Doug Rose Flyfishing Winter Newsletter 2009
The first winter steelhead showed up at the Bogachiel Rearing Ponds’ outlet creek several weeks before Thanksgiving this year. Then the rains came.
I know that some of the folks who read this blog don’t live in the Pacific Northwest, and consequently may not have a keen grasp of what the weather has been like lately in the wettest corner of the lower 48 states.
So let me just cite a few recent rainfall numbers for Forks.
We didn’t have any rain on November 3rd and 4th. Since then, we have had measureable rainfall every day until today. The following days had more than an inch–1.34 inches on the 5th, 1.42 inches on the 9th, 1.06 on the 10th. We had 2.17 inches on the 15th and an unbelievable 3.85 on the 16th. The 17th had 1.72 inches, the 18th 1.44 and the 19th 4.37, (yes 4.37). The 20th received 2.19 inches, the 22nd 2.14, the 25th 1.23, and the 26th 1.55.
That accumulates to more than 28 inches of rain for the month, and the numbers for the last four days aren’t recorded yet.
I have lived on the Olympic Peninsula for nearly 27 years, and I don’t remember anything like this. We get lots of rain, of course, but the relentless nature of the storm systems this month has been, well, unsettling. And it sure as hell didn’t do much for the fishing.
I expect we have a lot of relearning to do on the Hoh and Queets and Quinault, which tend to refashion themselves after each really big high water.
It’s finally stopped, though. There was a heavy freeze in Forks this morning, and it’s supposed to be cold and clear all week. The rivers are dropping nicely, and even the Hoh may be in shape by the weekend. I’m going to fish a couple of the Quillayute System rivers tomorrow.
In other words, winter steelhead season on the West End of the Olympic Peninsula is upon us! Along with tidewater duck hunting and fishing for cutthroat in the salt, winter steelhead fly fishing is one of my favorite outdoor activities.
In the past, I always used the newsletters to describe the classes and clinics and speaking engagements I have planned in coming months. But I am making things simple this winter. All I am doing from now through the end of the winter steelhead season is guiding and writing and working on improving my Spey fly tying.
I have a feeling this is going to be a good year. We had an unusual number of jacks last winter, and that often presages a big run of adult fish the following year. The hatchery coho runs were bigger than usual this year, as well, and they came in early and remained strong. From what I’ve heard, it seems like the hatchery winter steelhead are also making a strong early showing.
I am also excited because I have a number of new pieces of fly water to fish this winter. To be honest, I was frustrated last winter by the number of anglers on the West End. It seemed fly fishers were everywhere, including in a number of my favorite spots where I seldom saw other fly fishers previously. So I spent a big part of the summer and early autumn finding new, more remote drifts and re-learning places I haven’t been in years.
I plan to have a lot of fun with my old-time clients and some new ones this winter and spring, on both these new spots and my old standbys. And, of course, fishing by myself. I am also going to try to keep a reasonably current blog of what’s going on out here, as I did with summer steelheading earlier in the year.
That’s more than enough about me. Let’s move on to the features that make the winter newsletter my favorite issue of the year–the contributions from my friends and fellow outdoor writers. Before we do that, though, let me add a special Christmas bonus to this portion of the newsletter.
It occurred to me a while back that I would like to include some art in the winter newsletter along with the essays. Anyone who has read my books–or looked at the masthead of my website–can guess whom I asked. Jack Datisman contributed artwork to my book The Color of Winter–Steelhead Fly Fishing on the Olympic Peninsula and the cover painting of my newest book, Fly-Fishing Guide to the Olympic Peninsula. Jack and his wife, Eve, are also good friends of my wife, Eliana, and me. Jack generously agreed to let me include a painting, and I immediately chose ”Mr. Glasso’s Moment.”
I chose that painting not only because I like it so much, but also because it has such a great story behind it. I imagine many of you have seen the painting, as well. You see, it is the large painting of the steelhead about to hit a fly that hangs above the check-out stands in the Forks Thriftway.
Let me tell you the story behind the painting. The fish in the painting is a depiction of the nearly 22 pound steelhead that Dick Wentworth, another good friend of mine, caught in March of 1983. The fly in the painting is a representation of an original dressing by Dick called the “Mr. Glasso.” He created it to honor his great friend, former school teacher, fly tying companion and fishing buddy, Syd Glasso. Dick caught the big steelhead on the lower Sol Duc the first time he fished the new fly.
That’s not the end of the story, though. You see, I actually got to see the work in progress back in the 1990s. I was interviewing Jack about Spey flies (he’s also a very good Spey tyer) for my first book, Fly Fishing the Olympic Peninsula. Jack had me meet him at the studio he had at the time, a rustic cabin on the Hoh. The huge canvas was stretched out in an adjacent room as I watched Jack tie a Sol Duc Spey.
The cabin was near the complex of businesses just upstream from Minnie’s, the big gravel bar and boat launch near the Minnie Petersen DNR campground. Minnie Petersen was a legendary horse packer and guide in the Olympics during the early 20th century. As it turned out, the ”studio” where I met Jack, had been Minnie Petersen’s retirement cabin until she died.
