Chester Allen's Watery Planet

Floating on the music of a Puget Sound tide

 Low tide on a Puget Sound inlet. The water level dropped almost 14 feet in seven hours.

I hear that my fishing fanatic friend Greg Cloud was a talented musician back in the day, and I believe it -- even though I've never seen him pick up an instrument.

But I've seen Greg play the Puget Sound tides quite a few times, and few anglers are better at reading the music of flowing water, quirky winds and fickle sea-run cutthroat trout.

We launched Greg's boat on a cool, drizzly morning a few days ago, and the high tide had water pushed all the way up the beach -- and under the overhanging shoreline trees. Greg cranked the motor, and we raced across the water in a cold wind of our own making.

The dance with the tides was just about to begin.

Fly fishing for sea-run cutts is a different game when you're on a boat. You can move from spot to spot, and dozens of miles of empty shoreline await your casts.  Greg likes to launch at high tide -- or close to it -- on a day where the tide will suck lots of water out of a Puget Sound inlet. Inlets are the long, narrow fingers of water that spread inland from the main, deeper section of Puget Sound. Inlets are places of rocky bluffs, pebbly, shelly beaches and papery-barked madrone trees hanging over salt water. These fingers of water restrict and strengthen tidal flows -- think of how the water spurts from a garden hose when you hold your thumb over the nozzle. 

Lots of water flow means lots of baitfish, shrimp, tiny crabs and marine worms in the current -- and, hopefully, lots of sea-run cutts chowing down the the seafood buffet. The critters have to get into the current to avoid stranding on dry beach. All the creatures that swim or scrabble around underwater have to move downcurrent to deeper water -- or dry up and die.

Everything is moving in a giant seafood feast. Bigger creatures eat smaller creatures -- and the cutts and resident coho salmon feed like mad. Of course, you've got to find them to catch them, and that is another piece of this elegant puzzle of tides, weather and fish.

On this day, high tide was at 10 a.m. -- more or less -- and the water level was at 13.6 feet. Low tide was scheduled for 4:25  p.m., and the water level was predicted to drop all the way down to 0.2 feet. So, the water level in this inlet would drop 13.4 feet in seven hours. That is a lot of water, and the upper reaches of the inlet would almost completely dry up. A small creek of tidal water -- along with freshwater pouring in from creeks and streams -- would be all the water left in the top of the inlet it by 3:30 p.m. Most of the inlet would be mud flats, oyster beds and gravel bars.

Puget Sound is notorious for huge changes in tide levels, and the tide can drop to minus levels -- say, -1.2 feet or even more -- during certain times of the year, especially near the summer solstice. Most Puget Sound inlets go almost dry during these big tides, and million-dollar yachts mooring at exclusive marinas squat in tidal muck.

It's weird to ride a boat into an inlet and know that most of the water will be gone in a few hours. Of course, it returns during the rising tide. On this tidal cycle, the next high tide would be 13.2 feet and would arrive just after midnight. 

Fishing a Puget Sound inlet during the falling tide is kind of like fishing a lake that is draining.  The current is strong, and narrow sections of the inlet look like a flowing river. Good anglers like to start high up in the inlet and gradually drift downcurrent as the water level drops. Anglers that keep moving downcurrent can find water -- and fish -- hours after upcurrent spots became dry beach.

Narrow sections of an inlet constrict and speed the tidal flow. It's that old thumb-over-the- hose deal again. Narrows also funnel all that drifting and swimming cutt food into a smaller area. Greg once showed me that a narrow section will still have current -- and feeding cutts and coho -- late in the tide, well after the current slows in wider spots. 

Anglers that know this seek out narrow stretches late in a tide -- they can be that good.

You don't want to anchor the boat in the inlet and walk up the beach for an hour or so of shoreline casting,  as the boat will be high and dry for the next 10 hours or so. And I've seen that happen. It happened to me once, but my kayak was light enough to drag down to the water.

Greg grew up on Puget Sound, and he's tuned into the tides. We eased up the inlet to a good area. Sure enough, a nice rip was peeling off a point that poked into the inlet. The rip -- the fishy seam between fast and slow water -- also poured over a shallow, shelly bar and dropped off into a series of standing waves. Standing waves form when water flowing over a shallow area reaches a sudden dropoff to deep water. Sea-run cutts love that edge between shallow and deep water. Sea-run cutts love almost any kind of edge.

Greg knows all this -- and it's why his boat is  rigged with a pulley on the bow. Greg finds a good spot, points the boat into the current and feeds the anchor line over the bow pulley until it lodges on the bottom. It's kind of like anchoring a driftboat in a river. 

