Chester Allen's Watery Planet

Stalking trout and bass with a camera is a fun sideline to fishing for trout and bass

A nice Soda Butte Creek Yellowstone cutthroat trout captured with a camera lens aimed through grass.

I woke up this morning with a special place on my mind.

That place is a high, grassy bank on Soda Butte Creek in Yellowstone National Park. That bank is about 840 miles -- a full day's drive -- from my home, but it is always hovering around in my trout-addled brain.

I visit this special spot once or twice a year, and I guess that keeps it stuck in my head.  I love this spot because it's often jammed full of beautiful, wild Yellowstone cutthroat trout -- some of them pretty big. It's a great place to cast a beetle or grasshopper fly along the bank and watch the trout come up in a rush and a boil. Sometimes the fish are sipping little mayflies or caddis, and the casts, the flies and the rises get more delicate.

But you have to stay on your knees to keep from spooking the fish. On-your-knees fishing is fun, as you can often see the trout, but they can't see you. If they do see you, they vanish.

This heady mixture of frustration, knee pain and rewards is addictive enough to make an 840-mile drive seem fast and easy.  Yes, I'm jonesing for this spot -- and a few others around Yellowstone Country.

I started crawling through the streamside grass at this spot a few years ago. I wanted to get photos of the fish as they hovered over the rippling weedbeds and rose to bugs.  I bought a polarized lens for my camera and started to get sore elbows to go with my sore knees.  I'm a mediocre photographer, but the images still delight me. 

My friend, Tony Overman -- who is a top photojournalist -- gave me a great tip about polarized lenses. Sometimes the lens doesn't seem to cut the surface glare on the water, but Tony told me to slowly rotate the lens to get a clear shot. It works!

Confession: I usually have to catch and release a couple of fish before I can set down my rod and pick up the camera.  Luckily, this bank is about 300 yards long, so there is room for both happy addictions.

The world becomes tightly focused when you're crawling through tall grass alongside Soda Butte Creek. Bison dung -- especially fresh deposits -- can wreck a careful, painful stalk. But old deposits are not too bad.

Big beetles crawl and scrabble along those banks, and they often skitter over the back of my neck.

I now carry lots of beetle patterns when I fish that river.

I guess it's always a good idea to get close when fishing -- or photographing -- wild trout. Getting close has taught me a lot about trout and trout streams, bugs -- and the dung of large mammals.  I now spend a little bit of almost every fishing trip trying to get a shot of a fish in the water.  

Here's a local bass during the spawn:

Some waters aren't good candidates for fish spotting and photographing. The water is too cloudy, too fast or too deep. Sometimes -- as often seen on Puget Sound -- the fish are moving too fast. But other times, it's fun to turn into a heron and slowly, slowly stalk the fish.

I'm going to a favorite little Puget Sound creek some evening this week, and I hope to find little cutthroat and rainbow trout rising to hatching caddisflies. If I'm lucky, a few fish will come to my X-caddis fly -- and a few fish will rise to bugs under an overhanging tree branch. I like to drape myself over this branch and shoot photos of trout eating bugs. I've done this for a couple of years now, and I still don't have a great overhead shot of feeding fish.

But I'm working on it, and it's been a lot of fun. 

And, as I aim my camera at those little, jewel-like fish, I'll think of those big, beautiful Yellowstone cutts that are just 840 miles away from my flies -- and my camera.

So.... It's time for another photo contest. Send in your favorite shot -- just one! -- of a fishing swimming around in a lake, pond, river, stream or saltwater. First prize is one dozen dry flies that work on Oregon's Deschutes River. Second prize is 6 flies and third place is three flies.

Send your entry -- just one shot! -- to me at [email protected]. The winners will be chosen on Aug. 2.

Savoring solitude during the evening caddis blitz on Oregon's Deschutes River

Oregon's Deschutes River as the evening shadows steal over the water Saturday afternoon.

MAUPIN -- Salmonflies and golden stoneflies are long gone -- and so are the angler swarms of Salmonfly Madness.

Yet, the trout of Oregon's Deschutes River are still swimming around in the river -- and ravaging caddis, pale evening dun mayflies and pale morning dun mayflies. And they're also silly for the odd yellow sally stonefly drifting along the surface.

I've fished this river like a maniac since 1985, and this is my favorite time of year. And why not? Lots of rising fish and few anglers are a nice combination.  And fishing from late afternoon through the evening is my favorite time to fish this wonderful river.  I love seeing the long shadows inch across the water, and the air carries the scents of desert sage, wet trout and clean, cold water.

