Upper Columbia Flyfisher

The Wing-ed Wetfly Revisited

2012-02-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

Though the tying style has almost disappeared from the trout fly boxes of contemporary American anglers, when I was a young flyfisher in the mid-1960’s, the traditional winged wetfly was a staple on trout streams. Even though angler/writers like Ray Bergman, James Liesenring, Charles Brooks and others had done much toward popularizing the wingless nymph styles that prevail for subsurface presentation today, at that time, the wingless style had not yet surpassed the winged wetflies in popularity. Of course, one reason for this was the simple fact that the herd is slow to change. Good ideas always seem to need a long incubation period before catching on and becoming common usage. That, and, well, the winged patterns were aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and did work pretty good as fish-catchers. It was a difficult thing to take the plunge, clip off that lovely little Professor that had always come through for you, and replace it with a drab, ridiculously underdressed and naked-looking ‘flymph’.

Yet, we changed. Our knowledge and our eyes have developed exponentially, and the result, fly patterns have come a long way since the 1960’s. But as is our way in America, when we did eventually adopt the new tying styles, we went wildly overboard and threw our babies out with the old bath water. A thing that did not happen in Ireland and Scotland where the old style is still as useful and popular as ever.

There are two basic modes of winged wetfly patterns: Those tied in colors to imitate a natural insect, like the Alder, American March Brown, Blue Dun and Cowdung. And those like the Royal Coachman, Professor and Parmechene Belle, intended as attractors. Both types have their day. As a small-stream and freestone prospecting pattern, it is still hard to beat a Royal Coachman wetfly. I’ve found the American March Brown to be a very good pattern during spotted sedge and grannom hatches, and especially egg-laying flights.

In recent years, at least two winged wets have become staples for UC fishing, an October Caddis, and a winged version of the Western Black Quill, a large mayfly prevalent in my homewater which I learned, thanks to the Canadian fisheries survey team working down our side of the border sharing the contents of their fish-larvae traps with me, begins to sprout wings before leaving the bottom. On the UC, I swing both of these patterns (both #8) with a floating line and 13-14 foot leader dressed with sink compound. I tie both weighted (with copper fuse wire) and non-weighted versions, preferring the non-weighted, but sometimes fishing the weighted early or when they want it swinging deeper.

Our friend Bert, who recently introduced us to the venerable Usk Naylor, once again, from the edge, points out the way with this, the dangerously lovely Peter Ross Dabbler, as tied by Davie McPhail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1vOiob8xzw&feature=youtu.be

The Dabbler looks killer. And I suspect it might be a worth a try for low-water steelhead and sea-run cutts.

February Northern Pike Meetings: Spokane/Usk

2012-02-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

Been exploring the dysenterial perimeter of existence lately and have arrived back newly cleansed and settled down to write. Whether anybody but Bert is reading or not, I should relate the news that there are a couple of Northern Pike meetings scheduled: Feb 15, Center Place, 2426 N. Discovery Place, Spokane Valley, and Feb 16, Usk Community Hall, 2442 Black Road, Usk. Wherein, methods of eradication will be discussed, including the gillnetting of offending pike.

Personally, I’d like to hear more on the logistics of the gillnetting solution, which begs a question or two, as any gillnet I know of kills without regard for species. But that might not be a big problem in the Pend Oreille, already dominated by non-natives. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Good if we can stop the spread of non-native predators like northern pike into the Columbia system. But then, the Pend Oreille has become a major breeding habitat for largemouth bass, yellow perch and a prodigious population of smallmouth bass which has for some time been fenestrating into the Columbia mainstem, and much more competitive for trout habitat and forage than northern pike are. So, northern pike setting a precedence, are we to apply the same methods of eradication to other non-natives, like, say, walleye as well? Be interesting to see where this goes.

It will be interesting to see how the reg proposals concerning the increased walleye limits pan out. I understand there was a lot of resistance from the ardent spiny-ray troops. Anybody hears anything, let us know. I’ll report as soon as a decision goes down.

Here's the WDFW link for the latest northern pike info. http://wdfw.wa.gov/ais/esox_lucius/

“… there is always some idiot who thinks it would be cool to have the local fish from his home state in Wisconsin or Arkansas around to fish for.” ~gatorator

TENKARA

2012-01-15T01:17:00.000-08:00

Tenkara, for those who have not yet heard of it, is the traditional Japanese method of flyfishing, employing only a rod, line and fly. No reel. The collapsible tenkara rods are eleven to fourteen feet long, very light and sensitive, and will collapse to around twenty inches long, so rod length can be adjusted. Lines, usually about the same length as the rod, but up to 30’ long, are very light furled horsehair or fluorocarbon, and attached at the tip of the rod – about as minimal as you can get. Zen simple. The tackle and techniques are very suited to small stream fishing, though, in the creative crucible that is the Northwest, anglers are already adapting the method and equipment to larger streams and lake fishing.

Though associated with Japan (and of course the Japanese have refined the method) I see tenkara as representing the oldest type of flyfising in the world. After all, we have evidence of flyfishing from the time of Alexander the Great, and I suspect the practice of using feathered lures goes back quite a bit further; while line guides and reels are a fairly recent development. From colonial times until about the time of the Civil War, New England commercial fishermen hammered the brooks, using long rods whittled from maple or ash, horsehair lines fastened to the tip of the rod, and rigged with a gangion of about a half a dozen wet flies. In the hands of a careful stalker, an effective rig for vacuuming a brook. Similar rigs, carved from red cedar, were used by early flyfishers in the Pacific Northwest.

Though lifting and dapping with the wind is a prevailing technique, the whole spectrum of casts and tosses come into play in tenkara fishing. As most of the fishing is confined to small freestone streams in Japan, the Japanese carry very few flies, simple soft-hackle wets and the most basic style of dries. Because the line is fastened at the tip of the rod, one does not have the benefit of takes being telegraphed through the line to the hand, so when fishing wet flies the Japanese use a pumping technique to stay in contact with the fly. Americans, of course, are attaching bobbers to lines and carrying on with dead-drifting nymphs under bobbers, a technique well suited to tenkara gear. With no reel, fish have to be fought straight-up, the long, limber rod absorbing a fish’s run.

I like the idea of tenkara. I’ve always been attracted to a less-is-better approach. And there is a cool self-reliance credo among tenkara practitioners, many of whom build their own landing nets and furl their own lines. (Great practice for post-apocalypse trouting when there is no money for gear.) I have a nice 16’ length of old-growth red cedar that I’m going to carve into a tenkara rod for fishing the UC. A project for next summer. I’ll write and let you know how things turn out.

There is a lot of tenkara stuff here: http://www.tenkarausa.com/ (Though, watching the films from Japan, I'd have to say that the Japanese could learn a thing or two about fish-handling from us. Just sayin.)

At The Crossroads

2012-01-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

We find ourselves moved so quickly again to the crossroads of a new year.

Where does the time go?

Thank you all for the momentum. Wishing everybody The Best in this New Year, already in progress. And ever after.

Here’s an appropriate excerpt from Far West:

The wind off the high plateau whipped his hair against his cheeks and shoulders and rattled the exit sign. It was a Sunday. Traffic on the highway was sparse at the outskirts of Rock Springs. Beyond the road a redtail hawk circled above the sagebrush, head tilting, alert for prey. A line of gray hills entrained in the distance. A creek, flowing from the direction of the hills, ran parallel to the road between him and the red brick backs of a couple of low buildings tagged to the end of town. Some old tires and a rusty engine block lined the creek behind the buildings, though the water looked clean. Maybe it held trout. He’d been there since early morning, about five hours, and wondering if there were any trout in the creek had occupied most of that time.

He heard the motor and then he saw the car approaching. The road was straight and open. The long Wyoming sky. He watched the car. A dark blue Chevy Impala. When he was sure the driver could see him he stuck his thumb out. He saw some animated movement among the passengers inside the car. Oh good. They were making room for him. Yes, they were slowing down – the windows open – the guy riding shotgun in the front seat wearing a cowboy hat – the Impala rolled up even with him – and a beer bottle launched from the front window and at the same time a large paper cup filled with something flew from the rear window. The driver tromped the gas and the tires lit up with a hurt yelp.

A whoosh of air flicked his ear as the bottle zipped past his head but the hurler of the cup made better aim and it spiraled like a football and dissembled before contact, the plastic lid falling away to reveal the contents splashing forward like a cupful of amber jewels to burst against his chest. The Impala swerved and sped away, its occupants with their heads out the windows looking back to assess the damage and their arms banging the sides of the car, jubilant at the result.

Stinking beer piss soaked the front of his t-shirt and dripped from his chin. Tight lipped, he stripped the shirt off and dropped it on the ground then looked down the road at the receding car.

"You fucks. You rotten FUCKS!" Both arms raised, he shook his fists at the car.

They were gone. He went to his pack leaned against the exit signpost and fished out a bandana to wipe his face. He looked down the empty road daubing his cheek and neck with the bandana. Then he shook his head. Must be my lucky day. That bottle would of killed me.

He gathered the pack and wet shirt and walked across the road and down through a strip of tall dry grass and then through a row of alders lining the creek. A steep, weed covered embankment led up to the buildings on the other side, blocking the wind. The creek formed a small pool there, unseen from the road. It was a couple feet deep. He stripped down to his underpants and waded into the water, scrubbing his body with sand scooped from the bottom. He lay down in the creek and let the cold water flow over him. Then he gathered his clothes and washed them, then rung them out and laid them over some willows to dry. A magpie flew into the alders and leaned from a branch to watch him. It was late summer and the creek was low. He found a sunny spot of dry streambed gravel and sat down then lay back resting on his elbows. The sun felt good, drying his skin and wet underwear. He figured he’d stay long enough to dry his clothes.

There looked to be a couple of fetching runs downstream, possibly deeper water, beneath the canopy of alder and willow. He watched the water for awhile. Then went to his pack and got out his gear and lined the rod. He opened the flybox and looked, then chose a #14 Coachman wet fly and tied it to the end of his tippet. No need to get dressed, he thought. He didn’t have a Wyoming license, so no sense pushing his luck. But he just had to try those two little runs and see if there was anything in there. Something to do while his underwear dried. He’d just hit those two spots then call it quits. Probably wasn’t any fish anyway, he’d looked when he first waded in but hadn’t seen any life scooting off. He dangled the fly in the creek until it soaked and sank.

Working downstream, he quartered and swung the fly down through the first run for nothing. The second was deeper. He crept up on it, carefully, and from a crouched position placed a short rollcast against the far bank –

And a fish stopped his fly as it swung into the deepest part of the little run.

He fought it kneeling down, and it fought well for a ten incher. At hand, he examined the trout. It was a beautiful fish, svelte and firm. A new one. A kind he hadn’t caught before, though he recognized it from pictures. A wild cutthroat trout. He turned it to get a look at the twin red slashes in the lower jaw folds. He admired the trout, then removed the hook and replaced it unharmed into the creek. He was satisfied. And this looked to be about the only trout water along this portion of creek. A short way downstream the alders played out and the creek channeled into a ditch running parallel with the highway for a couple hundred feet before disappearing into a concrete culvert passing under the road and then out into an overgrazed pasture where there was no growth along the banks, just muddy cow trails.

He was standing at his pack taking the rod down when a female voice spoke.

"Hello."

He turned, startled. A young woman stood at the bottom of the embankment, across the creek. She had a broad face and eyes of palest blue. Her long hair was almost white, straight and fine. She was pretty; wearing a yellow cotton halter and loose bell-bottomed jeans completely covered in velvet patches, artfully done, the multicolored patchwork hand stitched with a claret embroidery thread. She was holding a towel and a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap. She looked to be in her early twenties.

"Ah… hi…" he stammered, taken by surprise, wearing only the nearly transparent wet underpants.

"Do you always fish naked?" She assessed him up and down.

"Um… yes. I do. Whenever I get a chance, matter of fact," he said, forcing himself not to smile.

She laughed, a trailing loop of birdsong, then kicked off her sandals and waded across where the water was shallow and laid down her things on the gravel. Without a word she unfastened her pants, let them drop and stepped out of them, and then slipped her top off and shook her hair out.

"Hope you don’t mind, but I really need a bath. Don’t worry. I have some soap that won’t hurt the fish," she said, stepping into the water. ~Far West

And Robert Johnson with the musical outtake – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A

December Short Casts

2011-12-23T22:28:00.000-08:00

Remember everybody, December 30^th is the deadline for public comment on the 2012-13 WDFW Rule Proposals. You will find links and info concerning the proposals in my last several posts. Please email comments to Lori Preuss, LoriPreuss@dfw.wa.gov and let them know where you stand.

* * *

Want to run a jug line for northern pike? Here’s the link to WDFW’s new northern pike site, outlining the northern pike situation and their current approach to it:

http://wdfw.wa.gov/ais/esox_lucius/

* * *

My New Year’s confession: I don’t always fish the Northwest. Stiff damn winters way up in the far northeast corner can make you a little nutty. Good to break it up. Sometimes winter sends us packing to a place where we can hang our hammocks, wade in shorts to cast a fly from the beach for sierra, corvina and cabrilla (bummer, roosterfish only in summer). And yellowtail and dorado holding a little too deep to be reached with fly gear. Ah well.

Felice Navidad!

Support WDFW Proposal #12 - Crucial To Columbia Native Trout

2011-12-16T22:03:00.000-08:00

One of our favorite things: Native trout that are a match for two handed rods.

Please. Help ensure that they continue to exist in Washington. Support WDFW Rule Proposal #12 allowing for a 16 fish daily limit on Roosevelt Lake walleye. Below, there are several articles concerning the WDFW 2012-13 Rule Proposals most affecting eastside anglers and the upper Columbia. Hope you will read through and take a moment to send Lori Preuss a short email letting WDFW know where you stand on the proposals: Lori.Preuss@dfw.wa.gov Public comment closes December 30th.

Another thing we love is elevating claymation figures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6lZy02HQ_Y

Here is the world without native trout: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1rTSazpCJs

WDFW 2012-13 Roosevelt Lake Walleye #12 Essential

2011-12-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

The "Upper Jurassic"
American Reach of the Columbia, above Roosevelt Lake. About a fifteen mile, free flowing segment within the U.S. and about thirty miles in B.C., still closely resembling the pre-dam river and hosting a sustaining population of redband rainbow, west slope cutthroat, kokanee and bull trout. WDFW, B.C., and Tribal surveys indicate that 40%, and possibly up to 70% of the native fish spawned in the Reach succumb to walleye predation before reaching maturity. If you love big wild trout on dry flies, please read through my post below and write an email supporting WDFW Rule Proposal #12

Meet the American Reach~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9UMPxy7T9Q&feature=share
Letter from Jack Mitchell~ http://theeveninghatch.com/Newsletters/Kettle_UC.htm

Roosevelt Lake-Upper Columbia WDFW 2012-13 Rule Proposals

2011-12-12T18:08:00.000-08:00

Opportunities For Effective Stewardship

Now, until December 30^th, offers the possibility for Washington fisheries to move toward self-sustainability. The WDFW rule proposals for 2012-2013 hold some pivotal ideas toward stewardship of our native fish. Here are the proposals: http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulations/rule_proposals/2012-2013/2012-13_rule_proposals.pdf There are some very important proposals in this favoring sustainable native fisheries, statewide. I hope everybody will read the Proposals and take a few moments to send an email, yea or nay, on each one. WDFW is taking public comments until December 30^th, here: Lori.Preuss@dfw.wa.gov

I’m going to write Lori with comments on all of the proposals, but here are the ones I see as most important to Roosevelt Lake, the American/Canadian Reach and upper Columbia / Kettle watershed: Proposals #1, #2, #3, #12, #13 and #14. Here is a copy of the letter I’m sending out her, and a few others who need to know, concerning the WDFW 2012-13 rule proposals affecting fishermen in NE Washington. Please read through and take a few moments to let WDFW and other pertinent agencies and lawmakers know where you stand on these important proposals. A few lines will do it, or feel free to copy mine if you think it reflects your views. The public comment period is open until December 30^th.

Some others who might like to know:

invasivespecies@rco.wa.gov

teamspokane@dfw.wa.gov

commission@dfw.wa.gov

And of course: wendy.brown@invasivespecies.wa.gov

Letter:

I see some of the WDFW rule proposals for 2012-2013 as holding the potential to move us toward revitalizing self-sustaining native fisheries while effectively cutting costs and enhancing non-extractive local economies, in the long term. Please consider my comments concerning the following proposals:

#1 ~ YES: Proposes to remove invasive northern pike from sportfish status. I am FOR this one. I don’t think this will serve as a be-all, end-all measure for controlling invasive northern pike, yet it does alert fishermen to the fact that this species needs to be kept fished down. It is some weight thrown on the balance.

#2 ~ RESERVATIONS: Proposes the allowance of two poles while fishing northern pike on the Pend Oreille. Okay. But I don’t see many fishing two poles at once while using artificials, the primary method. One is left to wonder about the introduction of foreign live baits this practice might inspire.

#3 ~ YES: Proposes increasing the limit on walleye and recognizes the viable native salmonid fishery utilizing the San Poil arm and drainage. I am FOR this one. And this might serve as a model principle supporting the establishment of similar limits and regs for the native-rich American Reach segment between China Bend and the border with Canada.

#13 ~ RESERVATIONS: Proposes increasing the walleye limit in the lower Spokane River and allows for two poles. Too many sub-proposals packed into this one. I agree with the part calling for increased walleye take, but disagree with the allowance of two wild kokanee per day. I suggest a no-kill on wild kokanee throughout the entire system until spawning habitat can be identified and improved enough to provide sustaining numbers.

#14 ~ NO: Proposes to lift gear restrictions on the Kettle River. The Kettle has been noticeably improving since restricted gear went into effect. There is no arguing the science on this one, as we see almost immediate improvement in a fishery when sound method-of-take is applied along with realistic kill limits – the results of that borne out over the last 60 years, at least. I vote NO on this one. Let’s do ourselves and the Kettle River a favor and stick with the proven results.

#12 ~ YES: Proposes a 16 fish (only one over 22”) daily limit for walleye in Roosevelt Lake. Saved this one for last, as I see it as most important and vitally necessary, having the highest positive affect on the valuable UC native trout fishery. Everybody wins with this one. Good for fishermen, good for fish, good for the local economy. Overpopulation is stunting walleye in Roosevelt, and harvest has not been sufficient to keep the population at numbers needed to produce larger class fish. Most importantly, this proposal has the potential to lower walleye predation on native trout and sturgeon fry. A resounding YES on this long overdue reg change.

Thank you for considering my views for record.

Best,

Please, if you would like to see a self-sustaining world class native trout fishery in NE Washington, this is the opportunity to ensure that happens. A short email might tip the balance.

Here is a copy of my letter concerning #12, which includes an outline of the UCNFA plan proposing an alternative, should another way be needed. Please write a short email supporting WDFW proposal #12, or feel free to copy and send my sample, signed with your name and address.

Proposal #12

I would like to go on record as supporting the proposal for an increased (16 fish limit) on Roosevelt Lake walleye. This, in my observation, is sound management that will contribute greatly to the survival of native salmonids in the upper Columbia, above Grand Coulee, and particularly the free-flowing American Reach segment from RL to the border.

Also: I propose that WDFW consider the Upper Columbia Native Fish Alliance (UCNFA) plan, that a native fish stewardship segment be established on the valuable American Reach segment flowing between China Bend, at the head of RL, up to the border with Canada, a segment containing the greatest portion of self sustaining wild trout, and a growing economic principle in the Northport area because of that. Yes, an increased walleye take would benefit the entire lake, but failing, for whatever reason, to achieve that, I see the UCNFA plan as the best compromise, calling for a walleye limit increase only within the 15 mile American Reach segment. (Modern cartographers have confused the issue somewhat, blithely drawing RL all the way to the border, obscuring the marked difference between the lacustrine, reservoir structure of RL and the flowing segment above China Bend to the border, a fertile riverine segment much resembling the original river and hosting self sustaining native fish and insect populations. A little known gem in our state that is gaining recognition as a “world class native trout fishery.”

The losing story...

2011-11-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

The writing contest guidelines call for a story which embodies a love of flyfishing. In this story, I left that as a given, and then veered into a departure:

Breaking Camp

It was almost dark when he arrived. He’d driven straight through all the way from Massachusetts without sleeping. He said the Badlands made him thirsty. Soon as he crossed into Montana Richard stopped and bought two bottles of Jack Daniels – pounded a whole fifth driving a hundred miles an hour across the Big Sky State and Idaho panhandle – cracked open the second bottle as soon as he hit camp. He said he hadn’t come to fish.

Gary helped him finish off the rest of the whiskey around the fire while Richard played Al DiMeola full volume on the camp stereo. “…Listen a that… wait… listen a that…” he said, holding a finger up, nodding and smiling like he was sharing the sweetest revelation, and then he danced, a stumbling dancing bear swaying dangerously close to falling into the fire. “I love you Cuz,” he kept saying, earnest and fierce, “I love you Cuz.”