Greg's  sinking fly line sent a pink Knudsen Spider right over the dropoff, and he hooked two nice cutts on his first two casts. I got to take the photos of the gleaming, black-spotted fish and slip out the barbless hook. 

"Two fish on two casts!" Greg said. "I love this spot."

 

We caught and released a couple more fish -- Greg brought a beefy, 17-inch-long cutt to the boat -- before the spot went dead. Then Greg started playing the tide. All he had to do was raise the anchor and let the boat drift downcurrent to the next likely spot. Then he eased the anchor back down to the bottom, and we were in business.

I got to catch the first cutt at this spot -- mostly because I made a sneaky cast while Greg was still fussing around with the anchor line. 

The tide kept rushing away, and the nearby beach keep getting wider and wider. This means that fishy rip, dropoff, oyster bed or cluster of drowned root wads that was so hot will soon be high and dry. The fish, which are not interested in dry beach, move downcurrent with the water. We anglers have to keep moving too.

Greg's way of raising and dropping the anchor to sneakily ease down to different sections of a beach is elegant and simple -- kind of like Miles Davis blowing "Summertime."  It also seems pretty obvious, but I rarely see other boating anglers use this method. I didn't do it until I spent time on Greg's boat. It's easier to crank up that noisy engine and rattle off to another spot. I've never asked Greg where he learned how to play the tides this way,  but I suspect it was while fishing a local inlet as a boy.

At times Greg will look back upcurrent at a spot we'd already fished, cock his head a little -- it lookslike he was listening to some internal radio station -- and then pull the anchor, crank up the boat and move back upcurrent a little way. Rips change -- they appear and vanish and appear again as the water level changes -- and a spot that was fishless 45 minutes ago may teem with fish right now. Or not.

It never hurts to find out.

We ran across the inlet to a long beach with a bottom that undulates between shallow and deep water. The waterlogged remains of old cedar pilings and log cribbing are mired into the bottom pebbles, and cutthroat trout often lay in the green, glowing water off the shallow dropoffs to ambush bait. Other cutts hover just in front of the log cribbings -- which create a cushion from the current and funnel bait to greedy mouths.

The water just offshore was too deep for easy anchoring, so Greg unlimbered another instrument to play this tide. I stood in the stern while Greg kept the engine humming at near-idle speeds -- just enough to keep us in place in the current hissing along the hull. I cast Knudsen Spider flies to the pilings or the dropoffs.  Every now and then, Greg bumped the throttle into neutral to drift us downcurrent to another spot. All this is like rowing a river driftboat to keep it in one spot.

I bungled the one good take on this beach -- both of us saw the bright flash of the big cutthroat as it came up out of the dropoff and then wiggled off the hook. 

But we both laughed, as it was still early in the falling tide, and we had lots of beaches just downcurrent -- and more tidal music left this drizzly,  early spring day. 

"Do Overs," rocket engines, shy fish, dark forest, bright light, shattered glass and Scooter Pies

What would you do with an offer to restart your life?

Would you press a big, red button marked "Do Over" -- and find yourself walking into your first grade classroom with new Converse All-Stars squeaking on your feet and a Scooter Pie tucked into your rattling "Star Trek" lunchbox?

First grade is when I learned about Do Overs -- the playground solution to an knotty situation.  My first Do Over was during a dodgeball game. One team thought the ball barely grazed one kid's scabby knee, and the other team claimed that ball missed by a mile. The bickering went on a for a couple of minutes -- until we all realized we were wasting precious Recess Time. 

"Do Over!" everyone shrieked, and we got back to the game.

I thought the whole concept was fantastic. We got to rewind and go back in time -- kind of like the instant replay during football games on the old, black-and-white Zenith in my dad's home office -- and get back to playing. We were just a bunch of kids, but we knew recess was short and the school day was long.

This all happened back in 1967 -- that moment in my time where most moms stayed at home, dads were hardly ever at home and going to the Moon was everyone's goal. My school was in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, and many of the dads worked in the space program.  The Rocketdyne Company tested the giant rocket engines for the Apollo Saturn V rocket within earshot of our playground, and we would stick our arms out like airplane wings and run around in circles when scientists lit off the crackling, rumbling engines a few miles away.

We soon learned that life is actually pretty short -- and Do Overs are pretty rare outside of the Nevada Avenue Elementary School playground. 

I started thinking about Do Overs while I fished a Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat beach a few days ago.

This beach is about a half-mile hike from the access road. Anglers park along the road -- right under a stand of mossy-barked cedar and Douglas fir trees. Trees loom over the trail for hundreds of yards, and branches as thick as my leg can tumble from the treetops when the wind howls in from the coast. 