I zipped over to Maupin late Saturday afternoon with the notion of casting dry flies to rising trout until the Deschutes River Canyon was completely dark. I stopped by the Deschutes Angler fly shop in Maupin and talked to co-owner -- and friend  -- Amy Hazel, who guides the river several times a week.

Amy confirmed that the fish are on the banks and eating caddis.

"Not many people are out there, but the fishing is great," she said. 

Amy said many anglers think the best fishing is over after the last salmonflies and golden stoneflies lay their eggs -- or end up in the mouth of a trout. But it's easy to find rising trout throughout the day along the bankside foam lines.

And, of course, the Deschutes is famous for the evening caddisfly blitz.

Amy said the good daytime caddis action should last through July -- with great fishing early and late in the day.

 August is caddis, caddis, caddis early in the morning -- think bajillions of little, dead caddisflies sprawled on the water  -- and caddis hatch late in the afternoon into the evening. Deep nymphing -- or a nap under a tree -- takes care of the scorching, sun-blasted afternoon.

Amy writes a regular, detailed fishing report for the river, and it's a must-read for anyone who fishes the Deschutes. Amy is a really nice person, an expert angler -- and she's always ready to talk fish and the river.

I left the shop and headed for a favorite section of river, which has good bank water -- steep rocky spots with deep water and overhanging trees -- a backeddy and a nice, rocky flat.

The steep bankwater -- especially in tree shade -- is good before the sun goes off the water. Backeddies often fill up with feeding trout as soon as they're in the shade.  Trout glide onto the flats -- especially downstream of riffles -- in the evenings to feed on hatching or egg-laying caddis.

This spot has all of these areas within 300 yards, which means I spend a lot of time -- probably too much time --loping up and down the banks to see what is going on.

Caddis adults in a mating dance over streamside grass and brush. Millions of these bugs hatch, fly around and lay eggs on the Deschutes on almost every summer day.

I found trout rising to caddis Saturday afternoon wherever there was shade and cover.  I used Craig Mathew's X-Caddis with a small pupa tied to a dropper. The fish wanted the X-Caddis, so I clipped off the dropper and just hopscotched to shade spot to shade spot.

Fishing -- and catching -- was pretty fast. I managed to lose most of the bigger fish to underwater rocks and snags. It's the price to pay when fishing the afternoon shade on the river.  I also left a few flies in trees. I was happy to see quite a few 10-inch-long trout -- they were NOT steelhead smolts -- popping around after caddis. A healthy river has trout in all sizes, and I also noticed a lot of young-of-the-year rainbows along the shoreline.

As the last daylight faded, the fish moved into the backeddies and flats.  A flurry of pale evening dun mayflies got the fish pumped up for a few minutes, and a size 14 PED parachute and size 14 PED Sparkle Dun both worked well. I suspect that these flies are particularly tasty for the trout, as they jump on them just about whenever they show up. The fish on Washington's Yakima River do the exact same thing.

One that I didn't bungle. This fish was feeding under a shady tree Saturday evening.

Then the fish settled down into feeding on emerging caddis, and a Iris Caddis -- another Craig Mathews creation -- worked really well. An Iris Caddis sits low in the surface film and glows and shimmers just like a caddis caught in the pupal shuck.

Things were building up really nicely -- I spotted two very big redside rainbows rising regularly just downstream of me -- when a big, dusty gusts of winds suddenly started blowing over the river.  Caddis adults pelted me like hail!

The wind kept gusting -- and the fish stopped rising. Eventually, that sudden wind blew me off the river a little earlier than I expected.

But I wasn't disappointed at all. Any time on the Deschutes  -- it's my favorite river on the planet --fills my soul.

I made the long hike back to the car under a moon that rose over the canyon rimrock. The best time of the year -- summer on the Deschutes is here, and there are days and days of rising trout rising amid the scent of sagebrush and clean water ahead.

Fishing an entire falling tide reveals Puget Sound secrets -- and sea-run cutthroat trout

This handsome sea-run cutthroat trout was one of the few I didn't bungle during Wednesday's big falling tide -- which dropped 18.8 feet in a morning. 

Fishing an entire falling tide defies time.

My watch is forgotten for the 7 hours or so it takes a Puget Sound minus tide to finish draining an inlet. Instead, my eyes watch the water level recede down the pebbly, shelly beach -- and expose the underwater ledges, channels, dropoffs and shellfish beds that attract the fish.

It is almost hypnotizing -- and I always feel as though I've woken from a dream when the tidal current stops flowing around my legs.

I took the entire morning Wednesday -- from 6:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. -- to haunt a South Puget Sound beach during one of the biggest minus tides of the year. The water level dropped from 14.5 feet above the mean high tide line to 4.3 feet below the mean low tide line.

