Saturday Fishing Report: The Boys Get a Taste

I took Isaiah and Jeremiah to the lake this evening for a taste of the Drake hatch. We would fish from the bank, just like I used to do, and in the same place, and catch lots of fish.
We jumped this young buck on the way in. Jeremiah took the picture out the truck window.
The lake calmed shortly after we got there, and we could see the Drakes rising out of clouds of dark caddis. Amazing, really. We were still up on a rise over the lake when Isaiah saw a Drake sailing for the sky, at eye level with us, and asked if that was one. Then, before I could answer, he said, "That bird got it!" The swallows, at least, were at work.
The same couldn't be said for the trout, who were pretty quiet. But we set up and threw a couple flies out into the hatch.
The boys did pretty well, stripping the fly in, making roll casts, or flipping the fly out. A few trout began rising, enough to get them real interested--and also more frustrated when they couldn't get the fly where they wanted it. And, I have to say, I was reminded that fishing from the bank isn't easy. There are countless places to snag and tangle, and I found my time taken up with dashing back and forth to remove flies from willows and sticks, untangle lines and leaders, and help cast the fly back out again.
But the Loons were there, and put on a display of calling, making long takeoffs, wings beating the water before they could get airborne, and then landing with great whooshes.
Isaiah made it on his own the longest, and called out once for me to come see a Drake hatching right at his feet. He watched as it wiggled out of the shuck, dried its wings and took off--right into a swallow's snapping beak. Has to be some kind of life lesson there.
But he also grew the most frustrated, and eventually gave up. That's him with his hoodie over his head. Jeremiah, meanwhile, was having a great time playing in the sand.
I saw a nice rise fairly close so took the opportunity to cast to it, and got a nice strong take. I handed the rod to Jeremiah, and he brought it in like a pro.

It was a nice Brown. I asked Isaiah if he wanted me to try to hook one for him, but he was done. He went up to the truck, and when I kept casting threw a stick down into the lake. OK, I get the point.

I was disappointed that things--once again--didn't go as I had hoped. But Jeremiah was in a great mood all the way home, and the first thing he said to me when he woke up this morning was that he wanted to go back. Alone.

I asked Isaiah if he would give it another try sometime soon, and was glad to hear him say he would. But alone.

Yes, that will be better. So I'll take them out separately soon, with the canoe this time. Only one rod to manage, and only me to snag the hook on and wrap the line around. That just might work if we can find an evening when the fish are working as hard as the Drakes and the Swallows.

Maybe then the boys can get more than just a taste; maybe the whole banquet.

That would be great.

Friday Fishing Report: More Drakes

Another wonderful afternoon. These are the good times. (Although I saw a pretty good sized grasshopper the other day: soon it will be the other good time: Hopper Time.)
I sat down at the vise again before heading out and got a little fancy. Tied up two prototypes. I decided to try the hot pink wing. I liked it; easy to see when the sun is reflecting off the riffled water. I also tried dark dubbing with the yellow floss as a rib. I liked the effect, but the darkest dubbing I had was gray. I think I need black. I also tied these on #12 3X hooks. I thought I still had 10's but couldn't turn any up. So I want to try this pattern on a #10. Still, I liked the look of the thing. The question was, would the trout?
It was another unsettled day, windy with scudding clouds. The wind was from the south when I got there, but soon shifted to the north and picked up in intensity. The temperature must have dropped 10 degrees in 10 minutes.
I paddled with the wind down the bank a piece and then turned my back to the wind and began working my way back up again casting to the willows. The wind was driving waves into the shore, and it seemed unlikely that I would catch a fish. Then I saw a fishy splash right where the waves were breaking against the willows. It took two casts, then this Brown took. He came two feet out of the water when he felt the hook.

So the fly worked. I fished with renewed confidence but had no more fish for awhile. Then the wind began to abate a bit, and the swallows grew more active: there were Drakes in the air.

I paddled down the shoreline to the north end of the lake. I took a break there and found a shuck on the float tube. The water is littered with these.

By now the wind was calming, and here at the sheltered north end the Drakes were easy to see as they popped out of the water and flew straight up until the breeze caught them. It was fun to watch the birds--including some kind of woodpecker, or maybe a sapsucker--swoop after them. It was surprising how many times they missed.

A few trout started rising here, and I paddled around in circles and cast to them for awhile, but these were the flippy rises of smaller fish. I kept my eye on the deeper water back down the shoreline. Soon I began to see rises there, so headed back.