The trail drops down through the woods to the beach, where more trees hover next to the barnacle-crusted pebble beach. There is no room for a back cast during a big high tide, as the water laps within inches of the tree trunks. Madrona trees -- with peeling, paper-like bark -- cantilever their trunks out over the beach, and giant ferns clump in the damp, dripping forest shadows.

The beach -- even on a foggy, drizzly day -- shimmers with light after the long, shaded hike. Barnacles cover everything below the high-tide line. Rocks, driftwood and even oyster shells wear a sharp, studded coat of barnacles. Barnacles crunch under my wading boots -- and cut into my waders when I kneel to cast to sea-run cutthroat trout noodling around over the flooded beach.

I sat on a big rock and waited for the tide to begin the six-hour drop. On this day, the water level would drop 12 feet in six hours, and that meant the upper reaches of this inlet would empty like a bathtub. The tidal current would flow by like a big, smooth river. Rips -- the fishy seam between fast and slow water -- would form, vanish and form again as the water level dropped.

An hour later, the water level had dropped a couple of feet -- and exposed about 30 feet of beach, which was plenty of room to cast a 6-weight intermediate fly line, a 9-foot leader tapering down to 2X and a Knudsen Spider fly. The clouds and rain blew away, and a bright sun lit the water.

I expected to hook a cutt on the first cast. Thirty or so casts later, I was still waiting for a strike. Sea-run cutts wander all over Puget Sound, and they vanish from a beach for no reason. Well, we humans don't understand why the cutts abandon a beach with perfect tidal currents, plenty of food -- in the form of marine worms, tiny crabs, shrimp and baitfish -- and a waiting angler. I'm sure the cutts have their reasons, but they don't tell us.

Anyway, I kept casting. I didn't feel like hiking back up to the car and driving to another beach.

 I wished I had a boat -- maybe a nice 16-foot Boston Whaler with a modest engine and  walk-around deck. I wished I had bought that great used Boston Whaler a few years ago.

 Boating anglers can zip from one Puget Sound beach to another -- just about every inch of the 2,500-mile shoreline is open. Wading anglers have to find public access spots -- or ask property owners for permission to cross their land. A wading angler has to make a choice on each tide -- and pretty much stick with it. 

All this got me thinking about choices -- and how we usually have to stick with them. I remembered bumping into a first-grade classmate -- his name was Robert -- a couple years after graduating from high school. Robert vanished from school somewhere around 10th grade. Anyway, Robert was in the grocery store, and he had three screeching kids percolating around in the shopping cart. We stopped and talked for a few minutes, and Robert -- who was 19 or 20 at the time -- looked worn and old and exhausted.

Robert looked like he needed a Do Over. But he also looked kind of happy with all the chaos spilling out of that Ralph's Supermarket cart. Two of Robert's kids chanted "Captain Crunch, Captain Crunch, Captain Crunch...." as we talked.

I stood there in the cereal aisle and felt -- for just a moment -- the dense weight of having kids.  Robert walked away like a man wading through knee-deep glue. I didn't become a father until I was 29 years old, and that choice was right for me. I was ready for the weight, and I loved the gentle chaos of fatherhood. I still do -- almost 20 years later. I never wanted a Do Over with Courtney. 

I wondered whether Robert really wanted a Do Over on that long-ago day. I wondered what he was doing now -- and how all those kids turned out. I wondered how he was doing during this Great Recession. I wondered how I was doing in this Great Recession. I wondered if my days as a journalist were over for good. I wondered if I needed a career Do Over.

These thoughts washed through me as I cast my way through the next two hours -- with only one half-hearted strike. I figured that the trout had finned off to another beach -- maybe that beach just across the inlet. I wished again for a boat.

I stood in knee-deep water and watched the current bump into a point and split into yet another rip. I felt the warm sun on my back -- a rare sensation on Puget Sound during the month of March. I also saw flashes under the rippling water of the rip. Fish -- sea-run cutthroat trout -- were feeding in deeper water. 

I remembered -- finally -- the sinking line in my backpack. I rigged with the sinking line and walked upcurrent about 30 feet. I cast upcurrent and let the line sink as it drifted down to the feeding fish. I started stripping in the Knudsen Spider when the line was pointed at a 45-degree angle downcurrent. A nice sea-run cutt thumped the fly. My reel chattered, and I felt like I had just gotten a nice little Do Over.

Someday, I will remember that a sinking line will reach sun-shy cutts feeding in deep water. 

I hooked a few more fish before the falling tide stopped falling. I lost most of them. I released the ones that stayed on the hook. The sliver-sided, black-spotted fish made a bow wave like a surfacing submarine as they raced away in the shallow shoreline water.

