For those of you who didn’t catch my feeble attempt at being clever with my headline, it’s an admittedly weak play on my favorite Heart song from their 1976 Dreamboat Annie album. Great song, though it has absolutely nothing to do with fly fishing. Regardless, just click the play button and listen as you read – at least that way the music will be good.
Against my better judgment I found myself once again floating the lower canyon of Washington’s blue ribbon Yakima River (which really is not a blue ribbon river based on my experiences) with Marck and Erique (not his real name). It was the third week of August, which is was prime hopper time on the Yakima. The Yak flows are artificially high during summer months in order to supply the agricultural Yakima Valley with the necessary water to grow an assortment of crops in what would otherwise be a desert filled with sagebrush. As the growing season tapers to a close, the high summer flows (around 4000 cfs) are cut off and the great annual “flip flop” commences. By September the flows settle to somewhere around 1000CFS. As the flows drop, the fish know what’s happening: Winter’s a-comin’, so they’re on the lookout for food. OK, they’re always looking for food, but like bears and sorority girls, they need to increase their caloric intake ahead of winter hibernation (not that fish hibernate, but their metabolisms do shut down considerably as water temps plummet to near-freezing).
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. And so on this trip the water level was beginning to drop significantly. I’ve heard it told that the best hopper fishing on the Yak occurs at this time of year, so I was giddy when Marck called to say we’d be fishing on this
day. It would be good to spend the day with Erique as well, as he is in his own right a very accomplished angler and good all around guy, even if he made a bad choice in the college he attended.
Unfortunately, the day didn’t exactly turn into a catchfest. A couple smallish 10 inch trouts were landed, though nothing worth writing home about. One event worth writing about was the fact that Erique rose a 7 inch whitefish to a hopper. Now, before you make fun of both the fish and the fisherman, it should be noted that this was no small feat given the fact that even a much larger whitefish has disproportionately small mouth, which means that a 7 inch whitefish has a mouth so tiny that someone my age would need reading glasses just to see it. So, nice job hooking that fish on a size 10 hopper, Erique! Not surprisingly, Marck had already landed the Fish of the Day (a 13 inch bruiser), which gave him bragging rights (again). Par for the course.
Exhibit W
Things were looking dour for me, so when I finally hooked into a solid fish that bent my 4 wt to the cork, everyone onboard got excited in much the same way that everyone cheers for the uncoordinated kid when he finally scores a point. Immediately after I set the hook, Marck (in an uncharacteristically excited manner) proclaimed, “NICE fish! That could be your best fish on this river!” (Note: To date, my best fish on the Yakima was a 19 inch rainbow I caught 3 years prior while drifting with my brother Hal and guide Johnny Biotano of Red’s Fly Shop.) At any rate, it took some time to bring this beastly fish to the net, and as it was played closer and closer to the boat, two things were missing: (A) The typical acrobatics and (B) typical coloration one might expect of a rainbow trout. Enter into evidence Exhibit W: a 17 inch whitefish. Marck was partially correct in that it was my best (white)fish to date and, unusual for me, the biggest fish of the day. Braggin rights, baby! Had the fish been a trout I’m sure I would have been an insufferable braggart the rest of the day, but being that it was a whitefish I didn’t find much satisfaction in the whole thing. The remainder of the float wasn’t much for the memory books: The hopper action we had anticipated never really amounted to much and the evening caddis hatch let us down. Blah, blah, blah. Oh well, there was still the cold beer and greasy burgers waiting for us at The Tav, and all we had to do was put an end to this forgettable float and drive the short distance to Ellensburg.
There was, however, one small matter preventing that from happening: the keys to Erique’s Suburban were not inside the gas filler door where we had instructed the shuttle driver to leave them (as they were the only set of keys). We searched every likely and unlikely location where the keys might have been incorrectly placed, but they were not to be found. Marck and I were in denial – it was almost a year to the date of our last fiasco (Dude, where’s the car?). Surely this sort of thing couldn’t happen again! After the desperate search that fell just short of removing body panels, we concluded that lightning had indeed struck for a second time. To wash down the bitter taste of the bad situation, we borrowed a couple beers from a cooler that had been unintentionally left behind at the ramp by some generous and very intoxicated rubber hatchers. We then contemplated what our next move would be.