Now you know the story behind the painting, as well as a bit of the local Forks steelhead fly fishing heritage.
Mr. Glasso’s Moment - ©1995 Jack Datisman (48″x 96″, acrylic on hardboard)
Now, on to the essays.
The centerpiece of the essays this year, as it was last winter, is Les Johnson’s wonderful piece, “Our Christmas Coho.” Les is the dean of Northwest outdoor writers, and his two most recent books, Fly-Fishing Coastal Cutthroat Trout and Fly-Fishing for Pacific Salmon II are widely-heralded masterpieces. Les has also been a great friend and inspiration to many Northwest writers and salmon advocates, including me.
As many of you know, Les suffered a stroke earlier this fall. He is doing much better now and is home and working hard on his recovery. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Les for letting me publish his essay again. I know that all of us wish him and his wife, Carol, a joyous Christmas.
The other essays are presented in the order I received them. Preston Singletary, who writes the book and product reviews for Fly Fishing and Tying Journal wrote a lovely piece on cutthroat fishing. Leland Miyawaki, the manager of the Orvis shop in Bellevue and the originator of the celebrated Miyawaki Beach Popper, chronicled his fishing season last summer. My beach fishing buddy, children’s book author, and veteran Olympic Peninsula fisheries biologist, Ron Hirschi, wrote about creek fishing. And Olympic Peninsula fly fishing guide, outdoor writer, and creator of the well known Chum Baby saltwater cutthroat dressing, Bob Triggs, wrote about his hopes for the coming steelhead season.
I want to thank all of these gifted writers for taking the time to contribute something to the Christmas issue this year.
My essay this year is a remembrance of my long time hunting and fishing partner, Jay Brevik. I conclude the newsletter with a great recipe for a Basque tuna stew. It makes a tasty and festive holiday dish.
Our Christmas Coho
Les Johnson
It is around Thanksgiving when I begin to look for what my family for generations called “Our Christmas Coho.” In my high school days just about every man and boy in our extended family was charged at one time or another with bringing one home and preparing it for the smoker. After being properly smoked it would be kept in the freezer until Christmas when it would be the centerpiece of a splendid holiday buffet.
A Christmas coho however could not be just any old coho salmon from one of the many rivers near my family’s haunts along the Washington coast. It had to be a prime, late-arriving native fish, bright as a bar of sterling silver and thick through the shoulder. In those days we had them, entering the Sol Duc, Quinault, Humptulips, Satsop, Wynoochie, Naselle, and other rivers that will go unnamed, from Thanksgiving through early February.
There is one year among the many that I’ve gone after a Christmas coho that stands out in my memory. It was early December and all of the rivers close enough to round-trip on a dollar’s worth of gas for my 1941 Chevrolet had remained high and roiled by a series of rain-dumping southwesters that were boring in from the Pacific one after the other. My prospects for securing a Christmas coho were looking grim.
The rain did finally sbside though and the air cooled. Rivers would be dropping and there were certainly coho in the rivers. Time however was growing uncomfortably short. It was only little more than a week until Christmas when my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins would be showing up at our house for Christmas day. Feeling a twinge of desperation, I knew I had to give it a try.
I put muy boots, rain slicker, fly rod and a box of flies into the trunk of the Chevy and headed out of town. The Wynoochie River looked fairly clear and safe for wading but its lower reaches, where I figured I would have the best chance of intercepting a fresh-run coho, was a jungle of willows, devil’s club and berry brambles so I drove on to the Satsop. It was still running higher than I liked for safe wading, and dirty. I turned the car around and drove back to the Wynoochie.
Wading in just at the top of tidewater, I had worked my way down along a section of water that was reasonably easy to negotiate with a fly but didn’t see a single sign of coho. Then just where the river flowed under a long, dense, canopy of conifers I set up on a hard strike. It pulled several feet of line from my Hardy Perfect and then rolled to the surface. It was a cutthroat. I brought it to hand, a solid 18-inch yellowbelly, and contemplated killing it but then turned it loose. I needed a coho.
Making my way down under the canopy of evergreen branches, I could only roll cast, which actually allowed me to cover all of the water on either side. I disliked fishing under the heavy, fly-grabbing cover but I was heartened by catching the cutthroat which had changed my desperation to determination. I kept casting for some distance into the cover of the canopy where I came upon a snarl of downed-timber and stickups. The little fly swung in under the logs and stopped. “Cutthroat,” I thought. I set up hard. Nothing happened.
I pulled again and there was a tug . . . tug . . . tug so I really reared back on my old Granger and all hell broke loose. The coho, silver as a full moon hubcap, cartwheeled straight up into the low hanging branches, came back down with a resounding “splat” that echoed up and down along the river. Then it bolted straight downstream. My old Perfect was almost in free spool and giving up backing fast. I began charging downstream after the coho, when I slipped and fell forward face first sucking up a mouthful of the Wynoochie getting drenched to the chest. I grabbed a branch and pulled myself upright and discovered that I was still connected to the coho. My hip boots however were filled with water making wading a dangerous pursuit.