I had been on the water for six hours, and it was now low slack. The inlet, so full of water a few hours before, was now mostly acres of dry oyster beds and  barnacle-crusted pebbles. A narrow seam of water about 100 feet wide was all that was left in the inlet. The water level would start rising in an hour or so, and there was a good chance that sea-run cutts would follow the water. Cutts would probably feed in a new set of rips. Other fish might ghost along in the water right next to the shore to feed on crabs and shrimp creeping out of the pebbles.

But I was tired and hungry. And I knew that I would fish the next day with my friend Greg Cloud. Cloud has a great boat, and we'd cast to a dozen or so beaches during the falling tide. 

I walked back up the beach and started hiking up the trail. A new storm was blowing in, and dark clouds rippled across the sky. The trees creaked overhead, and I kept looking up for falling branches.

I got to the station wagon -- and found that some knucklehead had chucked a rock through a window and stolen quite a bit of my gear. LIttle rectangles of broken auto glass -- green in the fading light -- gleamed from the backseat and the roadside mud. I called 9-1-1, but the police dispatcher told me that car smash-and-grabs were so common that there was little the cops could do but take a report.

I was angry and frustrated and sad. I will never again be able to park on a quiet forest road and feel that my car will be safe. That takes some of the luster out of driving the Puget Sound backroads and searching for new sea-run cutthroat beaches. And finding and learning new beaches -- beaches that I can hike into -- is one of the best parts of casting a fly for sea-run cutts. I felt poorer and sadder.

I wished I had a Do Over on my parking choice. 

I got in the car and headed for the store. I needed tape and plastic sheeting to keep the building rain out of the car. As I drove, I thought about the person -- or people -- who smashed my window. What choices in life led them to driving the back roads, breaking windows and stealing? I suspected that some addiction -- probably the white-hot, relentless monkey of meth -- robbed them of their humanity and boiled life down to joyless, needy hunger. I couldn't imagine living such a sad, desperate life. 

Those poor people need a Do Over.

I thought about my partner Heather, my daughter Courtney, the words that swim around in my head, bright water and sea-run cutts that wanted a fly sunk deep into fast tidal currents. I thought about March sunshine, the peeling bark of madrona trees  and fishing the next day with a good friend. I thought about the clean scent of saltwater and the thick, musty, axle-grease odor of Puget Sound mud at low tide.

I thought about rocket engines burning a hole into the sky and running on a hot, asphalt playground. The heat would rise through the soles of my All-Stars, and I imagined rocket engines were strapped to my feet -- and I was flying, flying, flying....

I did eventually fly -- to the Northwest, where I found love, a family and endless trout water. 

Life isn't perfect, but I don't need a Do Over. I just want more time -- lots more time -- to savor the beauty of each beautifully flawed, imperfect moment. And to eat a Scooter Pie every now and then.

An addiction to rising trout on the Crooked River's glassy water leaves a permanent stain

Rising trout on a glassy Crooked River during the last weekend of February.

My fly-fishing vest sports a shiny, oily stain just below the spot where my dry-fly floatant bottle dangles from a little loop.

That stain started -- and gets bigger -- every time I puzzle over fussy, tough rising trout. The trout refuse one fly after another, and I have to keep showing the fish new flies. The trout bulge the water under the new fly -- but don't take it -- so, it's back to the vest, the fly box and the floatant.

All this usually happens when nice trout are rising to small mayflies or midges on glassy water. The slow,  porpoising rises of the trout drive me nuts -- and then the water turns glassy again for a few seconds. It all looks like Trout-O-Rama is about to start, but -- too often -- it takes me a while to figure out what the fish are actually eating.

Are they taking midge emergers in the surface film -- or are they tipping and sipping on adults stuck into tiny pupal shucks? Wait -- did that fish just eat a blue-winged olive dry fly?  When a trout takes a long look at a fly -- or rejects it at the last second, that's a clue I'm on the right track. If a fly floats over a rising trout without a reaction of any kind, well, I'm headed in the wrong direction.

The frustrating -- and fun -- routine of clipping off the old fly, tying on a new fly and applying a dab of floatant goo continues until I find a fly that fools the trout.

Or until the sun sets and I can't see to cast or tie on a new fly.

So, the open lid of the floatant bottle slowly dribbles expensive, slimy stuff onto my vest. I often forget to close the bottle when -- or if -- I  finally stumble onto the new fly, so the stain gets a little bigger whenever the trout rise.  All this happened -- yet again -- on Oregon's Crooked River during the last weekend of February.