The fire died down to coals. Gary and I decided to call it a night. We tried to get Richard to bed in one of the cabin tents I reserve for clients who’ve come to fish, but he refused to go into the tent. He lurched away into the outer dark and fell down over by the boat shed. We hauled him into the shed and dumped him on an air mattress.

He managed to poke a hole in the mattress and woke up on the floor at five in the morning still drunk on his ass, and wanting to fish. He pulled over the rack we store the fishing rods on, about twenty rods, left scattered and tangled on the floor. Couldn’t find his shoes, but he found the box of winter boots and dumped them all out on top of the rods. He selected a pair of giant, white, arctic boots that I use for ice fishing and pulled them on; then he found my favorite rod and took off down to the river, where he fell face-first down the rocky embankment.

Scraped his nose and raised a big goose egg on his forehead and broke the middle finger of his right hand, and busted the tip off my rod and scratched the reel all to hell. I drove him to the clinic in Northport where they splinted the middle finger straight, creating a permanent flip-off gesture of his hand. Rich talked the doctor into writing him a prescription for a month’s supply of strong oxycodins. Outside the clinic he turned a full circle on the sidewalk dancing a little jig, a banged up fat guy, his shaved head a crazy jack-o-lantern with the front teeth broken out from other falls, his hand raised high, saluting the shabby little river town with the big finger, “We’re still numba one!” he yelled, “We’re still numba one!”

On the way back from town Richard opened up. “See what’s happenin Cuz? I keep hurtin myself. I get so fucked up. The stroke fucked me up, man. I nevah drank whiskey before the stroke. It’s the only thing that makes me not give a fuck about what it did to me. That an the pills. The fuckin doctahs got me hooked on pills. I can’t do nothin. Can’t work. Can’t ride my motorcycle. Can’t get a hard on. Can’t even cast a fishing rod anymore. I’m retahdid. It’s like bein retahdid Cuz.”

I’m a guide. An outfitter. I take people fishing. Bird watching. Float down the river. I am not a qualified therapist. Oh, I do okay with horses, animals, but I’ve never claimed to be able to put broken people back together again. Barely keeping myself together. But everybody’s got some crosses to bear, I guess. I had Gary and Richard for the summer, and the family was counting on me to get them squared away. My mother insisted I take Gary on. Then Richard’s wife Cathy and my uncle and cousins in the East took turns calling to prep me for Richard’s visit. He’d already been through rehab five times and failed to detox every time. Cathy and his little girl came home one day, and there he was, passed out in a heap at the bottom of a stairway, his head in a pool of blood. Fell down. Drunk. Cathy was desperate. She called me: “…Stevie you are my last hope. Rich looks up to you. This is his last chance. If he can’t get off the pills and booze out theyah with you I’m gonna have to let him go Steve, I’m going to let him go. I can’t have Nikki seeing him like that all the time.”

My brother Gary, by himself, wasn’t too bad. Gary is a conspiracy theorist who needs only the smallest of openings to launch into a rambling, rapid-fire diatribe against the Zionist-Jew plan for world domination. His slide toward living in a tent out at my camp began last year during a nasty break-up with his wife: He left a death threat message on her cellphone. She played it for the cops. When they caught up with him there was a loaded shotgun riding with him in the pickup. They charged him with a felony: making a terrorist threat. And having a loaded gun in a vehicle. The loaded shotgun weighed heavy in the judge’s decision, even though Gary had no prior record. He spent his last dollar fighting it. The judge gave him six months solid. Nobody in the family had the money to cover his land and truck payments and he lost everything while he was in jail. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut in County and got seriously thumped a couple of times by the guards and once by another inmate. Spent almost the entire term in solitary confinement. He’s plenty broken alright. But everything else aside, he is unfailingly loyal to me. I can handle him. He seemed to be making good progress wrestling with his demons on his own. I wasn’t too worried about him. He’s a pretty good cook, so I gave him a job as camp cook for the season. Gary was doing okay. But cousin Richard was another case.

I’ve known some people with bad addictions, but I’ve never seen a jones like the one Richard had for the combination of whiskey and pain pills. He’d always been a partier, but ever since the stroke froze half his face and ended his sales career a couple years ago, he’d gotten worse with the prescription painkillers. The second day of his stay, a couple of clients arrived, a nice couple from Pennsylvania. They’d booked me to take them flyfishing on the river and they were going to camp with us for three days. Turned out they were drinkers, and they let us know on their first night that they’d brought a good supply of expensive Scotch singlemalt. Richard latched onto them and downed most of their supply while entertaining them with stories from our childhood on the lake in Mass: “Hey Stevie rememba that time we were fishin, and you weren’t lookin where you were castin and put that Bass-O-Reno in Pauly Reagan’s head? All three treble hooks. Stevie was a holy terra. Crazy fuck, weren’t ya?... You know you were.” And also: “Rememba that time we pitched a tent out in the back yard? Stole my dad’s Playboy and jerked to the pictures half the night. Goddamn crazy fucks.”

Ah god. I couldn’t even look at the woman after that. Gary followed Richard’s lead and got in on the whiskey, too, and his mouth got loose: “…When are you people gonna wake up? Don’t you know that the Jews are running everything? Huh? What’s it gonna take to make you realize that?...”

After the clients left I read Gary and Richard the Riot Act. They were not to mingle with my clients. They were to keep their conversations with the paying guests down to a polite minimum. They were not to drink alcoholic beverages or take dope of any kind while they stayed at the camp. The talk served as a temporary gut-check for Gary, and had no effect on Richard at all.

End of his first week at camp: Richard was out of money and out of gas. He spent eight hundred bucks driving the ten miles to town twice a day for beer and whiskey, and he’d gone through the entire month’s prescription of oxies. I suspected that he was sharing them with Gary. By the second day of oxies: they’d degenerated into two shuffling and unblinking manatees, drifting through the trees between their tents and the refrigerator in the boat shed for beer; while Richard’s Al DiMeola collection blasted from the screen room at the center of camp. I had a couple of clients over from Seattle, a couple of English teachers, and at the end of their second day, after fishing, one of them comes to me and says: “I think that guy Rich is taking beer out of our cooler… I wouldn’t care that much… except he drank it all, all we brought to last us the week…”

Out of money, gas and pills, Richard was on the hustle. He bummed enough money from Gary to get to town for a bottle of whiskey. Without the pills he needed to drink more to achieve the required buzz. He drank the entire fifth in his tent; then pulled the tent down on himself, breaking the tent-poles. He freaked because he couldn’t find the opening, so he got out his pocket knife and cut a hole through the roof big enough to ride a horse through and ruined my seven hundred dollar Alaskan Guide cabin tent.

I had to do something about Richard. The family was counting on me. And Richard was counting on me, I knew, because every time he got good and whacked he’d get to a point he’d start crying about how he had to quit the booze and pills, and how it was killing him, and how he was going to lose Cathy and the kids if he didn’t kick. And then his mood would switch to: “Aw fuck it, I don’t give a fuck.”

So much for good intentions.

I hatched a plan. Luckily I didn’t have any clients around who might be frightened, so I was free to get creative. Self-help wasn’t working for Richard. He’d thought the change of scenery alone would be the catharsis he needed. The stillness of isolation is like a still pond and acts as a mirror, and whatever it was Richard was seeing in that mirror he was not able to confront on his own.

He was sleeping it off in the cheapo dome tent we set up for him after he ruined the big one. I fetched twenty feet of anchor chain and a couple of padlocks out of the boat shed and crept over to the tent. I padlocked one end of the chain around a pine by the tent opening, and then, slowly, unzipped the door enough to reach in with the chain and padlock it around Richard’s left ankle. Then I went and told Gary about it.

“Are you nuts? You can’t leave him chained to a tree. You’re crazy. What’s he gonna shit and piss in?”

“Five gallon bucket. He’s staying there until I say he’s done. We’ll bring him food and empty the bucket. And make sure he doesn’t get any booze. Okay?”

“… Aw shit… you’re serious?”

“Yep.”

“…Well… okay… But if he dies it’s on you man. Right?”

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll take the blame if he dies.”

See. When you train a horse, the first thing you do is tie the horse to a strong post with a stout rope. If you leave the horse tied there long enough it will eventually become tractable. Like I said, I’m not a qualified therapist. Hard for me to articulate the change that takes place in a horse’s brain as a result of the tying. Let’s just say that the process rearranges some synapses in the horse’s head, and the horse comes out of it with a healthy respect for the rope. You can’t use the rope alone to master the horse because the horse is a lot stronger than you. You just tie him up, then stand back. At first the horse will fight. Maybe fight for a long time. But in every case the horse will eventually tire of struggling against the immoveable post and stand quietly. You let the rope and the post and time do the work. When the horse is standing completely relaxed, head down, ears down, you walk over and untie the rope from the post, and the horse thinks you’re his best friend for it. A light pull on the rope and he follows. Until Richard, I had never tried this on a human.

Richard woke up. When he swung his feet off the cot the chain jingled and he looked down. He clambered outside the tent tracing his tether to the pine. “You bastids. Ha-ha. Funny. Now c’mon, get this chain off me, I gotta take a shower,” he called across the camp.

I brought a bucket of warm water, washcloth, soap and a towel, set it down by his tent. “Here you go Cuz.”

A smile edged its way across his face. “C’mon Steve, unlock the chain, quit fuckin aroun.”

“Nope. Sorry Richard. This is it man. Now’s your chance to really do it. We’re leaving you here until you’re done.” Then I turned and walked away.

Richard lurched after me. “Hey come on… you aint serious…” He almost tripped when the chain clinked tight as he reached for my shoulder. “Oh boy… you fuckin fuck, you mothafuckin fuckin fuck,” he hissed, straining against his tether. Then he spit at me.

He didn’t sleep for the first four days. At night he howled like a wolf and laughed and cried. Strange voices came from his tent in the dark. One, like a child talking baby-talk that I couldn’t make out. Sometimes he’d yell in a plaintive voice, “JESUS! JESUS! JEEESUS!” Then there was a wicked, cackling voice that said cryptic things like: “You can’t do that. Never. No never. You know you can’t do that. That. That. That.” I could see how these things might be interpreted as demonic possession. But I figured the voices were just the various problems surfacing in his brain and being released through his vocal chords. Like toxins sweated out in a sauna. He threw the plate at me the first time I tried to bring him food, so I had Gary attend to him. Richard knew it was my idea, and that I held the keys to the padlock, so he wasn’t nearly as pissed at Gary as he was at me. He raised a ruckus for the first four days though.

He was able to sleep by the fifth day, and that was a relief to us all. He spent most of the time sleeping after that. Gary brought him a pad of drawing paper and a pencil.

On the sixth day, I went over to check on him. I half expected him to grab me and choke me out with the chain as soon as I came within reach, but was surprised to find him fairly resigned to his situation.

“I’m hurtin, man. This is hell,” he said without moving from the cot.

I noticed the sketchbook beside him, an entire page covered with sketches of eyes. Just eyes with eyebrows. They were the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen, perfectly rendered in various expressions of torment and sorrow. “I didn’t know you are an artist. Those are good. Ever thought about taking an art class? Might meet some people there you have something in common with. Might be a good way to track your life on to something less apt to kill you.”

“Maybe I’ll do that. Thought about it. I’m done drinkin Cuz. I’m done. You can let me off the chain now. Let me off the chain.”

I thought about it. He looked so pathetic. But he did look a little healthier. “I’m thinking about it,” I told him as I walked away.

I left Richard chained to the tree for six more days. The chain accomplished what five expensive stays at various institutions could not. He detoxed.

By the time I unlocked Richard’s chain the season was almost over. I was heading down to California in a few days. Gary was staying on at camp until he could put a better situation together for himself. The engine in his car burned up so I was leaving him my pickup. Richard had never seen the redwoods and was looking forward to driving me down the coast. We spent the last few days breaking camp. Pitched horseshoes. Richard and I fished in the evenings. He didn’t say anything about wanting a drink and seemed to be doing okay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The night was exquisite and the stars were very close, driving south from Crescent City. Broken plumes of fog rose up like whale ghosts against the Del Norte headlands. We needed to get some sleep. I pulled off onto a wide shoulder beside a grove of big trees, and we rolled our sleeping bags out on the ground and lay side by side looking up at the patchwork of starry sky knitted to inkblot crowns of tall redwoods assembled around us like gods in the dark. The trees drip. And the pure drops distilled through their millennial bodies fell as tears through the night.

Our sleeping bags were soaked through by first light. We packed up and hit the road, needing coffee, the car heater blasting us dry.

The morning fog departed under the breaking sun, and we rolled slow down the

Redwood Highway

through alternating shadow and spotted light beneath the boughs. I drove while Richard looked out the window contemplating the ranks of mythic trees. The immense wine soaked columns. Remnant temple of the one true god, yet standing, barely believable, at the far western edge of imagining.

“I know some crazy bastids, but you’re probably the only one nuts enough to chain me to a tree and leave me there.”

“Yeah? Well...” It came out sounding unsure and apologetic.

“Nah, Cuz. Don’t feel sorry about it. Don’t worry, I’ll never hold it against you. I love you man, you know that, right?... Look at them trees. Makes you want to live forever.”

Upper Columbia Short Casts: November

2011-11-18T21:19:00.000-08:00

Upper Columbia View Change From WDFW

Remember early last summer when I reported that WDFW had offered to host a meeting for the purpose of gathering citizen input regarding the UCNFA proposals for a stewardship plan favoring native salmonids in the American Reach segment of the upper Columbia? Well, after several correspondences, we still haven’t heard anything else about the meeting. Yet, notwithstanding, we are at least somewhat encouraged by what I perceive as, at least, a change in WDFW’s thinking regarding the American Reach fishery. I’m not really sweating in anticipation of a face-to-face meeting, as it looks like anything that could have been accomplished at a meeting, at this point in time, already has. I have no doubt that those who’ve written letters on behalf of native salmonid fisheries and UCNFA have been an instrumental influence, silently percolating in the background. We carry on –

The impression I’m getting is that WDFW has appointed one of the local biologists to work as a sort of liaison to myself and UCNFA writers. We have had some interesting exchanges via email. The reasons I’m encouraged are: This is the same biologist who, four years ago, while he was fairly new to the region, argued that the trout in both the American and Canadian Reach segments are the result of Lake Roosevelt net pens. I, actually shocked at his assertion, countered, “No. We rarely see net pen fish in the Reach. These are naturally spawned natives I’m fairly certain. We were catching them long before the net pens went in.” And that was the end of the correspondence, until recently.

And that same biologist, now further informed, leaning toward our claim, and assuring me that the department does see the value of the UC as a quality, self-sustaining native trout fishery. The biologist has notified me that WDFW will be conducting a redband spawning survey on lower Sheep Creek in the coming year. And that is very good news.

Yet, he seemed a little defensive about my use of the term ‘open season’ when I asked him his opinion about the affects dredging might have on trout fry and spawning kokanee due to the two-month open season on gold in lower Sheep, indicating that he’d reserve his overview until after the survey data comes in. I asked if a fry survey was planned as well, then, and if there was some comparison metric for numbers of spawning fish the stream might receive, and what would be considered sustaining numbers of fry present in the creek after gold dredging season. Admittedly, I don’t know the affects, but last summer there were six dredges operating within a mile stretch of lower Sheep Creek, and there are only a few miles, to the barrier falls, available for Columbia fish to ascend. In the end, as of the last email, I was unable to pin the biologist down on what affect the dredging might have. The survey results from Sheep Creek, when they are in, could prove interesting. We’ll see.

And there may be a comparison metric of sorts in the results of recent Canadian surveys, which were impressive according to B.C. Hydro and the volunteer groups who participated. I indicated to the bio man that a good number of redbands ascend Deep Creek and some in Onion Creek as well, and that those creeks deserved surveys too, and he agreed. So it looks like, sho nuff, WDFW might be getting caught up. At least, they admit now that we have something uniquely valuable in the American Reach above Lake Roosevelt.

I think it may be time to switch the UCNFA stewardship focus onto a more intimate conversation with Federal fisheries agencies involved and I am going to research that. I’d welcome any help we can get on this. Though I’m beginning to wonder if there is anything anybody can do about the mounting problem of invasive species –

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Smallmouth Bass Invasion

No sooner had biologists and trout fishermen begun to fret about the increasing northern pike population in the Pend Oreille-Columbia watershed, then we suddenly see an apparent population explosion of smallmouth bass in the American Reach where bass were a rare catch just a few years ago. Smallmouth bass have been present in Lake Roosevelt for at least 30 years that I know of, originally pretty much confined to the area around the mouth of the Kettle River, and through the years slowly spreading throughout the lake. We started catching the odd smallmouth from the American Reach about ten years ago, and the numbers increasing every year since, though still an infrequent catch. Now, suddenly, this past summer throngs of smallmouth shouldered into the Reach and set up shop anyplace looking vaguely bassy. Slack water with hard bottom and rocks. Lot of that on the Reach, you get looking around. The bass were there, one and a half to four pound fish, some a little better. Columbia River man, Doug Lochner, my favorite basser, had a couple of 30-fish days, jiggling plastic on the bottom, and a few of those bass taken on lipless crank baits Doug was proud to tell me.

I reported the bass incursion to WDFW, and yes, the biologist had received reports indicating the sudden appearance of startling numbers of bass in the reaches above Lake Roosevelt, yet offered no comment.

My present theory, the one I’m hoping is true: The radical drawdown last winter and early spring shrunk L.R. nearly to the original river flow. The silt-bottomed ribbon of flow afforded little habitat for the bass, while the American Reach above Northport remained nearly unaffected by the drawdown and certainly holding better feeding opportunities than the narrow drain that was Lake Roosevelt last March. The bass began to migrate up the chum line; and that upriver push aided by the sudden inundation of ultra-high spring runoff flooding out the fast water segment at the Little Dalles, usually a barrier to slow-water fish, creating easy passage into the fertile Reach. We’ll see what develops next season.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Perpetual Loser

Ladies and Gentlemen, once again, I have entered a story in the Fly Rod & Reel, Robert Traver Writing Award contest, and, once again, have come up dry. Ah well. Next year. Meantime, maybe the next post, I will post the losing story here.

And I’m not that bummed about not winning the contest money. No. I’m busy thinking about the approaching feast day and the delightful articles I know will be assembled on the table. I’m thinking about pies okay.

Happy Thanksgiving, Compatriots!

What Wall Street has come to symbolize.

2011-11-16T15:55:00.000-08:00

What Wall Street has come to symbolize is: the ability of extremely powerful private consortiums to be the major force of opinion guiding leadership and informing culture. ‘Wall Street’ is no longer a place, but a monolithic paradigm, artificial corporate culture spinning an ideology of consumerism posed as normal life. Wall Street has become emblematic of what the majority of us (recent polls verify this) are pissed off about.

Most obvious, and to my mind the most important to consider: the decisions power brokers are driving have resulted and will result in the ever-accelerating environmental degradation that is affecting the very climate, frakking the very crust of our planet and the well-being of every living thing upon it. Everything is connected.

Should Wall Street exist? Sure, I think so, but only as a workplace, not as a lever of power. Finance should sink or swim on its own merit. Just like everybody else.

The housing bust, really, serves mainly as a good example of how the thinking goes in the halls of power: Bush puts Republican Revolution market principles to work and it turns out banks can’t be trusted to conduct honest business unwatched. And the housing boom may have actually succeeded in creating jobs and homeowners, and the banks still profiting, had they been willing to lower monthly payments just a little for primary homeowners in trouble. But no. They steadfastly refused to even consider a refinance plan. Yet, such is their influence that they were still able to receive the money to cover their bets, courtesy of the American taxpayer, all the while reaping record profits.

Do we need large multinationals to provide goods, create jobs and maintain our way of life? No. Where there is a demand, a supplier will always arise. Actually, they inhibit smaller, less impactive manufacturing and local business. And it is still a fact that most middle-class Americans are employed by other middle-class Americans.

To some, the message of the Occupy movement seems unclear. That is partially do to the ever-twirling Right Wing 'news' media doing its level best to obscure what articulate commenters are saying; but also oblique, in part, do to the systemic depth of the many complaints citizens are attempting to articulate, complaints resulting from 40 years of societal tampering favoring the elite, a seemingly insurmountable wall of shit at least 40 years thick and 40 years high, and without historical perspective to a generation grown up knowing nothing else. Yet we lately begin to see focus on what I believe to be the fundamental issues at the core of our national problem, and suggestions for fixing them:

The Lobby. Lobby is the proverbial elephant in the room. Yet, the election on the horizon and neither party has brought it up. How can they? If they did, they wouldn't have a chance in hell without the special interest campaign contributors. And look at the resumes of those in power and you see the revolving door from lobbyist to banker to leadership and back to the lobby business between terms. (Look at the resumes of the people in Obama's cabinet, he is as guilty as the rest.) So, writers are bringing Lobby Reform to the forefront. And I don't think the subject is going away. I think, with a patriotic effort, it may even be possible to get Lobby & Campaign Finance Reform on the discussion table before the election. I urge online writers to hammer the point in an attempt to do so. That is where it starts. That is an issue I think the majority of us might find agreement on; and I'd venture to predict that the party willing to grow the balls to sincerely embrace the issue will gain overwhelming support from our citizens. To my mind, at this stage, the cogent location for physical Occupation is K Street. That is where the trunk rises from the ground.

