Fishing with the Fishin' Magician

As the title states, yesterday Brian Anantatmula and I went up to Pateros and met up with Dave Graybill, the Fishin' Magician!  Sorry to break it to Rick and Rob, but you guys are not the Fishin' Magician!  One of his friends, Rollie Schmitten was with us.

Rollie is of fame in our area as he worked for the national fisheries and was part of the group that decided to reopen the upper Columbia and its tributaries to steelhead fishing.  YEA!  That pretty much made him my favorite guy!  He then also admitted that he was also the reason they closed it years ago.  BOO!  I suppose that since he is now semi-retired he needed to get some friends back and have a local place to fish again.  I'm pretty sure this is the science that led to the UC reopening again!

It was about 34 degrees and cloudy and stayed that way all day.  Luckily, there was no wind, so it wasn't too uncomfortable.  We launched in Pateros and fished the main Columbia for steelhead at three different spots.  Right at the mouth of the Methow (where there was no flow) and at two rock pile spots below Pateros.

Dave has a 5 year run of never getting skunked while steelhead fishing.  Pretty impressive!  Brian and I did our best to break his streak, but we did end up catching steelhead.  All three of them were wild hens and looked great!  My phone was out of batteries, so I didn't get any pictures.  We were fishing with jigs tipped with shrimp tail and slip bobbers set at about 10 feet.

While bobber fishing isn't quite my preferred fishing style, man, it covers water well when drifting from a boat!

If you get a chance, Dave is a great guy to fish with.  Very nice, great boat and now a 5 year and one day streak of not getting skunked for steelhead!

Black Fishday at Rocky Ford Creek

With the turkey, stuffing, and pie put away (and I don't mean in the fridge!), the relationships with family members who live distant rekindled, and the Thursday night football game finished (go Hawks!), there was only one thing left to complete the Thanksgiving weekend - Black Fishday. While others crowd the mall, Tom and Rick headed to Rocky Ford Creek, the only viable option for moving water with all the rivers swollen from recent rains. The day after Thanksgiving, this place is often more crowded than the mall, but we arrived early and were pleasantly surprised to find only one other car in the parking lots. That was a good start - now if the fish would cooperate. And cooperate they did.

 

Starting at the corner above the bridge, we had a few chasers stripping, Tom with a black woolly bugger, Rick with a small olive leach. A couple to hand, but no fast and furious action. Moved to check out the skinny water. No action on small flies. A change back to stripping brought a few more fish.

 

Nice fish from the skinny water

Another view of the same fish

Coming back up we stopped at the rocky peninsula where the stream narrows and it got a little silly. Lots of fish, with dead drifting or slow stripping working better than fast stripping. Tom broke off his bugger, tied on another with a dull hook, and proceed to farm out (lose) about ten fish in a row, which is abnormal, even for him (five or six is believable, but ten?). Finally digging into his pack to pull out another bugger, he was able to land a few.

 

Tom finally lands one after changing from his dull hook

Things finally slowed there, so we moved back up, stopping below the bridge. Bugger and leach, dead drifted or slow stripped continued to catch good numbers of fish. With the sun rising in the sky, action slowed somewhat as we worked our way up towards the middle skinny water, usually catching at least one or two at every opening in the reeds where we stopped. Approaching the middle skinny, the Black Friday crowds began to catch up with us, and there were fishermen lining both sides of the bank, so we turned around, made a few more casts on the way back, found a few more fish, then headed for home, another successful Black Friday outing. It was a little different from our normal sleet/snow/freezing rain (sunny and 60°F), but the fish didn't seem to mind and neither did we.

 

Nice fish with colors brought out by the sun

A Good Morning on the Wenatchee

Rick was up in Wenatchee to help with some wiring modifications at Carlynn's sister's house and to get Melinda's braces adjusted by Tom; it just happened that the Wenatchee River opened for steelhead the week or two before, which added even more purpose to the trip (or took over the purpose of the trip?). Rob and Tom had been out Friday morning (where is that report, guys?). Tom and Rick reprised two of the holes on Saturday. Started at the confluence hole at first light, not too crowded, but no action, so it was on to the Bishop's hole further upriver. Fishing the tailout behind a good sized area where salmon were spawning, we found lots of fat whitefish, Tom and Rick each landed a good sized bull trout, and Tom had at least one suspiciously steelhead-like take. When the willing fish all had sore mouths, we decided to head downstream to try out a large broad run we have seen before but never really fished.

 

Walking along the long run of whitewater leading down to the next hole, we drifted our beads in a narrow strip of softer water right next to the bank, just wide and deep enough that a steelhead might be holding there. About halfway down, Rick's indicator dipped under about 3 feet from shore, a frequent occurrence from catching on the rocks in the relatively shallow drift. Lifting up, he felt one head shake and knew it was no rock; just as he lifted to set more firmly, the fish took off into the fast current. With virtually no line out to absorb the shock, in an instant the line parted and came back to Rick sans hook or bead. One of the most exciting (and brief) takes and fights in some time. Definitely steel. Three seconds of ecstasy, then days of wondering what might have been.

 

Another great outing. Peachy pearl was the ticket, as usual. And the home project at Marci's got done. Great weekend!

 

Tom and his bull; mine was perhaps a little longer, definitely quite a bit fatter

Fishing Without the Priests...

