Everyone gets hung up from time to time, whether it be one’s hopper pattern catching on a bit of riverbank shrubbery, or one’s streamer snagged on a rock or submerged log. When it happens, credit yourself with simply having put your fly aggressively where it needs to be: In the case of a hopper, tight to the bank–not 4 inches from the bank, but right there; with your streamer, in the money zone–right where the fish are holding behind the structure. Sometimes we flirt with disaster and get just a little too close. Gotta push that envelope, however, because fish are a lazy bunch (especially when they’ve been gorging on plentiful bugs) and often they won’t move more than a couple inches to take a fly. Therein explains my lack of catching – often times I’m too concerned with snapping off my fly and losing it. Sue me for being practical and fiscally conservative: I’d undoubtedly catch more fish if I were a bit more wreckless. I fault my parents for not allowing me to talk back, run with scissors, or act before thinking. Damn them.

Still, I’m no stranger to losing flies to all manner of obstacles, and when I started swinging  streamers on a sink tip with my Spey rod, 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 “Meat Pole”- belonging to my buddy, Large Albacore. He had recently landed a fish employing this savage device, and now it was my turn to get dirty.

Large Albacore with a wild steelhead

Working the inside seam of the tailout, I rather quickly, and surprisingly, had a fish take the plastic bead egg dangling 18 or so inches below a brown stonefly nymph. I’d like to think that my keen angler’s eye caught the subtle dip in the strike indicator, signaling a fish on and invoking a reflex-like hook-set. However, I am honest if not talented, and admittedly the fish took the dropper so hard I didn’t have to do anything but hold on.

After a respectable fight lasting several minutes, Large Albacore stood at the ready to tail the hatchery hen after I had steered her into the shallows. She was all mine–just waiting for a stone shampoo and ultimately the smoker. I savored the moment, licking my chops and watching intently as Albacore hesitated just a split second too long, which gave the fish a chance to see his oversized hand extending toward her. With one last effort to save her genetically inferior life, she thrashed violently and gave a series of head shakes, slipping the hook and wiggling off into the current from where she’d just be pulled against her will. Albacore sat down on a rock and beat himself up over the incident. But being the forgiving type, and an eternal optimist, I simply tossed the whole messy assortment of end tackle back upstream, threw a series of stack mends into the line, and watched the indicator bob in the current (ah, fly fishing at it’s best!).

Not 5 minutes passed before I felt tension on my line. Not the good kind of tension associated with a fish, but the other kind of tension when one’s fly snags on a bit of structure. The hook was clearly anchored pretty well, and I gave a gentle tug to see if it would pop loose. Nope (and by tugging as I did, I’d probably just buried the hook deeper into whatever if was that held it). This wasn’t going to be easy, and I began attempting to roll cast some slack line toward the problem in hopes of freeing the hook from the vice-like grip of the rock or log. This was particularly challenging from my vantage point because I was precariously perched on some slippery rocks, hip deep in water that was doing it’s best to dislodge my footing. I struggled a bit more before it became clear that I was hung up pretty good, which Albacore pointed out by shouting, “I see you’re hung up pretty good!” I gave him a quick glance as if to say, “Thank you, friend, for that astute observation!” as he waded out next to me to offer some assistance (the water was only up to his shins because he is nearly twice my height). With his additional wingspan he would likely have better success throwing some slack and getting the stuck fly unstuck, and I very carefully handed him the rod, worried that he might lose his grip and release the rod into the water just as he’d done with my fish. As I delicately passed the rod to him, the line quivered and the rod tip bounced.  “There’s a fish on!” we yelled in unison, and the rod was abruptly passed back to me in a manner reminiscent of the old “Hot Potato” game.

While the fish did let me know it was on the end of my line, it was not putting up much of a fight–certainly not what one might expect from a steelhead (even a hatchery brat).  I was able to get the fish on the reel quickly and steered it directly toward shore, where Albacore was waiting again. This time he wore the furrowed brow of a man keenly focused. His grab hand quivered slightly as might a gunfighter’s preparing to draw his six-shooter. The big man was to cockd and loaded, ready to pounce on the fish…which was another hatchery hen. Exactly the same size as the one I’d nearly landed 5 minutes earlier. Same coloration. The resemblance was, in fact, uncanny.