Will Daddy Warbucks Drop the Reins?

2011-11-09T23:53:00.000-08:00

One might argue that the growing Occupy Wall Street Movement is like the Tea Party, except with a finger pointing close to the right direction. And though Republicans and Fox News continue to characterize protesters as a “dangerous mob” and the lords of finance as the good guys, “the job creators”, we are beginning to see response from the movement’s targets change from contemptuous dismissal, to whining.

“Don’t they understand what Wall Street has contributed to the American economy?”

Yes. The protesters do understand what Wall Street, and more generally the economic elite have done for us, and to us. Nobody is asking for something for nothing. Basically, most only want a playing field slightly less tilted and containing no mines. That is why they are protesting.

Last Saturday, the New York Times provided this quote from a money manager which pretty much sums up what they’d like the public to embrace: “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”

It is indicative of the money man’s arrogance that his statement totally ignores and is deeply unfair to American workers and tradesmen who are good at a lot of things, the people who pave our streets and pick up the trash, the small farmers, the teachers or auto mechanics who love what they do but will never be rich, and may not even be in the middle class. And to the extent that

America

is lagging in everything except financial services, shouldn’t the question be: Why? and is it a trend we want to continue?

The financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the ‘invisible hand of the market’. What caused the finance industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy, starting around 1980, was a series of deliberate policy choices and a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis. It is no coincidence that the era of an ever-growing and politically powerful financial industry is also an era of ever-increasing inequality of income and wealth. The same political forces that promoted deregulation fostered inequality in a variety of ways including undermining organized labor and doing away with any constraints that used to limit executive paychecks. And of course taxes on those paychecks sharply reduced or nonexistent.

This was supposed to be justified by the wonderful things they do. Fill them up so that they might spring leaks and trickle down to the rest. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, grew only about a fifth as much between 1980 and 2007 as it did in the generation following World War II, even though the post war economy was subject to strict financial regulation and higher taxes on the wealthiest, actually much higher than anything currently under discussion.

So then the bank-created housing bubble busted. And the banks, fearing losing out on projected profits and the air capital they’d created to gamble with based on projected profits. With threats of a meltdown, they scared the Bush government into providing a ‘bailout’ which was really nothing more than insurance against their profit loss. And meanwhile, in that same time frame, they reaped record profits and paid out record bonuses to their CEO’s.

And what about now? Wall Street pay continues to increase while ordinary workers continue to suffer from high unemployment and falling real wages. It is hard, very hard to see what, if anything, financiers do to earn their money. How can anybody take Wall Street whining seriously?

That money manager who claimed finance is the only thing America does well also complained that New York’s two Democratic senators aren’t on his side, declaring: “They need to understand who their constituency is.” He’s not really talking about voters, as 16 out of 17 workers in New York are not involved with the financial industry. He’s talking about the one thing Wall Street has plenty of thanks to the bailouts (which actually did little or nothing to help primary home owners in trouble) and despite a total loss of credibility: money. They still have a lot of money. And don’t get me wrong. I see no evil in having money. I like money. My only problem lies with consortiums of the powerful loading the free wheel of fortune in their own favor.

Money talks in American politics. Nothing new, it’s been a fact for at least 100 years. A simple fact that is now in-your-face and no longer just the wry conjecture of polite observation. And what the financial industry’s money is saying lately, is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize the industry’s behavior, no matter how innocuous the comment. As evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned Obama in favor of Romney. They are making it clear that it has become nearly impossible to run for office in

America

without their backing.

See, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about the whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, a growing number of people insist on bringing up the subject again.

Effective in the end or not, the people are venting outrage at a Wall Street profit machine that has completely bought our electoral process, bought our lawmaking process, that has gotten fat from illegal wars responsible for the deaths of thousands, the dissemblers of commonwealth, who operate above the law, a mockery to justice in our Supreme Court who lent them a free hand to buy elections, those who profit by giving us cancer and radiation, those who have degraded society, culture and quality of life with 100 years of corporate defilement and constant advertising that has corrupted our identities and sense of community. That outrage is energetic. And focused, might provide some leverage. We’ll see. Wall Street is whining, and I take that as a good sign. Now it’s time to occupy Lobby Street, to my mind the more cogent target.

October Caddis Time

2011-10-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

Ava's October Caddis as tied by Chris Cornelius

Was pretty good fishing on the UC this past summer in spite of unusually high spring runoff lasting late into the season. Hot weather through the latter portion of August and through September narrowed the bite down to late evenings, but still, not bad. Lots of hoppers this year and the bite is still fairly good on imitations of them. Best of all though, October caddis are putting on a good appearance this year and some nice trout have been coming on the imitations. My brother released an 8-pound redband that fell for the October Caddis Emerger pattern that is given in my book – best one we’ve seen this season. The big bugs never fail to bring some of the better fish of the year.

Naturals emerge sporadically throughout the day with heavier, though spotty, shooters in late afternoon-early evening. Trout are used to seeing them and will take both wet and dry imitations throughout the September-November period.

Received a note from Chris Cornelius who recently made a trip up to the UC to fish and shoot grouse over his dog, Ava. Chris writes:

~ I tried a bunch of different patterns including swinging soft hackles, big uglies and various dries. I hit pay dirt with an orange stimulator. There were a few October caddis coming off the river, but nothing crazy. I went with it and found fish almost immediately. First fish I caught was a STUNNING brook trout about 13" just below camp. It was my first in the Upper Columbia and I'll tell you that I was surprised, in fact, my jaw dropped! One of the two fish that made my trip...

That night in camp I picked up your book and proceeded to tie up an October caddis emerger based on your experience and recommendation. Well, I didn't have quite all of the 'stuff' to make it happen, but I was able to cobble a representative simulation together. I was able to find a Mustad 3906b in size 6, add a few lead wraps, blend some orange, brown and black dubbing, legs from an orangish saddle hackle, top with some grouse body feathers from Ava's first bird, hackle with same and dub a gray head with the downy feathers from her bird and viola Ava's October Emerger emerged from the bin of feathers I'd toted along. The end result in hand looked good, really good in fact and I actually impressed myself. That said, I hadn't fished it. The next morning proved my gut was right. Six fish including the single largest rainbow I believe I've ever hooked decided to eat. The big fish drew an expletive from my lips I'm not proud of, but it happened, the fish earned it and I'm glad the rod stayed in my mitts during the ensuing few moments. Three good runs later and grateful the fish chose to stay in the turbid water vs slip into the hard current, I thought I'd had the battle licked. In fact, I'd powered my camera on and thought about how I was going to capture this experience and send you a picture! I had the line well onto the reel and seemingly little flyline remained out of the tip top when I felt a gut wrenching immediate 'pop' and the fly sprung free. My grin spread ear to ear as she was a really, really, REALLY good fish. No picture, but I'll never forget the moment.

The afternoon was similar. Several fish (minus the game changer) all on Ava's October Emerger (aka Steve's October caddis emerger tied by a guy who didn't have the right materials to make the fly as designed). In fact, so good, I switched to a dry and my evening was complete. What a great river!~

O yes. We agree, Chris. A great river. And a great report. We’ll be tying some Ava versions of October Caddis for sure. I like the idea of using rooster hackles for legs on this one. Simulates the heavy legs of the naturals, and might provide an enticing kick when worked on the swing. Thanks for sharing. Our search for effective patterns to fish over October caddis is ongoing. Anyone reading has a favorite they’d care to share, feel free to post in comments or send me an email with photo and recipe, and I’ll be happy to post it.

Ava
photos courtesy of Chris Cornelius

Margaret Dawn Thacker

2011-10-14T23:08:00.000-07:00

Appalachian autumn - M.Dawn Thacker

One of the contributors to the Readthisplease-Footprints anthology I wrote about in my last post is an Appalachian writer/photographer by the name of Margaret Dawn Thacker. Margaret Dawn is a friend and member of the UC Flyfisher circle of writers. One of the things I really like about this writer is that she is such an authentic voice of her region. And we are fortunate that her interests extend well beyond. She graces us with this portrait from the Piedmont of long ago. Grandpa and Uncle Wallace had it made is all I got to say.

~ My grandfather used to fly fish on the Jackson River. Uncle Wallace would call on a Thursday evening and invite him down to the cabin on the river for the weekend. Grandpa jumped at the opportunity. It was his excuse to get away from Grandma’s list of chores. Most of the time, he carried her with him for the trip though. She and Aunt Ellen stayed in the cabin, waking early to cook ham with red-eye gravy and buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. Lunch was a cold plate of thick club sandwiches and homemade potato salad. The two sisters vied for attention with a feast for Saturday supper. They compared recipes and attempted to out-do each other cooking and baking the entire visit. The men never ate so good.

Grandpa wore the pair of hip waders that hung from a wooden rack he built in his shop. They were tall green rubber boots that squeaked when he stepped on wet rocks. I can see him now, in the river, water swirling around his knees, a brown cotton vest over his flannel shirt, a railroad cap covering his bald head. The flies he so carefully tied using feathers and string, stuck tight in the lamb’s wool on the front of his vest, an artist collage. One hand held the handle of the long bamboo fly rod, the other held the line. He’d draw back and cast, draw back and cast again. The tiny fly barely touching down before it took flight again. Trout seemed to fight over which one would attack the little camouflaged hooks. The men never wanted for a catch.

The fish fry was Sunday night. Grandpa and Uncle Wallace stood outside at the cleaning station, gutting, scaling and de-heading the trout. They discussed the bend in the river, and hiding places where rainbow and brook trout laid low. The ones the fishermen tempted out from under rocks and falls of water landed, clean and shiny, into a bucket of cold water. Grandpa presented them to Grandma on the back porch. She and Aunt Ellen rolled the trout in cracker meal and fried them in big iron skillets.

We sat around the old pine farm table at the camp, passing the platter of fried fish, the bowl of homemade cole slaw, and the pan of cornbread cut into buttery gold triangles. The men compared this trip to the last one and argued about who caught the biggest or fought the hardest to land a catch.

No fish ever tasted any better. ~

Thanks Margaret. Person can never get enough corn bread!

The Train's Whistle link in the right-hand column will lead you to more stories from M.Dawn Thacker.

Readthisplease - Footprints

2011-10-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

A good anthology of short stories is like a box of chocolates. Or a buffet. A potpourri. A lush, diverse orchard. A chorus line. A beautifully tied selection of salmon flies arrayed in a box, each one lovely and unique.

ReadThisPlease Volume I – Footprints (Sage Press) gathers the fresh voices of Sheila Cano, Gaboo, Casimirr Rexregys, BG Lewis, Trularin, Adrienne S Moody, Thomas Pryce, Bruce Reisner, Sarah Scott, M Dawn Thacker. And a contribution from this writer too, I am honored to say.

Want to improve the quality of your life and ward off dementia? Read something good. Check out this twisty anthology of contemporary stories and poems from diverse landscapes – short, sweet, authentic. Nothing lame here. Whip this book out of your pocket and your friends will know how serious you are about literacy.
https://www.createspace.com/3632562

Columbia Basin Northern Pike

2011-09-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the article link, Bert. You are vigilant. Encapsulates the Northern Pike situation in the Pend Oreille very well: http://www.cbbulletin.com/411841.aspx

My take on the Pend Oreille River, from Lake Pend Oreille to the Columbia confluence, thus:

The 130 mile Pend Oreille segment is strapped with five dams, the original river drastically altered in every conceivable way. Habitat that once supported natives is now fragmented or altogether lost. Of course, anadromous species are ghosts of history. In the almost 40 years I’ve been visiting the Pend Oreille to fish, I’ve never caught a bull trout, or seen one caught. Scant populations of native cutthroat are trying to hold on.

Loss of natives due to northern pike predation? I shake my head. A wicked, toothie visage emerges, a savage icon of introduced dangers. Poor Esox. Must all weight of guilt and salt of ire be laid upon his lean frame alone? I think not. As a non-native of unsparing culinary habits, he is not alone. The created habitat has long hosted a thriving population of smallmouth bass. Extensive shallow-water sloughs are home to reproducing largemouth bass, as well as northern pike. There are walleye in the Pend Oreille; and introduced catfish. There are crappie. The entire Pend Oreille system is infused with bazillions of stunted yellow perch. And there are a few reproducing brown trout, though they are concentrated and not numerous. All of these non-native, minnow-loving species have fenestrated down into the Columbia River/Lake Roosevelt mainstem. At least one illegally introduced species, walleye, are considered proper and easy, self-producing mitigation for anadromous fisheries lost due to dams, and are regulated and stewarded as such. Every segment of the Columbia now contains recognized and managed bass and walleye fisheries regulated with catch limits.

These non-native fisheries are very popular, representing big revenue; and so, supporters have considerable leverage concerning fishery goals and laws, evidenced by what we have now; and that, in my view, often counter to the stated missions of the various agencies regarding Columbia fisheries. Indeed, input from many Pend Oreille locals points in favor of supporting a northern pike fishery. And I admit to enjoying pike and bass fishing on the Pend Oreille myself. There is no denying that the Pend Oreille’s dammed segments and sloughs are now more suitable as a spiny-ray fishery, it is obvious and self evident. That said, I would allow the chance of a native fishery, at least for cutthroat, but that only if existing non-natives (possibly with one or two exceptions?) where eradicated, and I don’t see that happening all at once or any time soon.

Are non-native fish in the Columbia system a threat to native species? You tell me. A preponderance of fishermen don’t think it matters all that much. They’re just as happy catching lots of walleye and bass and triploids. Hey, it’s a tug at the end of the line and meat in the cooler.

The idea of native, self-sustaining fisheries has not been entirely sold, or sufficiently bought. Agencies are still operating in a looped policy limbo. In my own opinion, it is true that there are waters suitable for non-natives and that mitigation for lost habitat and stocks is important and necessary. (I’m reminded of isolated ponds of large brook trout, and some bass ponds, that I like.) Yet I think agencies have overlooked, or have been far too slow in recognizing, the potential of many Eastside Columbia tributaries, including the Columbia mainstem between Northport, WA and Castlegar, B.C. Yes, it is true that some managers I’ve contacted have expressed accord, but they are field men, not policy and law makers. I’ve been assured the wheel is turning; though I can’t yet discern the direction it is taking.

Do northern pike, scary-looking as they are, and still relatively rare in the Columbia (where habitat is less ideal than the Pend Oreille) somehow present a greater threat to indigenous species than non-native predators already well-established there? I don’t think so. At least not presently. To me the more pressing question is: Will fishery agencies attached to the Columbia ever arrive at a stewardship policy clearly favoring native species in every regard? Only then can we move forward with what is necessary to achieve that. And that remains to be seen. Informed public input might lever some balance. Please, write fishery managers stating your opinion.

Escape of the Triploids

2011-08-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

Bert sent this item our way: http://columbiabasinherald.com/article_2be5e332-bf8c-11e0-a7fb-001cc4c03286.html Along with this: "Apparently, hatchery trout predating hatchery trout is more of a concern than introduced walleye predating wild trout."

Well, of course. And a new triploid factory is created (and you can ketch 'em on walleye gear!).

Thanks for that, Bert. And more good news coming up. Stay tuned.

Spate of Hatches

2011-07-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

What a difference a day makes. What a difference a few warm days make. Though beginning to abate, this year’s prodigious spate continues to swell the American Reach of the Columbia. Everything in the natural world seems three weeks late this year. Yet, in spite of that, the warming trend we’re having is triggering the awaited hatches.

Boaters must exercise caution with the considerable amount of debris coming down, and bank fishing is difficult in a lot of the usual runs, with water still into the trees and bushes; however, high-fast water is serving to concentrate trout below shore points substantial enough to break the flow.

Fishing is surprisingly good. I’ve been working the top of an eddy point which features a lazy-susan slick of cottonwood mast and other crap, along with a considerable number of insects riding on it, to the inside of the seam. Nice, technical nymph fishing on short casts. Last night I observed little sister sedge, little black sedge, ginger quills, red quills, a few stray callibaetis, a single yellow drake (gray drake) floating on the slick, with a strong emergence of spotted sedge getting underway by 8:00 PM. We’ve been having fairly steady action swinging ginger quill (baetis) nymphs early and then switching to sedge emerger patterns when the spotted sedges start to come off. Drakes can’t be far behind. It’s beginning to feel a lot like summer. Continuity gains the day. The photo is a typical UC redband taken on ginger quill nymphs. Most of that white stuff floating on the water is cottonwood mast, and all that stuff alongside the trout is the stuff that clothslined my leader.

The Runoff

2011-06-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

Fist the mist and

Mock the clock

Reckless rhythms of
Runoff

I wish it would end. Purely selfish reasons, of course. As a rule-of-thumb I try not to resist the flow, but thinking about summer hatches catches my head on fire and I backslide into impatience. The continuing fronts of rain. That, and the record accumulation of snowpack now flowing down West Slope drainages and flooding the homewater into the trees usually 40 feet above the waterline.

There was a good hatch of grannom sedges for a couple of days a few weeks ago, just prior to the major runoff that has changed the character of the reach so considerably in the meantime. We got a taste, a couple of nice fish on dries, and then the rising cold and off-color water blew the hatch out.

No doubt, the more prolific hatches of late spring and summer will be later than usual this year. I’m not seeing much sign on the home beat yet, only the #20 midges, which are in fact bringing up some good trout here and there in the more sheltered eddies; and I’ve been seeing the winged carpenter ants whenever we get a couple of sunny days between the bouts of rain, and I’m sure these are present on the water. A floating black ant is one of my standard choices this time of year, and a Griffith Gnat serves well to cover those free-risers feeding on midges. But it is not entirely for high water that I am currently on hold as to fishing these things. No. Though presenting technical challenges, the UC usually fishes okay even during spring runoff. What I really wish would end is the prodigious blizzard of cottonwood blow we’re having this year making it impossible to soak a fly without every protruding nub of line knot and terminal gear becoming instantly and hopelessly clotheslined with crap. Anyplace likely to concentrate feed and trout is also concentrating slimy mats of cottonwood down. Ah well. The cottonwood hatch is usually over in a week, but it looks like the runoff period will last quite a bit longer this year.

On the flip side, cloudy and cool weather is keeping the chironomid hatches going strong on the lakes still, and I’ve been taking advantage of that more than I usually do. I’m inspired by the lake action, really. Think I’m going to build a pram…

Coordinating Efforts

2011-05-29T23:34:00.000-07:00

As several fisheries studies have concluded, and anecdotal knowledge based on our own observations concurs, walleye predation being the foremost problem presently facing upper Columbia salmonids, and as WDFW seems mainly conflicted in its policies regarding illegally introduced walleye, I thought to complain to the Washington Invasive Species Council and attempt to enlist their help in eliminating, reducing, or at least addressing the problem of invasive walleye in the American Reach segment. I went to their website and filled out an Invasive Species Sighting form, and received an email from the council Executive Coordinator, Wendy Brown, who replied very promptly and sounds very nice. Her letter, in its entirety:

“Hi, Steven. Thanks very much for sending in this report. Invasive fish is a tricky one for us. We know that many of these species are competing with and preying on native species, yet there is not a clear policy and management path forward on what to do about them. It’s an issue that is definitely on my radar but will take time to resolve.

For now, I’ll include your report in our database. I appreciate your taking the time to send in the report.”

Sincerely,

Wendy Brown

Executive Coordinator

Washington Invasive Species Council

Now, rather than going off on a rant concerning the redundancy, ineffectiveness and non-cooperation of interrelated government agencies, I would prefer to be kind to Wendy and have invited her to open up a little more. I have extended her an offer to help. After all, these agencies, in general, may have a tendency to remain chiefly static unless prompted by continual citizen oversight and input. As Wendy and the WISC are in need of a clear policy regarding tricky invasive fish species, I invite readers who have encountered walleye in the state’s native salmonid waters to go to the WISK site and fill out an Invasive Species Sighting form so that the council might develop a policy based on citizen input, allowing them to find the path forward. And, perhaps, the clue unlocking the puzzle of a clear policy and mission might actually lie in the name of the council itself? I don’t know. And I would like to convince Wendy that an honest stewardship plan is much more streamlined, cost-effective and better at serving resources and people than a ponderous “management path”. We hope to hear more from Wendy Brown.

Western Green Drake Emerger

2011-05-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

‘I’m reminded that, as flyfishers, we have to mold ourselves so completely to the craft, and what strange split-personalities we acquire in the doing. The days before require a focused and fanatical dedication to perfecting the ‘stuff’, whether it’s practicing casts, re-spooling the backing on your reel, or the tying more flies appropriate to habitat and season. But the days spent on the water require a tao surrender to the flow, complete disengagement from everything beyond the river edge, and even in the water you’re barely aware of it. The only things that matter are the rhythm and an openness to thinking like a fish.’