I struggled to a small expanse of sand on the bank where I kicked out of my booots and then went back into the river in my stocking feet, winding and regaining line. The coho had stopped. Completely soaked through and cold, I gingerly made my way downstream, reeling steadily as I went. I saw the coho roll to the surface. It was big and I was beginning to forget that I was nearly freezing. That is when the coho turned and came straight upstream past me like a silver torpedo.
I slogged my way slipping and sliding upstream, past my boots and out from under the canopy of branches winding steadily to retrieve line. I had recovered the backing and most of the fly line before long and the coho was not interested in going downstream again. Its spawning instincts were telling it to get upriver.
The end was anticlimactic. The big coho just rolled onto its side, spent. I grabbed ahead of the tail, tossed my rod onto the bank and slid the salmon after it. With a good grip on what was an absolutely perfect coho, I pondered releasing it. This fish had been a warior in every respect and deserved to live, but it was my Christmas coho. I used a streamside rock to kill it.
After retrieving my boots, I walked to my car, packing the coho and dripping a trail of cold Whynoochie River water. Back in Aberdeen, I stopped at Walt Failor’s Sporting Goods, still wet but with my shoes on and hauled my salmon in to have it weighed. One of the staff hung it on the hook and congratulated me when it pulled the scale down just shy of 13-pounds.
It has been almost sixty years but I still think about that day from time to time. I think of the fishing and of the fish, how it fought and last of all how it looked on our Christmas buffet table. I’ve caught a pretty fair number of big, bright coho salmon since that day, but none nearly so rewarding.
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Cutthroat Creek
by Preston Singletary
Late fall and a morning mist, sometimes turning to a light drizzle, dulls the leaves of the big-leaf maples to a ghostly
yellow, and a spatter of willow leaves floats down the
current. It is some distance to the road and aside from the gurgle of the creek the only sound that breaks the silence is the occasional, surprisingly loud, splash of a jumping
salmon. This is a fair-sized creek and its waters are stained to the color of strong tea with tannins from beaver ponds
and cedar swamps upstream. The deeper pools are so dark as to appear bottomless and the shadows of sunken tree trunks and overhanging branches offer secret lairs and sheltering spots for the sea-run cutthroat that haunt its waters.
The creek is running low now, not the dead low of late summer when the rocks and snags stand up starkly like bleached bones, but low enough to be easily waded almost
anywhere except the deepest holes. But if the weather holds true to form, there won’t be many more days of fishing and the late fall storms will raise and color the water and move the cutthroat up and into their tributary streams and spawning sanctuaries.
The submerged, skeletal branches of a large fir tree, fallen from the top of a thirty-foot clay bank, and wedged, roots upstream, in the slot of deep water at the base of
this cliff, provide an obvious lurking spot for cutthroat. I had already tied on one of my favorite searching patterns, a size eight variation on a Knudson Spider with a copper
wire-ribbed, true orange chenille body and a long, mobile, boldly-marked hackle of pintail flank. Approaching from upstream, I made a quartering cast, down and across to
the near side of the tree with a quick mend to allow the fly to sink, before beginning an irregular, twitching retrieve. I was almost immediately rewarded by the flash of a good-
sized cutthroat, turning just short of the fly and vanishing back into the dark maze of branches beneath the trunk.
Knudson Spider Variation
Two more casts were ignored, but the third brought a hard strike and a twisting jump followed by a strong downstream run and a dogged, head-shaking battle before I
was able to bring him to the shallows and twist the hook from the corner of his mouth; a fine, fifteen-inch cutthroat, already taking on the brassy wash of his fall coloration.
Another cast to the same spot brought another fish out for a look, as did the next, and the next, but each time the cutthroat turned away just short of the fly. Retrieving the spider, I broke it off and knotted on a size fourteen soft hackle with a copper wire ribbed, brown-dubbed body hackled with a dark brown grouse feather; a nondescript fly but one which has often proven itself as a follow-up pattern. In my experience, a more neutral and natural-looking fly will often bring a strike when cutthroat seem to be interested but consistently refuse larger and more brightly-colored attractor patterns.
I.L.B.S.H. (The Innocuous Little Brown Soft Hackle)
This time it worked — the first cast brought a strike that snapped the rod tip down into a sharp curve and another bright cutthroat catapulted out, this time, over the half-
submerged trunk of the fir, and bored down into the tangle of branches behind and under it. Lifting the rod tip I could no longer feel any movement and, unwilling to wade out
and disturb any other fish that might be sheltering there, I pointed the rod tip at the trunk, backed up, and broke off the fly.
Tying on another orange spider, I worked carefully down the length of the fir trunk hooking three more cutthroat, one of not much more than ten inches, probably
returning to the creek for the first time after a few months in salt water, and not yet mature enough to spawn. All three came eagerly to the fly, as sea-run cutthroat
sometimes do; just one of the reasons that they can be such gratifying fish.