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.

That’s my story, and like a hook buried in a rock, branch, or gumption-free hatchery brat, I’m stickin’ to it.

Hatchery Rockfish

Dinner

At some point in one’s journey deep into the abyss of the of fly-fishing obsession, the angler reaches a point where they cease being a normal person. Now let me back up for a moment here and suggest that chances are the person in question was a little off center to begin with, and that may be what drove them to take up the quest for whatever it is that fly anglers are questing for: Sanity, the meaning of life, or maybe just a fish, and so on. But let’s agree that no matter how normal their inclinations before taking up the way of the fly, once they’ve crossed over the proverbial line, their outlook on life in general changes: One’s vision becomes narrowed, and everything in life begins to revolve around fly fishing. Suddenly they become fascinated with things that, when they were a normal person, never commanded much, if any, attention:  That rambling river alongside a road traveled countless times was just a flowing body of water; that weird looking boat with a curved bottom on a trailer being towed behind a vehicle on the interstate headed in the general direction of Montana was just a weird looking boat with a curved bottom (and where’s the motor, anyway?). And things that crawled or fluttered in the air were just bugs.

But that was back then. In the previous life.

Now that rambling river holds spiritual promise and beckons one to stop at the next pullout, string up the rod (that is always in the trunk), and see if perhaps the river also holds fish. Or answers. That drift boat headed to the mecca of trout fishing is something one covets and hopes to one day own, if only the purchase requisition would be approved. And things that used to crawl or fly unnoticed for the most part suddenly become things that cause excitement, or at the very least, some degree of interest.

Those things are, of course, insects. And once bitten by the fly fishing bug, insects forever lose their anonymity and insignificance and become trout food in the eyes of the angler. Mrs. Unaccomplished Angler is just as likely to grab a fly swatter and smack anything that carries the label of “bug”, and while I am certainly not opposed to crushing a pest, I can’t bring myself to do that if the bug in question is one of the noble trout food variety: Mayflies, caddisflies or stoneflies. They deserve better than to have their short lives snuffed out by an ignorant human–they deserve the privilege of sacrificing themselves to a hungry fish: To die in honor.

Obviously it makes sense that fly fishing peoples should have some degree of interest in bugs. After all, we’re doing our best to imitate those bugs with the flies we tie to the end of our tippet. Certainly one has to occasionally engage in the art of  “matching the hatch”, so it goes without saying that observing bugs is an important part of being a fly angler.  Whatever is in, on, or above the water, or crawling on the rocks or in your ears and up your nose, is natural and necessary.

Now, before you accomplished anglers roll your eyes at me for stating the obvious, allow me to point out that there’s another type of fascination with bugs: The irrational type.

Mosquitos and grasshoppers are common. I see them all the time when the seasons allow for it, and even the layperson knows a skeeter or a hopper when they see one.  But what of the other bugs that nobody other than a fly angler or perhaps an entomologist becomes remotely familiar with?  Those are the bugs that get me all worked up. Now I don’t exactly live in Troutville, and the nearest moving water is, by way of the crow (or mayfly), a good 3/4 mile away, through dense timber, a broad valley floor and a two lane highway (filled with speeding windshields just waiting to collect low-flying insects). The lower Snoqualmie River is a lazy, meandering slough of a river near where I live, and it doesn’t hold any resident trout. Searrun cutts, steelhead and salmon move quickly through this stretch of river en route to more oxygenated waters upstream, and from my experiences the only resident fish are Squawfish (alright already– Northern Pikeminnow!). While I am probably wrong, I always figured that the bugs which trout feed on live in the same waters where trout live, and since trout don’t exactly live in the waters near my house I don’t expect to see trout bugs around these parts. And I don’t – very often. But occasionally  when there is a rare trout bug sighting, everything else can wait while I take a photo, download it to my computer, administer Photoshop adjustments to make up for poor photography skills, then send it to my favorite back alley entomology enthusiast for a positive identification. Thanks to Roger Rohrbeck for always being there with answers.