I got to the river early on a cloudy Friday afternoon, and a tireless rain shower shrouded the river in tiny dimples. But quite a few bigger dimples showed that blue-winged olive mayflies -- bugs that love dark, damp, cold days -- were hatching in rafts. The tiny bugs -- a size 20 -- looked like tiny sailboats, and the wild Crooked River rainbow trout were up and gobbling down the helpless mayflies.

The Crooked River seethes with trout food. Scuds, mayfly nymphs, caddis and midges teem in the rocks and flowing weeds. This river, which flows out of the bottom of Bowman Dam, is a lot like a spring creek. The Crooked is justly famous for good fishing from fall all the way through winter to spring -- unless an arctic blast ices up the pools and runs. A sudden rise in water flows -- especially cold water in spring -- also can shut down the fish for a day or two. The trout get used to higher water fairly quickly, but it pays to keep tabs on river flows -- especially if the drive to the river is a long one.

The trout were pretty silly for a size 20 olive Sparkle Dun, and, while I bungled my share of fish, I also managed to leave the river -- at dark -- feeling very good about the day. 

"We'll do it again tomorrow," I told Berkeley, my Labrador retriever cross. Berks wagged his wet tail and we headed into the nearby town of Prineville.  We needed for a motel room, a shower -- for me -- and hamburgers for both of us.

I was wrong about that. Saturday dawned cold and cloudless.  The sun beat into the clear water of the Crooked River and evidently scared the bejabbers out of the trout. The Crooked River usually flows with a cloudy, milky tinge, thanks to some silt in upstream tributaries. The trout are used to cloudy water, and they find dry flies with no problem at all, although it is often a better idea to tie a scud or Pheasant Tail nymph to the leader.

But the Crooked can turn clear as chilled vodka during the low flows of winter. All that sudden sunlight laced into the clear water and freaked out the trout. I walked along the river and admired the clear water. I also had trouble finding happy fish.

I found hundreds of rocks covered with cased Grannom caddis larvae, and I bet the Mother's Day Caddis Hatch will have the trout frothing the surface in a few months.

I know these caddis are Grannoms -- the classic Mother's Day Caddis Hatch --  as I read Dave Hughes and Rick Hafele's bug books all the time, and there is no mistaking the tapering, square-sided cases these caddis make.

Grannom caddis in the telltale cases gathered on Crooked River rocks. Some rocks in this ultra-fertile river were coated with bugs.

But I missed those wonderful clouds and rising trout. I cast my tanden rig of a Copper John and a scud fly into the deeper holes, but I had better luck with whitefish than trout.

Then I saw Berkeley lounging in the shade of a tree -- the sun cooked the canyon, and it was about 60 degrees out there on the last weekend of February. A bell went off in my head, and we tramped off in search of some shady water. Luckily, afternoon shade is easy to find on a desert canyon river. 

A wild Crooked River rainbow trout are some of the prettiest fish around.

A dark shadow was making its way from a tall, basalt bluff to a glassy section of river, and I sat down on one of the thousands of handy rocks along the river to change my rig. I was pretty sure that a midge hatch was going to start when the shade arrived on the water. I wish I could say I have the Crooked that dialed in, but I don't. I figured midges -- those small, harmless relatives of the mosquito -- would hatch because  I could see a few bugs already drifting on the water.

But what would those spooky trout do?

I got into a good spot, greased up my Biplane with gooey floatant and waited. Trout began rising as soon as it got shady, and some of them were pretty big. All of them were pretty picky. I changed to a size 20 Griffith Gnat Emerger and hooked two smallish trout right away. Then the fish boiled under -- but did not eat that fly. I peered at the water for a while -- my nose was almost touching the surface -- and it seemed like a lot of adult midges were riding downstream. I tied on one of A.K. Best's simple dry midges -- the one with the trailing pupal shuck and the cool wing made out of the waffle-printed section on zip-lock baggies. I got boils and rises -- but no hookups.

I tied on a pupa pattern with a little foam shellback that helps in float in the surface film. No rises at all. I tried some other patterns, and that shiny spot on my vest got a little shinier and bigger.

Then I looked at my tippet. It was kind of short -- and, at 5X,  maybe too heavy for that flat, glassy, clear water. I tied on a two-foot section of 6X -- and put the A.K. Best fly back on. After all, the fish seemed to want that fly.

I hooked a nice trout -- about 12 inches long on the first cast. Hmmm. Maybe I had the right fly earlier, but I needed a better tippet. I hooked another fish a few casts later. This trout bored off upstream with the steady power of a big, broad-shouldered fish.

