Chester Allen's Watery Planet

Midnight Woolly Bugger Madness: What fish won't eat this fly?

A sleepless night has one benefit: full fly boxes.

Every now and then, I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get to sleep again. It seems like my whole life is swimming around in my brain. Other times, one thought keeps bobbing around and around and around.

It's kind of like those days when one song drones over and over in your head:

 

 "Rikki, don't lose that number

You don't wanna call nobody else.

Send it off in a letter to your self...."

Sorry about that.

Anyway, I'm ashamed to say that I woke up last night with Woolly Bugger flies whirling through my head. Why, I don't know.

Greg Cloud's Woolly Bugger variation imitates marine worms that swarm out of Puget Sound oyster beds. Sea-run cutthroat trout and coho salmon love this Bugger!

Maybe it's because I've been tying a variety of Woolly Buggers this week. I've tied tiny, size 12 Buggers with peacock herl bodies for trout lake fishing -- and tempting big crappie out of sunken trees.  I've tied a few giant, black Buggers with gleaming Krystal Flash tails and tungsten bead heads for dredging winter steelhead out of western Washington rivers. And, of course, I'm tying lots of sparkly olive Buggers for Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat trout.

An olive, bead-head, Krystal Flash-chenille Woolly Bugger fly for Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat trout. The fly can imitate a marine worm, a shrimp, a baitfish and who knows what else?

All told, I'll probably tie about 10 dozen Buggers in various sizes and colors this spring.  And I sat down shortly after midnight this morning and tied a couple more dozen Buggers in the dark hours of the new day.

"That is strange," said my partner, Heather Blaine, when she called me from Hood River, Oregon this morning. "How could you be thinking about Woolly Buggers in the middle of the night?"

"Well, they work really well," I replied.

Heather gave one of those deep, patient sighs that seem so much more powerful over the cell phone. 

Know that Heather, who spends her days whirling through pear, apple and cherry orchards, rarely has trouble sleeping. Yet, even Heather can't fault me for tying more Woolly Buggers, as she has seen their magic too many times.

A Woolly Bugger's combination of long, marabou tail and soft, fuzzy hackle gives the fly an impression of life even when it's just sinking in the water -- or just sitting on the bottom.

I've caught lots of largemouth and smallmouth bass on Woolly Buggers -- black marabou tail, peacock herl body, black saddle hackle and gold tungsten bead -- as the fly sank near a weedbed or downed tree.

I once watched a Florida redfish swim over and suck down a rusty-brown Bugger with red rubber legs that was marinating on the bottom of an Indian Lagoon flat. I had to put down my sandwich to set the hook.

A Bugger really comes alive when it's stripped in with a stop-and-start rhythm. The fly dips and pulses and flashes, and the fish can't help but think it's a small, struggling hunk of food.

I've lost count of the different kind of fish that I've hooked on one or another Woolly Bugger.

I've caught gafftopsail catfish -- as the falling tide flushed shrimp from a shallow flat into  Florida's Intracoastal Waterway -- on tan, rubber-legged Woolly Buggers. I was hoping for redfish or spotted sea trout, but, wow, a catfish!

In Washington's Puget Sound, I've hooked sea-run cutthroat trout, resident coho salmon, chum salmon, piling perch, sculpins -- ugly, gaping-mouthed fish with poisonous fins -- flounder, rockfish and, weirdly, a big red rock crab.

I suspect the red rock crab -- a cranky creature with claws that can break a pencil or your finger -- was snagged as one claw grabbed for the fly. I was glad that my hook was barbless, as that angry crab was ready to rock and roll on my fingers.

In Mexico, I've hooked snapper, jack Crevalle, snook, ladyfish, sierra mackerel, bonito, skipjack tuna, small yellowfin tuna and dorado on silvery-green Buggers that I tied to imitate tiny baitfish on the Baja's East Cape.

Confession: the tuna and dorado were wailing away in feeding frenzies, and I probably could have hooked them on a plastic sandwich wrapper tied onto a hook.

Still, they ate the Bugger!

There are hundreds of variations on the Woolly Bugger formula of marabou tail, body and soft hackle wrapped around the body. In fact, a great book: "Woolly Wisdom: How to Tie and Fish Woolly Worms, Woolly Buggers and their Fish-Catching Kin" sits on my bookshelf. Author Gary Soucie amassed more than 400 variations of Woollies, which is quite a feat.