Below the fir tree the pool emptied out to a short riffle before dropping into a narrow chute along the right edge which gradually broadened and slowed to form a dark
run beneath a low, steep-sided, bank overhung with willows and ragged blackberry canes. Tiny flecks of foam twisted and spun down the current and I could see the occasional
subtle and inconspicuous ring forming on the surface within a few inches of the bank before being swept away downstream. Kneeling and tilting my head to one side, close to the surface of the water, I could see a scattering of small mayflies, riding the flow and, now and then, disappearing into one of those tiny, sipping rises. Standing up and wading
a little way back upstream, I found my fly box and dug through it to find a size 20, blue-winged olive imitation. This simple, thread-bodied, parachute pattern has long been a favorite of mine for imitating the Baetis mayflies so common and prolific in the spring and fall.
Parachute Baetis Imitation
Tying the fly onto a lengthened tippet, applying a little floatant and positioning myself thirty feet or so above and out from the line of current where the rises had
occurred, I worked out a little more line and, stopping the forward cast high to jerk the line back into a series of serpentine curves, laid the fly down five or more feet above the point where I had noticed the rises. Lowering the rod tip as the curves in the line straightened, extending the drift of the fly as long as possible, I strained my eyes to
follow the fly’s tiny, blue-gray wingpost as it passed, unmolested, over the spot. Picking up the line when the fly had passed well below the fish’s location, I made a couple of
false casts to dry it and laid it out again to repeat the same float. This time, the fly rode smoothly downstream for only a couple of feet before vanishing into the barely-
discernable ring of a delicate rise. I even had time to watch the growing ring and its minute, attendant bubble move downstream for an inch or two as I lifted the rod tip,
removing all of the slack from the line to come up against the solid resistance of a good fish.
The strike
The reel sang as he dashed downstream to come out in a complete somersault, sides flashing, then settled down to a long slugging match, tenaciously resisting every
effort to work him back upstream. Short, hard lunges jerked line off of the reel and brought him closer to a nasty tangle of roots at the lower end of the run and I had to step
down and across quickly to pressure him out and away from it, all the while being uncomfortably aware of the tiny, fine-wire hook in the corner of his mouth. As he began
to tire at last, I was able to work him across the stream to the shallow water along a small gravel bar. Briefly admiring his robust, 17-inch length, I slipped the small, barbless fly
from the side of his jaw and held him upright briefly until, recovering his strength, he dashed straight across the current to deep water and safety.
The drizzle became heavier, turning to a real and steady rain, and the hollow sound of the wind began to grow in the treetops. Reeling in the line and hooking the fly into the keeper ring, I turned to wade downstream and back along the trail to the road where my truck was parked, feeling fully satisfied with the morning’s fishing.
On the far bank of the creek, a mink, his dark brown coat grown long and lustrous in anticipation of winter, hunted up and down among the riprap rocks.
————————————————————A Summer to Remember to Forget
By Leland Miyawaki
It’s time for me to face it. I had a lousy summer. I couldn’t catch any fish. I couldn’t even buy a fish. I even drove one afternoon to buy some at Uwajimaya’s but they were sold out.
It all began on July 8, when I went to a favorite MA 9 beach looking for searun cutthroat. After an hour of working the beach, I had a follow punctuated by a boil on my popper. It wasn’t a searun because the hole left in the water was way too big. Four hours later, the tide stopped moving and all I had to show for the day was the memory of what could have been.
Two more trips to the same beach with less than the same results then off on July 13 to the Klickitat for my first summer steelhead trip of the year. Waking a #6 Turks Tarantula through the first run I stepped into, I turned over a genuine beauty that refused to come back. Once again, all I had to show for the day was a memory of what could have been.
August is when I really get into the swing with my coho popper off the beaches. But first a side trip to Whidbey Island to do a beach fishing demo for the Whidbey Island Fly Fishers. I caught two pinks in ten minutes. It was way too easy. End of the pink season for me. Let everyone else go pink crazy. Not me.
I fished every other morning throughout August at three different beaches looking for coho with my popper. Sometimes, there would be at least 30 guys throwing hardware at pinks and I swear that 29 of them hooked up at the same time.
On August 30, I hooked and lost a steelhead in the Snoqualmie River one morning before I went into the shop. For most of September, I alternated between the Snoqualmie and my local beaches looking for any migrating salmonid that would fall on its sword for me.
September 9, I landed my first Snoqualmie summer run, two months later than any of my buddies. I thought briefly about the pinks I so arrogantly passed on.
On the 13th, I flew south to give a beach fishing demo to the San Diego Fly Fishing Club. After fishing all these years in the calm sheltered waters of Puget Sound, you might wonder what in the hell was I doing waist high in the high storm surf off Torrey Pines? I wondered too as the first wave almost tore a pair of borrowed size large trunks off my size medium body.
Ah, September 22, I’m on my favorite Clearwater River in Idaho casting over a record run of summer steelhead. In four days of fishing, my two fishing buddies brought them in left and right of me. I managed to hook and land two small jack Chinook.
I don’t know if this season went to hell in a hand basket or not but why am I standing here in the river holding a small basket? And my only consolation for having such a miserable summer is that I was able to contribute to the overall increase in fish returns.