While there may be no real qualitative value for me in discovering what the bug is, I find it interesting to know that the small mayfly I discovered crawling on the side of our house in March of one year was a male dun of genus Ameletus! It’s not like I was out looking for bugs, either – I was actually engaged in something very important when I happened upon this delightful looking little specimen, so I set aside the task of cleaning my fly line and moved in for a closer look.  Or what of time I was again deeply engrossed in something of critical significance (rearranging the contents of one of my fly boxes) when I observed a much larger mayfly specimen crawling on another side of our house in May. This time it was none other than Ameletus female subimago, which became clearly identified by the forewing veinlets attaching longitudinal vein CuA to the rear margin! Both of these mayflies are commonly called Brown Duns, though they were quite different in size. If that’s not enough to make you say “WOW!” then consider the bug that landed on our window during late October. Looking up from my peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich and the latest edition of one of the many fly fishing magazines I subscribe to, I immediately noted the swept-back wings of a caddisfly and was so overcome by intrigue that I actually pushed aside my lunch, grabbed a footstool, and went outside in a drenching rain to photograph what would later be identified as a Summer Flier Sedge, genus Limnephilus! There are (25) species present in WA, usually present at higher altitudes but apparently not always.

Now THAT right there is riveting stuff – and there’s more! However, sensing a certain lack of enthusiasm on the part of my readership, I’ll stop while I’m ahead, if in fact I haven’t fallen way behind already. But before I return to one of several very important tasks, I wanted to briefly address Mrs. Unaccomplished Angler: You know that “gross thing” on the bookshelf in my office? It’s the nymphal shuck of a Hesperoperla pacifica and no – I will not “get rid of it”.

Whenever I bring up a highly interesting topic that has little interest to my daughter, she likes to respond, with a heavy dose of teenage sarcasm, “Yeah, but what does that have to do with fly fishing?“  Apparently she finds mild amusement in the fact that I tend to talk about fly fishing with some degree of regularity, as if fly fishing is all there is to talk about. She has no interest in my hobby/obsession whatsoever, but I’m hoping that will change as she matures and comes to realize that fly fishing is woven into the fabric of everyday life. My year in review supports my contention that everything has something to do with fly fishing, whether directly or indirectly: You really cannot separate the two. Well, I suppose you can, but why would you want to?

January. As does every year, 2009 began with me adding another digit to my age. Soon after that came the first fishing excursion of the year which entailed a frigid float down the Yakima with Marck and Sir Lancelot. Yes, the ice flows that had choked the river just a few weeks earlier had subsided, but ice still clung to the bank in all places untouched by the sun (which is most of the lower canyon). It was really a silly time to be trout fishing – if I’m going to be that cold and not catching fish, it damn well better be because I’m standing in a steelhead river. Marck caught a real nice rainbow that just happened to be the only fish caught that day.  Looking back it was a Yakima River Premonition of things to come: With the exception of one outing much later in the year, the Yakima was not kind to me in 2009. I should learn from this, and avoid the Yakima in 2010. But I won’t.

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February. My daughter’s car (or, rather, the car that I allow my daughter to use) was long overdue for some new tires. Having failed the penny test by a long shot, I probably should have gotten them month’s earlier because we had over 2 feet of snow in December 2008 and her car was incapable of gaining any traction during that time. The good side of this is that the car sat safely idle in the garage instead of being stuck in a ditch somewhere because of the false sense of security good tires might have provided a young driver with no snow-driving experience. But the silver lining in all of this is that by procrastinating on the purchase, I was able to take advantage of Free Beef at Les Schwab Tire Centers (BTW, I chose the steaks and they were excellent). This year my Jeep will need new shoes. Luckily we’re having a mild winter with no snow at the time of this writing, so I should be able to hold out until Free Beef month. What does this have to do with fly fishing? Well, Les Schwab started his tire business in Prineville, Oregon in 1952.  Prineville is in Central Oregon, and Central Oregon is chock full of tremendous fly fishing waters. More directly pertaining to fly fishing, I ventured out on the Skykomish for the first time with a double-handed rod in February, and the only thing I caught was a heaping portion of humble pie. I quickly learned to embrace and love the Perry Poke – perhaps the single best technique in the arsenal of a noob Spey caster because it allows one to bail out of a botched cast and still save face, maybe. Remember: If you don’t Spey, don’t start.