The fish rolled at that glassy surface, my heart rattled around in my chest, and floatant dribbled onto my vest.

Mexican fishing, surfing -- and living -- are the charms of small-town Sayulita

 A Sayulita sunset is a good time to sit on the beach and pay attention to the slow rotation of the planet.

SAYULITA, Mexico -- The taxi veered off the main highway and jounced down a narrow, potholed road, past small, concrete-block houses with metal roofs, open-air cantinas and patches of jungle.

Coconut palms waved in the light, balmy wind, and the cab inched past a truck loaded with battered ice chests.

 A Mexican fisherman stood in the bed and held up 10-inch-long shrimp in his dark, leathery hands. A battered loudspeaker balanced on the rust-pitted hood blared “Camerones, Camerones, Camerones.....”

The mixed scents of shrimp, ocean breeze, hibiscus flowers and jungle rot filled the car.

Malcolm looked at me and wrinkled his nose.

“This place smells funny,” he said.

Sayulita, a small fishing and surfing village about 45 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta International Airport,  isn’t the usual Mexican coastal resort of big hotels, thumping discos and manicured golf courses.

This little Pacific Coast town -- of crooked streets and steep, jungle hills perched next to a small, clear bay -- stubbornly remains a delightful Mexican village. There are no all-inclusive, fenced resorts and the locals don’t live a few miles away.

The locals live right next door to your small hotel.

Tourists and expats bump elbows with locals in tiny grocery stores,  surf the same breaks -- and buy eye-popping shrimp and fresh produce from the same trucks stopped in the middle of dusty streets.

All this is why my partner, Heather, suggested bringing  her two teenagers, Malcolm and Miga, to Sayulita.  We wanted the kids to taste, feel -- and smell -- life away from manicured, insulated resorts.

We wanted the kids to experience another culture -- even as we surfed the peeling right-hand break, fished the beaches, browsed art galleries and swam in the warm, tropical water. 

All of this would involve long walks down dusty streets, paddling through warm waves, casting to ravenous jack Crevalle, two massive thunderstorms, a wandering horse, a baby humpback whale and a mysterious -- and talented -- woman known as  the Chicken Lady.

The kids warily unpacked in our small suite at Casablanca Hotel. The small, white rooms were spotless, and the open-air living room and kitchen had a view of clear, shimmering waves. Small geckos perched on the walls.

My friend Greg Cloud waved at us from his porch, and he gave me a quick update on the fishing.

Life was good.

 But Miga and Malcolm had the lean, beady-eyed look of teenagers who hadn’t eaten much since boarding the jetliner at PDX early that morning.

And both of these kids from Hood River, Oregon  were worried about gurgling stomachs and nights hugging the toilet.

It was time for Burrito Revolucion, a ramshackle outdoor joint that serves up -- with attitude -- ultra-fresh,  ultra-safe burritos stuffed with fresh fish, beef, pork or vegetables.

We made the five-minute walk down the sandy, dusty street. Dogs loped along the sidewalk, and most people just walked on the gritty road.

A woman walked onto the sidewalk and tossed her mop water -- a flashing arc of brownish water -- into the street.

Miga and Malcolm winced.

The kids grabbed seats at Burrito Revolucion’s streetside counter, ordered food and watched Patricia -- one of the owners -- haggle over fresh tomatoes piled into the back of yet another truck parked in the street.

Fresh dorado and chicken sizzled on the grill, and the kids were soon wolfing down their first meal in Mexico.

“This is good -- really good,” Miga said. “Can we go look at that art gallery?”

Sayulita's own Burrito Revolution -- great burritos made from scratch in front of your eyes. 

Sayulita has been on the  tourism map since American surfers discovered the village’s classy, clean reef wave during the late 1960s. 

Things have changed a bit since then -- many Americans and Canadians expats and snowbirds now live in town -- and that once-lonely surf break can get crowded on a sunny afternoon.

But the surf is usually uncrowded just after dawn -- or when rainstorms pelt into town. Other surf breaks are nearby for those willing to explore.

Many of Mexico’s best surfers live in Sayulita, and they’re friendly on the waves -- unless you drop in ahead of them and cut them off.

Then they’ll frown --  and give you a little talk about manners.

Fewer tourists wander the beaches at dawn with a rod and reel -- but they should.

Greg Cloud met me a dawn on the first morning, and the waves were too big for flinging poppers with a fly rod. But a spinning rod armed with a Krocodile spoon got out to the fish, and line was soon rattling off the reel.

Fishing wizard -- and madman -- Greg Cloud with a small jack Crevalle. 