Yet, I'm sure that Soucie could easily crank out three or four follow-up books, such as "Woolly Wisdom: The Sequel." I would buy all of them.

Some flies have that magic -- that mojo -- that fish can't resist. Clouser Minnows, Craig Mathew's X-Caddis and Iris Caddis, and Mike Lawson's Spent Partridge Caddis come to mind.

But no fly has the mojo to fool fish like the humble, ever-changing -- yet ever constant -- Woolly Bugger.

And a fly like that is worth a little midnight Woolly Bugger Madness.

Columbia River smallmouth bass fly fishing lights up in April and May

HOOD RIVER, ORE. -- The Columbia River, which forms the border between Washington and Oregon, just might be the best place on this watery planet to fly fish for smallmouth bass.

And the best time to cast a gurgling popping bug, rubber-legged Wooly Bugger or Clouser Minnow on the Columbia is during April and May.

That's when the millions of smallmouth that lurk among the billions of rocks on this huge, rocky river slide into the shallow backwaters and tributary streams and rivers to spawn.  The best fishing is from Bonneville Dam upstream all the way to the Snake River. That's a few hundred miles of water.

Just about every mile of that water holds the rocky banks, rocky underwater reefs and weedbeds that smallmouth bass love. There are millions of smallmouth on the Columbia River!  Fly anglers can find hot fishing -- several red-eyed, tiger-striped, hard-fighting smallmouth bass  each hour -- from April through October on the mainstem Columbia. 

The fishing -- and catching -- is best early and late in the day, when the wind has stopped roaring and the light is low.

Finding areas with a light current, current seams, rocks, deeper water and weedbeds is the key to finding the bass. It's not hard to find these spots on the Columbia -- even for anglers on foot. State and local parks dot the banks, and a boating angler could never fish every spot on this giant river.

A good map and a visit to the websites of Washington and Oregon state parks is the key that unlocks miles of public water to fly anglers.

An average-sized smallmouth bass caught in a Columbia River backwater near Hood River, Oregon.

Anglers look for the many backwaters -- especially those behind railroad berms or dikes. The huge piles of rock used to form the bed for railroad tracks or highways created ponds and lakes that are connected to the Columbia through culverts or breaks in the rock.

Anglers can put pontoon boats, float tubes, canoes and kayaks on these backwaters and float along banks swarming with aggressive, cranky smallmouth bass. The Columbia is a world-famous salmon river, and few anglers pester the backwater smallmouth.

Backwaters are usually the haunt of largemouth bass, but smallmouth rumble into these neighborhoods during April and May to find warmer water, fat crayfish and spawning beds. Spring smallmouth also invade some of the Columbia's tributary rivers and streams, including the John Day River in Central Oregon and the Lower Yakima River in Washington.

In fact, the John Day and Yakima rivers are world-class smallmouth rivers in their own right. Spring brings more than 40,000 smallmouth into the lower Yakima -- from the Tri-Cities (Richland, Pasco and Kennewick) upstream to Roza Dam. The smallmouth find rocky spots to spawn -- and wallop on young chinook salmon migrating downstream to the Pacific Ocean.

These aggressive smallmouth hammer poppers and streamers all day long. They average about 1.5 pounds, but fly anglers have very good shots at fish ranging up to 5 or 6 pounds. Biologists are starting to worry that the Yakima smallmouth are eating too many chinook smolts, so this is guilt-free fly angling!

Most smallmouth bass fly anglers use 6-weight to 8-weight rods. Floating lines get the most use, but a sink-tip line can get that Clouser Minnow or Wooly Bugger down to deeper fish.

The Worley Bugger Fly Shop, located in Ellensburg, offers terrific guided trips for Yakima River smallmouth bass.

Fly anglers fishing from Bonneville Dam near Portland upstream to the waters near The Dalles can find guided trips, flies and other needs from the Gorge Fly Shop in Hood River, Oregon.

One warning: the state of Washington warns anglers that smallmouth from the Columbia River can carry high levels of mercury. State guidelines say that children younger than 6 and women of childbearing age should not eat more than 2 meals of bass each month. Most anglers follow this advice. Smaller bass are also safer to eat, as they are younger and have accumulated less mercury.