Simply put, the water would drop 18.8 feet right in front of my eyes.

I have fished this beach regularly for 12 years, but I've never seen it at such a low tide. I brought my camera, a bottle of water -- and my sea-run cutthroat gear. I wanted to fish through the falling tide -- see the rips form and vanish and reform somewhere else. I wanted to see what the bottom of this inlet looked like. I wanted to learn what created the standing waves that pop up from time to time near the current rips. I wanted to know why this beach holds good numbers of feeding sea-run cutts on the falling tide.

And, of course,  I wanted to catch a few sea-run cutthroat trout.

Here's what the beach looked like at about 7:40 a.m. -- just as the tide really began falling:

There isn't much beach at this point, but the start of a pretty good rip -- the seam between fast and slow water -- is easy to see.  A big school of eel-like sand lance were right in the soft pocket of slow water near the bank.

It's also a bright, sunny morning. The weather and water level would change rapidly throughout the morning.

Here's how the other end of the beach -- downcurrent of the first shot -- looked:

A bigger rip was forming off another point -- there was about 40 yards between the two rips -- and the tiny standing waves are an indication of the bottom suddenly dropping away from a ledge or stream channel.

Sea-run cutthroat trout were already chasing sand lance in this lower rip, as the current was flowing really fast and pushing baitfish down the inlet. The little fish had nowhere to go.

Here's a shot of the same rip about an hour later. The current is even stronger. What you can't see is the two sea-run cutthroat that came to my sand lance pattern -- Les Johnson's Williams Point Sand Lance streamer -- and that I bungled on the strike. But the tide kept dropping and the current kept flowing:

I kept fishing.

Sea-run cutthroat trout were working the edges of fast and slow water. Then a sea lion roared into the rip and spooked the daylights out of every fish. 

I went back to the upcurrent rip to see what was going on. I bungled a couple more fish, which was no surprise. Then I looked downcurrent, and saw this:

Another angler -- with his young son strapped into his backpack -- was exploring the lower rip with long, graceful casts. A western breeze was blowing in a pretty thick overcast at this point, and the day was getting darker.

I expected the guy to hook up any second, but that sea lion had really spooked the fish. But the angler -- we talked later and his name is Greg Fulling -- was having a great time with his young son. The boy kept kicking his feet, laughing and saying: "Da, Da, Da, Dadddyyyyy."  Sharing that big beach with those two was wonderful.

Greg and his boy had to leave when the overcast turned into a gentle rain shower. I was sorry to see them go.

Sure enough, the fishing got hotter as the weather got darker and wetter. I hooked another fish or two while running up and down the beach. One of the fish was the nice cutt seen at the start of these ramblings about tides and fish and weather. I also kept taking photographs of what usually lurks beneath the surface:

This photo was taken at about 12:30 p.m. -- about an hour before slack tide. it's easy to see how much water rolled out of the inlet that morning. This photo is taken from roughly the same viewpoint as the first beach photo in this package. The beach humps and stream channels hold sea-run cutthroat trout -- when they're full of water. 

I know a lot more about this beach tonight than I did last night. And I got to savor a quiet morning of watching moving water, pestering sea-run cutts and seeing a father fish with his very young -- and delighted -- son.

Yes, it's almost hypnotizing on the big falling tides of the summer solstice. And the time just vanished.

Wiggly rubber legs mixed into fur dubbing hooks angler during a bookstore browse

This fly needs help -- a few of the rubber legs are tied down into the dubbing -- but it hooked trout.

I see lots of new flies -- often variations on an existing pattern, which is OK -- in fly shops, magazines, websites and even on the river. 

It is amazing how many flies garland streamside tree branches by the time the World Series rolls around.  I once pulled 9 flies from a particularly pesky tree branch on Oregon's Deschutes River. One or two of those flies were probably mine from earlier trips.

Anyway, some new flies just look buggy and trouty to me, and all my bells started ringing when I came across photos of David Klausmeyer's Swimming Caddis Pupa in the spring edition of "Fly Tyer" magazine.

Confession: I was actually leafing through the magazine while visiting the downtown Portland Borders bookstore. I subscribe to a lot of fishing and surfing and outdoor magazines -- "Field & Stream" is my favorite right now, as the writing is terrific -- and I buy others off the newsstand. I bought this edition of "Fly Tyer."

What got me excited about the fly was the tiny, wiggly rubber legs. 

A jumble of tiny legs waving in the current seemed like a good idea.