On days of smaller surf, Malcolm joined me on the beach, and we flung flies and lures  to thuggish, hard-fighting jack Crevalle slashing into schooling baitfish a short cast from the sand.

On one memorable outing, we hiked over a short hill on the south end of the bay into the jungle.

After about 100 yards of uphill hiking, we came across a cemetery tucked into the thick, green jungle. 

Malcolm stopped to look at the elaborate memorials -- a green parrot rubbed his orange beak on an arched mausoleum -- and read some names and dates.

“This town has been here for a long time,” he said.

Just downhill, gentle swells rolled onto a small, lonely beach -- one the locals call Playa de Los Muertos.

Jack Crevalle, roosterfish and snappers zipped through the swells -- and hammered our offerings.

Both of us lost outsized roosterfish that steamed into the maze of rocks just offshore, but we landed jacks galore.

“The fishing here is great!” Malcolm said. We also managed a few snappers, a beautiful -- and tasty -- fish.

Many tourists never leave Sayulita’s main beach, but there are beautiful, pristine beaches north and south of town -- if you’re willing to look at a map and take a little walk. Anglers should cast to boiling fish -- or near rocks and current rips. Be ready to lose lures and flies to big fish, but that's part of the fun.

A beach that is a short hike from Sayulita's main beach. Roosterfish, jacks and snappers swarm just past the breakers. 

Cloud, who cooks as avidly as he fishes, told us of the delicious chicken that came from the grill of a woman who lived up nearby alley.

Heather, Malcolm and Miga found her stand on our second day -- as I was out surfing.

The kids had started the trip worrying about falling victim to bad food, but they lost that fear quickly.

I returned, ravenous from three hours on the water -- and found one small wing and part of a drumstick -- in the refrigerator. There also was some savory, spicy rice and mole sauce. Gourmet food from a street stand isn’t restricted to Portland.

The chicken was moist, slightly spicy and smoky -- and I could have eaten a whole bird by myself.

We immediately made plans to get more chicken the next day.

“Maybe we should get three chickens,” Heather said.

“Maybe we should get four,” Malcolm said.

Sayulita is full of food stands - the cooks set up shop each evening near the town plaza or right on the sidewalk or street -- and the fare is delicious and tasty.

The kids couldn’t get themselves to try a taco made with beef brains, but they wolfed down chicken, pork and beef.

A man who spends his winters in Sayulita told me that food stand owners are very careful about sanitation.

“One tourist or expat with a rumbling stomach would quickly start a bigger rumble that would put a stand out of business,” he said. “Word gets around quickly in this little town.”

We went back to the Chicken Lady the next afternoon -- right after surfing -- but she was done for the day.

“No mas pollo,” she said.  “Mas Manana.”

A local Sayulita surfer rips up a wave on a rainy day. Photo by Miga McCurdy! 

Tomorrow brought dark skies and dense, clinging humidity.

Few surfers paddled out to the head-high waves, and even fewer stuck around when rain pelted down onto the water.

The water -- at about 80 degrees -- was actually warmer than the air on this day.  Non-surfers huddled under the thatched roofs of beachside restaurants. 

Sayulita waves are not powerhouses, but they peel off the reef for long, perfect rides.  I paddled my longboard into several waves -- and soon forgot about the rain.  It was such a pleasure to surf without a wetsuit.

I surfed each morning during our eight days, and there are few better ways to start the day.

Miga shooting photos of Sayulita surfers.

 

Sayulita’s surf is what brings most tourists to town, and a lot of them are from Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

Many of Sayulita’s expats are escaping the dark, wet winter of Seattle and Portland, said Richard and Mary Ann Hodge, who flee Portland each winter and open up Macondo, their Italian restaurant. Macondo, tucked away on a sandy side street, offers a tasty change for those need a break from Mexican food.

Most Sayulita restaurants are spotlessly clean, but you know it’s Mexico, as the cooks and wait staff are often barefoot.

That's OK, as we wore flops for the entire trip.

Locals bargain for fresh produce on a Sayulita street. 

Macondo’s covered, open-air courtyard came in handy that night, when a massive thunderstorm rumbled into Sayulita and rain fell in sheets.

The dusty roads became running streams, and deep pools formed at some intersections.

Richard and Mary Ann herded their customers -- a mix of locals, expats and tourists -- to the center of their covered patio, and everyone watched waterfalls cascade off the roof.

“We can’t stay open during the summer rainy season,” Mary Ann said. “It rains so much it floods into the dining area, so we go home to our sailboat.”

We hung out in Macondo until the rain stopped, and we then hopscotched among  street puddles all the way home.

Frogs -- some of them as big as a tea saucer -- kicked around in the murky puddles or burbled and peeped in the trees.