Ted and Troy, a couple of guides who work for Red’s, were hanging around the launch, talking shop after having pulled their boats out of the water. They’d had a great day putting their clients on fish and when they asked how we’d faired, the collective reply was “Great! Fabulous! Slayed ‘em we did, by golly!” We then told them of our precarious situation and they kindly placed a call to The Boss, who in turn made a couple calls. It was discovered that the shuttle driver had safely locked the keys inside the vehicle, under the floor mat, where they were secure from anybody who might want to drive off in the car, be it some low-life car thieves, or in this case the owner of the vehicle and his two very hungry, very thirsty fishing companions. I offered a simple solution that was met with a lukewarm reception: smash the window and presto- we’re in! It was decided that Erique would make use of his roadside emergency service and call a tow truck. Seemed pretty simple and straightforward, but in actuality it was far from either. After walking 37 paces to the southeast, standing on one leg with his left arm outstretched at a 47 degree upward angle, Erique finally manage to get a cellular signal. He then spoke with an operator in Maylasia, who connected him with the dispatch center which was, I believe, in Bostwana. From there the dispatcher consulted the yellow pages and within an hour and a half we had a towtruck en route from Yakima, which was twice as far as had they sent a truck from say, Ellensburg, which was about 12 miles up the road. The important thing was that the tow truck driver was able to unlock the Suburban, and by 9:30 PM we were on our way home, way behind schedule. As we sped past Ellensburg, I pressed my nose against the window and gazed to the north: I could just make out The Tav in the distance. I was hungry and parched. If you’ve ever been struck by lightning, you know that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth that only a greasy burger and a cold beer can wash away. Oh well, maybe next time – I’ve heard that lightning never strikes three times. Knock on wood, and please pass the cheese: This Unaccomplished Angler is whining.
separate vehicles. As I tried to get my mind off steelhead, I performed a series of mental stretches in preparation for the first day of trout fishing of the year. By the time it hit me it was too late to do anything about it – the unmistakable aroma of skunk infiltrated the cab of my truck. Thick and heavy, skunk gets on you fast: in your nose and on the back of your tongue. And unlike an odor that originates inside the vehicle, you can’t just roll down the window – you have no choice but to deal with it until you’ve put sufficient distance between yourself and the source. But skunk lingers for a great distance and will test the lung capacity of even a pearl diver. Only once you’ve put a solid quarter mile between yourself and the source can you roll down the window and exhale. God forbid one should actually run over the mess with their tire (which luckily I did not). I cannot begin to imagine the suffering endured by those who have either been sprayed themselves, or had to deal with a dog that became bathed in skunk juice. Anyway, as I pulled into the launch, I had put odor behind me and thought nothing more of it. We dropped the Hornet into the river, did the shuttle thing (which took us again past the dead skunk), and were ready to shove off by 11:30. It was a mild day in early February. The winter had not been hard and there was no snow visible for many miles in any direction, including Vancouver BC where the Olympics were suffering from an equally mild winter.
sharply, and waited. Still nothing. Certain that I was hung up on a rock again, it felt safe to exhale. But how could I be – I’d seen something splash…hadn’t I? I paused, dumfounded. Then I held the tip of my rod upstream just a little bit to see if the rock was really a rock. Yep, clearly a rock. But then the rock abruptly started to take line from the reel. I held on as what appeared to be a fish took off at a run. Bull trout? Big bull trout, perhaps? Then she lept out of the water and showed herself completely – the bright chrome sidewalls did away with any notions of a bull trout, and she peeled line so fast my loose drag almost allowed for a bird’s nest in my reel. After tightening down the drag it took several minutes to turn her to shore, by which time McCoy was ready with a steady hand to tail the beautiful 28” wild hen. This was my first steelhead on this river, and my second wild fish ever (the first coming from the 
alarm, Eddie knew it was time for his breakfast, and when Eddie has chow on the brain, there’s no refusing him. Besides, I had to get up- I was supposed to go fishing. And so, harkening back to the old college fraternity wake-up duties, this was a “Red Tag” and called for “feet on the floor”. OK, throw off the covers. Get the motor runnin’. Eddie spun circles and pounded the wall with his tail waggage as I followed him to the garage and filled his bowl before stumbling back inside. I hoped I had remembered to open the side door so he could get outside after inhaling his food.