———————————————————— KID CREEKS
Ron Hirschi
Ever go back to the places your first fished? I get to from time to time for work, checking on the streams for fish health and that sort of thing. But I mean, do you ever go back and fish kid creeks? The tiny waters that hold four and five inch trout that seemed like two pounders when you were just getting the idea that trout held more magic than Jesus or Santa.
I started trout fishing by heading to a local lake with my Grandpa. Pop took me once each year to Buck Lake and it was fun being with him, eating my Gramma’s sandwiches, and drinking real Coke, something banned from our house for some unknown reason. But I felt a different kind of tug. I knew trout lived in places other than where dozens of boats floated. A solitary kid, I longed for trout fishing in running waters where no one else was in sight. Creeks called to me.
As if a kid beaver, I could hear streams. I swear it’s born within my fishing soul. The trickle beckons, and when I was still maybe four feet tall, I struck out, first to the south of town, up and over two hills to where there was a bit of a draw on both sides of the highway beyond Wes Beham’s house. Wes was drinking buddies with my Uncle Chuck and occasionally showed up at family gatherings. He talked fish with Uncle Chuck and I listened. I knew, instinctively, that this man had trout near his home. Nobody could talk fish like he did without living where they swam in close proximity. So, of to Wes Beham country I went with a stubby rod in hand and some worms in a tobacco can.
As soon as I found the waters of the creek, pouring from a pipe under the road, I hooked into a fat trout. Bright orange slash beneath its throat and a snap and a slide onto a forked branch. Trout meant meals to us in those days and I could then count on bringing trout home for breakfasts because of this magical little piece of water. Catching trout meant a kind of acceptance back home. It took me years to sort it out, but my love of finding and catching trout filled some kind of void in our household. It was as if the fish were paychecks I handed over for room and the rest of my board. I only cared about the fact I could fish and fish I did.
Soon, I was fishing another crek to the east of home. It flowed into a pond used to store water for a long gone alder mill. There must have been two dozen cutthroat living in that little piece of water and after taking the first five or six home, I got the idea of leaving them be. Catching but not keeping. This, mainly because I was by then catching rockfish in such abundance that our family freezer held two full compartments of fish and our Catholic need of Friday fish was satisfied by those filets. Not to mention, the deer and grouse and ducks in the rest of the food storage compartments.
That was liberating time for me, being able to strike out pretty much any day after school or any day of the summer to fish trout in my little creeks. By the time I was twelve, my buddy Rick and I rode our bikes 15 miles or more to creeks on the other side of water we had to cross, first by ferry, then by a bridge put up, or so we thought, just for us. We fished beaver ponds a good ten miles away and when my other fishing buddy Barry’s sister, Sharon, turned sixteen, we could talk her into driving us to creeks much farther afield. She would let us ride in the back seat of the Falcon where Barry and I would point over the seat to our secret fishing creek entrances–trails that led to our dark water pools, stained by cedar, filled with cutthroat.
It was in those years, fishing with Barry, that I started delivering newspapers. This cut down on my fishing a bit, but it also gave me money needed to buy my first fly reel and the much anticipated hot-off-the-press editions of Sports Afield, Field and Stream, and Outdoor Life. I couldn’t wait for the new issues to arrive at the Port Gamble General Store and read over and over the stories of trout fishing in a place called Montana.
Years would pass and my trout fishing in salt water for cutthroat opened my mind to bigger waters. But the childhood dreaminess of Montana led me there in 1977. I fished first on Slough Creek and the Firehole/Madison. I was hooked on fishing trout on bigger running waters and by the early 1990s, my wife and I actually moved to live and fish in the Madison Valley.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to fish the big water. No one could avoid spending a lot of time on the Madison and I lived just a few minutes from the river. I fished it for five years, probably 200 days of each of the years we lived in the valley. But when I wanted fish for breakfast and for my soul, I headed for a kid creek I found one day with my dog, Daisy.
I found Granite Creek while looking for rocks to build up our garden paths and humps, and bumps that made the plantings look good enough for an aspen and clump of river birch. Those aspen and birch still grow in that garden, but with new owners. Granite Creek still flows too and you can find it. It flows into Alder Gulch Creek and on to the Ruby River and where I fish it still, on every return to Montana, this little kid creek is a treasure.
Like the Madison, Granite Creek holds wild trout. Unlike the Madison, it is a place where I have never fished in sight of any other people. You can get good fish where it flows through the pipe under the road or go up to its headwaters to where it is often no more than two feet across and catch a nice bunch of brook trout to bring home for breakfast.
When I fish the Granite these days, I let the fish go free. They help me remember childhood and a lot of that is good memory, especially the simplest of remembrances of finding fish in small waters where a kid can hide from family or needs of any kind. And, when I get back from Montana, I always go in my dreams to the little pieces of that creek, even when I might have landed a four pound Yellowstone Cutthroat on more famous waters. It is in kid creeks that I find hope and a sense of place in the world.