The Drakes were much in evidence, but so were at least two other kinds of mayfly, caddis, and midges. The air was full of bugs.
I began to get hits, but missed far more fish than I hooked. Many of the hits were big and splashy, but when I'd raise the rod, nothing. I think that's the work of these guys, the "schoolies" that have more exuberance than experience. But I admire their silvery wackiness.

Then there were the better fish who hit just as hard but with more efficiency. These are amazingly strong fish for their size.

I caught another like this one who not only hit the fly, he ingested it. I couldn't see it when I took him out of the net, and thought it had come out in the net, as sometimes happens. But when I followed the tippet to find the fly I found it in his gorge. It was at that moment, as I held the tippet in my hand, that he flopped out of my lap and into the water, snapping the tippet and taking the fly with him. No picture for him. Hope he'll be all right.

It wasn't long before the wind began to pick up again. The rises gradually faded like the day.

I caught the last fish with just enough light left for a decent picture.

It was blowing pretty hard again, and I was getting cold, so I called it a day. I called it a good day. It was chilly and windy, but it was still a good day.

Drakes will do that.

Tuesday Fishing Report: Drakes

It was all about the Drakes. Before leaving home I tied up a few, my own pattern, quick and dirty but effective. I use moose mane for the tails, four or five since they keep getting broken off (the bug has three.) I dub a body and cover it with yellow floss, then touch it up with a black Sharpie ( I'd use brown if I had one.) The wing is white poly yarn and the hackle is lots of brown and grizzly, trimmed on the bottom. Yellow thread. My flies tend to be workmanlike, and they work. That's all I care about.
When I got to the lake I drove past a spinner flight of Drakes way up by the road. When I got on the water there were a few popping but no risers. So I cast along the bank enjoying the easy drift with the wind. Then a few fish started working, some right up by the willows, others 10 or 15 feet out.
I chased a riser near me, letting the fly sit. No notice. So I began to strip it in, slowly and smoothly, and this nice Rainbow was on it.

That became the method for the rest of the day, working the fly, and even drifting it behind the float tube. When I stopped to observe I realized that I was seeing very few Drakes resting on the water. They were coming out of the water and launching into flight quickly--"popping," as I myself said; so it seems the fish were keyed to heading them off at the pass.

I drifted on down the bank past the Damsels at rest, watching a Flicker come in and out of her nest hole in an old snag, listening to and watching the Kingbirds and the Baltimore Orioles and the Redwinged Blackbirds and the Violet Green Swallows. The Kingbirds and the Swallows were also keyed on the Drakes, and I could hear their beaks snap shut as they swooped out over the water and intercepted them in flight.

I came to this stretch near the far northern end of the lake and worked around that blowdown. But I had no hits until I got way down there to that clump of willows at the far left of the picture.

I dropped the fly right at the base of the willows and stripped it a few times, then raised the rod to lift the fly out of the water for another cast. The fly swept under the surface, and it was just at that moment that a fish hit it. Hard. It was the best fish of the day, a snaggletoothed, big-shouldered Brown. I seldom have Browns make my reel sing, but this one did, even though I had the drag cranked up. I took my time and got him in the net.

He flipped off my lap and into the water at one point, and I cupped him with my left hand and then--throwback to my bass days--started to lift him by the lower jaw with my right thumb. Bad idea. Bass don't have teeth like this guy did.

I fished my way back to the dead pine and paddled back and forth along this bank until dark. The wind died, and it was flat calm, just like the old days I remember so well. I caught fish the whole time, none as nice as the first two, but all strong and beautiful. And I lost a few, though I kept my fly. And I never hooked a bat.

A great day. Think I'll tie up some more Drakes.

Monday Fishing Report: The Mayflies Are Here

Winter seems like a dream of a dream. These are the longest days of the year, and the world is infused with light and warmth. From the fading of the light in the west to the rising of the light in the east is a mere four hours. Everywhere life embraces life, and all things, from the mountain to the eagle to the tiniest nymph, are in place and whirling like a galaxy in the great dance. The present is a calm lake that holds eternity in its depths, and moments flit by like trout-colored shadows. The mayflies are here.
It was hot and windy in the valley, and storming at the lake.
A short time later the storm blew through and I got the float tube in the water. The sun broke through the ragged clouds as I launched, and a shower broke through the sunlight. It would rain off and on as storms passed near trailing their long skirts behind them. The wind would blow, swirl, calm, and blow again.

