Rest In Peace, Saber

Sabertooth is no more. He survived for over two years in the midst of many threats to life and limb--traffic, coyotes, disease and desolation--and he made us and this place his own. But it was the road that finally got him.
I have been accused of not liking him, calling him "stupid cat," for example. The truth is that he and I bonded in those late hours that I liked to be up and he liked to go in and out. In many ways he was getting to be like me: a little opinionated, a little curmudgeonly, wanting what he wanted because he wanted it. He would often take my chair if I got up for a few minutes, and he had an elaborate system of non-verbal communication to tell me when he wanted out or when he wanted more food--not the old food, fresh food.
The truth is I admired his independence, adaptability, and pure catness.
Above all, he was a family cat who enjoyed hanging around us, and put up with anything the kids could dish out. In moments of quiet when he would cuddle up next to Jeremiah or Isaiah he would reach out a paw and put it on their head or their arm. A touching expression of ownership and belonging.
I went out this afternoon to change the sprinklers and he didn't show up to tag along like he so often did.
I will miss him a lot.

Football Report: Isaiah's Game One

The scoreboard tells the tale: our team won 39 to 0. Here's Isaiah after the game with his friend Marshall, tired but happy.
The first video is the team's first play of the season in an actual game. All that hard practice paid off. That's Caleb, the tailback, making a great run. He and Isaiah are a definite double threat. The rest of the videos are some of Isaiah's better runs.
The last video leaves him on the ground after a late tackle in the end zone. He pulled a Jim Brown and laid there for awhile, but got up and went back to work. He says his arm was hurting for a bit. But it didn't slow him down.
I'm as proud as can be.

Friday Fishing Report: Deja Vu All Over Again

It was a lovely afternoon and evening. It had been an entire week since I had fished, an interval unprecedented in recent memory. So I decided that the lake would provide the get away that I needed. The river can wait a little longer.
I trolled across the lower lake without a hit and decided to try the hopper along this bank. There were a few fish rising splashily, and they looked hungry.
I tied the hopper on 4x, greased it up, and flipped it out beside me so I could reel up the extra line I had used in trolling. I had just begun reeling when a fish hit the hopper.
Of course I wasn't ready. I was able to set the hook and strip in line but by the time I had tension on him he was already deep in the weeds. I tested that 4x trying to dredge him out, but the knot failed finally.
Well, that could be a good sign. But that was the last of my little hopper patterns with those quill legs. So I tied on a Stimulator and worked the bank--and the water away from the bank where I lost the fish--but I got no more hits. Maybe those legs were the trigger.
There were still some fish coming up so I added some 5x--figuring I'd take my chances for the sake of a hookup--and tied on a little caddis. I worked a riser and got a hookup, but again I lost the fish in the weeds. This time at least I retrieved the fly.
I kept casting to rises, had a heartstopping refusal, and then hooked up again. I stripped this little Rainbow in over the weeds and got him into the net. He was a beautiful sight, the first fish in the net for awhile.
I kept going and was finally able to get another take by stripping the fly underwater. This was a bigger Rainbow, but he had inhaled the fly, something that rarely happens. I figured an attempt at removal would be more life-threatening than leaving the fly in his gullet. So I clipped the tippet and released him.

It was time to change flies anyway. I decided to go back to my Cinnamon Ant. By now I was near the far south end. That western bank has been the scene of lots of activity. There is a big bush right on the bank that has a skirt of dead branches that dangle into the water, and there's always one or two little fish rising there. So I cast right up next to those branches and let the ant sit.

I was expecting a little Rainbow. What I got was this.

He took the fly with a dainty little rise, but then began to thrash. That's when I knew it wasn't a little fish. Fortunately he chose to fight on the surface (with as much urging as I dared give him with the 5x) and didn't run. I never got him on the reel--it would have taken too much time--but stripped him in.

Another nice Brown. I'd say 18 inches at least; what do you think?

I revived him and released him, dried the ant and cast it back in the same spot. It was deja vu all over again. Same take, same fight, and I had another nice Brown in the net.

I had this nagging feeling that maybe it was the same fish. It seemed smaller, and was very strong and energetic in the net for a fish that had just been caught before. But still, could there really have been two good Browns in the exact same spot ready to take the same fly in exactly the same way?

So I compared spots. See for yourself.

Two different fish. Wow. Speak of being in the right place at the right time....
I drifted away from that spot--yes, I tried one more cast first--and followed the shoreline to the south end. I took a little break, put on my jacket, and went back out to fish the cool of the evening. I stayed with the ant.

Pods of fish were cruising up and down, and I entertained myself by trying to maneuver the float tube close enough to intercept their rises without spooking them first. They'll be all around you, and then they're gone and start rising again a hundred yards away.

These are predominantly little Rainbows, though you can see some big dorsals coming up once in awhile here and there. And it's very difficult--at least for me--to time the cast just right, or have just the right fly to induce a take.

But I managed it, twice. The first time it was a little Rainbow, and I released him in the water. The second time it was another Brown.

That already made this one of my more memorable and successful trips. But later, as the stars came out, I caught another nice Rainbow while trolling with the beadhead leech.

I wouldn't mind having deja vu all over again all over again.

