Fishing in the Fall

October 9, 1999

When I woke up Saturday morning, fishing was the last thing on my mind. At the end of a month packed with 21,000 air miles and three weeks of hotel rooms and airline food, I was perfectly happy to spend the weekend putzing around the house and watching my son's soccer game. And that's how the day started, rooting for the team through a 9-1 loss, and not-so-secretly admiring how much Ryan's improved this season (no matter what the score board said). The wet gray morning and cobwebs on the blackberry vines made me think of salmon, though, and later that day, the sun melted away the clouds and exposed a trout-shaped hole in my heart. Once exposed, it festered, leaving me to wander restlessly around the house, wondering out loud if anyone was up for a drive to the mountains.

My wonderful wife of nearly twenty years, who had seen this behavior before on many occasions, saw through the charade. Any "trip to the mountains" was destined to result in a detour to the Yakima (perhaps on the pretext of visiting her alma matter in Ellensburg), where she'd face long periods of waiting along the side of the road while I got out "just to make a few practice casts." Finally, around 2 p.m., bowing to the inevitable, she pushed me out the front door, with an admonition to come back only after I had these fishing blues out of my system. On the way out, I grabbed a handful of Joni Mitchell CD's and headed eastward from Port Orchard, singing along as Joni sang about taking refuge in the road and urging us all to find our way back to the garden. I pulled into Ellensburg before 4:30, with butterflies in my gut. It's one of life's ironies that humble little Ellensburg has always evoked this reaction (even when the wind ISN'T blowing from the meat packing plant). When I was younger, the anticipation was of a different sort, as I raced across the mountains every weekend to visit my wife-then-fiance who was away at CWU. These days, it's the sight of the "Flying J" and the entrance to the canyon that brings on the butterflies, but in many ways the anticipation is the same. As always, I turned off the radio to enter the canyon in silence, giving it the respect it deserves. I'd driven 125 miles, forgoing water closer to home, to get here, and was eager to get on the water.

I pulled off the road at the end of the long run just below Bighorn; you know the place, where there's a huge shallow riffle that crosses the river, and some nice holding water where the current bumps into the road bed. This area gets hammered, but it's fun to fish and there's usually a few nice fish holding in there no matter how many people have worked on it for the day. The river was running low, fast and cloudy, with much less visibility than I expected for mid-October. The wind blew cold and downstream, leaving me to resort to downstream drifts and reach casts since my 7x leader would just pile up in a wad every time I tried an upstream cast into the wind. I worked the riffle edges and trailing branches with a #14 Elk Hair Caddis, raising a few small trout and catching most of them. I worked my way about 200 yards downstream to a particular rock that I like to fish, one located right on the current seam. I think of this as the "neon" rock, because with the fast current adjacent to a back eddy, it is only lacking a neon sign that screams "FISH HERE!" I worked my way sideways against the fast current until I was a few feet below and to the side of the rock. I began flipping short casts with the EHC, reaching with the rod and being careful not to let any more line or leader touch the water than necessary. After pulling a few small trout out of the hole, I finally got the reaction I was expecting when a large splash erupted, and I felt the brief contact with a trout that looked to be at least 18". Drat! For the entire drive over, I had known he'd be there, and kicked myself for missing the strike I had spent 2 hours anticipating. I'd felt enough of the fish to know he wouldn't be back soon, though, so I continued to move on downstream, taking some satisfaction that the fish was where he should be, even if I wasn't good enough to catch him.

I worked the rest of the way down the run, catching a few more small dinks. Reaching the bottom of the run, I decided to work my way back up the same stretch, hoping for another shot at the big fish (the only one I'd seen so far). By now, the wind was downright frigid. The water was cold enough to make the leaks in my waders a more serious concern than they'd been in September, and I made a mental note to myself to patch them one more time before chum season got too far underway. Wading upstream against the current, I wished that I'd actually spent some time riding the mountain bike I had bought back in February, in a cholesterol-induced fit of conscience and resolve to get myself in shape. But, rubber legged and winded, I eventually worked my way back to the neon rock, and tried once again to convince the locals that dinner was ready. After a dozen or so casts, it was clear that the EHC wasn't going to cut it. Even the little fish were done looking up. And despite having seen a few October Caddis, I hadn't had luck on stimulators. So I was faced with a dilemma: was it time, finally, to face my demons and try a nymph?

Now don't get me wrong. I am not a purist in the snooty conventional sense -- while I may look down on nymphs, I don't hold it against people who fish with them. To me, it's a personal choice, influenced largely by a certain uneasiness that comes anytime I'm faced with walking along that slippery gray slope that separates the way of righteousness and the depths of depravity. You've heard the stories -- one day you decide to use a bead-head dropper off your stimulator; next thing it's a spinner, until finally, you're panhandling in front of the local bait shop, hustling dimes and quarters to buy your next bucket of nightcrawlers. That first step down the slope isn't necessarily so bad, but it's the step beyond that, and the step beyond THAT one, that finally does you in. I simply don't trust my moral footing in such cases -- so I avoid the broad shades of gray.

Alas, thanks to Steve Worley's "Bug of the Month Club," I found myself with a dozen double tungsten bead headed stone fly nymphs in my fly box. Temptation comes in many sizes, but in this case it was a size 8. Knowing that it could be my last chance at a big Yakima trout for the season, I tied on the nymph 3 feet below a strike indicator. A strike indicator! See what I mean about slippery slopes?!? And defying all I knew to be good and true, I lobbed the heavy fly into the honey hole. It was like casting a sparkplug. I felt dirty, but strangely energized.

Though it's probably no surprise, I should note here that my nymphing experience is very limited. So I wasn't all that sure what to do next, other than I was pretty certain I had to watch the strike indicator. Well, I might not have much experience at fishing nymphs, but after four semesters of college physics and a couple of courses in fluid dynamics, I was pretty certain that it wasn't the current that made the strike indicator jerk upstream. I set the hook on a lovely trout, broad shouldered and muscular, who took off downstream into the main current. He jumped once or twice, a feat made even more amazing considering the half-pound of tungsten bead head hanging from his jaw. I edged him towards the slower current and worked him back to within an arm's length before the skinny end of the 7x leader gave way, falling victim to physics and fate. But in that final moment, I was able to stare down the fish, who looked to be, perhaps not the 18 inches I had earlier thought, but a good honest 15 inches. A good fish to end the season on, I thought, even if I had caught him under tainted circumstances.

I drove home under cover of darkness, replaying each fish in minute detail, burning the day into memory, temporarily welding shut that fish-shaped hole I mentioned earlier. Each time I came to the final fish, I realized that I couldn't end the season on this one. It was a gorgeous fish, and a personal accomplishment to finally nail a decent fish on a nymph. But I can't end my season quite yet -- not without making the last fish the kind to be remembered -- a splashy rise to a caddis, or a sipping rise to a BWO, some cool November afternoon. So I'll be back this year, and again, and again. And some day long from now, when I am done fishing forever, my sons will do for me what I did for my mother and father before me -- they'll bring me back to these home waters, one last time, to stand in the river forever.