The fishing doesn't end when the smallmouth leave the backwaters in late May and head back to the rocky shorelines and reefs of the mainstem Columbia River. Smallmouth stay close to shoreline rocks -- and most of the Columbia River is rocky -- through late October.

Creeping along a rocky Columbia River bank in the dim light of early morning or late evening puts fly anglers in a new world. Smallmouth bass are on the prowl for crayfish, salmon smolts -- or anything else that will fit into their greedy mouths.

Casting a popper onto the slowly moving water is like lighting a stick of dynamite. An explosion is just a matter of time.

Favorite photos are worth sharing....

I'm planning my yearly fly-fishing pilgrimage to Yellowstone National Park, and that means gazing at photos from past trips.

I found that my taste in fishing photographs is changing. My favorite photos used to me images of myself holding up a big, gleaming, dripping fish. In other words: Trout Porn.

I still like those shots -- who doesn't? -- but I'm starting to prefer other images, such as anglers casting in a pretty spot, close-ups that show the subtle shadings of a wild fish and even flowers along the water.

I really like this image:

I must be growing soft or something.

 Anyway, my daughter, Courtney, took this shot on Oregon's Deschutes River last summer while I was fishing a caddis hatch in a favorite back eddy. I really like the soft light, which is so typical of the last hour or so of a summer day on the Deschutes.  

Wonderful memories.

Anyway, I'd love to see your favorite shot, and what better way to do that than crank up a contest of sorts?

Any contest deserves a prize, and this one comes with these:

First Place: One dozen of my favorite Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat flies or five cakes of cold water surfboard wax.

Second Place: Six of my favorite Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat flies or three cakes of cold water surfboard wax.

Third Place: Three of my favorite Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat flies or just one, measly cake of cold water surfboard wax.

I'll also publish the winning photos right on this blog on April 16.

Please e-mail ONE photo, to [email protected] by April 15. 

Good luck to all, and I can't wait to see your shots!

Sea-run cutthroat trout -- and a few coho salmon -- springing for chum fry

This nice Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat trout whacked a chum baby fly cast off a beach earlier this week. Sea-run cutts and resident coho salmon have started their spring ritual of eating some of the millions of chum salmon fry that are migrating along the beaches.

It's a longish hike in to my favorite Puget Sound beach, and the time spent walking from asphalt to a big stretch of barnacle-encrusted pebbles and shells  helps my mind shift from the human world to the natural world.

Tiny, electric-green leaves poked out of the winter-bare branches along the trail. New life glows in spots that have been barren and gray since November.

Pebbles crunched under my feet when I reached the beach, and gulls screeched and screamed out on a rip -- the seam between fast and slow water.  Puget Sound has giant tidal changes -- the water level can rise or fall up 14 feet or more -- and the inlets can look more like rivers than inland saltwater bays.

On this day, the tide would drop 11.8 feet from high tide to low tide. All this water would flow past my feet in about 6 hours. I was on the beach about an hour after the tide began to fall, and every little shoreline point, drop off and oyster bed had created a rip.

Moving water and rips off a good beach often mean sea-run cutthroat trout.

I sat on the beach, slipped on my polarized sunglasses and watched a nearby rip. Tiny dimples and swirls appeared on the calm water close to shore. Baitfish. I eased closer -- and saw about a hundred or so baby chum salmon in the water.

Millions of baby chum wiggle out of streambed gravel and head for Puget Sound every spring. From now through late May, the tiny fish -- about 1.5 inches long when they hit saltwater -- swim out of their birth streams and start the long journey to the North Pacific Ocean.

Sea-run cutts, coho salmon and even flounder hammer these little salmon.

On this morning, underwater flashes in the rip showed that the cutts and maybe a few coho were on the prowl. Further down the beach, where a point of land created a temporary rip, cutts slashed into another pod of baby chum.

Bob Triggs' Chum Baby streamers are an great fly to cast when sea-run cutthroat trout are chasing chum fry on Puget Sound beaches. All Puget Sound cutthroat trout must be released.

Trout look delicate, and their shy ways make them seem gentle. But those swirls and boils near the beach told a different story.

Puget Sound becomes wilderness whenever you step into the water.

I tied on one of Bob Triggs' brilliant Chum Baby streamers and cast it out on the moving water. An oyster bed created a turbulent rip about 30 feet away, and the bright fly swung into the roiling water. I gave the intermediate fly line a couple of good strips -- and the electric thrum of a hooked fish shot up my rod.