first time I’d seen it. And it was a dandy: Wood construction, beautiful finish work. It was the type of gentleman angler’s boat one might expect a couple of attorneys to own – not a couple of grizzled steelhead fishermen. I assumed my perch in the rear of the boat, cut loose with a repertoire of rapid-fire sneezes, and we were off. “You don’t sound too good,” Junior noted. “I sound worse than I feel,” I replied. I was being optimistic, but truth be told I was feeling better now that I was on the water.
Each equipped with Spey rods, we stopped and fished the runs that offered decent swinging water. Admittedly there was a 
one of the first things I learned to do was get a fly un-stuck from the many rocks I encountered. There’s an art to it that I haven’t fully mastered, but it’s safe to say that my fly un-snagging is better than my Spey casting. On a recent steelheading trip I was working a run below a tailout, swinging a streamer at the end of my Type III sink tip, and hanging up on rocks with amazing regularity. Now before you take pity on me, let me state that I felt pretty good about this because at least my fly was getting down where it needed to be. Having covered the run with no bumps from fish, I decided it was time to run with rusty scissors, and reached for nymphing rod–the “
Signs posted along access trails to the river make it clear: “There’s a mandatory retention of adipose fin-clipped hatchery origin steelhead”. As if they needed to remind us to kill hatchery fish, it would be good to take a fish home for the grill: Mrs. Unaccomplished Angler would be pleased with my offering since 95% of the time I come home empty handed (due in part to the fact that the majority of my fishing takes me to catch & release waters, and also because I rarely catch anything). So after the fish was quickly dispatched of, I took my turn at sitting on a rock. I removed my lucky fishing hat and scratched my head, trying to make sense of the whole thing. It evaded me then, and I still have no rational idea as to what was going through the fish’s head during the entire 2 minutes that I assumed I was hung up on a rock. I had stood there in the river waving yards of slack line–in essence trying desperately to remove the hook from it’s mouth–but it never moved during the whole ordeal. I gave that fish every opportunity to simply open it’s mouth and slip the hook–a virtual green light to freedom–and it did nothing. Maybe the fish itself was stuck–wedged between two rocks? No way–not possible. Maybe I was hung up on a rock or stick intitially, and then unstuck the hook and as it popped free it landed right in front of the fish, which casually opened it’s mouth and slurped the hook. Not likely. Steelhead anglers acknowledge that hatchery fish don’t fight like wild fish to, but this fish was exceptional even in that regard–it was a veritable sloth. My current theory is that perhaps the fish was just too tired to move, because that theory also maintains that this fish was the same fish I had nearly landed 5 minutes prior–you know, the fish that Albacore allowed to get free? Yeah, that fish was this fish.
So maligned is nymphing for steelhead that a recent thread on the very popular Washington Fly Fishing online forum saw 24 pages of 
hitting a long stretch of perfect dry fly water just prior to our take out. With each cast of my size 16 tan elk hair Caddis toward the brush on the river bank (where it would proceed to hang up on a branch) several dozen caddisflies would be shaken free of their perch and land on the water’s surface, where the trout would methodically sip the bugs while I fought to free my hook. When I did manage to avoid the vegetation and get my fly directly upon the water, it would be met with a rather lackluster reception from the feeding fish (read: Refusal). I won’t even tell you what Marck was doing – by now you’ve probably assumed that he was getting into fish, and your assumption would not be incorrect. I caught one fish that day, for which I was grateful. I’m not one to feel entitled, and I know that just because you’re fishing that’s never a guarantee that you’ll be catching. Still, one would expect more than one fish on a blue ribbon trout stream at the peak of hopper season.
