a little close, on a spot where he thought it looked dry enough to step, and, slurp, he was in up to his waist. Everyone called out and he leaned forward and pulled himself out. Tommy couldn't believe it.

"Didn't we just say 'look out for that spot?!'"

Hey, what's a little adventure without a little peril?

After all the searching and the slog through the wet swamp, it was already 8:30. The mosquitoes were out and we made jokes about being carried off by some of the bigger ones. We rigged up a dry line and a fat popper and took a few casts but we knew we were too late. The bass had gone to bed. After 20 minutes of trying at three different spots along the lake we broke down the rod and made our way out.

We didn't mind missing out on the fish. After all, we had just successfully accomplished a great suburban adventure and had actually found the old pond.

It should be noted that, once again, the fish were just the reason for going...

Below: one fish taken the first year I brought the boys to see this place (2003).

Small Pleasures

Of course, by "small" I mean Smallmouth. And they are a pleasure... After all, one of the prettiest settings in central Washington also offers some great fishing for mid-sized Bass. On one evening recently, I couldn't keep the fish off my line. I arrived late in the day and only had two and a half hours to fish before dark. I would be heading off for some big trout early the next morning so this brief time slot would have to satisfy me. Let's just say the results were surprising and prove why I keep coming back to Banks Lake: 18 fish in 2 1/2 hours - three of them pushing three pounds and all on various minnow and leach patterns in shallow water. Man, I love Smallies on the fly...