A bright, silvery sea-run cutt rolled on the surface as the first, cold raindrops of the day landed on my face.

Spring has arrived on Puget Sound.

"Bluegreen" movie shows human connection to ocean -- and benefits Surfrider Foundation

A great new surfing movie -- "bluegreen" -- will be shown in Olympia and Seattle in April to raise money for local chapters of the Surfrider Foundation. 

Starring legendary surfers, such as Robert August, Keith Malloy and Layne Beachley, "bluegreen" explores the human connection to the ocean -- while showing some terrific footage of longboarders and ripping shortboarders.

Robert "Wingnut" Weaver -- a artist with a longboard -- narrates the movie. 

"bluegreen" has gotten great reviews -- it's worth seeing even if you don't surf or rarely surf -- and a preview is available here.

A new surfboard will be raffled off at each showing, and an $8 admission ticket also gets you one raffle ticket. Surfrider Foundation speakers will talk about the need to protect oceans and beaches from pollution and overdevelopment.

The Seattle showing of "bluegreen" is on April 10 at the Jewel Box Theater at The Rendezvous, 2322 2nd Ave., Seattle 98121. The doors open at 6 p.m. and the movie starts at 7 p.m.

The Olympia showing of "bluegreen" is on April 13 at the Capitol Theater, 206 5th Ave. S.E. in downtown Olympia. The whole luau gets started at 6 p.m. and the movie starts at 7 p.m.

The Northwest -- despite cold water -- is a surfing paradise, and there are active chapters of the Surfrider Foundation in Washington and Oregon. And you don't have to be an expert ripper to enjoy surfing. I'm a 47-year-old, mediocre surfer, but I love the sport, and a session at Westport, La Push or Cannon Beach leaves me with an incredible glow -- especially if my daughter, Courtney, also paddles into some waves.

Surfing is indeed a lifelong sport and passion -- for waveriders of all ages and skills.

Washington Surfrider Foundation chapters include Olympic Peninsula, Seattle, South Coast and South Sound. Oregon chapters include Newport, Portland and Suislaw. 

Clean oceans and beaches benefit all of us -- not just surfers, anglers and other happily waterlogged people. The Surfrider Foundation has a long history of saving beaches and cleaning up pollution problems.  

Confessions of a fly-fishing heretic

Thingamabobbers -- profane in the eyes of some fly anglers -- show when trout eat sunken nymphs, which in and of themselves are sometimes thought of as profane.

It has been a year or so since my last confession, and I have sinned almost every day since then.

I have tied steelhead flies on leadhead jigs designed for the unholy largemouth bass, and I have cast those abominations upon the sacred steelhead waters of Washington's Olympia Peninsula.

I have tied trout flies with the hair of a black toy poodle.

I have pinched four BB split shot onto my tapered leader and lobbed a nymph into the clear -- yet, fast and deep -- waters of Oregon's Deschutes River. I have done this more than once.

I have tied bead-head versions of almost every nymph known to fly anglers -- including the hallowed Pheasant Tail.

I have brought a banana onto a driftboat -- and I did catch fish that day.

I have practiced the forbidden, dark art of "Chuck and Duck" with nymphs -- weighted so heavily they sunk like manhole covers --when the holy trout would not rise to my dry flies.

I have affixed tiny, air-filled balloons -- called "Thingamabobbers" onto my line to signal when a pristine trout ate my bead-head, Lightning Bug nymph on Washington's Yakima River, Oregon's Deschutes River and Montana's Madison River. 

I have professed love for "Thingamabobbers," and I believe they are the best strike indicator -- um, bobber -- on the water. I know they are sick and wrong, but I use them anyway -- and debase myself and the fish.

I have told others to use strike indicators and bead-head nymphs on slow days when the trout are not rising. I have also tempted others to tie on heavy stonefly nymphs -- such as the scorned Brooks's Stone -- and roll them along the cobblestoned bottoms to catch and release wild trout.

I have not smoked a pipe, worn a tweed hat or sipped stream-chilled wine since my last confession.

I have bought and used a sinking fly line -- and an intermediate fly line -- over and over again.

I have fished dry flies on a downstream reach cast -- thousands of times.

I have kept my favorite spots secret from my fellow fly anglers.

I have bought flies from a fly shop and then copied them at my own vise.