But I had never noticed dubbing with rubber legs in any fly shop.  Klausmeyer wrote that two companies make the stuff. I ordered a selection of 12 Hare's Wiggle colors from Hareline Dubbin. Bugmaster Doug Swisher also makes a similar product, which is called Swisher's Rub a Dub.

My local fly shop got the Hare's Wiggle dubbing -- the sample pack of 12 colors is $17 -- and I started tying. Klausmeyer advised to use a dubbing loop, but he warned that the tiny rubber legs would get tangled and the fly would look messy.

Both of these things happened, but I didn't care. Trout -- and other gamefish -- like messy flies. Klausmeyer used Stretch Tubing for body of the fly, but I substituted pheasant tail with a copper wire ribbing. I'll tie some up with Stretch Tubing when I can dig some of that stuff out of my massive collection of fly-tying materials. Some of my materials are in Hood River, Oregon, and some are in Olympia, Washington.

Yeah, the particular material I need at the moment is often 165 miles away. So it goes.

I tested out the fly on Oregon's Deschutes River as a dropper off a golden stonefly Norm Woods Special. The trout -- and some really nice trout -- whacked and walloped that fly!  I think those wiggly legs make a difference.

I also got the fly wet on Washington's own Deschutes River, which is really a smallish creek flowing through Thurston County and into the Puget Sound at Budd Inlet. The resident rainbows and cutthroat trout liked the fly a lot. I drifted it under an X-Caddis during an evening session tonight -- and during a quick lunch trip last week.

I think this fly is a winner. I'm going to try the Wiggle Dub on some other flies, such as Gold-ribbed Hare's Ears, scuds and stonefly nymphs. I bet the wee, wiggling legs will jazz up those flies -- especially the scuds I tie for sea-run cutthroat trout in Puget Sound.

I'm not about to stop tying my fur-dubbed flies in traditional recipes. But change is good, and showing the fish something new is often a very good idea. 

I promise to never claim I've created a new fly, such as a Rubber-Legged, Wiggle Dub Hare's Ear.

Chilly, windy Columbia River smallmouth -- and sweet cherries off the tree

Bing cherries on the tree -- and about to make the short trip to my mouth.

I had high hopes for Bass-O-Rama this past weekend.

My partner, Heather, was harvesting cherries at a family orchard upstream of the Columbia River's John Day Dam, and great smallmouth bass water is a short walk from the fruit trees.  I sometimes feel bad about strolling off with fishing tackle when everyone else is working, but an angler has to be strong sometimes.

This rocky stretch of river -- what part of the Columbia River isn't rocky? -- has the perfect mix of ledges, weedbeds, current seams and dropoffs. It also swarms with ultra-aggressive, red-eyed smallmouth bass. I arrived late on Friday night, but the very air seemed to carry the mixed scent of biting bass -- and ripe cherries.

Heather, who gets up at the wicked, foolish hour of 4:15 a.m. on harvest days -- never mind it is still too dark to see the doggone fruit -- advised me Saturday morning that the wind was howling. I got up -- about three hours later -- and the wind was ripping down the river. Swells pounded my favorite rocky banks, and casting a fly rod and gurgling, chugging popper would have been foolish.

In fact, I didn't even give it a shot.  I spent the day hiking around the orchard and eating handfuls of cherries picked right off the tree. Blood-red Bing cherries dripped off overloaded branches, and the whole red-and-green color scheme reminded me of Christmas.

When I looked at the river, I was reminded of a stormy Pacific Ocean.

My eyes popped open on Sunday morning to the sound of lighter winds. I jumped into my clothes, and sauntered into the living room, where Heather and her parents greeted my arrival with complete astonishment.

"I'm going fishing," I explained. No one was surprised at that.

The river still looked a little rough, and the breeze was cold. Rick, Heather's dad, reminded me that a backwater a few miles away was in the lee of steep ridges. I was there in less than 10 minutes.  The backwater is narrow, as steep slopes rise from the banks.  It was cold -- but calm.

I rigged up near a jumble of bones and deer hair. A mule deer fawn had died a few weeks before, and not much was left of the carcass. This is hard, scrabbly sagebrush and basalt country, and scavangers had quickly consumed all there was to eat. Now, white, sun-bleached bone gleamed through gray patches of gray hair.

I shivered and wished I'd brought a fleece instead of a cotton sweatshirt. But it was good to be on the water before the sun popped over the rimrock and blasted the bass into the greeny depths.

I hiked up the ridge and scanned the water below. Smallmouth bass hovered near clumps of rocks and ledges. There it was -- Bass-O-Rama -- and just a day late.  I eased down to the water, tied on one of the poppers my friend Dwight Caron recently gave me and dropped a cast near a clump of big boulders.