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March. Caught my first wild steelhead on the Sauk River. It was special then, but seems even more special now because the fishing future for wild steelhead looks even more bleak than just 9 short months ago. Returns for hatchery fish to the Skagit River Basin are down this year, and there has already been an emergency closure on one trib of the Skagit. Additional fishing closures to protect wild steelhead also are likely this spring, according the the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. That means this year I probably won’t even get a chance to have a remote chance at a fish like that. We may be looking at more closures on more rivers in the future. That will mean more pressure on rivers that do have decent returns of steelhead, which could spell trouble for those rivers.  Domino effect. It’s quite troubling. Something needs to be done on a much larger scale than just closing rivers to sport angling. On another note, my daughter’s birthday is March 6th, but what does that have to do with fly fishing? I could come up with something, but I ask you, the reader, to chime in, for the benefit of my daughter, and suggest pertinence…

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April. Spring-like weather before the runoff meant a visit to the Yak with Jimmy and Hal. If it weren’t for this one photo, I’d have no recollection of the day at all.  That means there were probably skunkings all around.  But, after a long hard winter, the photo suggests a few things: One, it was a beautiful day to get out and throw some line; two, Hal (right) desperately needs a new fishing hat; three, there’s more to fishing than catching fish.  Repeat that several times – “There’s more to fishing than catching fish.” You may start to actually believe it.

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May. Runoff swelled rivers in the west, and I missed out on the Mother’s Day caddis hatch on the Yak again. Fortunately Memorial Day weekend brings the annual trip to Yellowstone National Park to fish the Firehole River with Marck and whoever else shows up. This past year it was just me and Marck, which resulted in a lopsided competition to see who would catch more fish: It resembled a slam dunk contest between Michael Jordan and Danny DeVito.  While we don’t really compete to see who catches more fish, one can’t help but compare (a form of masochism on my part). This year, to change things up and make the long drive home more interesting, we fished the Madison River below Quake Lake.  Water was high and dirty, but one of us managed to catch a lot of fish. It wasn’t me. Gave me some ideas that I thought I might someday use in a blog about fly fishing.

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June. This was the second month of runoff and raging rivers. If you’re a lake fisherman, you have that to fall back on.  If you’re not, you must find other ways to bide your time. One option might be to peddle books at a small town festival, and that’s just what I did.  If you missed me at Duvall Days, and I’m confident that nearly all of you did, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of each of my books featuring Olive the Little Woolly Bugger.  Ask for them at your local fly shop or bookstore – if they don’t stock them they should. Regardless, they can get them through their distributor.  Or you can get ‘em online at Amazon or many other virtual outlets. I guarantee you’ll be hooked on Olive!

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July. My favorite month of the year, and this year was the second trip I made to fish the St. Joe River in Idaho.  There’s no point in arguing – this is God’s country. So when the fish aren’t biting or even when they are, one should occasionally look up from the water and take it all in.  You might, for a fleeting moment or two, forget that you’re there to fish. The water level was absolutely perfect and wading from run to run made for a lot of time with a fly on the water. This year Jimmy and Marck joined me, and while Jimmy and I caught enough fish to keep it interesting, Marck’s catch rate was ridiculous.  I’m never taking him back there with me again. Ever. Thought some more about maybe starting a blog related to fly fishing.

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August. We usually get one hot week per summer where the temps get into the 90’s. It’s a mild inconvenience that we could live with, and we always managed to survive in the years before we had a cooling system. However, this year after enduring a week of record-breaking temperatures (it reached 107 at our house), we finally decided it was time to fix our heat pump. The cooling mode had ceased to function a month or two earlier, and like everything that costs a lot of money, I ignored it for as long as possible, hoping the problem would just go away.  When it didn’t fix itself, and repairing it was declared to be not a viable option, we had to spring for a new one. What does that have to do with fly fishing? Well, I could have bought a lot of fishing gear and even a nice Bonefish trip for the cost. But I’ll admit, there’s no price for happiness, and when Mrs. Unaccomplished Angler is happy, I’m happy. We also took a family vacation to Sunriver, Oregon. It was not a fishing vacation, but somehow a couple rods made their way into the luggage pod.  My son, Schpanky, and I managed to steal away for an afternoon on the Fall River, which is a spring creek in central Oregon (not terribly far from the Les Schwab epicenter).  If you’ve ever fished a spring creek you know that equates to a steady water temperature, which means ample bugs to support a good population of trout, which means the trout can and do get quite large.  And they be quite difficult to catch. It was tough casting, and the Fall River kicked our butts and sent us home hot, dusty, mosquito-bitten and downtrodden.  I did hook one 14 inch rainbow, but he busted me off before I could say, “This is a stupid river and I’m never coming back here again. Ever.” Once again I gave some more thought to maybe starting a blog related to fly fishing.

