sw 2 nw by mw

I don’t like to think this way, but sometimes the holidays are just an unwelcome break in the routine. And the last two years they’ve been a depressing reminder of my current social state. Last year I was freshly dumped and could not enjoy myself no matter what. I was irritable with my family, found no joy in travel, I even purchased the newly released Rock Band and hated it for the first couple days after thinking it was going to be the solution to all my problems.

This year for Thanksgiving I didn’t have turkey and yams and watch football. My mom and stepdad were in Scotland for their 10th wedding anniversary, which approximately coincided with my 9th divorce-iversary. My dad and stepmom were at home in Scottsdale and my grandparents and aunts and uncles were at Lake Tahoe. I was too far away to drive, not wanting to deal with the busiest travel weekend of the year, and mainly unwilling to foist my dog upon strangers for 4 days again and vice versa.

So I took Petunia for a nice romantic trip to the Oregon coast. I packed for beach camping, having read that the entire coast was public land and you could drive and camp nearly anywhere on it thanks to a benevolent governor a hundred years ago. Turns out in the places I went, beach camping is frowned upon but probably not prosecuted, and I didn’t see a way to reasonably drive a car onto or along the beach with all the people out for their post-turkey dinner walk. The weather was the final decider. It was cold, foggy, windy and raining or, as it does up here, misting. Mist is not as intrusive as rain, but not nearly as nice as sunshine. And besides, I camped less than a week before on that beach near Forks where they have all those vampires.

So after driving from Seattle and arriving in Manzanita about 2 hours before sundown which comes at 4pm, and seeing the inhospitality of the beach, I made the executive decision to get us a hotel. But not just any hotel. I had to try to ignore the irony or patheticness or whatever you want to call it, but I took us to the same beachfront hotel about 20 miles north in Seaside where I stayed with January a year and a half ago. It was an oceanside room that time, with a kitchen and fireplace. This room for half the price was a tenth as nice. Just a bed, a table and a tv. It was fine though. At night with all that fog you couldn’t see the beach anyway, and during the day we would be out on it in person.

After putting off dinner later and later, hoping for some inspiration that would make for a nice Thanksgiving after all, I settled for a so-so burger and fries in the hotel bar and proceeded to get unintentionally really drunk on spanish coffees while talking with the bartender and one of the waitresses. She didn’t have what you’d call classic good looks, but they were compelling nonetheless. So close to ugly that she was hot, if that makes sense. Tiny, about 95 pounds, with teeth that pushed her lips out. Pale cheeks, sharp nose and red lips with no lipstick, a head full of puerto rican hair under a chef’s hat, and a formal chef’s coat that was way too big for her, standing at the prime rib carving station for the Thanksgiving buffet that was more than I wanted to pay. I got her to save the fatty end piece of the roast for Petunia. It was the name Petunia that clinched it – ‘oh she’s a girl’. Pretty soon there appeared an older lady in the seat next to me, then a younger blonde, pretty, trashy and loud on the other side of me who I got to talk about all her problems. She lost custody of her son to her baby-daddy because his family has money. So now she’s a barfly. Now. The last thing I remember was going up to the room to get a cigarette to smoke outside with her – because I like menthols and she only had regulars. I can’t remember her name. I could tell the next morning that I had smoked a cigarette but I hoped it wasn’t with her, because I don’t remember and I always fear the worst in that situation.

In the morning I was pretty hung over. I had a moment of realization that every hangover I’ve had this year, surprisingly few as there have been, came from drinking liquor, never from beer. There may be a lesson in that, but I’ll surely ignore it since tequila is the nectar of the gods. I had planned to actually do some work-work on the laptop I had brought all the way from Seattle and made sure to get a hotel with internet for the purpose of using. It wasn’t going to happen that day. I have to use my brain for this job, and hangovers kind of make that impossible. So I slept all day and didn’t even turn on the tv. Finally around 3 I got up and took Petunia for a long walk on the beach before it got dark. It was much better than being in the room. It got dark while we were out and little fires popped up on the beach with people sitting around them. Closer to the water flashlights danced from people clamming. We came across a couple older ladies shining their flashlight at something on the ground and Petunia ran up on them but they weren’t startled. They told me they were trying to figure out what this dead thing was. I looked and whatever it was had decomposed pretty well. It was completely flat as if it had been crushed under the weight of burial, and you could see the demure vertebrae laid out in a curve. It had skin intact but spread out like a spilt milkshake. They pointed with the light and said look at the size of this bone. It looked like a hip bone, the upper end of a femur. Clearly this was a mammal, and a pretty big one by the size of that bone. It was as thick but not as long as an adult human’s. Maybe this was a dog? We couldn’t figure it out, it was so far gone. But it didn’t smell at all, and damn if there was any fur on that skin.

