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Cutthroat
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 26
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Big Fish Hunting
Awhile back a friend of mine was invited on a fly-in fishing trip in Alaska. As he described it, the plane load of fishermen would fly out every morning looking for a spot to land and fish. Often the first choices would already be occupied by a plane. There had been rain and some rivers were out of shape. Part of every morning was the flying and looking until they found a vacancy. He said that he knew they were miles and miles from the nearest road but it didn’t feel wild to him. There were too many people and too much going on.
The wildest feeling river I’ve ever fished was hidden in a canyon surrounded by clear cuts. The parking spot on a logging road was an easy drive from Seattle. You can’t see Coyote River, as I will call it, from the logging road and there was no obvious way to get to the water, even if you had a reason to try.
Old Blue and I were grouse hunting when I found a faint human trail that went down through a clear cut to the river at the head of the canyon. The leaves were off the deciduous brush and the trail was clearly visible. Someone else had been fishing Coyote River, though I never saw another person in the years I fished that water. Once there was a foot print on a sandbar. A couple of adjoining pools in the other-worldly heart of the canyon were linked by human artifact. The upper pool was very fishy. I could only get there at low water. Steps had been cut long ago in an ancient log that gave high water access over a yawning watery chasm to the upper pool from the lower. The steps were old and weathering away. I wish now that I had walked them.
The Steelhead were wonderful wandering Skamania summer run hatchery strays! There were no plants in Coyote River but there were enough strays to keep me coming back.
There’s a pool in the canyon I called “The hole that always holds fish.” It often did, though the water was hard to approach from up stream without spooking them. I renamed it “Big Fish Hole.”
The whole river moves through a rock gate at the head of the hole. The river is no wider than five or six feet at its narrowest point in the gate with the heavy current moving into a deep slow pool. Sheer rock walls both sides of the pool. It’s your typical ethereally beautiful scene in Coyote River Canyon. Fish can rest comfortably in the pool, but not out of sight. You can see every fish in the pool with a little elevation. If you are coming from up stream, it is easy for the fish to see you too. You have to climb the rock gate and descend it in full view of any fish in the pool.
It was a couple of hours past daylight by the time I had fished down that far and climbed over the rock gate, scrunched down and hiding my face. The water was at a level to fish nice from the first fishing position at the edge of the pool with the rock gate to the left and up stream. I drifted little cut sections of prawn on a #2 hook with white yarn. Coyote River was too small for my casting rod so I was using a spinning rod and Cardinal 5 reel.
No action. I moved to the lower and better casting position, being forced by the rock wall bordering the water to walk downstream closer to the water than I liked.
I passed the tail out staying as far from the water as I could get and came back up to it wading from below, ending just at the break with the whole pool above within easy casting range.
My first cast was the best cast in the pool, straight up the gut into the heavy water, reeling to drift the bait naturally with the current the length of the pool. If something was going to happen, it would most likely happen now. Nothing did.
After the first several casts, the meaningful casts, the casts where all the action is, water like that, I had to take a dozen more. Before moving on down steam, I parked my gear and climbed back to the top of the rock gate to see if there were any fish in the pool.
The soft water part of the pool was empty. But when I looked down, there was a big Steelhead right below me in the heavy water coming through the rock gate! I mean a really big Steelhead! He was laying about 4 feet deep under the cover of the surface turbulence.
I retreated as quietly as I could, considering, reconnected with my gear and stood there shaking a little from buck fever, wishing I had a cigarette.
The big fish must have been laying in the soft water of the pool and spooked up into the heavy water, probably when he saw me coming down stream over the rock gate before I’d made my first cast. Without much hope, I made a few casts to him with a little green Steelie, and a few more with a little gold Mepps.
Then I got to wondering, though I’d never seen one on Coyote River, if the fish could be a Chinook. I’d moved back out of his sight as soon as I saw him, after only a quick look. Needing to know for sure, I climbed the rock gate one last time and moved slowly to a good view of the fish. He was big. He was huge! Huge! A slick passed over the fish and I saw him clearly. Steelhead!
I pulled the rig into the back yard looking forward to watching the game with a few beers and a couple of big bowls of Pinto Beans I’d cooked with a chunk of ham and those little dried red chilies.
Lia met me at the door and hustled me into the shower with the news we were meeting friends to go out. One thing led to another. I ate too much and drank too much and it was late before we hit the sack. But I got my best eggs out to thaw and went to bed with a plan.
I jolted wide awake in the middle of the night. First light found me slaloming thorough moguls on the dirt road to Coyote River listening to country radio. There was enough light when I left the rig to walk down a gated overgrown road through a clear-cut that took me close to a heavily treed slope plunging a steep three hundred feet vertical into the canyon. The slope was a rarity for the canyon, being all dirt. No rocks to hit or cliffs to go over. I went down there once or twice the first year I found it, but didn’t want to make a trail so never went back. But the dirt slope was a one way elevator to where I needed to be that morning, ending at the riverbank a hundred yards down stream from Big Fish Hole.
It was still dark under the trees when I reached the edge of the plunge. It felt good to flop and rest, waiting for a little more light. The burst of energy that got me out of the house and on the road was long gone.
(refrain)
“…These sorts of things,…were gittin’ hard to do…”
It was more work than fun on my butt in the old Red Ball Featherlights down the steep pitches with my heels plowing loose dirt and tree debris. It was red line hot in the waders at the bottom. Walked up to below Big Fish Hole to cool off and clean up, stripping to my waist and wading out to wash in the cold water. Dried on a towel from the day pack and rubbed my hands with a squirt of shrimp oil. Put on my vest and picked up my rod, tied on a new rig and baited with a cluster of my best eggs.
It was time.
I waded slowly up to the pool from below, pausing at the casting position to savor the sensation of perfect place. I cast to the head of the turbulent water coming through the gate and reeled to keep lightly in touch with the eggs as they drifted with the current through the heart of the hole. After several more casts, I took off the eggs and put on a piece of cut prawn doused in shrimp oil. When the prawn didn’t work I went back to eggs, using a little more weight. Took a long break to rest the water and went to a big black Wooly Bugger, then to the little green Steelie and the little gold spinner.
I climbed the rock gate slowly with great care, positioning myself to see the fish. The pool was empty.
It seemed most likely the fish had moved upstream so I hunted that direction first, climbing to high points with visibility into the pools, fishing through the deep slots where I couldn’t see. Went as far as the trail at the head of the canyon. Didn’t find him. Turned around and hunted back down the canyon to The Big Fish Hole and a mile below, checking all the water I could get to. The Big Steelhead, he was gone.
Didn’t get out for a couple of days and then went to the Sky for some easy fishing. There was a good run that summer. I did well and ended up fishing there until it went dead in August, short lining the high bank side at the Cable Hole and the Wedding Bell Hole, and walking down the old railroad grade to fish the low bank side at Proctor Creek.
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FisherJack
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