Two chugs, and that popper vanished in swirling whitewater. A foot-long smallmouth was at my feet a couple minutes later. I rock-hopped a few feet and made another cast. Another smallmouth -- bigger and fatter --whacked the fly.

Yes!

I got out my camera to take a photo of the bass, and it wouldn't work. A message on the screen -- isn't it weird that everything has an electronic screen these days? -- said: "Insert New Power Pack."

The "New Power Pack" was about 70 miles away in Hood River. I, foolishly, was attempting to travel light.

I let the fish go, and figured I would surely now catch the 20-inch-long, 5-pound smallmouth that I've wanted for a couple of years. In my weird belief system, things like this happen when the camera is at home or not working.

A gust of icy wind hit my face. Then another gust. And then it started to really blow. All this happened in seconds. I tried a cast -- and hooked my own hat.

Bass-O-Rama would have to wait a few more weeks. Smallmouth bass fishing from the Columbia River shoreline is good all summer -- especially early in the mornings. And this day was the first day of summer -- although it felt like late October. 

But knowing that months of good fishing are ahead took the bad taste out of the bitter wind.

I rock-hopped back to the car and headed for those trees dripping with sweet, tart fruit.  

Moon snails, jellyfish and feeding cutthroat trout during a big falling tide on Puget Sound

A big jellyfish -- I think it was a Lion's Mane -- drifts down a Puget Sound inlet during Thursday's extreme low tide.  This jelly was more than two feet across.

I got up before the sun Thursday morning, as I wanted to fish -- and explore -- a favorite Puget Sound inlet during a major low tide.

The tide actually started dropping at 1:30 a.m., but I didn't get out there until 5 a.m. I wandered around in the gray light of dawn and watched the current just hiss on by. So much water was pouring out of the inlet. I could actually see the water level dropping -- just as though someone had pulled the drain plug out of a bathtub.

Rips were all over the place, and I connected with a nice sea-run cutthroat trout right off the bat:

This sea-run cutthroat trout was chasing sand lance in a rip -- the seam between fast and slow water.

Sand lance were wiggling in and out of the rips, and a slightly modified version of Les Johnson's Williams Point Sand Lance worked just great.  I caught two more fish -- and then the phone rang. Yeah, I know it's dumb to carry a cell phone onto the water, but I was expecting a call from the East Coast.

I talked for a bit, rocketed back home for some fast some computer work -- and then made it back onto the water by 7 a.m. By then, the tidal current had eased somewhat, but plenty of rips and boiling dropoffs were still waiting for my fly.

The morning's third sea-run cutthroat trout on Les Johnson's Williams Point Sand Lance fly.

The sea-run cutts of early summer -- OK, summer starts on Sunday, but it has really been summer in South Puget Sound for two weeks -- are fat and glossy and just hammer the right fly. There are no gentle takes in June.

Walking down the beach and following the rips as they formed and vanished -- rips fished 45 minutes earlier were high and dry -- was fun. The sky was overcast, the air was balmy, and I felt as though I was the only person awake.

Of course, the marine life in the inlet had to swim, scuttle or ooze very quickly to stay in the water. The tide was falling just that fast.

A bloated moon snail was finishing a morning meal of clam when I took this photo:

This was a small moon snail -- the shell was about the size of a baseball. As I understand it, these critters find a clam, drill a hole in the unlucky clam's shell -- and then start eating. Could you imagine life if these creatures were as big as a car?  

The moon snail's body looks like some squishy organ pulled out of another animal. These are amazing creatures, and big low tides, such as Puget Sound gets during the summer solstice, are the best times to find these snails.

I actually spent more time slogging around the beach looking for weird marine creatures than I did fishing. Bajillions of crabs scuttled around, and strange crustaceans popped in and out of tiny holes in the bottom muck.

Fish started boiling on sand lance trapped in the slow, inside water of a fast rip, and I trotted down the beach and cast my fly into the swirls. The take was immediate, and a nice resident coho salmon vaulted out of the water three times before I could catch my breath.  Then the coho showed me my backing.

I eventually got the coho in -- it was about 19 inches as measured against my rod -- and slipped out the barbless hook and let it go.  I hope to catch this fish again in, say, August. It looks like a very good coho year for South Puget Sound beach anglers!

The tide kept dropping, and I kept looking for new sights.  I found a big bed of giant oysters, and I lined up the spot with easy-to-remember landmarks on the shore. I bet sea-run cutts hang out around this spot just about all year.