I have used a Sharkskin fly line -- and polluted the air with the rasp of reckless innovation sliding on my rod guides.

I have used a fly rod designed for trout and dirtied it while catching bluegill, crappie, rock bass and pumpkinseed sunfish.

I have professed love for smallmouth bass, largemouth bass and redfish tailing on a saltwater flat.

I have fished for wild trout before 10 a.m.

I have fished for surf perch, black rockfish and even the ugly ling cod with a fly rod designed and built for the hallowed steelhead.

I have always loved wild trout above all other fishes, but I am not a faithful angler.

I have hidden a four-piece spinning rod in my duffle while on trips to Mexico -- just in case the wind blows too hard for fly angling. I have used this profane tackle -- more than once.

I have listened to Led Zeppelin while performing the ritual of tying dry flies for sacred trout.

I have guzzled Coca-Cola from a can while standing in a wild trout stream.

I killed and ate a limit of kokanee with my friend Greg Cloud last summer. 

I have made fun of the little magnifying glasses attached to my fishing hat.

I have put road-kill in my freezer for later use as fly tying materials.

I have not made a pilgrimage to the Henry's Fork River in Idaho for 12 months. I promise to not commit this sin again.

Yet, I have always been a sinner, and I will remain a sinner, as I love catching fish more than following the one, true path of fly angling. 

I know I will burn for this, but I am happy anyway.

Yakima River fly fishing, roadside puddles and spring craziness

A wild rainbow trout rising to hatching blue winged olive mayflies leaves a ring on the Yakima River.

My first Northwest winter was 23 years ago, and I handled it well -- until I started seeing trout rising in puddles along Highway 97 just outside of Bend, Oregon.

I'd had a good winter -- working and skiing at Mount Bachelor, tying flies and looking forward to fly fishing all the sweet water in the trout paradise that is Central Oregon.

But I hadn't seen the rings of a trout rise since November, and it was late March. In those days, the Crooked River and the Deschutes River below Pelton Dam were closed during the winter.

 The middle Deschutes River -- from Bend downstream through Redmond -- was blown-out, and the promised hatches of winter stoneflies, midges, and blue winged olives didn't happen. 

That's when I started seeing rising trout in roadside puddles. Mirages of dimpling trout were my first taste of real, hard-core spring fever madness, and it was scary. I actually pulled the truck over -- a sweet 1974 Ford F-100 than ran as smooth as warm syrup -- and parked to watch the water.

I waited a while -- and the murky water was still. I got out of the truck and walked closer for a better look. 

Yeah, I was that crazy.

Just then, a logging truck rumbled by, and little pebbles rattled off the tires and mudflaps. A couple plopped into the big puddle -- and left rings that looked just like a trout had sipped a bug from the surface.

Mystery solved -- and I wasn't crazy. Or was I? It takes some amount of lunacy to even think about trout living and eating in a roadside puddle. Clearly, finding some rising fish was the medicine I needed, and kind friends took me out to Chickahominy Reservoir -- near the desert town of Burns -- for a session with rising trout that weekend.

Nowadays, I know a little more about Northwest fly fishing -- most importantly that the fishing never stops -- but I still yearn for the rings of rising trout when March starts the slide toward April.

 That's when I start checking out the daily Power Hour Yakima River fishing report on the Red's Fly Shop website. When things start looking good -- hatches of Skwala stoneflies, blue winged olive mayflies and even March Brown mayflies -- I lash the Outback over Interstate 90, over the Cascade Range and to the Yakima River near Ellensburg, Washington.

The Yakima -- Washington's best wild-trout stream -- is 205 miles from my home near Puget Sound, but the early spring fly fishing can be fantastic.  The trout -- mostly wild rainbow trout that range from 10 inches to 24-inch-long monsters -- are looking up for food.

Blue winged olive mayflies in sizes 16 through 22 hatch on every cloudy or drizzly day. The Skwala stoneflies, in size 10 and size 8, bring up big trout along the banks. If there is no hatch -- and no rising trout -- fishing lightning bugs, pheasant tails and other small nymphs in sizes 12 through 16 spark hits from trout in the current seams.

I always fish my nymphs on a dropper leader tied to a size 10 Stimulator dry fly. The big dry imitates a Skwala stonefly and acts like a bobber when the trout hit the underwater nymphs. And a nice fish whacks the Stimulator every now and then.

