A pod of raggedy and lusty rainbow trout -- all of them broodstock males from a hatchery -- are hanging out in a tough western Washington neighborhood.
Some of them are fighting and squabbling in a tiny slip of Woodland Creek -- right underneath a train trestle and amidst floating plastic bottles and backwaters covered with a shiny, green scum.
Dog turds -- slowly decaying -- decorate the bank, and shards of broken glass glisten on the stream bottom.
Two frustrated, retired male broodstock fish from a hatchery look for females that will never arrive in western Washington's Woodland Creek. This photo makes their digs look a lot better than they really are. A railroad trestle is right over their heads, and pile of plastic bottles bobs just upstream.
The trout, which were stocked into nearby Pattison and Long lakes to spice up catches on the April 25 trout opener, didn't stay in the lakes. The fish may be retired from the state of Washington's broodstock program, but they evidently still have needs.
So, the boys headed off to Woodland Creek -- the marshy, urban stream that connects the two lakes -- to find some girls.
They have only found frustration amid flooded willows, broken concrete and cloudy Gatorade bottles.
Larry Phillips, local fish biologist for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, says electro-shock surveys show that there are no wild trout in this stretch of Woodland Creek.
And that means the bachelor trout have little or no chance of finding female spawning partners in their new, semi-squalid neighborhood.
Phillips, who stocked the retired brooder males into the two lakes, didn't expect them to hightail it into the stream.
But there they are.
Another pod of males -- many of them sporting the rasty, whitish fungus of a spawning fish -- are hanging out near a big, rusty culvert that directs Woodland Creek's flow under a busy road. These fish seem resigned to spawn-free future.
They nip at each other from time to time, but they spend most of the day easing around their lair with the hopeless lassitude of teenage boys trapped in the car on a long family road trip. There is even a crumpled Doritos package hung on a submerged limb.
Retired hatchery broodstock rainbow trout -- all males -- hang out near a Woodland Creek culvert.
These pods of lovelorn hatchery trout seem like good quarry for Brownliners -- a tribe of fly anglers who take pride in finding and catching fish from sketchy urban waters. Brownlining -- also known as ditch fishing -- was recently the subject of a wonderful Wall Street Journal story.
But western Washington Brownliners can't pester these fish until the June 1 opening day of stream angling.
The frustrated, lust-corroded trout will probably be gone by then. Some may return to the lake -- where there are tiny females fresh from the hatchery runways -- but no spawning grounds.
The hatchery females will probably be more interested in committing suicide by PowerBait than any kind of trouty romance.
The other males may end their lives in Woodland Creek's maze of flooded willows, culverts, and murky backwaters.
But there are many other places to brownline in Puget Sound cities and suburbs.
Some anglers have brownlined for years. In fact, it's safe to say that most fly anglers have brownlined from time to time.
When I was a poverty-stricken journalism student at the University of Oregon, I lived in school housing perched on the muddy, weedy, shopping-cart-studded banks of Eugene's Amazon Creek.
Most Eugene anglers cast their lines into the McKenzie and Willamette rivers for beautiful wild rainbow and cutthroat trout. I was one of them.
But I looked out my bedroom window one morning to see a group of kids feeding popcorn to a writhing, splashing school of giant carp.
I lashed styrofoam packing peanuts to hooks, trimmed them into a popcorn shape and colored them a sickly yellow with my daughter's marking pens.
The next day, I cast those clumsy flies onto the scummy surface of Amazon Creek.
Carp rose to the flies, and my reel chattered and screamed as the big fish took off on long, scorching runs and broke off on concrete blocks studded with rusting rebar.
I breathlessly ran through thorn-studded blackberry thickets while chasing hooked carp. I finally coaxed a big carp to my flip-flopped feet, which were covered with cuts and slime. That fish was about 10 pounds, which is modest for a carp.
I was out of flies and a 10-page paper was due in 36 hours.
I let the fish go and went inside to tie more popcorn flies.
Most anglers -- like the Woodland Creek hatchery rainbows -- are trapped by their own desires and strange needs.