~SX (craigslist writer’s forum poet)

Being a large mayfly and widespread, and with at least one of the two species commonly called ‘green drake’ (Drunella doddsii and Drunella grandis) inhabiting virtually all streams and rivers in the West, this an important bug in our part of the world. These are likely the largest mayflies occurring in your local freestone.

Green drake hatches will begin in the morning in the early part of the season and then progress toward evening as the season goes on. Though you seldom encounter heavy green drake hatches on smaller streams, they are still worthwhile imitations to fish throughout the hatch season, as there are usually some, and trout are used to seeing them.

The nymph is a crawler with very stout legs designed for clinging, and it is not a good swimmer. At emergence, the wing casings expand to crack open and the wing begins to unfurl. The unfurling wing is water repellant and buoyant, as it billows from the casings the nymph releases its hold on the bottom and tumbles helplessly in the current while the wings unfurl, lifting, sailing the emerger toward the surface. It is through understanding this emergence behavior that we find a good imitation for this stage.

Adult western green drakes are olive green top and bottom at the moment of emergence, the coloration darkening considerably over the top of the carapace with exposure to air, while the belly coloration may vary, acquiring a tan, gray, yellow, light olive or cream coloration. Stimulator or Wolff style patterns tied in green drake colorations are a good choice for those who like to ‘fish the water’ with big dries on freestone streams this time of year.

Green drakes occur in the UC, though nowhere near as abundant as the brown drake, coming on a few weeks earlier in the season than brown drake, their sparse emergence drowned out when brown drakes come on. Yet trout take the imitation fairly well through the hatch season. Here’s a version of the green drake emerger that has worked good for me the last couple seasons, and killed on the Kettle River one afternoon when we lucked onto a good hatch of these.

Western Green Drake Emerger

Hook: Your choice. Naturals are #8 – #12. The version here is tied on a #4 Gamakatsu octopus.

Thread: Dark brown

Tails: Three mottled turkey tail biots, separated.

Rib: Hot-yellow wire or poly rope fiber wound over the abdomen.

Abdomen: Equal parts olive and brown rabbit dubbing (guard hairs removed). I have a good supply of olive and brown striped rabbit zonker strips from Orvis that make perfect dubbing and winging for this one.

Thorax: Mixed olive and brown dubbing, guard hairs left in – build up heavy, the green drake thorax is considerably bulkier than the abdomen section.

Wing: Pinch of mixed brown and olive rabbit fur (try to get mostly guard hairs), then a pinch of black over that and top with a few strands of very fine greenish flash if you like.

Legs: One turn of yellow-dyed grizzly hen or saddle, stripped on one side, then one turn of olive-dyed grizzly hen hackle.

Head: Four or five turns of dubbing in front of the legs, then finish.

Green Drake Cripple

2011-05-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

Here’s my take on the western green drake cripple.

Hook: Dai-Riki 270 #8 - #12

Thread: Brown

Tail (shuck): Brown deer hair

Rib: Strand of yellow poly rope fiber or suitable substitute (Like the brown drake, vivid yellow banding between the segments is a distinguishing feature of green drake naturals.)

Body: Dark olive float-treated dubbing twisted on yellow sewing thread.

Wing: Mix black, natural and blue dun deer hair and tie in a clump.

Hackle: one dyed yellow grizzly and one bronze hackle (bronze: like very dark blue dun with greenish and brownish highlights)

Discover Pass

2011-05-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

Starting July 1, a ‘Discover Pass’ costing $30 a year, or $10 for a day pass, will be required for vehicle access to ‘recreational’ lands and water-access sites managed by the Washington State Parks and Recreation, WDFW and Department of Natural Resources. Governor Chris Gregoire signed off on the legislation, saying: “It is essential that we keep our recreational areas open to the public. I applaud the Legislature for coming together with a solution that allows us to keep our recreational lands open and accessable during the worst budget crisis in the state’s history.”

This does not smell like refinement to me. The idea begs a few questions.

Why exactly does the state have a “budget crisis”?

Is the Discover Pass a temporary admission fee that will be rescinded when the “budget crisis” is resolved?

Why is Discover Pass termed a “solution” to keeping commonwealth lands “open and accessable”? Is that to say that a viable alternative would be to restrict citizens from entering commonwealth property? By what authority? what law gives the state the power to deny access to commonwealth property by reason of a state budget shortfall?

Are our revenues (state revenues) from timber and mineral sales, hydro and other extractive interests benefitting from commonwealth resources, meeting the costs of public land stewardship?

It’s not the cost of the thing that bothers me so much, it’s the idea. (I have never had a problem with having to purchase a hunting or fishing license, as I’ve always seen those activities as extractive, more or less, and I don’t mind paying a little more than the guy who doesn’t hunt or fish for upkeep of the ‘ol grounds, questionable as that upkeep may be. And I think that the price of a fishing license is still one of the best bargains around, when you figure you get a whole year for the price of taking your family out to dinner at McDonalds. In the interest of refinement I’d suggest a single fishing license, one fee covers it all, adjust price accordingly. And do away with the stupid boat-launch-user permit and windshield crap. Less paper, printing, office work, administration.) But the thing that really bothers me about the idea is the ideology couched within it, in its very language, relegating public property to the status of “recreational lands”, as if our only stake is recreation. As if our public lands be walled Disneylands. Pay for admission.

What really bothers me most is that this gives in to one of the basic precepts of radical conservative thought, and represents yet further diminishment and dissembly of commonwealth, serving to ratchet us farther along toward an entirely privatized, pay-to-play (we already pay a lot but they want us to pay more) society.

Don’t laugh. Next step: the selling of public lands to private interests as a way to ease government costs. Florida Tea Party Republican congressman, Dennis Ross is proposing that the government sell extensive public lands in Utah as a solution to the deficit. And he’s not the only one, the idea of selling off the commonwealth is very close to Republican hearts. And sadly, too often anymore, uneducated Democrats with no grasp of history or connection to founding principles are complicit.

And yes, closing public lands to the public was actually considered by our state leaders. And that idea, I am certain my friend Mr. Thoreau would agree, could only be responded to with acts of civil disobedience.

I am going to send copies of this to the governor, and senator Kevin Ranker (D) San Juan Islands, who authored the bill. I didn’t get wind of this until it was already a done deal, but I’m still curious to hear what they have to say, if anything, I’ll post it here. Anybody agrees with me and would like to copy this and send it to somebody, feel free.

And if anybody thinks I might just be on a rant, please enlighten me. I’d really like to know how people feel about this one.

Rise Forms

2011-05-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

Sky Trout

Most of us are aware enough of the great literary tradition attached to the practice of flyfishing. We read a lot. Many of us came to fishing through reading, or along with reading, I would bet that all of us, regularly, read fishing and flytying articles in our ongoing efforts to inform and better ourselves in the practice. We stand on the shoulders of the ancestors who’ve recorded and passed down instructive fables. We enjoy the lore. Lore unites us with the ancestors and with each other. We share a collective dream of adventure, the symbols and metaphor sprung full formed from the pages of our literature. And the threads and connections thereof, far too myriad and entangled to assemble into any sort of entrained history that is not subjective. Tradition is a fun toy.

An adventurous moment relived speaks to instruct and entertain us. It has ever been the affect of the storyteller to create lore, intentional or not. And the main vein of tradition runs anew every day with fresh stories added to lore. Each moment an epic. The real deal: you’re living it.

The physical beauty of wild places and water, fish, flies and rods, the graceful accoutrements of flyfishing, serve to provide touchstone icons that we practitioners recognize in common. These things are key elements on a palette, solid bones to hang fresh and evocative stories and poems on, to place thoughts upon. That is a thing understood by the flyfishing writers behind Rise Forms, an online project recently spawned, and headed up by Scott Carles of Cutthroat Stalker fame. The crew of contributing editors include Simon Blanford, Justin Cober-Lake, Anders Halverson, Cameron Scott, Dr. Samuel Snyder, and Dave Motes, a populist writer who blows me away he is so damn good. Go over to Rise Forms and check out ‘Holdover’ by Dave Motes and I promise you won’t be disappointed. Nor will you be disappointed in the unique art of Yoshikazu Fujioka or any other of the quality offerings impeccably presented.

(And while you’re there, check out ‘Sky Trout’ by yours truly.)

The only beef I have with Rise Forms is that it is a quarterly, and I wish that it came around every month. Ah well. Good things are worth looking forward to.

Rise Forms: http://riseforms.com/

Rubber Band Grannom Emerger

2011-05-08T23:56:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

Grannom sedges generally begin to appear from the UC at around mid-April and emerge into June, the peak hatching period usually from mid-May to mid-June. On the UC, as with many West Slope freestone streams, grannom are often the first dependable insect hatch of the season, with daily hatches ranging from sporadic to heavy. Though there will be some present just about every afternoon and evening, heaviest hatches occur on overcast days, throughout the day – and on the UC, often in conjunction with BWO mayflies, a situation that might create a challenging masking hatch on smaller waters, while UC trout, many of them fresh from spawning and hungry, seem to eat emerger and adult versions of both, blithely and opportunistically without discernible preference or bias in my experience. Grannom are nowhere near as prolific in the UC as its close cousin the spotted sedge which will produce truly blizzard hatches on summer evenings, mid-June through July; though trout seem to take dry imitations of the earlier grannom better. There isn't the easily available quantity of pupae available to key them like there will be during the more ubiquitous spotted sedge emergences.

Grannom are case-builders, the larvae free to roam on the bottom. I haven’t found imitations of the cased larvae to be of particular value for UC fishing, possibly because the heavy rubble bottom affords the larvae good cover making it difficult for trout to get at them. Grannom, for the most part, tend to gather and emerge close to the bank in shallow water on the UC, so, again, there’s not the quantity of emergers available to concentrate pupa-selective trout that we’ll see later during spotted sedge hatches.

Both pupa and adult sport abdomens in various shades of olive. On calmer water a hard wing profile like the Henryville or cut-wings seem to get the nod over hair-wings. The tight delta wing denotes a live and healthy sedge that is currently relaxed on the water. When there is a lot to choose from, trout become sedge experts, thumbing their noses at the spent and splayed. And on more than one occasion I’ve witnessed fish sipping relaxed sedges inches away from fluttering individuals. (Though it is true that a paucity of adult sedges might swing things in favor of the ubiquitous hair-wing.)

In my experience trout prefer the vulnerable, soft and plump, emerging pupa over all other stages. Routine examinations of trout stomach contents taken during sedge hatches have borne that out. I’m always experimenting and searching for better patterns to meet this stage. The variety available now is fanciful, and I’m always up for trying a new one, and my own designs are synthesized from those that have worked. This one is my favorite. I know, it’s too simple.

Rubber Band Grannom Emerger

Hook: #12 straight or up-eye caddis style.

Thread: Brown or light brown.

Abdomen: Strip of green rubber band wound to the thorax to create a segmented abdomen. Yup, green rubber band. Probably the first synthetic used in nymph tying. Old as the hills. And perfect for quickly creating evocative, chewy, sedge pupa abdomens that catch fish.

Thorax: Pale brown or tannish hares mask dubbing.

Hackle: One turn of pale brown partridge, game hen, or roughed grouse feather, fibers stripped from one side.

Head: A couple turns of dubbing ahead of the hackle; finish with a proportional head.

I like this one drifted, swung, dangled, lifted, dropped back; using a floating line with a 12’ leader, two nymphs, tandem on a 6 pound test fluoro tippet, when fishing the UC or Kettle. Or fished under a floating stonefly imitation.

Notes:

2011-04-29T23:26:00.000-07:00

The Upper Columbia-American Reach is at its lowest flow in about fifteen years, with the current drawdown for dam repairs. Elevation of Lake Roosevelt is currently at 1220 feet, 70 feet below the normal high pool of 1290 feet. A few feet lower and the old Kettle Falls will be exposed. Ancient Ilthkoyape emerges, a ghost from beneath the reservoir. Ghosts of salmon, jump.

Not really sure the affects of the drawdown on river life. Shoal gravels usually holding mainstem-spawning cutthroat this time of year are high and dry, which may mean a low production year for cutthroat. I think redband are less affected, for the most part, up the creeks right now, and plenty of water in the creeks this year. I’m curious to find out how spring/early summer sedge and drake hatches will be affected. Last year, higher than normal spring runoff, colder off-color water, seemed to take the fat off those hatches. I’ll be sure to note things more carefully this year. The low flow might serve to knock down aliens like walleye who will not like the pinched velocity of the flow; and walleye spawning area is diminished as well. (Be a good time to let the walleye guys just go to town on the walleye, no limit, all you can eat.)

A couple guys emailed me after unsuccessful attempts at using the comment box. It is wonky, I know. The Wordpress blogs make it a lot easier to leave a comment. Here’s a rundown on it based on my own experience: 1) Write your comment in the box. 2) Under the box, where it says Comment As: select a profile. Anonymous is the easiest, requiring no further action. Others with more tech savvy will know how to get further into the various choices one is confronted with when selecting a profile. 3) Here’s where it gets chancey: Click on the Post Comment bar. Your comment may post, requiring no further action, but more than likely the clicking action will squirt you to the top of the page, requiring that you scroll back down to see if the comment posted. Or, a box may appear requiring you to decipher a code word. Upon accomplishing that: Click Post. If that don’t do it: try alternating back and forth from Post Comment to Preview. Keep doing it until the comment posts (sometimes it requires this). See. What could be easier?

It really is a mystery. They need to make these machines easier for old people to use. Levers. Visible matriculations. We’re used to that.

Or simply wireless thought.

Here’s a mystery for you by Yours Truly. If you will. The Cardinal. Things uncovered in the spring:

http://now.readthisplease.com/2011/04/the-cardinal/

Everyday Magic

2011-04-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

It’s a classic situation, we’ve all seen it: Two guys fishing from a rowboat. Both using the same pattern. One guy is on fire, hooking up with eerie regularity, he is in the zone; while the other guy is bumming because he can’t catch his ass.

And it isn’t just in fishing, the dynamic plays out all around us. Why does this happen? What is this state of grace that seems to exist beside conceptual reality, this upper case REALITY of serendipitous connections that we anglers call ‘the zone’? (Why does being in it make us attractive to fish?)

Allow me to introduce you to a group of writers exploring around the edges and inside the zone, this month. And among them my friend, the enigmatic Gaboo, a remarkable voice from British Columbia. B.C.’s Roderick Haig Brown defined the man beside a river. Now, from beside the Frazier, Gaboo defines the man who is in the zone.

THE INVISIBLE UNICYCLE ~Gaboo

So much I could further on workings I’ve gleaned, but the very act of toward behavior nullifies the effect. Love was always the seeker. The one with horizons to seek, sought.

Control, control, control, control. We all want control. From the raindrops pinging above to the toleration level of humming, what came before and what will be – all in our control. Never was, why start now?

Fun to watch people run and splat into the wall, though, until they hurt themselves. Then it’s kind of disenfranchising. I wince and turn away at horrid things, thankful I came with the gauge of time that runs rewind around the bends, a chance to head check and measure options and depends. Ha.

We control our rising, on who we associate, and our view of things outside the head box. So much we control: to where we travel and to where we can escape; how comfortable the backrest and how long the bondage. We seek to control everything. Unless we offer control to others. C’mon, cordon off some of that defiance and acquiesce. Personally, I want responsibility for running into the wall as an individual. Some cut the tongue to prevent suicide, they want to control so, thus I avoid discussion. Seekers will seek……

Read the rest of the story, and a lot more, here: http://readthisplease.com/

Expert-ness

2011-04-17T12:09:00.000-07:00

Prior to the release of my book, the editor called to inform me that they (the publishers) would be sending me a box containing 1100 high quality vellum pages to sign. The editor is a nice lady. “Make sure your hands are clean,” she told me. I was to send them back, and then they would go to the book-binder to be bound into 1100 signed, leather-bound, hard-cover editions.

I laughed. “You mean there are people in the world who are not bill collectors that would ascribe value to my signature? For what? assembling a measly hundred and seventeen pages of eclectica about a place I see every day? Any flyfisher who takes the time to write down notes about their homewater and takes a few photos could accomplish at least that. Be all I could do to write five pages on Westside steelheading. Labrador brook trout? Argentina? Just a dream,” I said.

“There are collectors who will want the expert’s signature,” she said. “Oh, and we were wondering if you have another picture of yourself, other than the one you sent us with the manuscript… a picture of you wearing your gear – your waders and vest – one that makes you look a bit more, you know… professional.”

While holding the phone I involuntarily glanced over my shoulder to see if there was an expert standing behind me, the one she was really talking to. “I look like an astronaut wearing all that stuff, all sense of proportion lost – and besides, that photo shows my usual attire for fishing the UC on a summer evening. Weather’s too hot for waders, and it’s too deep to wade anyway; I have a shoulder bag to carry my gear, you just can’t see it in the picture,” I told her.

“That hat you’re wearing in the photo is really something… “

“The hat’s practical headgear. Keeps the sun off me. Protects my ears from stray hooks. Helps to keep bugs off my face and from dropping down my neck – you wouldn’t believe how thick those sedge hatches get sometimes,” I explained to her. “You watch. Those straw coolie hats are gonna be the latest thing in flyfishing fashion,” I assured her, trying my best to sound convincing.

My grandfather and my dad fished, and we lived on a lake, so I started young. As a kid, I fished a lot, so I caught a lot of fish, and that garnered me a neighborhood reputation as a ‘getter’, in spite of the fact that I operated with only a basic technical knowledge and a very limited arsenal of equipment. I was the farthest thing in the world from being an expert, but I was doing okay. And that pretty much sums me up as I am today – a perpetual student. When I think of the infinite facets, variables and nuances of flyfishing, not to mention fishing in general, my mind spaghettis at the amount of knowledge and know-how one would have to accumulate to become a card-carrying expert. No, the word might apply to specific tasks, like to say: “He is an expert at tying the San Diego knot,” but to apply the word ‘expert’ in a general sense seems imprecise if not a bit disingenuous applied to an activity so intimately connected to the unrevealed, infinitely diverse, ever changing dynamics of nature and the universe. It seems to me, the best anyone could hope to become, in a general sense, is an ‘accomplished practitioner’. And where does one go after reaching the EXPERT level, anyway? Seems unfair to truncate a perfectly good accomplished practitioner at such a static position.

I’ve noticed that when the term ‘expert’ is applied to anybody connected to fishing, invariably, said ‘expert’ is a salesman for a manufacturer of fishing products. The most extreme example of expert-ness exemplified in the bass fishing world and its attendant media where worship of product-pushing, stock-car-racer-dressed pros approaches idolatry. And there have always been experts associated with flyfishing, though, to our credit, they are carefully scrutinized by the accomplished practitioners who tend to be an observant bunch. For the most part, I’m glad to say, we come nowhere close to the crass commercialism exhibited by the hero-worshiping bass cult.

After hanging up the phone I found a piece of lined paper and scratched my signature on it. The result was pathetic, looking like the stilted scrawl of a third-grader with ADD. I took a deep breath and exhaled letting go of my inhibitions and tried again, this time going big, drawing a bold ‘S’ that looked like it might represent a graceful loose-line cast placed artfully upon the water. I studied it. Better, I thought. I shook my head and cackled to myself. Now, about a thousand more practice runs at the signature and I just might become an expert.

Chironomid Emerger-Stillborn

2011-04-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

Anybody putting in time on Eastside lakes is very likely to meet afternoon-evening chironomid hatches through the early season. Here is a tying style that is laughably simple, yet very effective when fish get going up top. The design was modified from the old Gray Hackle Peacock wetfly, a favorite of mine as a kid. I accidently discovered its effectiveness late one afternoon in April, during one of my early visits to Deep Lake.

When I arrived, the lake’s cutthroat were ringing the surface here and there (I had no idea what was hatching) and I caught a couple fish on a Renegade. Then, things really got going with trout rising everywhere and, the more it got going, the less effective the Renegade became. I didn’t carry a very large assortment of flies in those days, so I started going through the small stuff –

They wouldn’t touch the Hares Ear nymph. One sniffed at the floating Humpy before sinking it with a disdainful slap of its tail while turning away. Tried about a half dozen patterns for nothing while the lake surface buzzed with rising fish – and I’m going nuts as nice cutthroat puddle at the oar tips.

I tied on the Gray Hackle Peacock simply as a matter of elimination. I thought about cutting off the illogical red tail, but already discouraged to complacency I cast it out and, before it could soak up enough water to sink, it disappeared inside a confident ring. I admired the nice cutt for a moment before releasing it, and made another cast. Now soaked, the fly sunk immediately, I twitched it a couple times and was on again. Of course, two fish on two casts was not good enough, I determined that the fly might work even better without the ridiculous red tail. I clipped it off and casted out again. Nothing touched it while I worked it through pooling fish with short fast strips and pauses. Then I cast it a few more times with the same result. I clipped it off. I still had a couple of the red-tailed versions in my box. I tied one on, cast out, and caught another cutthroat – and it went that way until dark.