Yakima River fly anglers get an early start on dry fly fishing -- and for good reason. The Yakima blows out into a coffee-colored mess when millions of tons of snow in the Cascades starts melting in April and May. The Yakima blows out  -- and drops back into fishing shape -- quickly, so checking with Red's website is key before making the long drive.

And there's always the chance that rain in the Cascades could blow the Yakima out even as you make the drive. 

But just seeing the rings of rising trout -- real rings from real trout -- make the long drive worth every mile and every drop of gasoline.  Rising trout on the Yakima River in March are sure signs of spring -- and long months of dry fly fishing through November.

The Yakima fishes well all summer, but the river is high and fast as water flows from upstream reservoirs to downstream farmers and orchardists. It is almost impossible to wade the Yakima River from May through early September. Anglers fish from drift boats and rafts during the summer -- and find grasshopper-happy trout inches from the banks.

But spring is the sweetest time to cast a dry fly on the Yakima River. The river is easy to wade, the hatches can last all afternoon, and the rings of rising trout seem like mirages.

But they are real.

Big surprises from small places....

When I was a kid -- 13 or so -- I discovered a small lake tucked away inside a semi-exclusive Southern California housing development.  

I'd take my tobacco-brown fiberglass Fenwick fly rod down there early in the mornings and cast poppers for bluegill, small bass and green sunfish. Adults walking the lakeside path always told me two things:

"I didn't know this lake had fish!"

"There are no big fish in this lake."

A nice wild brown trout -- about 16 inches or so -- caught and released from a tiny Yellowstone National Park stream that is known for lots of beautiful, colorful 6-inch-long brook trout.

I was old enough -- and had fished long enough -- to know that many adults didn't know diddly about fishing. But, weirdly, I bought into the widespread wisdom that there were no big fish. After all, I wasn't catching any big fish.

Then, one morning, a swirling whirlpool sucked down my little popper and line peeled off my flimsy, chattering el cheapo reel. The fish felt like one of the big calico bass I hooked from time to time in the saltwater of Santa Monica Bay, but it wasn't.

The biggest largemouth bass I'd ever seen wallowed at the surface and dug for deep water. I didn't even have backing on the reel, and I saw the bare metal of the spool for the first time since I wound on the level line a year or two earlier.

But my stout leader -- I think it was 10-pound-test Maxima yanked off my saltwater pier fishing reel -- held, and I gingerly worked the bass to the bank. I was sure that fish was the new world record -- at least 25 pounds -- but, in hindsight, it wasn't.

That bass was probably 5 pounds or so, but it had the beer-drinker's pot belly that I'd admired in Field & Stream cover shots. For a second, I imagined how impressed all my friends would be with my toad bass.

In those days, all big fish caught in Southern California were called toads.

Then, of course, the fish shook his -- or her -- big head, and the little popper popped out. The bass slowly eased away, and I sat down -- shaking -- on the bank. I fought back tears for a couple of minutes. Then I started looking at that little lake in a new way.

I saw the bankside docks, lily pad fields, submerged weedbeds and, yes, that no one else was fishing that lake. I saw potential in the fact that no one took the lake seriously -- or were too busy rocketing off to work for even fish the water in their expensive housing development.

In that moment, I started to believe that big fish can show up just about anywhere. I was wrong about a lot of the stuff I believed as a scruffy teenager, but I wasn't wrong about that.

Since those days -- a lot of years ago -- I've stumbled onto big fish where they just didn't belong.

Knowing -- in your heart and your mind -- that big fish can be anywhere is a sweet gift of hope. That gift gives each day on the water a sense of anticipation and mystery.  I don't catch big fish in tiny water on every trip -- or even on most trips. But it happens often enough -- once or twice a year -- to keep my addiction to small-time water boiling in my veins.

I can't drive past a small stream without wondering what lurks in those dark, bathtub-sized pools below the rocky riffles.  I find myself casting flies on slow, near-stagnant canals and river backwaters hiding behind wader-ripping brush. Most of the time, I catch small fish -- or no fish at all. 

I don't know why big trout show up in small-fish water, but they do. I was creeping along a jump-across stream in Yellowstone National Park a few summers ago and casting a beetle fly to the many small brook and brown trout that flashed in the clear water.

