Late Summer Whities

10:00 PM
I was standing near the shore with my camera on a tripod watching the storm roll in, hoping to catch some lightning photos.  The water level was up and the wind was starting to blow.  The first time I heard it I thought a walnut or some tree fruit had broken off and hit the water.  The second and third splash made me think someone was throwing rocks.  It took awhile before my brain switched from photo mode to fishing mode.  I was home and back with a 6 weight in about 12 minutes.  The white bass were clobbering baitfish.
Two nights later I revisited the spot and helped a local spin fisherman fill his bucket.
My conservative estimate was 40 fish caught on what is now a very beat-up streamer. 

I put the call out to the boys and the next night we arrived ready to catch.

Between the 4 of us, JH got the only fish.

Shoulda been here yesterday.

Summer Saturday

It was one of those fishing trips that gets planned over a late breakfast at a local cafe.
One of those good cafes too, with a sheen of bacon grease covering the light fixtures, and a full on breakfast and coffee running under six bucks.

"Why don't we go fish later?"
"OK."
"I've got a few things to do but I'll call you later."
"Excellent."

And then you do your "few things" and you make the call and you grab an 8 weight and throw a couple of beers in a cooler and your buddy shows up with his drift boat and you drive to the river.

To be fair, I love the big trips, the missions.  I love the outings where you spend time at your vice a week before you leave, the trips where you actually make a list of things to not forget.

And then there are the summer Saturday trips.  Special in their own way because you are just going fishing.

You arrive at the bottom end of the float and meet your buddy's buddy and then you decide how the shuttle is going to work.  You drive and play chess with cars, making sure that the keys you will need will be in the place you will need them when you get to where you are going.  (This part goes smoothly because chances are fair that earlier in your life you learned the hard way how bad it can suck when you get this part wrong.)

Before you know it, it's a summer Saturday evening and the oars are dripping water between pulls and fly line is exiting and entering the bottom of the boat.  You throw top water flies because you have nothing to prove and if you do get a fish you'd rather see it explode into the setting sun then just feel a tug.

You've been fishing hard since the ice left the lakes in the spring and the July evening feels like a sort of halftime in the season long game.

Fish are caught and celebratory beers are cracked.

It's your turn at the oars and you watch your buddy and his buddy throw to the bank as you move the oars just enough so that they might think you are working for them.

A smallmouth chasing bait explodes fifty yards back upstream and you do the quick calculations factoring in the time of day/available light, river miles left, interest in actually rowing against the current and then you see the hopeful looks from the two guys holding rods.  This cancels all calculations and you pull hard on the oars until you are upstream of the spot where the fish betrayed itself.  You drop the anchor, let out rope and if you are lucky, as you are this evening, the anchor grabs and the anchor line comes tight just as the boat settles in just off the bank from where a second fish now erupts on its dinner.

Flies get crushed, fish blow up and some are caught.  Earlier in the season and certainly earlier in your life you would have added a third fly to fray.  But, it's a summer Saturday in July and you have a camera and a cold beer and it's much easier to heckle when you are watching and not fishing.

River Running

I sent RS a message at 7:55 Pm on the 9th asking him to fish today.
He messaged me back affirmative.
It was a morning start, launching a little after 8 AM.  The sun was out and the world was our oyster.

As we slid downriver hitting spots and looking for smallies, I noticed a guy downstream and across the river, with a fly rod, working some water and throwing a decent line.  We kept fishing and after 30 minutes I saw the same guy again, further down, fishing a spot that I wanted to hit.  Again, nice line.

I thought he was camped on an island and on foot until I watched him beach his kayak at the bucket we were hoping to fish next. 
RS said, "I wonder if it's CA?"

I pulled out my phone and texted CA, "Are you working today?"
Knowing that he isn't always prompt to reply to text if he IS working, I snapped on my telephoto lens and took a few photos, zooming in on my camera screen to see if I could ID him.

Indeed.  It was.

The only logical thing to do was to pole down and say hello.

As we pulled up the the gravel bar, the sky darkened and we stood in the rain shooting bull.

CA, RS and I fished the bucket (without a ton of success) but I gotta say that it was cool to be out on the water with these guys.  (Thanks again CA for sharing your beat.)

It's a small, small fly fishing world.