Back in those days, before the lake shore became entirely developed with leach-field leaking vacation homes, Deep Lake cutthroats were excellent eating. I took a few home, curious to find out what the stomachs would contain. I was surprised to find them chockablock full of what looked like red worms of varying length from a quarter to almost an inch long. That explained the effectiveness of the red tail. Later, I learned that the red worms were actually blood chironomid larvae. And as time went on I found out that hatches of dark chironomids would come on the heels of the blood midge hatches, and a dark-tailed version would work for them.

Though the adult is very small, larvae may be up to an inch long. However, there is a great variety in size among a lake’s population. I generally tie them on a #14 or #16 caddis style hook. The ‘tail’ length can be varied to suit the prevailing size of larvae on the water you are fishing. This is a very simple fly that simulates more than imitates an emerging chironomid, but I think its effectiveness lies in its built-in action, the ‘life’ of its materials. I fish this one with a floating line and 12’ mono leader with a fluoro tippet, retrieved with short pulses and pauses just beneath the surface.

Chironomid Emerger-Stillborn

Hook: #14 - #18 caddis style

Thread: Black

Tail (larva): The 'tail' is actually meant to simulate the wormlike larva body. Blood red soft hackle fibers (a few strands of very fine red flash can be added) for the blood midge. Natural guinea fowl feather fibers for the dark version (with a couple strands of fine silver flash optional). Tail, about twice the body length. I like dyed mallard flank fibers for 'tailing'. I carry them with dark olive and insect-green tailing as well, and a few black fibers mixed with very fine 'chrome' prismatic flash works good for simulating chrome midges.

Body: Peacock herl. Not too full. I use a low-grade, short-fibered hurl with a dark cast to it. The kind with bluish-purple highlights.

Hackle: One turn of gray partridge or grouse, or grizzly hen hackle, with one side stripped.

Refinement: part III

2011-04-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

Living on the U.S.-Canada border and often making fishing forays up to B.C. I have come to see a marked difference between the way BC Fisheries and WDFW operate. About twenty years ago, B.C. decided to radically cut back on its trout hatchery program, in favor of more fish-friendly logging/developing practices, stream enhancement/rehabilitation and an emphasis on native-spawned fish. For the most part, B.C. trout water is now regulated as single-barbless-hook, artificial-only, with a daily kill limit of one or two trout, and there is a lot of no-kill water. (I will always lean toward the one-fish kill limit over no-kill, as it allows bagging that occasional deep-hooked fish that comes to hand with a ribbon of blood running down its side.) Moving toward a stewardship mode reduced their budget dramatically. Sure, local smoker-fillers complained about the reduced kill limits, at first, but now we are seeing the positive results, with the great native trout fishery developed in Columbia headwater streams like the Bull, Elk, Kootenay and many others, including the Slocan, fairly close to my place, which was almost fishless thirty years ago when I first visited, and now provides quality fishing for native trout. Nobody complaining now, the B.C. anglers I meet and talk to seem quite proud and enthusiastic about their trout fishery; and a healthy, innovative flyfishing culture rages in B.C. as a result. The social/economic benefits are evident throughout rural southeastern B.C. You go up there, you spend a few days fishing, you catch and release lots of wild sixteen inch, and better, cutthroat or redbands, a few honker bull trout, and you say to yourself: “What the…?! Why can’t we do this with our streams?”

Well, to be fair, we have. And with success, even on some rivers that might be considered less than pristine. On the Eastside, the Yakima is a stand-out example. Efforts continue on behalf of the Methow, San Poil and Kettle Rivers. And we hope to add the Columbia-American Reach to those. We still have a way to go getting caught up with the efficiency of B.C., but faced with the reality of the current budget I think their model is an alternative worth looking at (and I will write more about things that are happening in B.C. in later segments of this Refinement rant).

I mentioned a strong flyfishing culture in B.C., and that brings me to a point regarding changing demographics in the U.S. where numbers of fishermen per capita are in decline overall, yet, flyfishers are still on the increase. Not like in the several years following the movie release of ‘A River Runs Through It’, but still creeping up. My point being: I don’t think shifting the emphasis to quality native fisheries, albeit with reduced limits and gear restrictions, would bring on much of an outcry from anglers if phased forward in a logical manner. And I would propose that limits not be static across the board, but rather, flexible and appropriate to individual waters and circumstances. Within the new model, unburdened of an overly ponderous hatchery program, WDFW might be able to swing from fish-production, to a far deeper mode of resource monitoring and stewardship. In other words: more funds toward rebuilding and rehabilitating sustainable wild fisheries.

Of course, nothing new here from my mouth, we have been kicking these things around for fifty years and longer; and the reduced WDFW budget is certainly trending the agency toward a greater emphasis on stewarding wild stocks. Yet, and at the risk of sounding redundant, these ideas do merit repeating, after all, citizens of our state, whether they realize it or not, are the only stakeholders in our public resource agencies, and those agencies require our constant oversight and input to refine and serve best. Your letters and opinions make all the difference. Sure, there are some daunting obstacles toward maintaining sustainable, reproducing fisheries across the state, but a lot of small, inexpensive measures can add up to remarkable results. Small obstacles, as small as, maybe, knowing the whereabouts of a culvert that is blocking fish passage on a stream. (I can only imagine the increase to wild stocks the amending of offending culvert and drainpipes, alone, might add.) The more input, questions and knowledge shared, the more refinement accomplished, serving a better result and a lower bill. Continuing...

Refinement: part II

2011-04-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

Our public ‘resources’ are not just special places where we go to hunt or fish or recreate, they are our total environment on which we are dependent for a healthy life. Whether we go afield or not, we all share the interconnected positive or negative effects of environmental policy. We all breathe the air, drink the water. A healthy living system deserves to be our first priority. We are, all of us, to some extent reliant upon our public lands and resources, and need to see their proper stewardship as a fundamental civic priority.

Having to work within tighter budgets, we need to better prioritize our state’s natural resources. In my view, one way to accomplish that would be to achieve synchronicity of mission among the various agencies charged with stewarding our resources. This is the reason I went on a rant about the numerous public protection agencies in effect during 9/11 – even though there was information regarding the impending attack on the Twin Towers, the disparate agencies failed to synchronize and pass the info along channels and in the process failed their mission. My point being that one of the suggestions some state legislators have posited as a means to refine WDFW would be to combine it with the state Department of Natural Resources and include the Washington State Patrol as fish and game law enforcement – an idea that has been soundly rejected offhand by most outdoor commentary I’ve read; and the not-so-surprising irony, several right-wing writers, who I would’ve thought might at least examine the idea as a way to actually carve down “big guvmint”, dismissing the suggestion immediately and for no other reason than it was the idea of “democrats” in the state legislature.

Personally, I see merit in the idea, and think it deserves closer examination. Consider: both DNR and WDFW are charged with the same mission: stewarding our state’s natural resource commonwealth. DNR functions on state lands much the same as the Forest Service does on federal lands, and is much more well-equipped and with greater manpower than WDFW. In my career working in the woods as a logger and forester I have worked closely with DNR on many occasions, and as that agency is a major employer in my neighborhood, I have friends who work for DNR. My overall opinion is that DNR is a good outfit with a very conservation-minded culture, at least among its workers in the field, any of its shortcomings invariably due to bad policy coming down from the top. Though state agencies do concert fairly well, I have witnessed some instances of environmental problems in the past, resulted from DNR forestry practices that came down to a matter of ignorance and one hand not knowing what the other hand was doing. But we seek to improve and refine. We now know that our forests and lands and watersheds, the wildlife (and human life) that depend on them, are not separate but intricately interconnected. So… Perhaps combining the two agencies might serve to not only conserve costs, but also to create a more careful, concerted and holistic approach to stewardship? Perhaps. However, as usual, that would be dependent upon diligent citizen education, oversight and input – and in either case, whether these agencies merge or not, increased citizen oversight and input is essential if we are to turn around the current degradation and loss of access to commonwealth we are currently witnessing. Just off the top of my head, a few advantages there might be to such a merger of agencies are: fish and game personnel would have use of a far greater and more broadly distributed equipment pool and facilities; logging, road and land development practices would be under the closer scrutiny of fish and game stewards; such a merger would put more eyes in the field; and including State Patrol in enforcement would add even more (a thing that is sorely needed in my remote neighborhood where poaching, questionable timber-cutting practices and stream degradation are common occurrences).

But regardless a merger between DNR and WDFW, there is still plenty about WDFW that could be refined, and in the process bring it more on-center with its original mission.

Looking over the budget pie-chart on the WDFW site I was immediately struck by the fact that the single program of greatest expenditure, the fish hatchery program, does not even have its own wedge on the chart, being obscured within two separate categories: Fish; and Agency Costs. Be that intentionally oblique or not, it is generally known that the cost of operating the hatchery/stocking program takes up roughly one-quarter of the total budget. At its inception, the hatchery program was intended to be much more diminutive than at present, a way to mitigate for stocks lost to dams and development. It was not foreseen that the state would populate and develop as it has, nor the ensuing impact of degradation to the environment that growth would create; and along with that a predominant notion among the sporting public that “good fishing” meant being able to bring home a generous stringer or bag of dead fish, and that notion becoming a guiding principle. As time went on, the hatchery program assumed a much greater role than was originally planned. Meanwhile, expenditures toward stewardship of existing native stocks moved increasingly toward the back of the budget bus, to the point now, a good part of the stream habitat work being done is performed by agencies other than WDFW, and a large part of that being done by, and at the expense of, citizen volunteer groups and organizations.

In my view, confronted with the reality of the present budget, along with mounting environmental threats, the time has come when we must change direction away from the put-and-take hatchery model and proceed as much as possible toward programs intended to enhance natural stocks and quality fisheries, even though that would entail lowering kill limits and restricting methods of take on many waters. Would fishermen raise hell about decreased trout limits and fishing artificials only? Yes, many would. But I think only at first. And what are the alternatives? Rely on receiving a windfall shot of money from somewhere allowing us to continue producing and stocking triploids and other salmonids of dubious ancestry for a little longer while our native stocks continue to degrade? Truth is, we can’t afford to do that. And in the long run, the hatchery program diverts funds and digresses from the original WDFW mission which is to steward our ‘natural’ resources. We have already arrived at the crossroads. It is down to two choices: We choose the status quo and an uncertain future and pray for miracles; or we change directions and choose to stand by stewardship of the naturally created and clockwork system that worked perfectly before we arrived and continues to do so in those places where we simply allow it without undo interference. Simplified: doing nothing, except making sure things aren’t getting screwed up is the least expensive environmental insurance there is, and paying the most benefits to all. See: we don’t pay for a healthy environment – it pays us. Continued...

Refinement: part I

2011-04-04T23:32:00.000-07:00

All of us who take flyfishing seriously know very well what it means to refine, and we spend quite a bit of our time engaged in the process. We are always seeking a cleaner and more natural presentation, knowing that less is more. We unclutter our boxes and vests of extraneous and dubious trappings, refining (more or less) toward an ideal of zen pure utility, which in turn makes us a leaner and more effective fishing animal. As time goes on we learn what works and we assemble and keep those elements of our outfit which prove the most useful and indispensable; and if we are diligent we eventually arrive at a point where we find ourselves spending a lot less money on those extraneous and dubious items we don’t really need. Fisher folk learn and refine and through the process get enjoyment and achieve better results at their sport.

Refinement is the process of improving. It is done best, or at least done quickest, when there is an impetus for it – a need. This is a thing that government has been slow to learn, and the source of much misconception about “big guvmint,” a term often heard in my conservative neighborhood. It is true that some of these folks are so far right as to be borderline anarchists, holding to the belief that the only function government should have is to provide a common defense and nothing else, and beyond that it is every man for himself. But most realize such a system without oversight would return us to the Dark Ages where consortiums of powerful men consolidate the wealth of the land to themselves, unchecked, and the rest are landless serfs (a process Ronald Reagan set in motion and we see well underway). But when I hear the term “big guvmint” and press the person who uttered it, most of the time I learn that it is not exactly the size of the government they are angry with, but rather the un-refinement of government functions: the wastefulness and inefficiency of government. Having worked for the Forest Service and witnessed plenty of waste first-hand I can certainly sympathize with this point of view. When I talk to these people, they seem to hold one view in common: they all perceive the government as somehow an entity separate from them, and indeed malevolent toward them. And very few of these people seem cognizant of the fact that ours was meant to be a participatory democracy, totally reflective of its citizen’s input and participation – they tend to be so disenfranchised as to not vote or volunteer or participate in any way, and those who do vote tend to vote against their own interests, leaning toward flim-flam candidates sworn to dissemble commonwealth, and who put a face on the good country folk’s vaguely defined fears by pointing their fingers at enemy “socialists” (anybody who is not a Republican) conspiring to bring us down the road to that greatest and most feared of all evils: “communism”.

(Stay with me, please; this article is actually about the increasingly reduced WDFW budget, and that leading to my views on how there may be a silver lining on the flip side of that. I find myself digressing before I even get going. But then, everything is connected; and I somehow see the necessity to present the fix within a broader social/political context, as reduced budgets to state agencies become the present and future reality.)

One of the many ironies and inconsistencies of the conservatives (irony in the ‘conservative’ label, alone), and at the same time a good example of imprudent government out of control, was the formation of Homeland Defense after 9/11, a brand-new police agency of dubious usefulness and effectiveness, at a cost of billions to taxpayers, in spite of the fact that we already had Coast Guard, National Guard, Border Patrol, FBI, CIA and dozens of other interstate and local police agencies to protect us from “evildoers” and not to mention the U.S. Armed Forces with its nearly infinite web of intelligence gathering apparatus and resources – yet Bush and the Republicans jerked, with almost no forethought, to create yet another agency (with an odd, Orwellian name) at tremendous expense to taxpayers (while lying about the reason for starting two illegal wars that continue to this day at a cost in lives that can never be reversed, and a fiscal debt that we will be paying for generations). And most of the wimpy-assed Democrats went right along with them out of self-serving political expediency. And then when the economic crash came as a result of Republican deregulation of the banking system, and Bush called to bail out the banks with taxpayer money, the same thing: very little dissent from Democrats and not a peep of dissent from so-called ‘conservatives’ (including my neighbors, who waited until Obama took office to start bitching).

So now the time has come that they get to live the reality of their policies – the reality of radically decreased budgets to run state agencies and services, including WDFW. The irony is, once again, that nobody is crying about this fact louder than some conservative writers of outdoor blogs. They sure sing a different tune when the cutbacks affect them. Their main fear is that license fees will go up a dollar or two. They also worry that hatcheries will close down, reducing their opportunities for bagging generous limits of triploids. Yet none that I have read offer any real, participatory solutions toward tailoring an agency that might function very well under the present budget, should it be willing to function in a stewardship role that is conservative in the real sense of the word. In the next installment of this article I will attempt to outline what that role might be, and offer some suggestions toward refinement. I rant. Stay tuned…

Partridge & Patch Sculpin

2011-03-31T01:49:00.000-07:00

Sculpin patterns are a staple with me this time of year. I love tying them, and hate losing them in the bottom, where, of course, you want to be fishing them to achieve the best results. If quantified, I might be able to retire nicely on those… let’s say $10.00 apiece, at materials plus minimum wage, sculpin patterns I’ve so far donated to the cobbled bottoms of my favorite streams.

But for more reasons than just that, I’ve come to prefer un-weighted versions; fishing them with a full-sink line or fast-sink leader depending on depth. I want it swimming lazily, slipping and moseying down over the stones.

The freshwater sculpin is a critter that inspires some fairly time-consuming and expensive ties, and some that might require talent and patience. But being one who is always looking for the easy way out, ever expecting the best of all possible results in the end, I undertake to refine. And sometimes the result is utility reflecting art; and Jack Mitchell’s Natural Sculpin Muddler is a good example of that: http://columbiatrout.blogspot.com/2010/12/letter-from-jack.html

Here’s one I like, and easy to tie:

Partridge & Patch Sculpin

Hook: #4 - #8 octopus

Thread: dark brown or black

Tail: two brown partridge or game hen wing secondaries; strip quills leaving enough tip to create the tail; tie in with tips together and extended about an inch behind the hook bend (for a #8); tie the two quills together at the base of the tail with thread or a piece of mylar tinsel; trim knot tags and seal with head cement, allowing cement to penetrate into the fibers at the base of the tail.

Body: patches of brown raccoon fur progressing up the hook shank, with patches of black rabbit fur dressed on top and natural gray rabbit fur as the belly; allow plenty of buildup toward the head

Pectorals: tie in a single strand of twisted (crinkly) copper mylar flash as lateral-line on each side of the body; then tie in two partridge or game hen body feathers, one on each side as pectoral fins

Collar: dark raccoon guard hairs arranged around shank as a collar

Head: dubbed, dark brown raccoon underfur mixed with a little black rabbit

(Click on picture to make bigger. Several clicks makes it a lot bigger.)

Commonwealth, Water, Fish

2011-03-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

A temporary victory came down on the side of commonwealth, Tuesday, when the Montana Senate tabled revisions to the state’s stream access law. The bill had cleared the House, only to be tabled by an 8-3 vote in the Senate, amid stiff opposition from anglers. Public water is still public. We breathe a temporary sigh of relief.

Those who want to turn America into a Private Disneyland are eternally busy. Genius, really, how they’ve convinced so many of the good folks to vote against their own interests. A lot of people in my neck of the woods are reliant on Social Security, Medicare and public lands to hunt and fish on, not to mention the fact that a good portion of the jobs in the county are tied to public commonwealth: DNR, USFS, BLM, WDFW, Border Patrol, Homeland Defense and all the rest of the law enforcement agencies, fire departments, public utilities and institutions such as schools and libraries, road and infrastructure agencies, to name only a few, and then there are the ranchers who enjoy open range privileges on public lands, and lumber/logging interests reliant on public timber sales, and yet, the irritating irony that has me too often scratching my head is: the majority of the folks in my county continually vote for candidates who are sworn to dissembling Social Security and Medicare, public schools and utilities, public access to waterways and, indeed, openly posit a privitizing ideology that preaches any form of public commonwealth to be ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’ (though there is no such label applied to things like corn subsidies, oil exploration or financial institution bailouts and any programs funneling privileges, money and resources upward toward the so-called “job providers”).

You want to continue fishing public water? Then any stream capable of floating a canoe at normal stream flow should be considered public property to the high water mark. That is the metric we must seek to maintain. A free society requires at least that much free range. My hat is off to the anglers and writers of Montana.

(Who owns the fish?)

Copper Boss

2011-03-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

UC flyfisher Scott Krashan ties a Copper Boss. When true simplicity is gained…

I’ve probably said it before: I’m a sucker for fly designs that become activated when swung. I love the subtle variegations of natural materials, and the motion they create.

Like most of my patterns, the Copper Boss came as the result of evolution, inspired by the effectiveness of an old standby. A long time ago I discovered that the old Mickey Finn worked good on big Northwest rivers for early spring trout. Like steelhead, pre-spawn trout develop egg-minds and display a predilection for reds and oranges. UC trout like copper; and altering the original to a copper body improved it for use on my homewater. Later, I became interested in two-handed rods and spey fly designs, and that, coupled with my affection for winged wet flies, led me to tweak it so radically that it no longer was a Mickey Finn. The result looks more like a steelhead fly than a trout fly, and it does work for steelhead, greased or deep, but tied in proportions suitable to trout-water, this one has proved worthwhile for early season and high-water trout.

Copper Boss

Hook: #6-#10 Tiemco 200R

Thread: black

Body: rear two-thirds copper tinsel, then red tinsel to the head, reverse wind with fine copper wire

Underwing: single golden pheasant crest feather tied on top of the hook shank

Hackle: sections cut from a dyed-orange mallard flank arranged around the sides and bottom of the hook shank (six sections of five fibers each is about right)

Wing: Bronze-ish mallard flank or lemon wood duck (Scott’s is the perfect shade) flank sections tied on edge or as a clump (becomes a clump, anyway) And really cute tied with jungle cock eye cheeks.

I met Scott when he and James Watson booked a trip with me last year. The two of them turned out to be fun guys, wild, hard-core fishermen with good taste in jazz and whiskey, and both of them talented fly tiers. Check out Jame's renditions of Galloup's T&A Rainbow and other creations at his blog: http://jameswfishingblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/shes-my-little-rock-roll-t-rainbow.html
Scott and James are going to fish the Pend Oreille for pike, and the UC for trout, in a couple weeks. James is saying he's going to run a series of posts on his blog. Worth following.

