Eager outdoors people swarm the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen's Show on Wednesday afternoon.
PORTLAND -- Life can make me dizzy in a split second.
I was at the gigantic Pacific Northwest Sportsmen's Show, and I had just settled into my seat to hear John and Amy Hazel -- Deschutes River angling wizards -- talk about fishing their river.
John had barely brought up his first slide when a guy in the audience raised his hand -- and got down to business.
"When are the blue-winged olives going to get going on the Deschutes?" the guy said.
"It's happening right now," John said. "Right around 1 p.m. every day."
John then tripped the remote control, and a photograph of a bunch of big Deschutes River redsides rainbow trout bunched up and grazing on blue-winged olive mayflies filled the screen. I counted 22 fish, and not one of them was small.
My heart broke into a brisk trot -- and I got a little dizzy and sweaty.
"Yeah, it's happening every day -- this is some of the best fishing of the season," John said. "This is really the beginning of the Deschutes River season."
"What am I doing here?" I thought. "I should be on the river -- right now."
So goes life at an outdoor show in early February. Thousands of nutso anglers, hunters, boaters, campers and other winter-addled people cram into big rooms crammed with the latest and greatest outdoor gear, seminars and outfitters hawking trips. It's all fun, but it's not even close to the real thing.
But it's the only thing for a lot of people during the middle of winter.
It's kind of crazy -- even on a Wednesday afternoon. I could barely make my way through the crowd jammed into buildings that could easily hold a few football fields. I bumped right into a guy who stopped short at the piercing cry of a horny bull elk. A entire booth was dedicated to calls that replicate the lust-corroded moans and shrieks. The calls didn't do much for me -- I don't hunt elk -- but they stopped that guy in his tracks.
I wondered whether that elk hunter heart was galloping against his ribs. I bet it was. Luckily for him, elk season is closed everywhere. Fishing season here in Oregon never really ends, and my home is just about 75 minutes from one of my favorite Deschutes River backeddies. So, I knew -- in my heart -- that I should have been walking along rocky banks of the Deschutes instead of sitting in a chair and watching a slideshow about fishing my favorite river.
But no one is really thinking that clearly this time of year.
An outdoor show is really a bunch of people suffering from withdrawl. We'd all rather be out there, but February is really the Month of Hell for Northwest outdoor people. The days are getting a little longer, but it's still winter.
I should have known that I'd get the shivers for casting small dry flies to big trout. I've fished the Deschutes for a long, long time, and I know that the little mayflies hatch for an hour or so just about every afternoon.
As the days get longer, blue-winged olives hatch for longer periods of time, and the fishing can be knee-shaking good. The trout, which see a lot of fake flies all summer long, haven't endured much fishing pressure since October, and they're a little dumber. They're also hungry, and they're conditioned to grazing away at hatching mayflies during the last weeks of winter.
I guess we angling addicts are pretty conditioned to forking over !0 bucks or so and marching up and down the aisles of the big outdoor shows during the last weeks of winter. We're hungry for the rise of a trout or the electric throb of a fish on the line.
Most of us also haven't spent much money on gear for a few months, so I guess we're hungry for that too.
But John Hazel's slide show -- which is terrific -- woke me up and made me dizzy at the same time. I'll make the drive to the Deschutes within the next few days -- all for about 90 minutes of casting a tiny dry fly to some big rainbow trout.
If I'm a little bit lucky -- and keep myself from spooking the fish -- one of those fish will tip up under a size 18 Sparkle Dun and sip it in.
That moment -- just before I raise the rod and tighten up that line to the first dry-fly trout of the year -- really makes me dizzy.
By the way, it's always a good idea to check out John and Amy's fishing report at www.deschutesangler.com....