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A Chance of Rain
Bob Triggs
This year the autumn rains came right on time, according to weather history for the Olympic Peninsula anyways. After a summer of record low rainfall and pitifully scant river flows, we finally got the first good shot of rain of the year in October and the rivers came back to life. Late September marks the big October Caddis hatch on the lower Sol Duc River, which was progressing nicely under the then low flows. But the quality of our dry fly fishing lacked something . . . water. The fresh October rains changed all of that. After a parched summer of beach fishing I was ready for the cool, shaded Rainforest rivers and maybe even an “Indian Summer.”
The autumn Coho salmon took advantage of the rising waters in October and came up the rivers in a big way, by recent standards I mean. And even a few hatchery Winter Steelhead managed work their way home early on the tides. There were Cutthroat hitting dry flies all over the Peninsula rivers after that. And the beaches lit up with Salmon running home. October is my favorite month of the year. All of this, and I was waylaid with a flu bug and bedridden for almost two weeks. And so I recovered, watching the flows, listening to annoying fish stories, tying flies and planning my late fall fishing. “November will be better” I hoped.
On average November is our wettest month here. I have learned to be pragmatic about that. But this time has also proven to be the transition into real winter flows on the rivers, and often many fish show up “early” then, surfing in on the big storm flows, then holding and resting as the rivers drop back into shape. And if I pay attention to it all I can often get some good days in between the storms and heavy flows. I was kinda hoping for that this Novemeber too, especially after getting smacked down in October.
Several big storms have swung inland from the Pacific this November, dousing us with huge amounts of warm rain and hurricane force winds. Along the way, we have seen fishable winter-like flows, a solid showing of Salmon, and an early appearance of winter-run hatchery Steelhead. But it has been a cat-and-mouse game of flows and storms and runoff, rising and falling water, cancellations and rescheduling trips all along. The most recent storm in particular took its toll on the rivers, and washed out the little bit of snowpack we had gotten earlier. The rivers have been mostly mud and ice and trees ever since. They call that a “Pineapple Express”; when the atmosphere is loaded with moisture and warmth–”a river in the sky”–and some of them stretch all the way from Hawaii to here; and when they arrive and converge with the cold air over the Olympic Mountains the precipitation in the form of heavy, warm rain can be astonishing. And yet stories of more early returning Steelhead, and the few lucky, in-between, truly fishable days have persisted. I regained hope for my own November fly fishing plans. And then another low pressure system, laden with warmth and moisture, comes rolling in on gale force winds.
So we all hang tough and wait, grateful for the winter flows and the rains that bring life back to our rivers. Knowing that all of this carnage won’t, can’t last forever, and that every day we are not fishing is a day that more fish get upriver. And we know that when these rivers drop back into shape that there will be hope for bright, fresh run fish waiting for us in the colder, deeper jade green winter flows. We may well get a few good days in at the end of this tempestuous November after all. And maybe December will be better too. Winter–It’s all about hope.
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Jay Brevik–1955-2009
Doug Rose
Once years ago, on our way from our homes near Port Townsend to a West End winter steelhead river, Jay Brevik and I got into a discussion about how much Port Townsend had changed in recent years. We grumbled about how the town’s raffish mix of mill workers and artists, loggers and organic gardeners, wooden boat builders and commercial fishermen was being displaced by an onslaught of self-important urban over-achievers and trust fund dilettantes.
“The town has filled up with the kind of people I moved there to get away from,” I groused.
“You know,” he replied, “I was thinking the other day that if I died, there would probably be more people at my funeral from Grays Harbor than from the town I live in.”
Well, Jay was right about things more than any other person I have ever known, but he was way off the mark on that. The sanctuary at the Quimper Unitarian Fellowship in Port Townsned was standing room only at his memorial service in September. Some of the people present were doubtlessly there because of their relationship to Jay’s son, Kristian, or ex-wife, Jess Schumacher. Others were from Seattle, long-time friends and associates from Jay’s 30 years as a commercial fisherman in Alaska. And there were folks from Grays Harbor, in particular Jay’s great fishing and hunting buddy, Marshall Ross. But I recognized an awful lot of Port Townsend people too.
Here is a brief sketch of Jay’s life. He grew up on the water near Tacoma. He took apart (and successfully re-assembled) lawn mowers and other small engines in grade school, and he already had his own small power boat by the time he was 14. He began his commercial fishing career on a tender in Alaska while he was still in high school. As an adult, he fished halibut and black cod out of traditional halibut schooners in the Gulf of Alaska. He eventually earned a chief engineer’s license, largely through his great mechanical aptitude and independent study. He worked on some of the most advanced factory trawlers in Alaskan waters. Jay served as the president of the Deep Sea Fisherman’s Union of the Pacific in the 1980s, as a board member and interim dirctor of the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, and, most recently, as president of the Marine Trades Association of Port Townsend.
In addition to all that, Jay had a passion for hunting and fishing, and he was very accomplished at both. That’s how we became friends.