Olive/Brown Bow River Bugger

2011-03-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

My favorite kinds of flies are those workhorse patterns possessing that deadly quality of ‘imitates nothing, looks like everything’. Who can argue with the success of the Hare’s Ear Nymph and its many variations, or the Adams dry fly, or the Wooly Worm? For many years one of my staples has been a simple dark-olive and brown Wooly Worm; and of all the variations of the style I’ve tried, the Bow River Bugger has proved one of the most effective. This is a good pattern on the Spokane, San Poil, Methow, UC and Kettle Rivers, and very good in early spring. I don’t go anywhere without this one. Trout take it for sculpin, crayfish, large nymphs, and it makes an excellent dragonfly nymph imitation for lake fishing. The original Bow River Bugger is tied with a black body and tail, and I carry that coloration as well, but find myself more often reaching for the dark olive version. This time of year, when pursuing egg-minded pre-spawn trout, I’ll peg an orange or red tungsten bead ahead of the hook eye to create an egg-sucker that gets down deep. The BRB is a killer smallmouth bass pattern as well; tie with a bead head, or peg a tungsten bead ahead to get it down for deep smallies. A staple pattern for Pend Oreille River smallmouth bass and brown trout.

Olive/Brown Bow River Bugger

Hook: #2 - #8 Tiemco 200R

Thread: brown or black

Tail: clump cut from a section of olive and brown rabbit strip (leave guard hairs in)

Ribbing: fine copper wire

Body: dark olive chenille

Hackle: brown saddle hackle palmered over the body – reverse wind over hackle with wire ribbing

Collar: brown deer hair placed and flared around the hook shank, extended about one third the body length

Head: brown deer hair spun and clipped Muddler-style

For a little more flash, add a few strands of fine, copper flash to the tail. Some like this pattern with rubber ‘legs’ tied in behind the collar.

(I’ve vowed to get a better camera. On my wish list. Until then, click to enlarge.)

March Stones

2011-03-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

In the second week of March a warm spell moved up from the south and the pussy willows broke bloom and busted out pearly catkins along the river road. Still snow on the mountains and up in the higher valleys but it was mostly gone from the bluffs lining the reach. The march brown earth smelled musky and sweet and optimistic under breaking clouds. I thought it might be a good day to get away from the cabin where, for weeks, bad weather had kept me mostly indoors consuming overdose quantities of coffee and unhealthy baked goods. It felt like a good day to fish. Once in a while in a fisherman’s life he needs to fish. Has to fish.

The river had a vibe, in spite of the cloud cover. Speartips of new grass poked through last year’s brown crop along the edge of the turnout. The gear in my shoulder bag rattled and clicked as I pulled it out of the truck bed and slung it up. A good sound, the clinking cowbells of continuity. Another round begins.

It is a big river requiring a big cast, and the trout it holds are big as well. I usually swing streamers this time of year and I’d brought the twelve foot double-hander, the meat stick; a streamer tied to the business end of the leader. The streamer riding the stripper was the brightest thing in the pinto horsehide world.

The gravel bars are not flat. The eternal work of the river, the push and relaxation of flow, has arrayed the stones in low rows resembling wrinkled corduroy. Fingers of stone thrust from the bars into the channel, breaking the flow to form a series of nice runs strung like prayer beads at the edge of the corduroy bar section. A banner of seam water trailing downstream from each. I started at the top.

At the first point, only a few casts into it, I received a vicious strike but failed to set steel. I wondered how a fish could slam the big hook so hard and not get stuck on it, but I was

encouraged by the quick action despite the missed strike, so I kept hammering away with the streamer for about another hour and finally managed a fish that put up an odd fight, and when the twelve inch rainbow came to color, there was the red and yellow fly riding it’s back, pinned ahead of the dorsal fin. I was suspicious. The trout might have slashed at the streamer out of irritation and got stuck, and I wondered if the first one I’d missed slashed at it too, not really wanting it. I stood there mulling it over, then clipped off the streamer and tied on another pattern, a Northern Minnow, tied spey style with long soft hackle. A drab color scheme. And then I spent another half-hour or so swinging that one for nothing.

I stared at the water, thinking about things. I was considering trying another pattern when a small gray insect plipped from the river. I stared harder and noticed a few of them in the air. Then I saw a few struggling on the water. One eventually came to within range and I scooped it carefully with the bill of my hat. I pulled the readers out of my shirt pocket and put them on. A #16 stonefly. Maybe smaller. More like half-way between a 16 and 18 – grayish, slight olive on the underside, and fine yellow glyphs imprinted on the topside carapace. The abdomen was very thin, and I could barely make out the twin tails. A new one on me – water-born like the little black winter stonefly, but later, and lighter in coloration. The river heaved, ran reflecting the pale sky empty of sign. No tell-tale rings of trout feeding on them...

I dismissed the little stoneflies and tied on another streamer: sort of a spey version of a Royal Coachman, winged with mallard flank and hackled with long brown shlappen. I worked it down the gravel bars, stepping and casting, swinging, dropping back, mending, lifting, while an increasing sprinkle of the little stoneflies rode the current going by. They drifted a good distance before leaving the water.

This hatch was going off regardless of my plans, a fact both irritating and compelling. If I couldn’t ignore it, surely trout would be keyed into it. …Maybe having their way with the easier pickings of a more bountiful subsurface pre-hatch still commencing… I considered the possibility.

Nothing wanted the streamer. I was bumming. All I’d brought was the box of streamers.

I pulled the streamer box out and rummaged through it looking for I didn’t know what – something. The box held nothing remotely small enough. No obscure nymph hastily stashed in the wrong box.

Aw, probably nothing feeding on them anyway, I told myself.

These musings were brought to abrupt closure when a spotted tail-tip poked innocuously through the surface and momentarily disappeared leaving a ring.

O boy, I thought, classic opportunity to catch one on a nymph. If I had one. In a decent world I would have a nymph the right size. And a dry fly. At least, there’d be that rusty-hooked day-saver waiting in my fly patch like you always read about in those stories in the flyfishing magazines. And I have actually experienced the miraculous fly-patch day-saver discovery. Probably everybody has. But no, not this time. This time, the day-saver was hooked into the stitching holding down the trim of my pickup’s sun visor a quarter of a mile away. It was a #16 Hare’s Ear Nymph, veteran of one of last year’s campaigns, hastily clipped off the leader and stuck into the visor edge to join a diverse row of veterans that’d met the same fate. What could be better? Of course, I had to hike back over a wide expanse of loose stones round as billiard balls and slicked over with wet scum to get it. I’ve become more of a minimalist, and seldom carry the load of stuff I used to, a habit you get into when you live on the banks of your homewater and think you pretty much have a handle on things and no longer feel the need for extraneous heavy trappings. I like being unfettered but now I was paying the price.

So I hustled to get the nymph and I sweated from the effort. The hatch was going strong by the time I got back. Rise rings erupted with rhythmic regularity along the seam. Trout were taking emergers just under the surface. The Hare’s Ear looked too fat in the abdomen, so I used the clippers to trim it down as thin as I could get it without ruining it.

I decided on a downstream presentation. There was a conflicting backflow on the inside of the seam, and a pod of rising fish on the outside of that. I wanted to get as close as possible so as to mend over the backeddy and get a good drift through them. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled like a sloth over the river stones; and it occurred to me that, maybe, if I crawled thus for about three miles of river bank it might please the gods and be penance enough to atone for my stupidity, not bringing some small flies. The idea amused me and I lightened up and got down to business. I slithered into range.

A tight cast placed the fly a little outside and above the pocket and I let the nymph swing into the zone trailing it with the rod tip, the seam water flashed and hummed, and when I thought the fly had arrived at the sweet destination, I began a slow Leisenring Lift, was just getting into it and – whang, a trout ate the Hare’s Ear.

Good ‘ol Hare’s Ear.

Things work out. It’d been awhile and the pull felt good. The trout was a fine nineteen-inch buck redband with Chablis gill plates. I hadn’t noticed its slow accumulation, but now I felt the cold effluvium of winter suddenly lift from my shoulders. The light coming into the world changed. The breeze coming off the river wrapped my face like silk. The trout was still fresh and pissed when I released it.

The buck had raised hell all over the eddy and put the rest of the band down, so I decided to work downstream, hoping they’d re-gather after awhile. I fished toward a large eddy at the trailing end of the corduroy bar, where the river starts a long bend against a stretch of low yellow bluffs. The little stoneflies were going full-tilt but I held off on casting to water where I saw no sign.

When I got to the bluff pool I found what looked like a gang of three or four bigger fish hustling the outside seam, beyond a broad pool too deep to wade. At the closest they were forty feet away, which required presenting the fly straight upstream, increasing the possibility of throwing the line over their backs. Once or twice lined and they’d disappear. A down, or across and down presentation would require a ninety-foot cast over the pool. I opted for the long-cast approach. A two-handed overhead cast easily covered the distance.

A lot of naturals had accumulated on the seam and the trout had a lot to look at. It took a few casts before one of them got around to it – and pounded the nymph so severely the strike telegraphed through the rod like a sucker punch and the line went immediately slack.

I didn’t like the way the line snaked through the guides with slightly less resistance

than usual…

Shit, I hissed. And my darkest suspicion realized when the leader appeared minus the Hare’s Ear.

I got over it quick. Surrendered it. The clouds broke a bit more as the sun neared the ridges. Rose light tinted the mountains, the river, everything. I didn’t need to always win. Wouldn’t want to always win. I shook my head and laughed. Anybody with half a brain would have been prepared with at least a few Hare’s Ear nymphs and a couple Adams dry flies, though.

American Reach Overview: Part III

2011-03-12T13:09:00.000-08:00

Our plan for world domination goes forward. Thanks to upper Columbia flyfishers and friends who have written policymakers on behalf of a quality trout fishery for the American Reach segment, WDFW regional biologist Bill Baker has contacted us expressing a desire to meet. Anybody interested is invited. Colville or Spokane, not decided yet. We will set a date and place, and I’ll announce it here.

This meeting is an encouraging opportunity and we want to make it count and be prepared going in. And that is why the recent stream of meanderings, my attempt, as an admitted instigator of these events, to codify my personal observations along with those of others and distill it all into a viewpoint supporting a suggested plan UCNFA writers agree is a necessary step toward ensuring the continuation of native trout within the Columbia segment between China Bend and the U.S./Canada border. These are the suggestions we want to present to fisheries managers. Nothing world shaking, they are:

*Recognize that segment flowing between China Bend and the U.S./Canada border (American Reach on old maps) as a riverine biosystem distinct from that of Lake Roosevelt, and consider the segment worthy of being managed as a stewardship segment subject to regulations favoring native salmonids.

We suggest China Bend as the downriver extent for a couple of reasons, the foremost being that the fast-water Little Dalles section directly above acts as a natural inhibitor to upstream migrating net pen fish from LR, and taking into consideration that natives are known to concentrate in the China Bend area in the vicinity of the Little Dalles outflow.

*We recommend increasing the take of walleye within the segment, and feel current regs should be amended to a kill-limit of 15 walleye per day, with no size restrictions. We advise that the China Bend area be included (possibly with China Bend boat launch being the downstream boundary) so as to allow increased take of walleye staging near the Little Dalles outflow prior to upriver migration.

Several American and Canadian survey results I’ve read estimate that up to 60 and 70% of native fish spawned within the segment are eaten by walleye. Of course that doesn’t mean that high of a percentage of trout are eaten, those figures represent, as I understand it, the total spectrum of natives. What portion of that percentage trout comprise is not actually known. As I’ve already pointed out, according to my own diaries and observations, trout populations in the Reach seem about the same numbers as in the early 1970’s when walleye populations were peaking. From then until now, forage species have greatly diminished, and with that I suspect there could be more attrition due to walleye predation. However, we do see some important mitigating factors pointing to the reasons trout are still holding out against walleye predation: diminished average walleye size; improved (but still not ideal) flow rates; reduced disposal of pollutants from upstream sources improving water quality from Keenleyside Dam, downstream; improved spawning habitat up Canadian tributaries and mainstem; and the Canadian program of adding nutrients to Arrow and Kootenay Lakes – and these improvements to water quality combining to promote an increase of aquatic insect populations within the river segment. We see a healthier environment producing more trout to account for increased walleye predation, but we still don’t see the fishery reaching full potential while walleye remain at present numbers – and the same should be said regarding other endangered natives, including sturgeon.

*We see the current five-trout daily limit as too generous to be sustainable and suggest reducing the current five-fish daily kill limit on trout to one fish, any size, within the American Reach segment. An alternative to that might be to keep the five-trout limit, but allow a daily take of only one rainbow or cutthroat with uncut fins included in that limit (existing regs still applying to bull trout, kokanee and non-native trout as well as fin-clipped net pen fish).

*My personal observation is that Onion, Deep and Sheep Creeks contribute substantially to American Reach redband populations, with the bulk of spawning redband using those creeks March through May. Of the three, Sheep Creek probably produces the most redband, followed by Deep and Onion. Sheep Creek shows potential as spawning habitat for native kokanee, and bull trout have been observed in all three. Through the years, I have known all three of these streams to have been subject to heavy poaching from would-be smoker-fillers. Sheep Creek had a very strong run of kokanee in 1978, word got out, and shooting sack-loads of spawning kokanee with .22 rifles became a local pastime for awhile. (I didn’t learn of it until too late, but nothing remains a secret around here.) These streams merit better monitoring during spawning season, either by law enforcement or by volunteers. (These creeks deserve an article of their own, and I will post on them in the near future.)

Current regulations allow the kill of five trout daily from Onion, Deep and Sheep Creeks during the regular trout season, allowing fishing during peak spawning periods. It is not unusual to see fishermen hiking out of these creeks with full stringers of steelhead-sized redband trout caught from spawning redds. We suggest that those three creeks be subject to full year around closure from their respective confluences with the Columbia, to the first barrier falls. Or, as an alternative, let those lower sections remain closed until June 1^st to allow spawning.

The above suggestions are pretty much the entirety of the UCNFA plan at this time. Continuing input is welcome. We believe these to be common sense and timely applications representing sound stewardship policy for our unique river segment and its valuable native stocks.

Links to studies, surveys, referenced material:

http://www.fwcp.ca/version2/reports/pdfs/RB_Spawning_Migration_1999_to_2003_Final.pdf

http://nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/HungryHorseDam

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2724

American Reach Overview: Part II

2011-03-07T19:54:00.000-08:00

As I read the results and recommendations of various surveys and studies that have been conducted so far on native trout populations in the American/Canadian Reach segment of the Columbia, I discern a contrasting attitude and approach to stewardship north and south of the border, the Canadians getting the nod for taking what is, to my mind, the more proactive and optimistic tack, so far. That is not to say that fisheries managers have been intentionally lax on the U.S. side, they have not, and I suspect any oversights could be purely jurisdictional, as U.S. agencies are charged with providing a fishery for the reservoir environment of Lake Roosevelt and the relatively short flowing segment is conveniently lost within that management segment, and said agencies have not, until recently, really been prompted to adopt a different view of the flowing segment. Studies are being conducted as ‘Lake Roosevelt’ fisheries studies, as there are no agencies that I know of who recognize the fifteen miles of free-flowing riverine habitat between China Bend and the border as a fishery distinct from Lake Roosevelt. (Cartographers of modern maps have been complicate, blithely drawing Lake Roosevelt all the way to the U.S./Canada border.) True, it has a short run within the U.S., but when you consider the volume of the flowing American Reach segment, alone, at 15 miles long, one-quarter to one-half mile wide, an average of 60 feet deep, and up to 90 feet, an average surface speed of six knots and a high-water flow of about 200,000 cubic feet per second, the American Reach is a stretch river of that can not be overlooked. And there are some long-time observers who suspect that the nearly 50-mile long American/Canadian Reach mainstem may be as important to remnant populations of upriver trout as the Hanford Reach is to mainstem spawning chinook salmon. Truncated though it may be, and major unobstructed connective drainages, the Kettle and San Poil aside, the combined U.S. and Canadian segments still comprise a fairly sizeable habitat, with strong evidence showing that, at least, reproducing redband and cutthroat trout have adapted to it, and the possibility of bull trout and kokanee with some habitat improvement.

The scene is changing. And we will be the cause of any turning. Canadian fisheries managers have recognized these fish and have moved forward with a stewardship plan that favors natives. The Canadian Reach, from the border to Keenleyside Dam, contains at least four tributaries hosting spawning Columbia redband trout: Blueberry, China, Murphy and Beaver Creek, as well as cutthroat, redband and bull trout known to be utilizing gravels in the mainstem and Columbia/Kootenay confluence. Canadian volunteers and fisheries personnel have undertaken projects to improve passage and habitat in the creeks to good result. Shortly after passage improvements to Murphy Creek, which is located in a fairly urban environment, Trail Wildlife Association counted 40,000 trout entering the Columbia from the creek (though the paper doesn’t specify, I would presume those to be smolts). In 2003, 2000 spawning trout were counted in Blueberry Creek alone. Here is a 2003 evaluation of rainbow trout spawning migrations up local creeks: http://www.fwcp.ca/version2/reports/pdfs/RB_Spawning_Migration_1999_to_2003_Final.pdf

By contrast, on the U.S. side, even though surveys of tributaries feeding into Lake Roosevelt and the American Reach segment note wild spawning populations of rainbow trout, and actually fairly impressive populations in some, they invariably conclude with a bleak overall assessment of native sustainability, tending to support the put-and-take net pen trout/kokanee and illegally introduced walleye fishery of Lake Roosevelt as the viable solution to mitigation of lost fisheries and providing a recreational fishery in the reservoir. And that may be the best policy, for the reservoir. But the salient point I attempt to make with the first part of this article is: that rainbow and cutthroat trout existed in the flowing American Reach segment above LR in about the same numbers before the LR net pens, as now.

In some cases surveys demonstrate results that are not entirely accurate. For example, based on my own observations, the 1991 assessment of Sheep, Onion and Deep Creeks performed by Tribal fishery personnel was inaccurate regarding the value of those three creeks as sources of redband stocks to the American Reach, and particularly Deep and Sheep Creek, which host runs of spawning rainbow trout in numbers that surely rival any of the Canadian creeks. However, that survey I cite was very accurate in its mention of placer mining activities on Sheep Creek as being a serious problem. Nonetheless, Sheep Creek still has the most spawning area of the three and many redband do ascend it to the barrier falls, and it is known to host kokanee and bull trout as well. If I understand it correctly placer mining has been ceased on Sheep Creek, at last, and we certainly agree that makes good sense. Projecting ahead, I think it might be possible to assemble a volunteer corps to provide habitat improvement work to Onion, Deep and Sheep Creeks to their respective barrier falls; and I am willing to help facilitate that effort in whatever capacity I am able to provide.

The idea of Upper Columbia Native Fish Alliance was conceived by a group of users familiar with the water and its fish and see enough evidence to suggest the potential for a world class native trout fishery in the American Reach segment. We think this can be achieved without significant alteration of fisheries policies currently affecting Lake Roosevelt. In the upcoming portion of this summary I will outline what UCNFA writers view as common sense measures that might be implemented without cost to fisheries agencies or loss to local economy, indeed we think serving to enhance the local economy, and helping to ensure our native stocks stay on improved footing until such a time that we might know more about them and their movement within the system. To be continued…

From Where I Stand: an Anecdotal American Reach Overview

2011-03-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

I regret that I don’t spend as much time on the river as I used to. Years ago, barely out of my teens and working at the sawmill in Northport, I fished the river nearly every day, if only the last couple hours of daylight after work, year around. Summers I rarely missed an evening hatch. These days, Doris and I travel in the winter, I drive my Oregon dory around on the ocean fishing for halibut. One of my sons has a place down in Baja, and that is an interesting place in the winter. But come late spring and summer you will still find me, daily, flyfishing the American Reach. There is no place in this world I would rather be. In a fishing life that has brought me coast to coast, to Mexico, and to many of the great rivers and lakes, I have spent more hours on the American Reach than anywhere else, it is my homewater and my favorite place to fish. My overview and encapsulated history of the fishery is only my personal view, my own perceptions and conclusions drawn from random observation, for the most part. My ticket is in forestry, not fisheries, yet the science of growing forests has shown me that all is connected and similar principals apply to growing healthy communities whether that be plant, fish or human communities. That said, much that I observe as actuality is intuitive, brought on by proximity, I spend a lot of time on the water, and I have fair trust in that. After all, how is it that I know when the phone is going to ring before it rings?

When I first met the American Reach segment of the Columbia River in 1973, it was thirty-three years after the inception of Grand Coulee Dam, an event that had drastically altered the watershed. We are all familiar with the results, and particularly as regards sea-run fish. And now it has been another thirty-nine years, a longer time than that, since I first wet a fly here. Funny, how time slips away. The old flyfishers who were my mentors then are all gone, and I find myself one of the old guys now. So what of then and now? some ask.

Well, for perspective, and for what it’s worth, here’s my comparison and assessment of then, 1973, as I see it now, 2011, and, as I see the American Reach now:

As regards fish and other aquatic forms, I think the river of 1973 was the old river, of before the dams, still in the process of dying, and that process being aided by regular discharges of pollutants from the Trail smelter operation, the pulp mill at Castlegar, mining operations, as well as upstream sewage discharges. At the time, I was fortunate to have a reliable mentor and source of information in my friend, Pat Graham, who spent his life beside the Columbia in the Northport area. Pat was an observant outdoorsman and knew the river intimately, before and after the dams.