It's a little silly to inch along a tiny creek on your hands and knees to catch and release tiny trout, but the setting -- a green meadow, bubbling hot springs and wolf tracks in the mud -- is magnificent, and I never see another angler on the water.  It's also fun to see the little beetle plop into the water and get hammered on every cast.

I inched around a grassy mound and got a good look at a small bend pool that had an undercut bank on the outside curve. It looked like a big tree branch was sticking out of the sandy bottom. Then the branch moved, and it turned into a big brown trout.  This brown eased back and forth in the gentle current -- but kept very close to the shade from the undercut bank.

I sat and watched this delicious mirage for a few minutes.

Then a grasshopper ratcheted out of the meadow grass and landed on the water. The brown rose and delicately sipped the big bug.

I waited a few minutes and then cast my beetle upstream into the pool. The brown rose with the ponderous grace of a nuclear submarine -- slowly, slowly, slowly -- and sucked down the fly.

I set the hook, and the brown shot under the cutbank and broke me off in the maze of grass roots. I think about that fish -- and that slow, slow rise -- almost every day. 

I visit Yellowstone almost every year, and I go back to that little stream with the dinky reputation on each trip. 

Sometimes I catch a few small, gleaming, jewels of brook and brown trout.

Sometimes I hook a big trout. A 16-incher is always a wonderful trout, but a brown of that size on this tiny stream looks like a salmon.

Sometimes, I don't even see a big fish, but that hope -- the hope of a scruffy, fish-addicted teenager with scabby knees and a sunburned nose -- fills my heart all day long.

It's impossible to make up stuff like this....

Every now and then, I read something on the Internet that shows how whacked-out -- and wonderful -- it is to live a watery, outdoors life in the Northwest.

Check this posting about March Brown fishing -- well, kind of -- on the Westfly.com Oregon forum.

As a professional outdoor writer, I love this tale -- and hope someday to scribble out one almost as good.

Online fly fishing photography magazine cranks up salmon fly fever

Nothing describes the intense beauty of fly fishing like a photograph.

And when the photos come from the cameras of experts, such as Oregon's Brian O'Keefe and his friends, the results ease from fishing shots to art.

That's what I found at Catch Magazine, O'Keefe's online fly fishing photography and video magazine. The Internet allows O'Keefe and other photographers the freedom to display their images without the boundaries of a print magazine.

O'Keefe, a veteran, well-known fly fishing photographer, has published his shots for years in fly fishing magazines, books and calendars. This new, online venture is clearly a labor of love. Every shot is brilliant and presented in a large format that explodes from the screen.

These shots cry out for a big, high-resolution computer screen. If your only high-res screen is at work, go in early or stay late to enjoy each issue. The photos are a world tour of fly fishing adventures.

O'Keefe put together a wonderful slideshow of floating down a secret Alaska rainbow trout river in the March issue, and every image captures the wild, clean feeling of country with very, very few human visitors.

The March issue also has two wonderful features:

Photographer Pat Clayton displays some of his underwater shots of trout. These crystal-clear, dynamic photos -- many taken with a remote-controlled digital camera -- are the best underwater shots of trout I've ever seen.

Todd Moen's video of the salmon fly hatch on Oregon's Deschutes River -- my home waters -- catches the mystery, weirdness, beauty and rush of this hatch. I'm addicted to fishing the Deschutes any month of the year, but salmon fly time -- late May through mid June -- is special.

The Deschutes can be very crowded during this hatch, but there are ways to avoid the crowds and find fantastic fishing.

Moen's video prompted me to paw through my boxes -- yes, boxes -- of salmon fly dry flies and dream of waking up with giant salmonflies and golden stoneflies clambering all over my tent.

This shot of lusty salmonflies crawling over my tent on a late May morning  isn't the quality of what you'll find in Catch Magazine, but it was the best I can do when my hands want to grab a fly rod.

My photography will never approach the magic that O'Keefe and his friends have on display at Catch Magazine. I suspect they've married talent, good equipment and the sheer willpower to put down the fly rods and pick up cameras when the fish are rising.

I just don't have the skills or will, but I do have Catch Magazine bookmarked on my computer, and so should you!

It takes the image-heavy Catch Magazine about 15 to 20 seconds to load when using a fast connection, which seems like an eternity to brains raised on lightning-fast service. But the short wait -- long enough to pour that glass of Coca-Cola -- is worth it.

And the March issue will get your rod hand shaking just a little bit.