Our very first trip together set the pattern for our relationship. It was early October, the most glorious time of year on the Olympic Peninsula. I showed him my favorite summer steelhead run on the upper Hoh and demonstrated its productivity with a 10 pound wild buck. The next day, we drove down to the Queets and met Marshall Ross at Hartzell Creek. We caught Chinook to 30 pounds.
We enjoyed each other’s company and were relaxed around each other on that trip. More importantly, I think, we respected the knowledge that the other was willing to share. I was the one who knew the area intimately and had a natural history background. He was the one with the expertise about boats and the technical side of hunting and fishing.
Over the next decade we spent a lot of days together, in every Olympic Peninsula season and setting, with a rod or gun in our hands.
At his memorial, a number of his closest friends reminisced about Jay and told stories about him at different times of his life. I hadn’t been to anything like a funeral in a long time, and I wasn’t aware that this is now a common practice. I hadn’t organized any thoughts beforehand and I didn’t say anything. To be honest, I wouldn’t have anyway, because I’m pretty sure if I had begun talking about Jay in front of a bunch of people I would have started crying.
But here are a few of the things I would have said at Jay’s service.
I would have talked about how we stumbled onto the importance of chum fry in the diets of cutthroat trout in saltwater. It happened on upper Dabob Bay on a soft March morning. We had been fishing for over an hour, amidst schools of slashing and boiling cutthroat. They were clearly feeding on some sort of small schooling fish, but none of our traditional cutthroat baitfish patterns had interested the fish at all. Then, finally getting a direct overhead view of the bait from the deck of Jay’s boat, I saw their blueish backs and salmon fry shapes. It dawned on us then that they were chum fry from a nearby creek. We whittled down some blue/white coho-sized Clouser Minnows and began catching fish immediately. That day was the beginning of the journey toward my Keta Rose chum fry imitation.
I would also have spoken about the first day we fished a beaver pond that I had found one summer while Jay was fishing in Alaska. I had seen no evidence of fish the first few times I hiked into it and initially didn’t think it was worth fishing. But in September my dog, Lily, and I had spent a late afternoon grouse hunting in the woods near the pond, and as we climbed the ridge back to the car, I saw dozens of rises. Naturally, when Jay and I returned to the pond a few weeks later, the surface was as dead as it had been on all the other occasions I’d seen it. After about 40 fishless minutes, I began to feel foolish for talking it up to Jay. Then, just as I was about to suggest we go somewhere else, my line tightened and a shimmering 15 inch trout erupted from the surface. I was so surprised I dropped the line, and lost the fish. I swore loudly, and my words echoed against the rock ridge to the north. Someone at the service said Jay had a wonderful laugh, and I can still remember his laughter, delighted and resonant, as it also reverberated against the rocks.
The final thing I would have said at Jay’s memorial is that I knew of someone else who would have really liked to have paid their respects to him that day–my yellow Lab, Lily. Now, I’ll be honest, Lily, like most Labs, likes pretty much everyone. But she really really loved Jay.
Lily was always intense and enthusiastic when we hunted the Hood Canal salt marsh that we lived beside in those days. But when she heard the sound of Jay’s big diesel truck rumbling down the two-track to our place in the dark, she became utterly beside herself with excitement. She would squeal excitely and dance around the kitchen until I let her out to greet him.
The ironic thing about all this is that Jay really wasn’t a dog guy. He liked dogs and was comfortable around then. And he liked to duck hunt as much as anyone I’ve ever known. But Jay wasn’t the kind of person who gets down on his haunches and talks softly to a dog while rubbing the grooves behind their ears. Or the type who tends to run their fingers through a dog’s fur without even thinking about it.
Jay was a boat guy, and I was the dog guy. And, let me say, you really had to be a dog guy to be able to relate to Lily during her first couple of years of duck hunting. Before we moved to the marsh, all of her hunting had been for grouse, and she was used to its freedom. She was also still pretty young, just over two.
She loved retrieving ducks, and she was more determined about it than any dog I have ever seen. She had an uncanny ability to find birds that she didn’t see fall, and she never gave up, even when she had to crash through big waves to find a bird. But it was a nightmare trying to keep her in a blind those first couple years. And after she retrieved a few ducks, she became so enthusiastic about it that she began to swim out to the decoys when she saw birds about to land.
So hunting with Lily was definitely a mixed bag during our first couple years at the marsh. For someone as meticulous as Jay, I knew her behavior was frustrating and irritating at times. But he was too decent to ever say much about it. Besides, we always got ducks.
Eventually, we worked out a strategy where Jay did most of the shooting when he hunted with us, and I worked with Lily. He would set up in one of the beach blinds, and we would take up position in the other blind or by a big Sitka spruce at the back of the marsh. When ducks appeared, I would control Lily, and then release her after he shot.
As a result, during our early years at the marsh we got a lot more ducks when Jay was around than when we hunted alone.
Because of that, Lily always associated Jay not only with hunting, but also with getting more birds to retrieve. I believe that’s one of the reasons she was always so excited when Jay showed up. She knew that we were likely to get more birds and to hunt longer, and she loved that more than anything in the world.
