Hope and Memories

I have high hopes for this weekend. And yes I said high hopes, not high hopes for high temperatures, which it looks like we will also be experiencing out here in Portlandia. My hopes are mainly concentrated on learning something about Columbia River Carps. And hopefully that "something" involves catching a few.

Since moving out here to OR I have dabbled around with fly fishing for carp, but I haven't spent any time trying for them in rivers; only in ponds/lakes. I'm fairly convinced it's a bit different but we'll see. Plus the need to locate good places to find and catch the wary creatures puts me at significant further disadvantage. Only time can fix that one.

From my bubbling cauldron of excitement and angst wafted up memories of the video below. I thought I had posted it, but I'm not so sure that I ever did. Either way it was a year ago so I'm sure you wouldn't remember anyway. Plus it's fun and funny. I don't apologize for my lack of skill, I revel in it. The water was too muddy this day to be able to see a take, so instead I was casting out past the fish, letting the fly sink, then stripping it back to where I thought the fish's mouth was, hesitating, and slowly stripping through the assumed strike zone. It's not often a good strategy out here but occasionally it works. Enjoy:

The one thing that might be looking in my favor this weekend is the river temp. Word has it that the carps like 60 degrees. Let's hope that's true and is enough to make up for my crap skills (not carp skills), complete lack of experience, poor fish handling skills, and any other excuse I can preemptively utter.

Oh, and I should try and remember to bring my net in the off chance...

To Eat or Not to Eat

I have been cursed, or blessed depending on your perspective, with a ridiculously small stomach and a high metabolism. Result? Scrawny dude who eats often but like a bird. And being a retired endurance athlete but still very active, that leaves me needing to refuel mid-exercise in the moderately rare occasion when I'm out there exercising. Since I've picked up cycling, which involves being out there on the bike for 2-5 hours, my refueling requirements are even more dire.

Thus, I always carry some sort of energy food with me when I'm on the bike. Usually it's Clif Blocks cause they taste good and can be rationed to last. But there has been a PowerGel in my cupboard for a while and my supply of Clif Blocks is running thin, so I pulled out the gel today with the intention of finally consuming it this weekend. Here's what it looked like:

Looking at the packaging I realized it seemed a bit beat up, which was odd since it's been sitting in a cupboard. And that led me to wonder exactly how old this gel was. So I flipped it over in search of an expiration data and here's what I found:

I admit that I literally LOL'ed when I saw the date. And no, that's not 7th of Jan 2011. It is in fact Jan 11, 2007. This gel is truly 6 and a half years old. How did this happen? I guess it's because I don't really like PowerGels. And fortunately now I have an excuse not to eat this one.

Except I feel I have to open it and take a taste just out of curiosity. If this is the last post I ever write, please don't ever eat expired energy foods. In fact don't even taste them!

PS - Apologies for the non-fishing related post. They occur from time to time so you'll have to live with it.

Faithfulness

I am often guilty of living a little too much in the moment rather than planning for the future. And this often leads to an inability to fully devote myself to anything. Since moving to Oregon I have continued to fish for trout when available, I have dabbled in salmon fishing as well as steelhead hunting, and more recently I find myself targeting more and more bottom feeding trash-fish. Thus I am no master of any of these fish, just as I am not much of a master of anything but a jack of many, whatever a jack is--see, i'm no master of the english language either. And this isn't even to mention all my non-fishing hobbies that also steal time from what's truly important.

This tendency of mine to time multiplex between many activities can be described as opportunism, disloyalty, or unfaithfulness depending on the situation. But every once in a blue moon I manage a little faithfulness and sometimes it pays off. Last week one such decision point came up and my heart and brain and soul began their usual three-way wrestling match, which I wrote about. In the end I decided to be faithful to my old home waters rather than opportunistic. At least at first.

On Friday morning I headed to my favorite spot on South Boulder Creek just outside Boulder, Colorado. The water was not high, but rather HIGH, however it was not too terribly off color. As usual up here the first bit was pretty slow but after 11am things started to heat up. I caught a couple small browns at first, and missed a few others, then came a few larger browns and finally a nice chunky 13" rainbow. That is about as big as I ever expect to catch here. In the end I had a fun time fishing my old waters in new and more challenging conditions and still managed to catch a dozen or so fish in the short time I had. Given all afternoon the standard 30+ fish day may well have occurred. At least I will tell myself so.