Visiting a Puget Sound beach as the water recedes during a big low tide is the best way to find the dropoffs, shellfish beds, old, submerged pilings and ledges that attract sea-run cutts.  I come back when the water is covering these little spots and fish them hard.

My last fish of the morning whacked the sand lance fly, which was getting pretty tattered.

Few fish are more beautiful than a bright sea-run cutthroat trout in saltwater. The white-tipped fins glow against the dark bottom rocks.

I always limit myself to four hookups on this inlet, as I want to give the fish at this special spot a break.  It's not easy to walk away from boiling fish, but it was 8:30 a.m. at this point, and the tidal current was slowing down.  

And there will be more big low tides later this week and into next week. In fact, the water level will drop 4 feet more next Wednesday than it did today. Amazing. That tide is probably the biggest minus tide of the year.

I'm going to try to explore other beaches during the big minus tides next week -- if only to see what other interesting creatures live in the deeper parts of Puget Sound. And I might find a few feeding sea-run cutthroat trout....

Goggle-eyed, sparkle-dusted bass poppers are a gift from an angler's heart

Three carefully crafted bass poppers -- a gift from Dwight Caron -- a new fishing friend.

My real job is as an outdoor writer and columnist  for two western Washington newspapers, and there is no better job in American journalism.

I'm not going to get rich, but I get to write about what I love, go to beautiful places and meet great people. Quite a few of those people become good friends. 

About a week ago, a guy named Dwight Caron came up to me while I was working on a story about injured and wounded Fort Lewis soldiers learning to tie flies and fly fish. The program is called Project Healing Waters, and it is wonderful.

Anyway, Caron, who is a retired police officer, gently scolded me for recommending a bass popper from Megastore Cabela's in my yearly Father's Day gift guide. I do the gift guide to save my fellow anglers from opening up well-intentioned gifts of ties embroidered with wee images of trout or fancy Atlantic salmon flies.

Seriously, if you're going to give an angling dad a present, give him tackle. That goes for angling moms as well. I treasure all the angling gifts -- from hand-painted river pebbles to a fly tied onto a safety pin to a tiny fly box -- that my daughter Courtney has given me during her 19 years.  I keep all these gifts -- talismans of love -- in a special part of my vest.

I told Caron, who was sporting an ear-to-ear smile, that I chose the Cabela's popper because it was easy to get -- and just about any kid could afford the less-than-$4 price tag. Caron clapped me on the shoulder and fished a little tin container out of his pocket.

Inside were three goggle-eyed, sparkle-dusted, hand-painted, fantastic bass poppers. Caron had tied them himself -- and they had clearly taken some time.

"These are for you," Caron said. 

I -- a newspaper reporter for 17 years -- almost teared up on the spot. Caron then went back to helping a soldier suffering from the emotional impact of 14 months in Iraq tie her first-ever Woolly Bugger.

What is it about fishing that makes our hearts bigger and more generous? The older angler with time on his hands and gentle kindness is almost a cliche in our sport. But it happens often enough to be true most of the time. I see Northwestern anglers labor on stream restoration projects, trout and salmon spawning surveys, kid fishing days -- and even visiting military bases to bring hope to our veterans.

Is it the fishing -- the long, patient days on the water, where fitting into nature is the key to success? Does angling give us broader insights to the world? I hope so. I think so.

I try to never discuss politics with my fishing friends. Somehow, it seems wrong to bring the arguments of the day into such a timeless pastime. We can all be friends on the water, as we can all agree about the beauty of a trout porpoising on hatching mayflies or a bass sucking down a popping bug in a slow, swirling boil.

Maybe spending all that time running around outdoors makes the best parts of us grow -- at least for most of us. I suspect that is true for Dwight Caron. I know it is true for so many anglers that I know. 

The anglers that never learn how to give or share -- these are the folks that have to win some weird contest every time they're on the water, hog the best water or somehow have to prove their worth by what they catch -- have missed the real message. Luckily, there are not many of these anglers around. None of them are my friends.

Anyway, I do plan to get those flies wet in a local bass lake during the next week or so -- at least two of them. I can't wait to see them gurgle and sputter across the glassy, late-evening water. I think I'm going to put the third goggle-eyed masterpiece on the shelf over my fly-tying desk -- to remind me of my new friend and to keep my heart open.

A Puget Sound sunset, plenty of wilted, scummy salad and a little bit of skunk....

Photos can lie. This image doesn't show the dusty scum on the Puget Sound water or the clouds of ragged algae drifting in the current Monday evening. Algae blooms are a curse of fishing Puget Sound.