I found a fish working between two old blowdowns and stopped to tempt him with the Stimulator, but he was cagey and stopped rising. So I tried a Callibaetis spinner and got a hard take, a sharp tug, and a broken tippet. Goodbye, Callibaetis spinner. I found I was out of Callibaetis spinners, so tied on another spinner. But he was finished.

Then I saw what I had been hoping for: the Drakes were coming off here and there. I found this cripple on the water to show you what one looks like. The Western Brown Drake, though many here call them "hexes." They're big, and pop out of the water and fly away like little helicopters. You tie the fly on a #10 2X hook.

I tied on the biggest mayfly I had and began to drift the bank casting to likely lies. I caught this Rainbow early on, but it would prove to be a day of misses.
But what a gorgeous day. I got caught up--lost--in the rapidly changing light, and in the rhythm of casting.
I moved down to this bank very near the truck. This is the place, three years ago BC (Before Canoe), that I first saw the Drakes hatching on one long, calm evening. Then that big dead pine was standing tall, and there were pods of trout rising with abandon just off the bank, and it seemed that any big fly thrown in the middle of them would get a hit. I ranged up and down the bank and had a genuine experience. I came back as long as it lasted, fishing right up to dark and still finding big solitary risers cleaning up along the bank after the little guys were home in bed.
This is also the place where I caught several bats. They swoop down and pick your fly right off the water. Most came unhooked quickly, but one hapless bat managed to get airborne while still hooked and flew around in circles at the end of my line, a little bat kite. A sharp tug sent him on his way.

This time the water was rougher, but the trout were still at work. I tied on a Hex fly that I bought long ago in Michigan. The coloring is similar to the Drakes, but it's about a hook size larger. That didn't bother the trout. I got many hits, netted a few small trout, and lost many more.

The most memorable lost fish was a Brown that slammed the fly and then went berserk. He jumped--I could see it was a Brown--and then just kept jumping. And jumping. And jumping. He didn't stop until he had snapped the 5X and taken my fly. I have never seen a Brown do that. I've never seen a Rainbow do that.
The weather kept changing, the evening deepened, the fishing began to slow, and I gradually came to. So I paddled in and loaded up, already making plans to be there the next day.

Hometown Parade and Sixth Grade Band

I don't want to lose this one. It happened a long time ago, on May 30. It was Founder's Day, and along with the rodeo and other activities there was the annual parade. This year the highlight of the parade for us was Isaiah marching with the Sixth Grade band.

Jeremiah and I parked on a back street and walked into town through the mountains of apple boxes along the tracks, reminders of a former time when the big growers and packers were still in business.Then it was wandering around to watch the parade before the Parade as participants lined up and waited for things to start. Things like the girls in the formals in their Barbie stands, so they don't fall off. And the driver's head poking up incongruously, looking uncomfortably like a grisly trophy of some Formal Girl rite.
And like the Rodeo Queens. I love the Rodeo queens, and we have lots of them around here. It goes back to the days of the Snake River Stampede Parade, every hot evening before the rodeo, and a boy with the first stirrings of Awareness, gazing up from his seat on the curb at those Queens of the Fifties riding by with their big hats and red, red lips, and long, bejeweled legs locked around their lunging mounts.
Now the Queens get a kick out of having their picture taken by Gabby Hayes. And they don't even know who Gabby Hayes is.

And like Isaiah and the Sixth Grade Band warming up and waiting impatiently.

And then the call comes down the line. It's time! Soon they hear the fire engines up ahead and one street over announcing the beginning of the parade with their sirens.

So they line up, with the help of Kim and the other band parents, and march past their future: the Marching Tigers, the varsity band with the fancy unis, the Drum Majorette and everything. The Marching Tigers, who took First Place in the band category this day, edging you, the hard working Sixth Graders, into Second Place. But someday..someday...that will be you in that magnificant uniform gazing down at the sixth graders as they straggle by in their T Shirts.

But now--NOW--it's your time.

You can't beat that, but there's more. The kids...

The Rodeo Queens...

The tractors...

The Rodeo Queens...

The Not Well Behaved Women...

The Rodeo Queens...

And the Seattle Cossacks Motorcycle Stunt Team. OK, they were pretty cool, too, and so were their bikes, 30's and 40's era Harleys.

A great parade, and a great day.