  

But the story doesn't end there. I can only be faithful and loyal for a short period before breaking out in wild and uncontrollable fits. So the next day I headed into the mountains with a couple friends with the intentions of camping and fishing some high mountain lakes. The camping worked out; the fishing not so much. I've never been much of a lake fisherman and I apparently continue to not be. We suffered through a brief 2 hours of skunking that smelled quite bad and lingered around us despite the howling and chilly winds.

After enduring sufficient pain and suffering we hiked down and aimed for a very brief attempt at some badly blown out high mountain streams. Under normal conditions these streams are all of a few feet across but currently are running heavy, fast, and very stained. It wasn't easy but we managed to pull a couple tiny fish from the tea-colored and sediment filled torrents. They weren't big fish. In fact they were the variety that have serious jumping skills and as soon as you set the hook they like to go flying back into the brush behind you. Despite the day's poor showing I suppose it was nice to have a challenge. That night we enjoyed a few melancholy beers back at camp rather than celebratory whisky and began plotting the next days ventures with optimism.

Since most of the rivers were in pretty bad shape, and simply because it's a blast, we decided to go fish for some pike. It wasn't going to happen until afternoon, which may not be ideal, but pike fishing is fun enough that it was worth a try and in the end was fun enough to have been a good idea. The two of us each brought one to hand, had a couple more on that were lost, as well as a few follows. I even got to spook a bunch of carp sunning themselves by casting to one. It was hot and smelled of sulfur and methane out there, but we couldn't have cared less cause pike fishing is a ton of fun! The only bad part is the ever-present fear of lost fingers when there's a big pike in your net.

Decision time

Right at this moment I am sitting at the Portland airport on my way to Denver for the weekend. As usual I have Friday morning allocated to fish probably on my own. The question is where exactly is going to be good?  Or maybe I should rephrase that: where exactly won't be too bad. It seems the runoff monster has reared his head just in time to gobble my weekend right up. 

My normal MO is to go hit up my old haunts on SBC, but that may not be the greatest idea. That river is top notch at 50-150 cfs. It is ok up to 250cfs, but above that I've honestly never tried. Today it's 410cfs and rising. 

And that leads me to a dilemma. Do I accept the challenge from my previous home waters and risk a potential skunking from old reliable? Or should I cheat on her with another water that's likely to be no better than a two bit hooker?

Who knows. I sure don't. I'll probably make up my mind in the morn. 

If any locals have the day off and are in possession of some inside info, shoot me a PM! I'll buy the beer.

If not I'll be sure to let you all know how amazing the chocolate milk tastes. 

The Evil Pool

Right off the bat I should apologize. This post has nothing to do about fish, and yes I chose the title to make you think it did.  Let's be honest; you wouldn't have read it if I hadn't done that.

And with that out of the way I feel free to explain how incredibly difficult snooker is. Yes, I know your first response: "what the hell is snooker???" Snooker is a variation of pool played in the UK on an enormous table with slightly smaller balls and pockets with curved entrances. Right off the bat you should realize that a much larger table with smaller balls makes this game quite a bit more difficult. And no the pockets are not proportionally larger. I had assumed the game would be certainly harder than pool, but upon seeing the table I wasn't sure how to take the rounded pocket bumpers. Are rounded bumpers easier than the normal straight and pointy bumpers of pool? Rounder seems softer and easier, doesn't it?

I wasn't sure until we started playing. But the more we played the more I became convinced that rounded bumpers were significantly harder. Every ball that was hit near a pocket but touched the bumper was rejected. Even the ones I was sure were going in, and no not just my shots; everyone's shots. I expected a good number of these shots to simply tick the bumper and drop right in.  Instead when they touched the bumper, they'd be violently slapped away from the pocket as if a miniature Dikembe Mutombo (very miniature) were filming a commercial on our table and we were the poor suckers slated to get rejected.

Finally by the end of the night I had to take a ball and roll it along the bumper to see how much deviation would be tolerated. The answer was virtually none. If the ball hits the bumper it will be rejected at least 95% of the time. Only if it just barely brushes the bumper does it still go in. And don't forget the table is 12 feet long. These rounded bumpers are to pool as a 13 foot Dikembe Mutombo would be to basketball; slapping just about any and all of your shots right out of the sky and high up into the stands, leaving you looking like a complete incompetent fool who has no business playing this game. You might even find yourself weeping in the corner.

And so after a couple hours of play, I had concluded that snooker is an evil version of pool. The game takes forever, is impossibly and unnecessarily difficult, and you even have to do math in your head! I'm not sure what's wrong with the English, but it is certainly something significant.