I didn't pester one fish all weekend, so I took my withdrawl-wracked, detoxing body -- my hands were shaking on the trail to the water -- to fish the incoming tide on a Eld Inlet beach Monday evening.

Three days without fishing is a pretty serious dilemma for me, and I was ready to hook a hot sea-run cutthroat trout to get rid of the shakes.  As I waited for the tide, I finished tying a bunch of marine worm flies -- all doctored-up Woolly Buggers  -- for a fly swap with friends from the www.washingtonflyfishing.com message board, and I had a few extra to show the trout.

I imagined seeing swirls right off the shore, as ravenous cutts prowled for food boiling up out of the newly submerged gravel.

I didn't imagine what I got, which was masses of limp algae oozing along in the soupy incoming tide. The algae, which looked like low-quality canned spinach, was thick in the water. It looked like a sickly green blizzard as the weak incoming tidal current coaxed the mess along the beach.

Dead jellyfish were scatter among the bajillion chunks of green goo, and the whole mess looked as trouty as Interstate 5 in South Seattle. I didn't have a chance of hooking a sea-run cutt, as any self-respecting trout was long gone.

Algae blooms are the wicked curse of Puget Sound fishing. It's all a natural deal after a few warm days, but it sure wrecks the fishing.

Nonetheless, I rigged up and started casting a Dumb Protein fly. My choice of fly was perfect, as my brain was about as active and effective as the limp algae salad pooling up behind my waders. The whole effect was eerily similar to standing in a sewage treatment pond.

Still, I cast. I was that needy for a strike.

But, even as the dusty scum on the water's surface reflected the setting sun, I knew I wasn't casting over fish. I decided to just enjoy the balmy evening and wait for the sunset.  The sun dipped below the ridge on the other side of the inlet, and the water shimmered for a few seconds. Then it just looked greasy and dusty again.

As I hiked back to the Subaru, I told myself that I'd be back in a day or two -- after some of this week's big falling tides flush out the inlet. In the meantime, I'm going to pester some small-stream trout with dry flies.

It was almost dark as I hiked the trail back to the car, and  I heard rustling behind me. I stopped and looked back -- and a skunk was about 70 feet away and kinda-sorta following me up the trail.

Little, scummy tendrils of algae hung off my fly line and fly rod.

A mosquito buzzed right into my ear.

Everything was just perfect.  

Fishing the early morning, before-work falling tide with my Uncle Alvin

I wonder if my Uncle Alvin helped me catch this pretty sea-run cuttthroat trout Thursday morning.

I work up early Thursday morning -- 4:30 a.m. -- and couldn't go back to sleep.

So many thoughts were jumping around in my mind. I was thinking about the possible one-week, unpaid "furlough" that my company may announce in a few days.  I thought about pay cuts and shorter work weeks and a beloved daughter working hard at university.

Yeah, I may have felt sorry for myself too.

Then, as I watched the sun lighten the eastern sky, I thought of A.O. Hill, my great-uncle from Oklahoma. My Unk lived through the Great Depression and a whole lot more. A.O. Hill had seen a lot, survived it all -- and never quit or stopped savoring life. 

 I also thought of something Unk announced one morning:

"Everyone has to believe in something, and I believe in going fishing."

So, I went fishing.

Luckily, high tide in a favorite South Puget Sound inlet was at 7:28 a.m. The beach I had in mind starts to get the falling tide about 90 minutes after high tide.  I had time to eat breakfast, tie a few flies and get to the spot with time to spare.

I was a beautiful, warm morning -- with some nice cloud cover. Butterflies -- some sort of swallowtail -- fluttered over the saltwater inlet as I rigged my rod. For some reason, I often see butterflies flapping over saltwater. There are no flowers or plants out there! I once found lots of butterflies flying over the Gulf of Mexico about 10 miles offshore of Cedar Key, Florida.

The water was a tiny bit cloudy, as winds the night before had stirred up the nearshore silt. This inlet has a big inlet stream -- and quite a few small, jump-across creeks as well. Some of these streams flow through suburbs, and others flow through forested country.

This beach can be great, or it can be empty of fish. It's a fickle spot, and it's best to fish it early or late in the day, as it becomes the semi-crowded territory of non-anglers on nice days. It's hard to fish a beach with kids and dogs and parents running around.

Anyway, the tide was moving well by 9 a.m. I'd been up long enough that my body clock was wondering when lunch would arrive. I ignored the internal gurgles and started casting a shrimp pattern -- actually a simple freshwater scud pattern tied onto a size 12 saltwater hook. The fly is just Hare's Ear dubbing with a Krystal Flash ribbing and tail.