Miga and Malcolm wondered why Sayulita doesn’t have many paved streets or stormwater drains -- and why the local creek sometimes carries a wiff of sewage.

“Mexico is like most of the world -- there just isn’t money for all those things,” Heather said. 

A lone horse ambled down the moonlit street, eyed us and then clopped up a steep hill. Local cops ignored the animal, who had a air of being on a mission.

“I guess he’s on his way home,” Heather said.

At dawn, state of Nayarit work crews fanned out onto the roads to fill in the small gullies from the previous night’s downpour. Other workers raked up driftwood washed up on the town beach.

We surfed and fished the morning away -- and then headed back to the Chicken Lady.

“No pollo,” she said. “Too much rain.”

Malcolm wondered why the Chicken Lady didn’t keep regular hours.

“They look at life a little differently here,” I said. “She works hard, but she probably doesn’t see the point in cooking a bunch of chicken on a cloudy, rainy day -- when most people aren’t going out on the street to eat.”

Malcolm nodded.

A baby humpback whale surfaces near our panga.

 

On our last day -- which dawned bright and hot -- we set out on a snorkeling expedition to some islands a few miles offshore.

Our panga -- the traditional, sturdy Mexican fishing boat -- waited on the beach, and everyone helped push 20 feet of heavy fiberglass into the water.

“PUSHHHHHHHHH!” yelled Carlos, who was our skipper and guide.

The boat slid into the shorewash, everyone jumped aboard and Carlos started the big outboard with one pull.

Pangas are narrow, fast boats, and everyone yelled with delight as the hull vaulted over incoming waves.

The ride got smoother after the beach faded in the distance, and the boat skimmed past the green, rocky point that shelters Sayulita from the open ocean.

Carlos suddenly throttled down the boat, and Heather gripped my arm.

“A whale,” she said. 

A big humpback whale porpoised about 50 feet away and blew a plume into the warm air.

“A baby too,” Carlos said.

A small humpback whale repeatedly heaved his -- or her -- nose out of the water to get a better look at us. Carlos shut down the engine, and the world was silent -- until the baby whale swam directly toward the boat.

All hands gasped at once.

The small whale, which looked about 10 feet long, circled the boat, nudged the stern and swam underneath the hull.

The little whale -- which still weighed several tons --  looked as though it was swimming in our own personal fish tank.

The mother whale swam nearby, but she didn’t seem alarmed at all.

“I can’t believe this,” Miga said.

“The baby -- it is curious about us,” Carlos said.

Mexicans are proud of their humpback whale nurseries, and Carlos explained how the huge animals are protected from all harm.

Carlos left the engine off, and the panga bobbed on the gentle swells until the baby swam away.

“He got bored with us,” Carlos said.

Everyone laughed, and the engine cranked up for the fast run through the warm, thick tropical air.

“What a way to end the trip,” Malcolm said. 

“I want to come back, Mexico is different -- but cool!” Miga said. “It feels more real than Maui.”

That afternoon we made another, last-ditch trip to the Chicken Lady. 

“No mas pollo,” she said as she cleaned her still-warm grill. A tantalizing scent of spices, charcoal and grilled chicken filled the air.

“This is Mexico,” Malcolm told me. “We’ll get some next time.”

Heather and Malcolm pose with yet another snappy jack Crevalle. 

If you go:

For more information about Sayulita activities, hotels and restaurants, visit www.sayulitalife.com. Visitors can rent houses, hotel room or even pitch a tent in a funky, beachside campgroud.

Sayulita is a 45-minute drive from the Puerto Vallarta airport. You can rent a car or take a taxi. A taxi ride is usually about $50. You don’t need a car if you plan to stay in or near Sayulita, but many visitors -- especially surfers and anglers -- like to hit the road and hunt out more secluded beaches.

Sayulita’s main surf break is right downtown, and wave riders choose between a mellow right-hander that gives longboarders long rides -- or a left-hander the breaks off the other side of the reef. The left break is a steeper, punchier wave that is perfect for shortboard slashing.

 Several surf shops located on or near the beach offer hourly, daily and weekly surfboard rental. I paid $120 to rent a very nice 10-foot Robert August longboard for the entire week. This is a much better deal than lugging a board from home, trusting it to the not-so-tender mercies of the airline -- and paying a luggage fee of more than $100 each way.

Surf shops also offer lessons. Many surfers ride their first wave in Sayulita.

Fishing tackle is hard to find in Sayulita, so bring your own. Finding a fishing, surfing or snorkeling charter is easy. Expect to pay between $200 and $400, depending on your guide, how many people are aboard and the length of the trip.