So although Jay wasn’t really a dog guy, my dog loved him in that big-hearted, sloppy, rambunctious way that only big Labs can. And I know that Jay eventually came to respect Lily’s drive and athleticism and intelligence.
She also got him what I am sure was his favorite duck of all time. It was on a cold late winter day. It was clear and dry, not particularly good waterfowling weather. We had killed a mallard and widgeon at first light, then the birds had quit moving. The only action was moving the decoys as the tide came in.
Then the wind picked up. It was out of the northeast. That often signaled the beginning of good shooting, especially with pintails. And, sure enough, a trio of pintails came in from the north a few minutes later. They looked at the decoys, dropped down a bit, and circled. Jay shot. None of the birds fell, and they continued flying south.
From our position in the north blind, I could see their path better than Jay. I watched them descend gradually into the flooded saltmarsh on the property to the south. As they came down, one of the birds angled away from the others and landed separately.
I ran down the beach. “I think you hit one,” I said to Jay.
“Really?” he said. “I didn’t see any reaction.”
I raised my binoculars. After a minute, I found the solitary pintail. It was floating on its back, its white belly clearly visible.
“It’s dead,” I said, handing the binoculars to Jay.
“What should we do?” he asked, after he located the bird.
The bird was on our neighbor’s property. He didn’t like me and wouldn’t allow me on his marsh.
“We’ll get it,” I said. “You stay here, and I’ll get Lily on it.”
Fortunately, a seven foot tall thicket of Oregon grape ran down the top of the beach, between the marsh side of the beach and Hood Canal. It gave Lily and me cover as we ran down the beach to a break in the vegetation.
“Fetch,” I said, pointing at the bird. It was a long way off, and I could hardly see it without my binoculars.
She looked at me, quizzically. I pointed again and said, “Get it, Lily.”
She gave me the dog equivalent of a shrug, and then walked across the beach and into the water. It was a long swim, probably 50 yards. She tracked a straight line in the direction I had pointed, and at some point she picked up the bird.
It was a beautiful drake pintail, fully mature, with long dagger-like tail feathers and luscious sable-colored neck and head. When Jay took the bird from me and held it up, he said, ”Look. A band.”
Jay got the results of the band a few weeks later. It was an old bird, as we had expected, and it had been banded near Great Slave Lake up in the Northwest Territories.
Whenever I look back on those days, I am always struck by how much more fun Lily and I had when we hunted with Jay. And I will never forget the excited clicking of Lily’s claws on the linoleum in the darkened kitchen when she heard his truck. In her dog way, she knew that things always worked out better when Jay was around.
I think that was one of the principal themes at the celebration of Jay’s life in September, as well. Whether it was on a halibut schooner in the Bering Strait, a drift boat on the Hoh, a boat shop in Port Townsend, or a duck blind on Hood Canal–everything always worked out better when Jay was around.
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Marmitako for Christmas
My wife and I buy an albacore tuna each September from the Gallows Point, a commercial boat that moors at La Push in the fall. We cook it a number of ways, but our favorite is Marmitako, a Basque fresh tuna and potato stew. Apparently, the root word for marmitako in Basque means “pot” or “casserole.” It is the way the tuna fishermen cooked their fish on the boats on the way back into port.
Our tuna is gone by this time of year but it’s possible these days to obtain very high quality frozen tuna. Moreover, I have been told that the recipe also works great with salmon, or presumably steelhead, although I haven’t tried it. Any of the firm Pacific Northwest white-fleshed fish–true cod, lingcod or halibut–shines in the basic Marmitako recipe.
If you like hearty, colorful and spicy stews, give Marmitako a try. I think we’ve had it four times in the last couple months.
Ingredients
3 tsp olive oil; 1 red onion, chopped; 2 garlic cloves, diced; 2 sweet peppers, seeded and sliced (I like the green ones to contrast with the red of the tomato but you can use 1 red and 1 green); 2 tsp paprika; 1 small chili; 1 cup white whine; 1/2 cup water; four tomatoes, sliced and seeded; 1/4 cup capers, drained; 4 potatoes, diced; 1 pound tuna, cut into chunks
Directions:
heat oil in the pan and then sautee the onions, garlic, and sweet pepper slices; when they are soft add tomatoes, capers, salt and pepper, paprika and chile; cook until tomatoes are slightly reduced; add potatoes, wine and water; cover pot and cook over high heat until potatoes are tender, approximately 20 minutes; add fish, cover and cook for 5 minutes or until the fish flakes easily; remove from heat and rest for 5 or 10 minutes.
Serve it with a good French bread and crisp white wine or ale. It’s simple, satisfying, and sort of exotic-tasting. It’s a great meal to have while decorating the Christmas tree. Or from a thermos on gravel bar or a duck blind.
Finally, I hope all of you have a great holiday season this year. That goes especially for all of the contributors to the Winter Newsletter this year–Les and Jack and Preston, Leland, Ron and Bob. And best wishes to all of my clients; I I have the most knowledgable, patient and interesting clients on the Olympic Peninsula. And Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone who takes the time to read this blog. Peace.