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September. The highlight from this month was fishing a section of the Yakima that I’d never fished before, above the town of Cle Elum.  It’s a much different river up there compared to the familiar waters of the lower canyon where I usually fish. The river was low and very wadable, and reports were that salmon were in the system laying eggs. The trout were following the salmon. And the fishermen were following the trout – at least Marck and I were.  It was a beautiful afternoon until the wind started blowing so hard that casting became nearly impossible.  As if the wind weren’t bad enough I was facing a horrible skunk. The Yak had yielded goose eggs for me the past two trips, and now this. It did not look good, and in fact vultures were even circling overhead (you can just make them out in the photo on the left).  As it turns out, while I worked my way downstream, fishing hard, trying a wide variety of different patterns and covering lots of water before managing to scratch out a 10 inch rainbow right as the light was fading, Marck had stayed in one spot for 2 hours, using the same fly, without moving an inch. When you’re catching fish on every other cast, why would you move? Started a blog about fly fishing.

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October. Ahh, Fall. The beginning of so many good things: Hunting season, for one.  But, what does that have to do with fly fishing? Well, this year I skipped my annual muzzleloader elk hunt to go steelhead fishing on the Methow River with my buddy, Large Albacore (not his real nickname), and his kin. I’m a rather unaccomplished hunter, and all things compared, when faced with a choice, I decided I’d rather not catch a fish than not shoot an elk. This was my first time fishing the Methow, and I would bet the same could be said for hundreds of other anglers who all seemed to be there on the same weekend, hoping to cash in on one of the many hundreds of thousands of returning fish that found their way up the Columbia last fall. Fishing was slow, and while we caught a couple fish, it did not come easy. But then steelhead fishing is not supposed to be easy – not like fishing for Pink salmon, which were thick this year. My decision to forgo elk hunting this year turned out to be a wise decision, because I would have ended up spending the night in a vehicle with 3 other cold, wet and grumpy elk hunters who got caught in white-out conditions that prevented them from being able to see the primitive access road that led down the mountain to camp. No elk were harvested, and I am 100% confident my presence would not have changed that. Glad I went fishing instead.

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November. The weather starts to really take a turn for the worse around here this time of year, and we usually see at least one big flood, often times more. Nothing substantial happened in that regard this year, so maybe the bazillions of eggs laid in the redds this fall will hatch and produce tons of fish for the future.  I fished locally a couple times, hoping for a searrun cutt or maybe a steelhead, but the water was high and off-color each time. The riverbanks were riddled with the remains of what was a big year for the Pinks – I love the smell of rotting fish in the morning.  I did make one last trip to the Yak that very nearly ended in Marck’s first skunking.  It was the first time in a couple of years that the Yakima actually sent some love my way. The month was topped off with Thanksgiving. So, one might ask, what does that have to do with fly fishing? Well, there is always much to be thankful for: Leftover turkey, for one. Ah, turkey sandwiches: Ate one every day for a week and a half before I was ordered to throw out the remaining carcass because, like house guests who overstay their welcome, it was starting to smell like fish.

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December. This was a busy month, and I didn’t have a single opportunity to get out and chase fish. However, I visited a few fly shops for book signing events, and that was a lot of fun. Thanks to Ron and Kristin Torda at All About the Fly, Leland Miyawaki at Orvis Bellevue, and Bill Drewry at Peninsula Outfitters for your generous hospitality.  If I couldn’t be outside fishing, it was fun to be inside talking about fishing.

Happy New Year to all you anglers, accomplished and otherwise. May 2010 bring you many great fish and even more great memories. And to my daughter, Miss Smarty Pants: Everything has something to do with fly fishing.