Back to the Basics

Today I spent some time in the morning fishing the WA Deschutes at Pioneer Park for late searun cutthroat. I’ve caught just a couple of these critters about now in years past. The last one was a shimmering silver fish of about 16 inches that nailed a wooly bugger stripped across a deep pool with a logjam on the far side. I didn’t catch anything but it’s always an outside chance for this type of trip anyways. Most of the cutthroat are way up in the headwaters and shallow tributaries spawning and so need to be left alone.

It was weird to go back to that part of the river again. I used to consider the Deschutes my “home water”. It’s where Bender and I spent a lot of time chucking streamers and dry flies, usually at the wrong time of the day or to the wrong places, in search of my first fish on a fly. Eventually I did finally get my first fish. It was on accident as I let my fly dangle downstream while I walked upstream towards the next hole. Once again a black wooly bugger only this time it was taken by a small cutthroat that could barely get it in it’s mouth. That’s always been a good fly here. I think the fish see them as small crayfish that they love to eat.

My first dry-fly success was at a spot that I called the mosquito hole in the park. A long trail ends at a small gravel beach where the river comes back together from going around an island. Where the water converges is very very deep and then, against a wall of alder and bushes, it shallows out into a broad tailout before a wide shallow riffle. I happened to be there right before dark and heard the splash of a rising fish. After about a dozen casts and not being able to locate my fly in the twilight my line pulled taught and another small fish came to hand. I was ecstatic. The purists only catch fish on dry flies. Now I could say I actually pulled off fly fishing.

There is one episode though that is burnt into my brain as strong as the first images of childhood that I can recall. I can say with certainty that it was that incident that changed my obsession with being able to say I could flyfish into an obsession with the fish, rivers, sounds of the water, birds and taxonomy of really being outside. It turned me into an outdoorsman again after a long hiatus during college.

The river flows through the Tumwater Valley Golf Course and they allow fisherman to fish as long as they are respectfull of the games that are going on. I had heard that there was some good water to be found there and so I started exploring. As you walk along the river there is an island of firs and oaks around which the out of bounds line bends outward. The river can’t be seen through the wall of alders until finally they thin and across the the river and out the other side can be seen train tracks beyond the green. Down a steep hill is a pool that starts with a shallow river under overhanging branches, curves around to the left as you look downstream, to the outside (right) of the curve is a sandy beach. The bottom is cobble and the left hand side is deep and overhung with branches and roots. All of it dumps unceremoniously into the next pool without the benefit of a proper riffle as it chokes through a narrow and deep channel.

Trees line both banks except for where you can see across to the box-cars so casting is hard and I was not very good at it yet. This was before I had caught a fish on a fly yet and I had switches from dries to streamers, more like spin fishing that I was used to, and so on my line I had a big blue Clouser Minnow from the Fly Fisher in Lacey. I roll casted out to the far side of the pool over and over again and let my fly and line swing across the pool to the deep side overcast with trees. Dozens of times I did this because I thought this spot must surely hold a fish. Then I held out my rod (good old Bender) to start shortening the swing and keep the fly in the gut or middle of the pool. Dozens of times again. I was wading wet but still the sun was hot. It was July and there was sweat in my eyes.

Over and over I roll casted. I steped down a bit to get my fly further across. I began to lose my concentration and daydream. Then the moment that is “burned in” happened. My fly was not more than 9 feet away from me and I was watching it reflect the light of the sun and thinking about leaving when a silver flash with the white wink of an opening mouth tagged my Clouser. Bender lept to life for the first time ever and the big healthy cutthroat dogged with it in the current. My line was in my left hand so that I could strip the clouser back in and I was so suprised that I forgot to let go and get the fish on the reel so that the drag could protect the tippet and as fast as the fish was on he was off. Bender again went to sleep, the line went from taut to the soft parabola pulled by the water only. My heart raced and there was salt from my sweat in my eyes. Twice the fish jumped downstream, my Clouser still in his jaw and he stopped after freeing it.

That was the first fish I ever hooked on a fly. It was also without a doubt the biggest Deschutes River cutthroat I ever saw with my own two eyes. The Deschutes river fish are beautifully naieve when young but the big, old lords and ladies of the river are cautious and rarely show themselves. I can count the number of 12+ inch fish I’ve caught since on two hands and count a 10 inch fish a fine catch.

So today, in the cold rainy morning I donned my waders looking for the cousin to that fish. New and still ocean silver from the bay and territorial enough to kill a weighted wooly bugger. I couldn’t find one. I had a hard time recognizing where the fish might lie. The mosquito hole is now deeper and longer with the beach washed out and the deep water on the near side. The far pools on the island are unreachable to me because the water at it’s head is now choked with a logjam and deep braided water that I don’t dare wade for fear of losing my footing and getting caught under the newly downed alder and maple. It was good to remember that I don’t really know my “home water” unless I fish it often. That while I quest for salmon and steelhead for the freezer or to hear my line rip out of my reel that the river and the fish that I learned on were not perhaps so easy after-all and that perhaps I do know a thing or two about fly fishing.
Only in this life on God’s green earth could not catching a fish tell me that I really do know something about fishing.