According to Pat Graham, at the formation of Lake Roosevelt, the river’s native fish concentrated into the American Reach segment between China Bend and the U.S./Canada border, and then above the border into the vast drainages still without dams, at that time. Though 150 miles of riverine habitat was turned into a sterile reservoir and the system closed to anadromous species, there was still the remainder of the drainage, above, still suitable for natives not entirely reliant on migration to the sea – redband, cutthroat, bull trout, kokanee, whitefish and sturgeon, along with the native non-sport species of suckers, dace, chubs and sculpin.

It is known that some upper river redband, before the dams, migrated to the sea, becoming steelhead, while others matured and lived their entire lives as residents of the upper drainage. One example of a non-anadromous population would be the giant Arrow and Kootenay Lake strains, which matured within the confines of the natural lakes. Like rainbow trout everywhere else within their native range, each creek holds its own unique, characteristic population. Pat told me that trout fishing before the dams was a “all you wanted, anytime you wanted” proposition. And he was not a man given to hyperbole. Pat relates that, though that portion of the river covered by Lake Roosevelt was wiped out, trout fishing in the Reach above China Bend remained as good as ever. For awhile.

The dramatic change, as regards trout populations, came with the construction of upriver dams following the inception of Grand Coulee, and particularly the Hugh Keenleyside Dam above Castlegar, and the dams along the Kootenay River between the Columbia confluence and Kootenay Lake. Prior to the upriver dams, native fish were able to move through and utilize the nearby and connecting Pend Oreille and Kootenay river systems and upstream spawning areas, and also Arrow and Kootenay lakes, but as of 1968, remaining native populations were confined to about a 40-mile segment of the Columbia mainstem shared by the U.S. and Canada, the Kettle River drainage, and a very short segment of the Kootenay River. The Kettle being the largest open tributary contributing to the remaining dynamic. And I should note that with the upriver dams came radically fluctuating water flows to stress the system further.

I think the native fish species most impacted by the upriver dams were bull trout populations, which are known to migrate long distances within the larger drainages they tend to inhabit. Bull trout were still a fairly common catch from the American Reach in 1973. And big fish present, up into the 30lb range. But I now believe those big bull trout were remnant fish spawned before the inception of Keenleyside and Mica Dam on the Canadian side. By the 1980’s, they had all but disappeared, and then I went many years without seeing or hearing of any being caught; but now, in recent years, have begun to see a few, possibly the result of fenestration through upriver dams, though I have heard there is now evidence of bull trout spawning in the Kootenay-Columbia confluence area near Castlegar. That section of river was pretty much devoid of life in the 1970’s due to regular discharges from the pulp operation at Castlegar which ceased in the late 1980’s, and since that time, the trout fishery in that portion of river has improved dramatically. There is the possibility that the several small bull trout, and one of about 5-pounds I’ve encountered recently, were born near Castlegar, and we shouldn’t completely rule out the possibility that they might have hatched from redds somewhere in the American Reach segment.

I am not sure how vital a role mountain whitefish play in the American/Canadian Reach system, but I believe the species important as part of the Reach’s original biodiversity, as well as being a worthy sport and food fish. Winters in the early 1970’s, we fished over good concentrations of whitefish on spots above Northport, and old-timers report whitefish were incredibly abundant before the dams. But they have yearly diminished in number since that time, to become a rare catch. Though I can offer no proof, my suspicion is that they succumbed to stress from walleye predation.

It was July of 1978 that I recall first observing kokanee spawning up Sheep Creek below the barrier falls, and have seen spawning kokanee in Sheep several times since, the most recent being the early 1990’s, and I have heard it said that kokanee still spawn up Sheep, but I’ve not checked recently. I did encounter a spawned-out specimen cruising the mainstem a couple years ago but do not know its origin or if it had been up one of the local creeks. I can’t really say what kokanee populations were in the early 1970’s compared to now, or their exact origin. Then as now, kokanee are an incidental catch on the Reach. Hard to estimate their numbers based on landings, as not many pursue them with the specialized tackle required to take them with most success. They are occasionally taken on small spoons or flies, and those are generally fish of 2 to 3 pounds. Over the past ten years I have caught three kokanee on flies while fishing sedge emerger imitations during the spotted sedge hatch, making the last ten years my most productive period for landlocked salmon, though that could be purely coincidental. The hatchery kokanee grown in LR have clipped adipose fins, and I have never seen these fish in the Reach above China Bend, meaning: these might be fish spilled from Arrow Lake or there is the possibility they are local in origin, and then, possibly the result of various introductions over the years.

For trout fishers, cutthroat trout are the second most caught species inhabiting the American Reach, a distant second to redband rainbow trout. Presently, by my own estimate, we catch one cutthroat trout for about every ten redband, and I think the ratio in the early 1970’s may have been slightly less than that, with fewer cutthroat in the mix then. I recall at the time, many mistakenly identified the native redband as ‘cut-bow’, ignorant of the fact that the red bars in the lower jaw folds, same as cutthroat exhibit, are a distinguishing characteristic of native upper Columbia redband rainbow trout. As I’d never encountered them spawning up the creeks, I wondered for many years about the cutthroat’s life cycle in the river. In the 1980’s I learned that concentrations of cutthroat could be found on gravels below Northport and down to about the Marble area. These were mature pre-spawn fish, and we assumed they were staging to ascend Onion, Sheep and Deep Creek, even though we’d not encountered them in the creeks, that is what we presumed. A breakthrough came in the 1990’s when, while fishing the Flat Creek area with Doug Lochner, we located a run from which we caught and released several nice cutthroat apiece, including a couple of males in full-spawn mode and leaking milt. The intriguing discovery arrived in the form of a very rare fish on the Reach, when Doug hooked and landed a 5-pound male brown trout. Doug called me over to see it, and I noticed it was disgorging from its throat what looked like fully formed trout eggs. We discussed the possibility that cutthroat may be spawning right out there in front of us, and the brown was drawn to the easy feast of eggs. We killed the brown, and when we cut it open we found the stomach chokablock full of trout eggs. Since that time, I’ve read Canadian studies of Kootenay Lake strain shoal-spawning cutthroats, able to spawn in a variety of environments including gravel lake shoals, and I wonder that these are the same fish, adapted to spawning on mainstem gravels. Whatever their origin, we know American Reach cutthroat are staging on those lower reach gravels and perhaps elsewhere as well, and the Canadians report cutthroat spawning over mainstem gravels in their segment also.

Of salmonids native to the UC, the redband has proven most adaptable. There are known redband populations spawning up the Kettle River, Sheep Creek and Deep Creek and, to a lesser extent yet still significant, Onion Creek. On the Canadian side, Beaver Creek is known as an important spawning tributary for redband, as well as the Kootenay-Columbia confluence. Some maintain that redband spawn in the mainstem as well, and I certainly wouldn’t rule that out, and particularly as regards the water above the Columbia-Pend Oreille confluence to Castlegar. I’ve been monitoring February to April runs to the barrier falls on Sheep and Deep Creek since the early 1970’s and know those streams to receive sustaining runs of spawning redband. I would say the catch rate on redband within the American Reach segment was about the same in the early 1970’s, before the Lake Roosevelt net pens, as it is now; with trout a slightly larger average size at that time, and, for whatever reason, you rarely saw the small 6-10 inch fish that are fairly common along the side-water presently. There weren’t the various size classes that we encounter now. My thought back then was that they stayed up the creeks until reaching a large enough size to escape walleye deprivation, but now I’m not sure that was entirely true. It is true that both Deep and Sheep Creek host good populations of redband trout below their respective barrier falls, with Sheep Creek having the most extensive habitat, and Onion Creek hosting young redband as well. I believe that those three streams play a crucial role in the production of American Reach redband rainbow trout. For me, the catch rate of redband has remained fairly static since the early 1970’s. The introduction of grow pens into Lake Roosevelt has not affected the fishery in the Reach above China Bend to my knowledge. Triploids planted in LR seldom stray above the Little Dalles, and rarely above Northport, though they are occasionally caught as far upriver as Castlegar, B.C., they are not significant in the catch. It is possible that a portion of the American Reach population is recruited from the Kettle River origin ‘Phalon’ strain redband from LR netpens, but no one is sure the percentage as they are indistinguishable from native stream-bred fish. I’m inclined to believe that it is a low percentage of net pen fish above the Little Dalles. I have never caught a LR tagged or fin-clipped fish, though I’ve caught several trout bearing Canadian tags.

The reason for the seeming lack of smaller class trout may have been due to predation from the, then, peaking walleye population beginning to decimate native forage species such as suckers, pikeminnow, peamouth and mountain whitefish. (Those fish dominated the bait fisher’s catch back then, though they are rarely caught now.) Walleye were illegally introduced into Lake Roosevelt in the 1950’s and proved more adaptable to the reservoir environment than the kokanee and coastal rainbows managers were attempting to establish as mitigation for the loss of anadromous fish runs and with no encouraging sustainable results. So, fisheries and power managers seized upon the walleye as a valid and easy mitigation for the lost fisheries and, to my mind, without suitable consideration of the long-term affects of allowing a top order predator into the already stressed system, if there was any realistic expectation of stewarding remaining natives. By the late 1980’s, having put a considerable dent in the larder, walleye numbers and average size diminished somewhat, and it seems they’ve leveled off, the population and average size staying at about what it is now since the 1990’s. Fisheries researchers estimate 60 to 70% of the wild fish associated with the Lake Roosevelt –American Reach segment become prey to walleye. And it is generally agreed that walleye predation is the most serious problem facing salmonids above LR.

Yet, walleye predation and loss of habitat withstanding, we currently see native redband and cutthroat trout populations sustaining in the American /Canadian Reach segment, and I am encouraged by developments over recent years. We are seeing some positive signs.

Though the smelter operation at Trail B.C. is not yet out of the dark and merits continuing oversight, discharges into the river have significantly diminished since the early 1970’s, and we are seeing the results with the developing fishery in the Canadian Reach, and increasing diversity of insect populations within the American Reach segment. These things leading me to the conclusion that, at least, a sustainable cutthroat and redband trout fishery is possible, and might be enhanced with minor regulation changes. Though the Upper Columbia Native Fish Alliance suggested plan is outlined throughout this site, I will continue with another installment so as to highlight what a consortium of regular users think those regulation changes should be.

To be continued…

Flow ~

2011-02-27T22:49:00.000-08:00

Concerning flow rates, as regards tailwater fisheries, including the Upper Columbia fishery, all of the science seems to concur: More is better.

A few assessments:

This, from the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority: ‘The most significant limiting factor affecting fish in Lake Roosevelt (upper Columbia) is pool elevation fluctuations that result from hydro operations. In addition, entrainment of rainbow trout and kokanee at Grand Coulee Dam limits the fishery in Lake Roosevelt. Spilling at upriver reservoirs creates total dissolved gas levels in L.R. that exceed State standards. Elevated dissolved gas levels limit L.R. fisheries. Severe fluctuations of reservoir elevation frequently changes the littoral zone, limiting productivity. The lack of stable littoral habitat has resulted in virtually no macrophyte communities and severely depressed benthic macroinvertabrate communities. Due to a short water retention period (8-65 days), there is lack of stratification during summer that results in limited refusia of preferred temperature areas. Hydro operations reduce food availability for fish and reduce fish carrying capacity of the reservoir.’

The Army Corps of Engineers Assessment agrees with the above, and concludes: ‘Based on estimated biological benefits, costs, other environmental effects and regional acceptance, the permanent natural river option is the only drawdown alternative recommended for future study.’

The problem I’m having with this issue is: the preponderance of science concerning the Upper Columbia fishery is based on Lake Roosevelt studies, and the goal of maintaining a lacustrine fishery, which the American Reach, from China Bend to the border, is not. The unique character and value of that twelve-mile segment is continually overlooked, lost within the immensity of Lake Roosevelt fisheries management.

This is why it is so important that we introduce the American Reach (or Jack Mitchell’s very descriptive and evocative ‘Upper Jurassic’) as a place, with a name, to policymakers, fishery managers and all concerned. We need to get on the map as being distinct from Lake Roosevelt.

The Army Corp of Engineers conclusion is intriguing. The Permanent River Option. This means, as I understand it, a flow resembling the natural cycle of the original river. Interesting, taken to the farthest conclusion.

But it is my thinking, based on the present reality, and optimal conditions for growing trout within a tailwater, that the best option regarding the American Reach fishery is to establish and maintain an optimal flow, as unvarying as possible.

This is a fundamental issue in the discussion. Good that you brought this forward Jack, as I’ve been remiss in pursuing this line. Feel free to post anything pertinant, anybody. I’ll see what I can do to get caught up. Curious to find out what biologist Bill Baker has to say on this. More coming.

Letter to Gary Douvia

2011-01-18T15:57:00.000-08:00

Need to get a net under commissioner Gary Douvia. He is the WDFW Commission rep from NE Washington. Most I can gather about him is that he is a business man and a Chamber of Commerce guy. No formal education or background in fisheries that I can find. He likes to hunt elk. As the American Reach of the UC lies within his district, I would like to know what his view is as regards a stewardship plan for the reach. Problem is: though I have sent him three emails on the subject over the past year, he has failed to answer any. So now I'm calling out the troops. Below is a copy of my last letter to him. Read through, and if you agree with the UCNFA points, please drop him a quick email, or feel free to CC or use any part of mine. Maybe a bunch of letters would bring a response from Mr. Douvia. Let's see. I'll give it a couple weeks. Meanwhile, if anybody gets a response of any kind from him, please share it with us here.

Commissioner Gary Douvia commission@dfw.wa.gov

Dear Mr. Douvia,

Greetings. My name is Steven Bird. I am a resident of Stevens County, living in the Northport area. I am a freelance outdoor writer, currently writing about remnant native fish populations of NE Washington, and particularly the American Reach of the upper Columbia, that segment of river laying between China Bend and the border with Canada, and combining with the Canadian Reach to Arrow Lake at Castlegar BC, about a 50-mile segment of free flowing river, altogether, roughly 15 miles on the US side. A riverine environment that we know to be much different than Lake Roosevelt in structure and fertility, and still hosting free spawning populations of native redband, cutthroat, bull trout and kokanee.

As you are a local resident, I am sure you are familiar with the country. As one who has had the privilege, in my career as a forester, to work and fish over most of the intermountain West, and as one who has lived beside and fished the Reach since 1972, it occurs to me the river corridor between Marble and the border should be considered one of Washington State’s natural gems.

And now we are beginning to see new non-extractive businesses starting up in the Northport area, benefitting from, or directly due, to what some are calling a ‘world class’ native trout fishery “developing” in the Reach. There are some factors contributing, including curtailment of pollutants from Canada, and the BC Fisheries program of annual feeding of upriver lakes with nutrient, producing increased aquatic insect populations downstream at our end.

Regional biologists have identified spawning populations of redband trout in Sheep, Onion and Deep Creek, and shoal-spawning Kootenay Lake strain cutthroat on mainstem gravels. (A thing fishing locals have ever known.) The ABC winter closure of recent years, implemented toward the idea of protecting spawning native salmonids, establishes that WDFW recognizes those fish exist.

It is my opinion that now is the time to implement a couple of small changes to regs that will surely move this fishery toward its full potential to be both a great source of sustainable, non-extractive revenue to our citizens, a blue ribbon trout fishery and a valuable ‘bank’ still containing the original genome of the old river. I believe this fishery can exist side by side with the Lake Roosevelt walleye fishery without hurting anybody’s feelings. My suggestions:

* Establish a native salmonid stewardship segment between China Bend (or Little Dalles) at the head of Lake Roosevelt and the border with

Canada

(about a 15 mile segment).

* Establish a one-fish, any-size daily kill limit for redband and cutthroat trout.

* Surveys conducted by the tribe, WDFW and BC fisheries have estimated that 50% to 70% of natives become victim to walleye deprivation. I think the recently increased kill limit and doing away with the slot-size limit for walleye was a step in the right direction, however, only allowing one walleye over 20” seems counter-productive if decreased walleye deprivation of wild species be the goal. I would recommend amending that kill limit to include walleye of any size, within the proposed stewardship segment.

* Fishermen are taking advantage of generous five-trout limits to harvest sacks of steelhead-sized spawning trout from Sheep, Onion and Deep Creek during the early part of open trout season. It is my opinion that those three creeks need remain closed from their confluence with the Columbia, to their first barrier falls, year around, or given no-kill status.

Thanks for taking the time to read, Mr. Douvia. I would very much appreciate any thoughts you might have on the future of the American Reach. I would like to get a discussion going.

Best,

Steven Bird

Hate Speech

2011-01-11T00:37:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write about my trip up to San Carpoforo Creek and how social obligations kept me from meeting perfect conditions last Wednesday, and how when I arrived on Sunday, finally, the water was too low and clear and the lagoon empty of fish. All I hooked was somebody’s lost sparkle-egg. And then the murders in Arizona brought something more urgent to mind.

I was not shocked by the killings in Arizona. Sadly, I expected something like this. Indeed, this wasn’t the first politically motivated act of violence recently. Since the election of Barack Obama, violence against Democrats, busted office windows, death threats, are almost a daily occurrence, and much of it goes unreported by Right-Wing controlled media, who are already in full spin attempting to equivocate the rhetoric of both Right and Left as contributing to divisiveness. But equivocation, in this case, is bullshit. Anybody with half a brain knows the hate speech igniting these acts blares incessantly from the Right and all the way to the highest positions of leadership and beyond. The corporate puppetmasters dispense the rhetoric through the staff at Fox News, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and all the rest; and the dumbest of the sheep dance and gird their loins.

I am a gun owner, hunter and proponent of gun rights, yet I can no longer engage on the hunting blogs, which are now become so rife with Right-Wing hate speech that it has become impossible to have sane discourse on them. Read the threads on the hunting blogs, or Sarah Palin’s blog, or any of the thousands of Right-Wing sites and you see that calls for violence against Democrats is standard discourse. Flyfisher, writer, biologist Ted Williams is no stranger to their vitriol, as he is under constant attack, while he takes them on single-handedly. The thugs have taken control of the political conversation. Make no mistake. They have constructed a tinderbox and now threaten to light it. Where are we going? I wish I could say.

One thing I do know: I need to go fishing. I need to fish.

Searching for Southern Steel

2011-01-02T16:26:00.000-08:00

I admit it. I’m a wuss anymore. In recent years I have come to the realization that a good way to avoid the corrosive cabin fever a NE Washington winter brings to those living in remote locations is: leave for a couple months. See the world. Places without snow.

Taking a break from winter and staying in Morro Bay, California, a small beach town about half way between L.A. and San Francisco.

There are palm trees. And amazing women. They really do flourish in this climate.

There is the ocean, with good flyfishing for barred perch in the surf – good fighters, some going close to 3-pounds.

There is an estuary with a protected harbor and, on incoming tides, a light rod works to throw small clousers along jetties and dock pilings for smallmouth bass-like grass rockfish the locals call ‘bombers’.

There are several bass lakes close by.

There is a nice park pond about 15 minutes away, full of big carp that feed actively, more or less, all winter. Those carp are fed so many pieces of tortilla that I am toying with ideas for the imitation. Stay tuned.

And then there are the little steelhead streams. A handful close by. This area being pretty much the southern end of the steelhead’s remaining native range. All creeks are legal to fish only as far inland as HWY 1, a very short distance in most cases. Catch and release, artificial with barbless hooks only. Creeks open Wednesdays and week-ends. I want to catch one of these fish.

The photo, taken last year, is San Carpoforo lagoon, the one and only steelhead lie within the 100-yard legally fishable section of creek. Most of it is shallow, the fish hold in the slot that runs tight down the base of that bluff on the left, and they don't hold long. These fish have evolved to get up there and get it done quick before the creek dries up to only a series of water-holding plunge pools along the dry arroyo. I caught a handful of 8-10 inch chrome salters but have yet to connect with the real deal. I watched a guy land a nice 8 or 9lb hen on an occasion (he'd gotten up earlier and beat me to the one good casting station). And I don’t mind naming the place, here, because it is no steelhead destination. You have to hit it exactly right. You need the combination of full or dark moon high tides (to bring them over the beach), and rain, on a Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday, and even with those things in line you only have a chance. Holiday obligations have kept me from a couple of chances. The current storm is due to last until Tuesday, so on Wednesday I will be up the coast. More to follow.

Good luck in the New Year all!

A Victory for Natives

2010-12-23T23:06:00.000-08:00

“Like many others around the state, the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery was built on an irony.” ~Gene Johnson~

A recent federal appeals court ruling against U.S. Fish and Wildlife could set an important precedence. Kurt Beardslee, director of the Wild Fish Conservancy (formerly Washington Trout) filed suit against USF&W alleging the Leavenworth hatchery blocks migration of native bull trout into Icicle Creek, a tributary of the Wenatchee River, in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The court has ordered USF&W to construct a passage around the hatchery. USF&W may appeal, but have not reached that decision yet.

