STAIRCASE, OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK -- The river, after months of little or no rain, was showing its bones.
Current tongues flowed into deeper pools -- amid lots of exposed rock and fallen logs. I've fished this river two or three times a year for more than a decade, and I've never seen it so low, so exposed.
It was about 3 p.m., and the trout -- wild rainbows and a few bull trout -- weren't hard to find. They were kegged up in the deeper slots and pools -- and downright paranoid.
Two ospreys cruising over the river for easy pickings were partly to blame, but trout in thin water are always jumpy.
I figured that one or two fish were holding in a deeper slot that fed a deep pool. The spot was in shade, so I dropped a size 14 Elk Hair Caddis onto the bouncy water. Two fish spooked when the dry fly landed on the water.
I took the hint, reeled up my line and retreated to a riverside rock.
There was no way these fish were going to bite -- not until just before dark. Hours of waiting stretched out in my mind.
I got up, walked upstream to a bunch of huge boulders that squat in a deep hole and put on my polarized sunglasses and started looking for fish.
If I couldn't catch them -- at least right away -- I sure could watch them.
I've been an avid fish watcher since I hooked my first fish -- a hatchery rainbow from California's Kern River -- back in 1968. I just can't help myself.
Koi in restaurant fish ponds, minnows in the concrete-encased Los Angeles river, piling perch hovering next to pier pilings -- any fish, anywhere puts me into a staring trance. I think this is a trait that all hardcore anglers share.
It's easy to spot angling junkies -- they're always staring at the water -- even while driving. Sit by a roadside river, and you'll soon see cars and trucks weaving around. Drive by a bridge, and you'll see the rear ends of anglers peering at the water -- looking for fish. Waterfront restaurants are great places to see beady-eyed anglers staring for fish and dribbling partially chewed food.
All this is hard on spouses and romantic partners -- unless they're also anglers.
Anyway, I sat on a big North Fork Skokomish rock and stared into the clear water, which was shades of jade green and blue. I was looking for shadows, as wild trout can blend in perfectly with the bottom. But they still cast shadows, and a shadow that looks like a torpedo -- especially one weaving back and forth in the current -- is usually a sneaky fish.
I also look for shadows that barely wiggle -- or vanish and reappear. Sometimes, I spend a lot of time looking at really big shadows and get pumped up over the big trout within casting range. Then I realize that the shadow is a rock or a tree limb.
I suppose our own wishful thinking can fool us from time to time.
Other times -- often enough to keep me going -- that big shadow belongs to a big fish.
On this afternoon, I sat and scanned the water. After a while -- I'm not sure how long -- shadows on the river bottom turned into trout.
The trout holding on the bottom of the big pool hovered just over the bottom. Other fish at the head of the pool swooped sideways in the current and darted for specks of food.
I counted 30 fish in a pool the size of a pickup truck.
I guess I don't spend enough time watching fish, as I didn't get tired of watching those trout ghost around in the clear, jade-green water. As the afternoon slid toward evening, the fish began to rise in quick, darting spurts.
It looked like caddis were hatching, but I didn't tie on a fly. I just wanted to see what would happen next.
At dusk, the fish that we so shy and paranoid all afternoon got silly and aggressive. Splashy rises were everywhere, and I still didn't cast.
It was too dark to see their shadows, but I could see their backs porpoising out of the water. A light breeze blowing upstream felt balmy on the back on my neck, bats and swallows swooped over the river and I could hear the gentle pop of trout mouths closing on the water's surface.
On this night, that was more than enough for me.