I was supposed to takes the Priests Quorum from the ward fly-fishing this morning. Friday I got a text that they weren't going to be able to go. Hey, I could stay home and mow the lawn, but I spun the dial on my wall and I couldn't get it to stop anywhere but on "Go Fishing"!

Actually, Kirk Morris, a fishing fanatic in the ward who I had talked to about maybe helping with the priests called and asked what the plans were. I said the trip was off, but knowing his wife and kids were out of town, I kindly offered to keep him company for the day on the Touchet River. He gladly accepted. For you sports fans, Kirk is the nephew of Jack Morris, the famous forkball pitcher in the major leagues. And he is as wild about fishing as some of his uncle's forkballs were at the plate.

Kirk and one of his nice ones

We fished 0.9 miles of the river from 8:30 to 2:30, through wind, rain, and sun. Some stretches were familiar and some were new to me. We found plenty of fish. None in some holes that looked good, then 20 or 30 in the next good run. I started with the double psycho, Kirk mainly caught them on a gray hare's ear that he tied. Some flyers and chesters, but a lot of nice 8 to 10-inchers, and we each caught a couple honest 12-inchers, great fish in this river. About noon we switched to dries, and had some non-stop action, Kirk on a home-tied kind of stimulator and an EHC, me with a standard big stimulator. Some October caddis around. I forgot how fun dries were!





My last, and nicest fish, that exploded on the fly in a little pocket of soft water against the bank

I found a kindred spirit after the likeness of Tom, who would fish from sunup to sundown. We almost stopped fishing three times, before we finally quit, each time having to check out that next hole just upstream, which led to the next and the next, which ultimately added a couple hours to our fishing day.

 

Pretty fish

A side stream came in that was heavily overgrown, that I thought was Wolf Fork, and I dipped a little rainbow out for a new stream, but then I got thinking about it and checked on Google Earth, and my suspicions were correct, Wolf Fork is a few miles upriver. This must have been a side channel, although I didn't see where it left the main river. Oh well, I'll have to go back and pick up that stream another time.

 

Briefly thought to be stream #125, but that will have to wait

Ended the day at Ray's, of course, with the cheeseburger basket and blackberry shake. An incredibly awesome day!

Team Patrick (or Team Gould?)

I had the pleasure of fishing this afternoon at the FRC with Patrick from Ellensburg, who fished with Rick earlier this summer, and his daughter, Ella.  Sunny and warm with water surface temps now cooled to 63 degrees.  Lots of weeds made fishing a bit of a challenge, but Team Patrick was up to that challenge.

Team Rob had the hot hand for bluegill (and all of them would easily fit in the palm of a hand) and put up the numbers early on, but it was not to be enough to fend off the challenge provided by Team Patrick.

After hooking a nice rainbow early on and breaking it off in the weeds Team Patrick made a nice comeback.  Some casting to rises yielded some strikes, but eventually it was on the troll that Team Patrick made the score that put them well ahead of Team Rob.  Quality and size was the name of the game.

Team Patrick with the winning rainbow.
(Ella shown wearing green body armor to protect from errant casts.)

I had a great time fishing with this Daddy/Daughter team and will gladly do it again.  Thanks for the afternoon guys!

Fishing Song

While floating down the Klickitat in the sunny warm weather this last week, there were many salmon in the river, occasionally rippling the surface of the stream as they rolled. Which led to this song, sung to the tune of Garth Brooks' "The Thunder Rolls". The chorus was composed on the stream, the verse while driving the last couple of days. (Craig and Brian were our guides on Monday).

Verse:
Early in October on the mighty river Klick,
Out with Craig and Brian on a guided fishing trip,
Driftboats on the water, the river’s running low,
Prayin’ that the weather won’t make the fishin’ slow,
Then the salmon roll, the salmon roll.
 
Chorus:
And the salmon roll, then the steelhead strikes,
Indicator down, now we got a fight,
The line screams out, out of control,
Steelhead takes flight, while the salmon roll.

All the Boys on the Klickitat (plust streams #123 and 124 for Rick)

October 6-7, 2014

Dad, Rob, Rick, and Tom all got together for two days of guided fishing on the Klickitat River for steelhead with Red's Fly Shop. Accommodations were great, at a lodge near Glenwood Washington with an expansive view of Mt. Adams. Great hosts, guides, and food.

View from my bathroom window (and the room if I had opened the blinds)

The weather was great for a scenic float down a beautiful canyon - clear skies, cool mornings, afternoon temps near 80 degrees - but it made fishing tough with it being dry for the last couple weeks and low water without any significant fall rains yet. Cloudy weather with rain a few days before gets the fish moving, but we made-do with the weather we had and found some fish, both steelhead and king salmon. The guides were licensed this year to allow us to keep kings, so we brought a little meat home in addition to the fun.

The Klickitat made stream #123 for Rick, then on the last day we got off the river with just enough daylight for Rick to stop at a pull out on the side of the road adjacent to the Little Klickitat River and pick up a couple small trout for stream #124. Tom could have been there, but somehow he thought getting home to see his family after being a week away from them was more important than a picking up a new stream (he was in California for several days before the fishing trip). He's getting soft!

It was a fun couple of days. We'll have to try again next year and hope for better weather.

Tom and our first steelhead of the day

 

Bright steel!

Fighting the king

A nice king

Tom was the steelhead man this trip





Stream #124 for Rick in the fading light of day