Gar

Hit the river with MK for a smallmouth stint.  Then, the gar arrived...
What a cool fish.

Not Much to Report

Marker sized walleye

Impatient white bass

Meow

JH has been hitting the white bass beat.  Sometimes with me, sometimes without.  It's been kind of a bust year as far as white bass go.  I heard recently that they go through population cycles.  Maybe that's our problem?

At any rate, we were out again tonight, hoping that we might meet head-on, the massive schools that we've seen in the past.

Instead of white bass, my first fish was a drum.  A drum eating a 3" deceiver a few inches below the surface.  Pretty Cool.

The second fish was a walleye.  Same fly, same drill.  Also pretty cool.

The 3rd fish walloped the fly so hard it kind of startled me.  When it stayed on the bottom and pulled line through my fingers, I started to mumble.  Once on the reel it pulled line back out and bent my 8 weight severely...that's when I started to curse. 

I thought maybe a decent pike or musky clobbered the fly and that I had hooked it somewhere that the sharp teeth had not yet made contact with my 15 lb tippet.  I tried to play it gingerly at first, but the scrappy nature of this fish made me doubt my assumptions.  After what seemed like 10 minutes (which is a LONG time to be fighting a fish when you were planning on white bass) I got it in close enough and switched on my headlamp.  It stayed deep and swam circles around me. On one pass I lifted and saw the fish about 15" down. 

"A walleye?  No.  What IS this thing?"

The Channel Cat's head broke the surface.  I was a little stunned, pleased and confused all in the same moment.  By this time JH (at my request) had waded over to assist.  He offered to lift it out of the water for a quick measurement and a couple of photos.

Later that night, when I got home I held a tape up to the mark on my rod and figured it to be 26 1/2".

A quick internet search and I came up with a conversion chart showing that the fish was probably between 8 and 9 lbs.

I'm now trying to figure out where I can catch these on a more regular basis.

(Big thanks to JH for being the hand model and for the assistance in landing this one.)

Saturday May 28th 2016

May is almost over.  I've watched 44 Mays come to an end and it seems that this one might have been the swiftest expiration of them all.  It is a long weekend and a rare one as we stayed at home and didn't load up the car with too much stuff, drive too far and come home late with too little sleep.  Just a mellow weekend...and this Saturday was a good day to just watch, look and listen.  And cast a few flies.

When the sun started to drop low, RS, JH and I made the trip to the lakeshore and waded out.  I picked up a smallmouth on one of my initial casts and thought that maybe I was in for a long evening of catching.  RS was posted up 30 yards off my left shoulder and JH was posted up 30 yards off of his. 

It's nights like this I am glad I carry my camera because the two of them stood mockingly and pulled in white bass after white bass while I went blank.  I changed flies, waded left, shot a few neighborhood casts their way and yet...nothing.

I suppose that this could have gone on for some time except that a lightning storm started tracking our way and we unanimously voted not to die tonight.  The fishing was cut short but the light show and lack of rain kept me on my camera for another 45 minutes after their departure.

I'd guess that they were both a little disappointed that the fishing ended.  I, on the other hand, was happy for the reprieve.

Albino House Finch at my feeder

Daisy Fleabane by the river

Backwater largemouth bass running daycare

RS hooked up

RS trying not to rub it in...this was his 3rd or 4th.

Lightshow 1

Lightshow 2

Local Lake

TP and I hit a local lake.  It was time to fish out of the Aluminum Falcon and see if there might be a musky or bass or something willing to eat.

The evening was perfect, and so thought everyone else.  Mush to our chagrin, the lake was pretty chopped up from props and milfoil.

Despite the outlook, the boat ran great and the evening was spent hucking 10 weights to pockets of open water.

A beer or two may have been extracted from Mr T's cooler which gave us a small bit of solace for not getting a grab.

A sip of fishing

Taking it while we can, Thor and I hit the river to poke around and see what there was to see.  The dark rain clouds pushed to the north and left us mostly dry but we felt the effects of the wind from the front and back of the front. 

The river was running clean and we dropped anchor midstream alongside a pod of surface feeding carp.  The added distraction of night hawks taking dinner early kept me switching back and forth between the rod and the camera with the end result being that I succeeded with neither.