Sunburns and Scales

It's been an incredibly nice spell out here in the PacNW over the past week or so. And the fish are feeling it too. I spent some time on Sunday working on my tan and trying to learn a little about carp. So far I continue to be a bit confused and frustrated but at least fish still come to hand. The fish themselves seem to be going crazy in full spawn, or maybe they're just loving the turn of sunshine like I am. And I'm also now sporting a nice pinkish hue to my skin, another sign that summer is nigh!

Montana 2013

Those who read this blog regularly (all 5 of you) or those who know me personally know this is an annual trip and sort of a big deal for me and my fishing acquaintances. At some point each year we head to this river in Montana called the Bighorn river, which is an extremely productive tailwater. We do this to catch a ton of fish, drink a little beer, a bunch of whisk(e)y, and just hang out. It seems to me that it's slowly devolving into a bit more of a hang out and less of a fish-hard-outing, but I think that's the general idea in most hobbies and in the aging process. I'm OK with it. I guess.

A couple years back I did a pre-trip post to introduce my beloved readers to the contestants. This year I was not on top of things, partly because the line-up wasn't totally finalized until the night we arrived, and partly because I am getting lazier in my old age. So I am going to introduce you, post-facto, to the contestants. What are they contesting in? A number of things. Some of which they knew about, others they were oblivious to. But all those things aside for now, here are the contestants.

Tyler (dry-fly only purist who has been fishing for 1 year)

Bueno (Bighorn virgin)

Gavin (Bighorn virgin)

Cousin John

Brady

Lewdie

Mitch (Bighorn virgin)

Big Jon

Eric

Mike

Jonathan

Dan

Me

Of the contests we all knew about, which were biggest rainbow, biggest brown, and biggest whitefish, we have winners. What did they win? Well, the biggest trout each received a bottle of Roughstock Montana whisk(e)y and a cigar (which was left in the rental car and I now have!). The biggest whitefish won the jackpot that consisted of $5 for each whitefish caught on the trip.

Mike sort of ruined the fun and won both largest trout prizes. Congrats Mike, and thanks for spoiling the fun for everyone else.

Jonathan won the largest whitefish, which was 17" and he claims to have caught twice. Unfortunately for him, I don't think anyone actually paid. Sorry. I owe you $5 and so do a few other people.

Of the contests that people didn't know about, here we go. 

Biggest partier disappointment, it's a 3-way tie between cousin John, Gavin, and Bueno. We were stunned when they were the first to head back to their cabin and turn in every night. I can only assume they were either pounding the whisky hard on the river or did so after they left us every night. Congrats either way fellas!

Most improved fisherman. This one is really hard to give out since I really only fished with the people in my boat, but I remember hearing reports of Mitch catching quite a few fish from the boat. Being as it's his first time here and how he hasn't done a ton of fly fishing in general, that makes him worthy and deserving.

Most dedicated fisherman. This one was going to go to big John because he didn't know how or when to take a break. However...and you knew there was a however coming...he took a half day off with a bunch of others to go see some silly historical sight, and that's not what a dedicated fisherman does. Instead I'm awarding this to Jonathan. We always have trouble getting him to fully commit to long trips like this and when he does it seems like he always has to come up late or leave early. He did neither this year, fished his heart out, hooked a million and even caught a few, so congrats Jonathan!

Best cook. Gavin for preparing something I certainly can't spell, and don't even recall what it was, to add to our fish tacos one night. He wins despite the neoprene waders.

Worst dressed. I place this here because it goes to Gavin, pictured above. I just can't get passed the neoprene. Of course the real blame goes to someone else in the group for donating these stylish waders.

Best boat rower.  I give this one to myself because I'm the only one who didn't row the boat over prime fishing territory while I was fishing.

Most dedicated to something other than fishing. This doesn't necessarily mean not dedicated to fishing, but Tyler win's hands down since he put in a number of 10+ mile runs in the mornings before we headed out. Then fished hard all day and walked up and down the banks nonstop searching for rising pods.

MVP. This one is sort of a no-brainer. It goes to Brady for doing all the logistics, delegating the shopping, making all reservations, sending out all emails, and basically sorting out everything so all the rest of us have to do is show up. The only hangup that made me consider re-routing this award was that the historical sight outing was his idea. Regardless, I seriously hope you got paid back in full plus a little, but it sounds like we shorted you this year. Maybe I'll help out a little next year. Then again maybe not.

Until he matches this catch, I am obligated to overuse this picture. I have no choice.