According to Beardslee there are currently 39 State-run hatcheries in Washington blocking native migratory fish from reaching spawning areas. He hopes, as many of us do, changes to the Leavenworth hatchery to allow for fish passage will provide a template for changes to other offenders as well. Such changes could include man-made channels that mimic natural flow.

“All these things are fixable,” Beardslee says, “You can have a hatchery that’s successful and a healthy river. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

This is an interesting case to follow. If this decision stands, it could set a precedence that might eventually lead to fish passage channels around Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee Dam. Imagine how a project like that might bring real stimulus to the state and provide sustained economic return from fisheries.

Solstice

2010-12-22T18:47:00.000-08:00

Transition to winter. And an eclipse of the full moon to boot. My apocalyptic heart races. My conspiracy-theorist mind whirls.

And now we enter a time of deep cold and short light up here in the northeast corner. The jangling caravan of warmer seasons a receding memory and a future dream.

It does seem like a metaphor for our time.

What have we transitioned to?

The almost total loss of our manufacturing base. The deconstruction of our educational system, to the point that we now teach Old Testament science in public schools where mention of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson has been erased from the history books, and universities now seeking donations to keep their Arts and Humanities programs going. We are in a state of perpetual war overseas, and hardly a mention of it on what passes for ‘News’ anymore. Jobless and Homeless polls are skewed and not even close to reflecting the real figures. At the time Ronald Reagan took office signaling the systematic attack on and takedown of our public commonwealth and giveaway of our political system to corporate consortiums, 10% of the American population held 90% of the monetary wealth. Trickle Down economics trickled up until that percentage at the top shrank to 1%. Yup. It is a fact: 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth. Gives you a good view of the playing field. Who are they? Well, if you could see the names of the major shareholders in oil, weapons manufacture, insurance and pharmaceuticals, you would see the same names. What do they do with their time? Well, they spend a lot of it making sure their interests are protected.

We see how they hold sway. Bottom-line trumps all public concerns, and the only way we the people hang on to anything is through endless, costly litigation which we seldom win. In spite of fifty-odd years of environmental research, education, activism, rhetoric and lip service, we continue to see the daily loss of our public resources to private interests. The Navigable Waterway status which makes streambeds public property to the high water mark and used to apply to any stream with enough flow to float a canoe, is being rescinded a river at a time by those convinced that everything need be privatized lest we be perceived as communists; while the paid shills of corporate media continue to spew that their masters are benevolent, continue to spew vile rhetoric of hate and division among our own citizenry, even to the point of calling for armed violence against those who disagree. Seems what they really want is a one-party, pay-to-play society under Old Testament law. We have truly arrived at the ‘winter of our discontent’. What is beyond this? That is totally up to us. We came to be a Plutocracy because we failed to participate to the extent required of a healthy participatory democracy. Not enough face to face with those making decisions. Some of us are disengaged even while nursing at the tit.

Anything going to change for the better? I don’t know. One thing I do know: Every construct of humankind has a beginning, middle and end. For what that is worth to us now.

Will we ever see healthy native trout and salmon fisheries restored to our State? Well… we have to take control of the story. WDFW is still stuck in that old stringer-filling story, the biggest part of their budget going to support hatcheries. Hatcheries originally intended to be a small sideline to provide mitigation for habitat lost to human activities. And now they are in the hatchery business. We need to rewrite that story. We cannot underestimate the power of stories. Words. Frame by frame. River by river. A deluge of letters. To be a defender means to defend the commons. When the story changes: things change. Stay tuned. I'm trying to pin WDFW commissioner Gary Douvia of Kettle Falls for an interview concerning the native fishery in our corner of the state. Let's find out what his story is. I will post results here.

A Letter From Jack

2010-12-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

Once in a while I get a letter from Jack Mitchell. Jack is a Columbia River man who puts more time in on the American Reach than anybody I know of. And the Klickitat. He is a passionate fly-swinger, exquisite fly designer, and a fine writer. He shares one of his latest patterns with us (click to enlarge), and writes:

Steve,
The sculpin muddler I sent your way is a pattern I designed this fall and used for steelies on the Klickitat.  I have not tried it on the UC but I am sure it would work.

                                                              *          *          *
Fishing is not just catching, it is the process, and all that nature allows us to be a part of while fishing. This thing we call fishing, the sport we all enjoy immensely, is a learning experience. The sport is a combination of great things. The dynamics of water and surrounding landscapes. The cast. The swing, drift, strip. The bugs, flora, fauna and birds. The camaraderie with others and the solitude of none.

The knowledge I have gained over the years is a compilation of personal experiences gleaned leaning over the shoulders of others, trial and error, ten-mile walks, twenty-mile drifts, and asking questions. Although I would like to give myself credit for the knowledge I have... that would be fairly egotistical. So, with all that said: Help the youngens feel welcome. And if you can't be friendly to the fellow fisher, better to say nothing at all. I let people fish the way they choose. It is their fishing adventure, not mine.

As far as steelhead is concerned, I have come to the conclusion that my favorite rod is a 13' 7" Guideline Lecie 7wt with either a 525 Skagit Compact for delivering big weight or a 420 Scandi for the dry line/light tip. It just flat out throws line. Effortlessly.

My wife is out-fishing me these days because I really just want to toss my fly 'over there' under the tree on the other side of the river and most of the fish are right in front of me. Don't get me wrong, she can bomb a line as well.

So what does that say about my prowess?

It says I want to fish the Scandi head because it is a dream to cast with a dry line or very light tip. It says I want to quarter down as far as I can, come tight, lead the fly to my bank. If something eats it, so be it. Otherwise, fuck it, I had fun. I got quite a few of those wiley steelie rascals to eat my skated fly this fall. Didn't land many. Ah well.

~Jack Mitchell~

Boat I Like

2010-12-19T00:07:00.000-08:00

Here ye go ChrisC.

Can't beat this one for economy and compact sportiness.

Rowability...

The little semi-vee.

BC Bruce will recognize the spot (the lake).

DOH!!

2010-12-18T03:03:00.000-08:00

Yep. He killed it.

The look on my face when he showed me the trout made him regret it.

The happy camper grinning behind the 18-inch brookie is Will. Will is a scientist. While attending a university in New Zealand he decided to take up flyfishing. He bought some gear, got some verbal instruction from the guy at the fly shop, and went fishing. He went fishing a lot and finally managed to catch a couple of trout, including a nice brown, and so he was hooked.

Will came to fish with us at Fat Camp and liked it so much that he stayed, camping in his tent for a month. Turns out he is a really nice guy. Brilliant and crazy and interesting. We are both John Coltrane and Miles Davis fans. He is a loner. After a couple days of instruction he wanted to go it on his own. I harbored secret doubts as to his abilities and success. He was barely able to accomplish a 30 foot cast, at least in my presence. The technical UC can be a tough neighborhood for beginners. And I worried about his safety, as he seemed ever prone to catastrophe.

But I can be wrong about people sometimes. What Will lacked in fishing skills he more than made up for in perseverance. The man is an animal. He fished nearly all day, every day, intense and undaunted. Often, and against my protests, he fished with dubiously outlandish New Zealand fly patterns; one, a clever and very realistic Japanese Beetle imitation. The ones that had worked for him in New Zealand. His confidence flies.

So he blanks the first few days. Then he gets one. A small, stupid one. Then his daily count starts creeping up. He’s getting two a day. And then he managed a couple of big fish. He is diligent, carefully handling and releasing his catch exactly as instructed.

It turns out, Will likes to eat fish. He came to me and expressed an unfulfilled fantasy to make a supper from his own catch, cooked over the campfire, and wanted to know if I minded if he killed one.

As one who has enjoyed that age-old culinary experience many times, who was I to refuse him that?

I know, they are not native, but I love brook trout. As a kid in Massachusetts I spent a lot of time pursuing them at the small, tannin stained brooks within bike riding distance from my home. Little jewels. A twelve-incher was mythic. Though they have inhabited the upper Columbia drainage for over a hundred years, they have never gained a strong presence in the Columbia mainstem, staying mostly to the tributaries. But once in a while one grows big and bad enough, and takes to the Reach. These are usually big males. I see one or two a year, and that’s putting in a lot of time on the water. I once caught a 4-pounder and I’ve seen a few bigger. They are rare. Within the 15-mile American Reach segment, juvenile brook trout are confined to three small creeks, a fairly short distance to the barrier falls on all three. Populations are no doubt supplemented with fenestration from the creeks above the falls where the brook trout were originally introduced. I’m not sure what effect they have on native populations. Spawning in fall, they do not compete with natives for gravel up the creeks. There is the possibility that they eat eggs and fry, but to what affect, no one knows; though I’m fairly certain that the effect brook trout have is negligible beside the 50 to 70% of natives being eaten by walleyes. Whatever the case, I confess a soft spot for brook trout and my heart was temporarily broken when Will walked in with that nice brookie. They all looked the same to Will.

I got over it. Used it as an excuse to check stomach contents. I filleted it for him. We gathered some alder wood and cooked the fillets on a grill over the coals. Coltrane’s ‘My Favorite Things’ a bird conversation from the disc player in the screen room. We drank a couple of beers. And the brookie was red meated and good. Will said it was the best fish he'd ever eaten.

Ah summer…

Double-Hand Trout Rods - A Primer

2010-12-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

Talking about swinging flies got me thinking about two-handed rods for trout. A concept catching fire but not exactly new. See, once upon a time, even the lightest of trout rods possessed a rear grip, making them, by definition, double-hand rods. Back in the days when flyrods were made from wood, the material dictated rods be necessarily long to achieve the flexion needed to cast and fight fish without breaking. These rods were not the most efficient casters, relying on their length to help achieve distance. The wooden rods were too heavy and cumbersome to be operated in single-hand mode for any length of time. Various tosses, roll and D casts were the norm with these rods, and it definitely required two hands to lob an overhead cast.

The Industrial Revolution saw increased production of lighter, sectioned-bamboo rods meeting the demands of a growing middle-class having less (not more) of the time required to master the old casts, nevertheless, more expendable income to buy gear. Cane trout rods could be comfortably handled with one hand, and could be made even lighter sans the rear grip. The relatively easy to learn and inarguably effective overhead cast became the cast of choice. And the trend to lightness commenced until now, a point in time where, if flyrods get any lighter we are sure to de-evolve into stick men, with stick arms. And something was lost when the rear grip was dropped from the design.

Double-hand flyrods until fairly recently where pretty much the province of steelhead and salmon fishers. Now, with lighter versions available qualifying as trout rods, the usefulness dawns on us. Swinging streamers, wetflies and nymphs. Throwing big dries. A formidable tool for high-stick and bobber nymphing.

The venerable question, answered: If I could have only one rod for the UC, it would have to be an 11’6” 4/5 switch rod. I hardly use anything else, anymore. This one does most of it. (On my wish list: an 11’ 3/4. Among others.)

My first DH rod was a 12’6” 5/6 spey, the lightest available at the time (switch rods were still on the horizon). I wanted something that would fish for both UC trout and Methow steelhead. Once I learned a few casts, and learned that double-hand casts can be performed with a single-hand rod, I began to wonder if a somewhat shorter/lighter rod might benefit from the addition of a rear grip, rendering a more versatile trout rod for fishing lakes and medium sized streams. What I had in mind was a mini-spey of about 9’ rated for a 6 or 7wt AFTMA line. There was nothing like that available. So I ended up guinea pigging an old, inexpensive, stiff, fast-action 9’ 7wt, with a generous full-wells fore grip. After removing the butt cap, I assembled a 4” rear grip on a fitted 9” section cut from an old blank, then epoxied and inserted into place. The result was a fun rod. Cute little booger. No powerhouse spey caster, but certainly better at performing D and roll casts than it was without the rear grip. It became a nice tool for high-stick nymphing, and it worked great for pot-shooting with emergers or dries due to its ability to fire a quick double-hand overhead cast a good distance without having to waste time false-casting.

If one is considering modifying a single-hand rod, or purchasing a light switch or spey rod for trout, lining it will be the next consideration, and the source of most confusion to those getting started in double-hand rods. Lining a converted single-hand rod is easy enough. Lacking knowledge of its grain window, start with an AFTMA line one weight heavier than the designation given on the rod. The rod will perform D casts better if you go two weights over the rod’s designation, but be careful, single-hand rods are tender, too heavy a line and there is a chance of breaking the rod while punching double-hand overhead casts. A stiff, fast-action rod makes the best candidate for a conversion. But keep in mind that a conversion will be nowhere near as strong as a rod designed to withstand the dynamics of double-hand casting. D casts require much more weight beyond the rod tip to load the rod than overhead casts do. My 9’ conversion handles up to about 40’ of line on the water for D casting, and 30’ is more comfortable. It’s good for maybe a 60’ D cast. No great distance but more than enough for the purposes I put it to.

Cut through the bullshit: begin to think in grain weights. You must think in grain weights. Free yourself to the possibilities. I wish that all rod makers would label their rods with the effective grain-weight designations. The grain-weight designation lets you know the window of optimum load range for best performance of the rod, leaving you free to choose from the entire spectrum of line weights the rod will handle. For example: I have a 12’6” 5/6 Deer Creek Spey rated 350-550 grains. I like it for fishing Methow steelhead, lined with a 5/6 ‘spey’ designated line. But this rod, lined correctly, serves as a decent switch rod, performing double-hand overhead casts very well. It serves for swinging nymphs and makes easy long distance deliveries to tailing UC trout. But not with the spey-designated line, which hits the water like a section of garden hose. As regards UC fishing, it is the quick double-hand overhead cast that is most useful. A soft presentation is helpful. You need a trout line. With a little experimenting I found that the Deer Creek Spey throws a fairly broad spectrum of lines, with varying performance, including 8 to 15wt AFTMA lines. And, as things stand at the moment, it is within the old AFTMA standard that we find the broadest selection of lines suitable to trout fishing situations.

Remember: it takes more weight beyond the rod tip to load a rod for a D cast than is required for an overhead cast. For me, the Deer Creek performs D casts best with 30’ to about 60’ beyond the tip; 30’-40' for overhead casts. To get perspective, here are a couple of the lines the Deer Creek 5/6 (350-550 grains) will throw, along with the length of line beyond the tip needed for optimum performance of D casts: 6wt spey: 55’ 420grains; 8wt AFTMA: 60’ 350grains. So now we want to select a line for trout that will function for both overhead and D casts. Which will it be? I have found it to be the 8wt AFTMA, favoring a double-taper for D casting, and a weight-forward for double-hand overhead casting. Of course I could get better D casts with a heavier line. And the rod does overhead cast slightly better with a 9wt AFTMA line. But presentation is a factor, and it casts the 8wt fine. Remember it takes far less weight beyond the tip to load a rod for an overhead cast. As a starting point for determining which AFTMA lines the rod will handle: weigh the first 60’ of an AFTMA line (the working length of a long-belly spey). If the grain weight at 60’ falls within the rod’s grain window, that line should work on that rod, and will be about right for double-hand overhead casts with 30’-40’ feet working beyond the tip. That is a starting point. Now time to invest in a postal scale.

{Folks have been asking a lot of questions regarding double-hand trout rods lately. Hope I didn’t add to the confusion. I’ll be posting semi-technical stuff from time to time when I feel like going on a ramble. And we mean this to be a site for writers. If you have story, rant, technical knowledge you would care to share, a conservation issue you would like to make others aware of, anything related to flyfishing or native salmonids, feel free to contact me about publishing it here.}

Steve

Swing Clown

2010-12-12T14:36:00.000-08:00

Can’t really think of a fishing method that I do not like. Just some I like better than others. I am no champion of a single technique, preferring to go along with whatever a situation seems to call for. Nobody likes a zealot. But I admit that I do harbor a decided propensity to swing flies. The clean simplicity of it. The fierce, no-questions-asked strikes. I love developing new patterns that adapt well to the method.

We’re into that time of year when swung attracter patterns work well for upper Columbia trout. Pre-spawn fish are developing egg minds, and patterns of red or orange coloration get the nod. The Swing Clown is one of my favorites for winter/early spring UC trout, and has proved itself on Methow steelhead, coastal cutthroat and bull trout as well.

Swing Clown

Hook: Tiemco 200RBL or up-eye steelhead/salmon style.

Thread: Black or red

Body: Copper mylar tinsel (can be overwrapped with copper wire for heavier version)

Wing: Tie in with quill centers parallel to hook shank: two dyed yellow shlappen tips or hen feathers, one on each side of the hook shank, tips together; overwing with two red-dyed guinea fowl body feathers, tips together; top with a single golden pheasant crest feather. Underwing should extend just slightly behind overwing.

Cheek: Two sections of golden pheasant tippet or jungle cock eye, one each side.

Hackle: Red or orange dyed mallard flank fibers stripped from the quill and placed as a collar around the hook shank.

Welcome to our new hangout.

2010-12-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

Welcome to Upper Columbia Flyfisher. My name is Steven Bird. I am a fishing guide, mentor and freelance writer. I have lived beside and fished the American Reach of the upper Columbia since 1973. I am one of the original dogs behind the Upper Columbia Native Fish Alliance. As I am technically bereft, an online home for UCNFA has been a long time coming. Hopefully, as I become more familiar with pushing buttons, the site will get better.

The primary purpose of this site is to serve as a clubhouse for anybody interested in the upper Columbia River, fly fishing for native trout and salmon, fly tying, literature, clowning in general, and of course a rally point for UCNFA writers. Our interests and views are varied and eclectic, and we hope to reflect that here. Your writing, photos, commentary and participation are welcome, and indeed essential to create a community of flyfisher/writers and allied conservationists able to lever real change through direct engagement principles.

Ours is a participatory democracy. I’m beginning to realize that allied groups of motivated thinkers with a focus, using the internet as a tool, have the power to drive policy. Our focus is: achieving a stewardship plan favoring native salmonids in that segment of the Columbia River in NE Washington, between China Bend at the head of Lake Roosevelt, and the border with Canada. About a 15-mile long segment known as the American Reach, on old maps. This segment, its corridor and connective drainages, should be considered and stewarded for its unique value as wildlife and native trout habitat, serving to generate non-extractive revenue in a part of the state where it is sorely needed. Ours is the power of petition in the best spirit of commonwealth. We are living at a time when our participation is crucial. The benefits are quantifiable. Everybody benefits as we think and work toward a sustainable economy that stewards our commonwealth of lands and waters and wildlife therein. We be watchdogs.

I want to thank all those who’ve written emails on behalf of a native trout stewardship plan for the American Reach segment of the Columbia. We affect the zeitgeist. Awareness is raised. But there is a long way to go. Here are some issues we’ll be attending to:

~ The increased kill limits for walleye are good, as far as they go, but I do not see the wisdom of allowing only one over 20 inches to be kept, if the goal is to reduce walleye predation in the Reach, as I’ve been told. Why release spawning-class walleye, to spawn, and consume more trout, if the goal is to reduce their numbers? Might the limit be amended to include walleye of any size? We’ll dig into this issue some more in further posts. With biologists on both sides of the border having conducted surveys concluding that up to 70% of the native salmonids in the Columbia segment between China Bend and Castlegar are eaten by walleye, this is a topic demanding its own post. Coming.

~ Everybody I’ve talked to who flyfishes the American Reach segment agrees: the current five-fish daily kill limit for trout is too generous. Most agree that a one-fish daily kill limit for redband, cutthroat and kokanee would be just about right. And I agree. Existing limits still applying to other species. Anybody have thoughts on this? Like to hear them.

~ In my view, the initial problem still needing to be overcome in actualizing a fishery stewardship plan for the American Reach segment is: raising awareness that it even exists, and as a riverine habitat markedly different than the lacustrine structure of Lake Roosevelt. Cartographers of recent maps have contributed to covering up the 15-mile free flowing segment within the U.S., blithely extending LR all the way to the border. WDFW biologists in the region are aware of the difference. Sadly, Westside policy makers, for the most part, are not. The purpose of this site is to change that.

Upper Columbia Native Fish Alliance is not a formal organization. No dues to pay. Nor do we seek, or need, monetary contributions. Not our way. I keep the membership roster on a pad of paper. Mostly fly fishing nuts. We are loose-knit, informal and clandestine. We will discuss issues, plot mischief and, from time to time, execute emailings to those who need to know what’s on our minds. If you think you’d like to become a UCNFA writer: click ABOUT US to read more.

We’re just getting started. Hang out. If you are a fan of big UC trout and Eastside fishing, here is where you will get insider knowledge. I’ll be posting on favorite fly patterns for UC, Eastside trout and steelhead fishing as well as on-the-spot updates regarding American Reach hatches and conditions. There will be stories and a lot more ahead. Pull up a seat.

BTW, if you enjoy truly good fish-lit that is not lame, check out ‘Rise Forms’ posted to your right under links. Congratulations to the crew at Rise Forms and my friend David Motes (who once promised to put a skwala in my neck) for creating a needed home for new outdoor writers who explode (explore) the genre. Beautiful art. Smart writing. Zen-simple formula. I recommend.