Depending on your point of view it was either a complete failure or a beautiful abundance of distractions.

At least Thor is a good boat dog.

Incidental Pike

I dropped the boat in for a solo run.  The baitfish were schooled and getting blindsided by pike and musky and probably bass.  I was hoping to find some crappies mixed in but instead I lost two flies in a row to teeth.  Instead of moving on, or tying on wire (a sure sign that I was targeting toothy critters out of season) I simply slowed down my retrieve...  It worked but not in the way I intended.  I went 6 for 6 on hammer handle pike.  The slow strip meant that the hard charge and deep hook didn't happen...I lipped hooked all of them. 

I guess there were no crappies around.

White Pelicans

Lip hooked Jr. Pike

X marks the spot

A Bluegill

Out for a quick run with MK.  The carp ignored us and so did everything else.  It's still early but at least we found a bluegill...

Scouting...fishing

I mowed the lawn.

Then, I launched the boat.

The River.

A look around.

It was time.  Winter makes fishing long overdue.

I poled from the launch just looking throught the brown, green stained water.

The flow is way down.  Maybe two feet lower than normal.

I wanted to see what two feet more air on top of the river looked like.

What I saw was pretty sensational.

Fish.  Lots of fish.

1000's of 6-7" largemouth.  100's of 2-3 pound largemouth.

Gills, in the shallows trying to find a mate and trying not to be food.

Esox, both species.  Slashing at baby bass...or waiting to slash at baby bass.

Carp.  Everywhere.

All I want for Christmas

The email came through from my Mom suggesting that a trip out west to Portland, Oregon (over Christmas) to visit my younger brother and his family might be nice...

Council was held, tickets purchased.

Moments later I was on the phone discussing winter steelhead with my brother.
No need to bring a rod, he said, NK would set me up.

The plane touched down and we dropped my family at the house and bee-lined for NK's to grab a rod and the keys to the boatyard.  NK's wife led us to the garage and handed over a Burkie for my use.  My brother said, "This has a scandi on it, where does [NK] keep the skagit heads?"  NK's wife swiveled, opened a bin and handed us the correct grain skagit head for the Burkie.  I was in good company.

Christmas night:
We were right up to the wire.  Listening to some extraordinary fiddle playing by Bacon's wife in a Portland bar, the night before we were to be going fishing.  Phones were out, river flows being checked, options discussed.  The target was identified and I took a cab home to attempt some sleep.

In what can only be described as one of my worst nights ever, the alarm on my phone would have woke me if I was actually sleeping.   Even so, there was fishing to do.  I brushed the remnant vodka from my my mouth, slid on my wool long underwear, layered and we left.

We arrived at NK's a short time later.  He asked us to call him before we got there so he could get up and see us off.  That's how you know a true friend, somebody who will hasten a day after Christmas hangover to be sure to cheerlead you in your adventures.  Good stuff that guy.

With the raft in tow, we took off into the rising sun to find a piece of sloped back into a Columbia River tributary.  We would have been on the water 30 minutes earlier if NK's 96 quart cooler hadn't decided to flip it's lid and fly out of the raft on the highway.  My brother was just off the phone with the shuttle driver when he stared into the rearview mirror and exclaimed,  "What the eff!!!?"

"What the eff" was the cooler going airborne.

It happened on a stretch of highway that required an extra 2 miles to an off ramp, and then an 8-10 mile backtrack to another off-ramp.  We finally located the (now 2 piece) cooler and did our job of not leaving litter on the highway.

We discussed the premonition and wondered if it was a sign of things to come or just getting the bad juju out of the way early.  I considered just breaking NK's Burkie over my knee at the raft launch so I could accept bad omens on my own terms.  Turned out, that was the last of it.

It was December 26th, a day when I normally spend hauling cheap crinkled wrapping paper to the recycling bin.  This year I was in the front of a raft, zipped into a PFD, clutching a borrowed rod and wondering if it was possible to dog paddle with one hand while still being able to return a fly-rod to it's gracious owner.

My brother rowed like a champ and thoughts of swimming vanished as I stepped into the first run.
Stripping off line and rolling out a short cast, I got my fishing song stuck in my head...John Lennon this time. 

I might have hummed a few bars...

..."So This Is Christmas"