It Smells Like Rivers

Fall is in the air. Cooler temperatures and some recent rain have spiced the air with a subtly different fragrance. It smells like football. It smells like the fair and rodeo. It smells like rivers.
The counts of steelhead and salmon coming up the rivers of the Pacific Northwest are better than they've been for some time. Our local flow, a trib of the Columbia, is one of those rivers.
There's a good chance that right now there are steelhead cruising up the river just a quarter mile from where I sleep, or even holding in that run under the bridge that I like so well. And the chance gets better every day.
I'm also going to be back on the Grande Ronde next month, joining two brothers for what has the potential to be a close encounter of the steelhead kind.
So I've been drawn to my fly books in the last week or so, turning to the Steelhead sections and looking for inspiration. These two caught my eye immediately. Both are easy to tie and have the colors and materials--the look--that I really like. No disco here. These are natural, buggy, and look like something that would live in the river, not invade it.
The Skupade is also a waking fly, something that seems to work especially well on the Ronde.
The Stone Nymph--well, it's a stonefly pattern. What else do you need to say? My best steelhead last year, in the Ronde and in the local trib, hit a stonefly nymph.
Oh, I tie and fish the flash flies, too. But for now, as the vivid colors of summer begin to ramp down into the muted colors of fall, these make me happy--and give me confidence.

Skupade

Stone Nymph

I'll try them on my river and see how they do. Meanwhile, I'm still looking through those fly books.

Football Practice Makes Perfect

Games begin this week. Isaiah plays on Thursday evening, Jeremiah on Saturday morning. Both boys will play the positions they wanted--fullback for Isaiah, wide receiver for Jeremiah--but they will also play linebacker on defense.
The last couple of really hot weeks have been devoted to almost daily practices, first with helmets only, then in full pads. It was rough at first, especially for Isaiah who started with a bad cold and had to run up and down hills. But they've both gotten conditioned and improved their skills.
Judge for yourself, but to this proud father they're looking pretty good.

Beautiful Skies, Beautiful Mountain

A change in the weather has brought cool temperatures, gentle rain, thunderstorms--and breathtakingly beautiful September skies.
I count myself lucky indeed to be able to see this view from my home every day.

Friday Fishing Report: Preparedness Is All

I made a long afternoon and evening of it. Took the van so I wouldn't have the stress of dealing with the truck. Its recent troubles have taken a toll on my peace of mind.
I thought it might be crowded due to the long weekend, but there were only two guys bank fishing when I got there, and they soon left. (One said, "They're really hitting on nightcrawlers! We got eight nice ones." Of course, bait is verboten. I think they were just having fun with the fly fisher.) A family stopped by with their kids for awhile, but they also soon wended their way down the road.
I started trolling the little bugger and hooked a small fish. What do you know, he managed to get into the weeds and came undone. The lake is down some more, and the weeds are close to the surface, and are a major factor in the fishing.
Maybe that's why I seemed to be weed obsessed in the next few pictures I took.

That first one was my shadow taken above water. This is my shadow taken under water. Trout live in a green, green world.

There was one more atypical visitor: this Great Blue Heron. Of course, you can't see it very well, but it haunted the shallows for awhile and reminded me again of what real patience and persistence is.

It had been breezy most of the afternoon, but it calmed way down come evening. I switched to a dry--a little Stimulator--and checked to see if the fish were hitting hoppers again.

Nope. I confess to being at a loss to explain that. This season is certainly different from last season, when hoppers and Stimulators were the fly of choice. I will continue to hold out hope that with cooling air and water temperatures the trout will be ready to start going for big, meaty flies again.

But not only were they not hitting big flies, they stopped rising altogether. It was eerie. I don't recall seeing this south end so dead. There were plenty of midges coming off, and I saw a couple of callibaetis spinners on the water, but no hatchers, and no caddis.

I made the decision to wait for a hatch--any hatch--and the rise that would surely follow, or the rise that would finally start going after the midges. I rigged up a strike indicator with a tiny tan emerger on a short dropper and went to work.

Here's me hard at work...waiting...and waiting... and waiting....

That's pretty much how the day ended. Oh, I trolled some more once it was too dark to see even the indicator, but the only bumps I got were from bats hitting the fly line.

But I really enjoyed myself. "Preparedness is all," someone has said. True, true. I was prepared, that was all; but it was enough for a good evening.

Tuesday Fishing Report: Cloud Trout

September. It came in hot with restless skies.
I got caught up in other things and didn't get to the lake until late afternoon. I decided to launch on the upper lake and make my way back to a cove I prize for its beauty, and which has also produced some nice fish in the past.
A change for a change.
It was a long paddle against a pretty stiff wind out of the south, and I trolled all the way without a touch. When I was in the cove the wind calmed. This is a cove of tall pines with a steep talus slide behind. It's shallow in the cup but has a steep dropoff along this bank.
The water was mirror-still.

Clouds banked and billowed and slid across the sky, all reflected in the calm surface.

The trout were like the clouds: elusive, insubstantial, appearing and disappearing, their rises shimmering for a moment and then gone. I cast a dry for awhile, and trolled the dropoff, but it was like trying to scoop a handful of cloud out of the water.

As dusk deepened I started trolling for the truck. I thought I'd be loading up earlier than I sometimes do. But a wind slowly picked up from the north, so again I was paddling against the wind.

And again, I caught nothing. How can you catch a cloud?

I was glad to be at the truck loading up when a squall blew through. Not a big storm, hardly any rain, but a chill wind, blue stabs of lightning, and mountain-shaking thunder.

Like the trout, it rose and was gone.

Saturday Fishing Report: I'll Be Sad To See August Go

I had to forego the afternoon and make an evening of it. It was an exceptionally beautiful evening, and my fish came at the beginning and the end.

I caught both trolling, the first in the hot sun, the last in the cool moonlight.

In between, the lake was absolutely calm and the rises were virtually nonexistent. So I watched the moon rise and the sun set, and listened to the crickets and katydids and coyotes and eagles and ducks and crows and Kingfishers, and peace and contentment settled gently over me like the cool darkness.

I'll be sad to see August go.