The sea-run cutts on this beach really like to chase small crustaceans -- little shrimp, little crabs or other weird creatures -- when the falling tide begins to flush out of the inlet. 

I began casting into a little rip, as one or two cutts were swirling right on the edge between the fast and slow water. I let the current carry the fly into the rip, and I than made hard, sharp strips to bring in the line. Little sprints and spurts of speed is how these little creatures scuttle out of trouble.

I didn't get a bite in 10 casts, but it looked like five or six fish were now working the rip seam.

I cast out again, and let the current swing the intermediate line into the rip. Just before I started to strip in the line, my rod jumped to life. A fish -- a nice fish -- had hit scud as the current carried it from the fast water of the rip to the edge of the slow water.

I guess the fish didn't want to chase their food that day. They were just letting breakfast glide down the current and into their mouths.

The fish jumped twice -- rare for a sea-run cutt -- and ripped off a lot of line. I though I had hooked a rare beach steelhead. A few minutes later, a nice cutt was at my feet. I put my rod down in the shallow water and took a quick photo of the gleaming, glowing fish.

I looked at my watch. It was 9:35 a.m., and I had to be at work by 10 a.m. I reached down, pulled out the barbless hook and watched the beautiful trout swim away. I felt completely relaxed -- I could have sprawled out on that pebbly, barnacle-studded beach and gone right to sleep.

As I walked back to the car, I got a clear image of my Unk laughing as he reeled in a big crappie on Lake Texoma more than 20 years ago. I thought of my brother Casey -- the best man that I know -- and his special relationship with our Unk. Casey tells me that he sometimes feels Unk is right next to him. 

My Unk died a long time ago, but I suddenly felt as though he had been there with me on that beach.

I don't know, maybe he was.  I hope so. 

I got to the car, changed my clothes and headed off to work. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day.

Fishing for the truth while leaning on the neighborhood fly shop counter

All these salmonfly and golden stonefly dry flies worked on Oregon's Deschutes River during the past three weeks, but they didn't all work at the same time.

"All you need is a ____, and you'll catch fish all day."

"If they won't eat this fly, they won't eat anything."

"This rod will add 10 feet to your cast."

"It's a great spot, but you have to hike down into that rocky canyon, dodge the poison oak along the bank and you'll maybe catch one or two fish."

I have heard all of these claims in Northwest fly shops during the past month, and all of them are true. All of them are also cow manure.

What?

We humans love to put everything in neat little boxes. We like to think we're dialed in on the fish so well that we can tie a fly on at the rig and catch a fish on the first cast.

Sometimes we are dialed in -- or lucky -- and it all happens as planned. These days happen most often when you're hanging around a fly shop. Doesn't all this sound so much easier when gusts of icy wind aren't stabbing needles into your face, your leader isn't wrapped around a thorny thistle stalk and fresh coffee is burbling into the pot?

We all stand around and make it sound so easy, so automatic and so slick.  It's all so simple -- such as finding out whether the trout in that big, glassy, swirly backeddy were eating Pale Morning Dun mayfly spinners, emerging caddis, midges or Yellow Sally stoneflies.

Out there, on the real backeddy, we stand thigh-deep in cold water, stare at the bugs stuck on the surface, cast a few times, swear -- and then peer into our fly boxes looking for answers. Sometimes we find the answer, sometimes there is more than one answer --  and sometimes we just want to lash the water to a froth with our $600 fly rods.

The fly shop -- most of the time -- is the home of simple answers, big, dripping fish, hatch charts and tangle-free leaders.

The real water -- almost all of the time -- is where we grope around for answers, bark our shins on submerged chunks of slippery basalt rock, forbid any bananas in the boat and wish we hadn't left the lucky hat in the truck.

We anglers -- especially fly anglers -- live in two different worlds. One is clean -- well, most of the time -- well-lit and fits well into our little boxes. 

The other world is saturated with chaos, guesswork and superstition.  Fishing is pretty much about figuring out what is going on -- at least at that moment. Sometimes, we figure it out -- and then tell our story in the fly shop.

But we leave our important details, such as the poison oak itch that is driving you nuts, how you tangled your leader on that alder tree on three casts in a row and how -- when that big, red-spotted brown trout was finally hooked -- you made all kinds of promises to the fish gods just so you could land the fish.

We don't talk too much about the urge to hold onto the fish -- even if we're hardcore catch-and-release anglers -- and run up and down the river showing it off. 

No, we just lean on that glass counter and talk about snaking that cast into the perfect spot and watching that big head suck down the fly.

I know all this because I fish -- and I stand around in fly shops shooting the breeze. I'm also guilty of living in these two worlds....