For dinner that night I went to a seafood restaurant I had checked the menu of earlier and got the Willapa Bay oysters, sauteed with mushrooms. They were good. I have a little connection to Willapa Bay oysters from buying some at the source back in July during my first trip to the coast about 50 miles north of there. The coast here is pretty remarkable. Changing always. When it’s foggy you can hear further than you can see, which is spooky. When it’s clear it’s fantastic.

I don’t mean to keep sounding like Oh everything is so much better up here. I miss lots of things about Phoenix and Arizona and the southwest. My friends and family, my house, the sun, the sunsets, not being cold and wet all the time. But most everything else does seem better up here. Not the mexican food. But the seafood. The one thing that drives it all is water. Instead of constant drought, it’s constant overabundance of water. It causes plants to grow everywhere unaided by man. Moss drapes from trees like green phantoms reaching out at you. After a rainy day in the city, you find moss growing over the sidewalks. Rivers run wide and fast year-round, animals flourish in size and number. Nature is almost too plentiful.

The next day, Saturday, around noon we went to the beach and played fetch in the surf one more time and then got in the car and drove east across the hills to Portland. I went straight to Brad and PeeWee’s and hung out and played rock band for a little while. I don’t know what to think about rock band anymore… all I know are songs from the years I was in college. Is that sad? That was a long time ago, but that’s most of what they put out. I called up our other friend from Phoenix, Drew, who I had plans to fish with the next day before heading back to Seattle. I wound up staying in his guest room that night and we headed out for the river just after 7am Sunday.

Seven a.m. seems really early to be leaving the house. I’m always up then but never ready to go. But I did it and by 9 we were fishing. Maybe 30 miles north of Portland, toward Mt. St. Helens. On the way we picked up Drew’s friend Shawn, who is a pretty experienced local angler and hunter. I didn’t know what to expect before I met him because he does all that rednecky stuff and lives in the hills, but I instantly felt at ease when we met. He’s just a real happy fun talkin guy with no negative rural traits that I saw. He lives on this hilltop, up a gravel road, a beautiful little spot with grass that keeps itself and trees that turn colors and a tidy garage and house and one of the biggest quietest dogs I’ve ever seen. Several vehicles and a drift boat for the river. One of his cars is a subaru like mine, the sedan version. He came out through the garage and the first thing he said was We got another subie!

Shawn led us to a fishing spot on the Lewis River near Woodland, WA. The drive was along one of the most beautiful country roads I’ve ever seen, really. That early light I don’t usually see, glistening the dew that covers everything. There are country roads that are spooky, like the one to the coast on Thursday. In the fog and mist and tall thick dark forest it was real creepy. But this road went down into a little valley with tall grass on the right and an squat berry orchard with burnt burgundy leaves on the left. Through a covered bridge shaped like a barn, then down to a gravel parking lot by the river.

I brought all my fishing gear, but it was not going to be of use because it was light tackle. Most of it came from my grandfather who fished for trout on the Truckee River flowing out of Lake Tahoe down through Reno. Today we were fishing for salmon and steelhead. I did have a few spinners that were extra-large versions of trout lures. I bought them 2 summers ago in Red Bluff, CA for an outing on the shores of the Sacramento River, which also has salmon. I showed them to Shawn and he looked closely at both lures and pointed out one as being a real good choice that I might want to use first. But then a few minutes later they had me set up with Drew’s spare pole. It was about the same length but 2 or 4 times as thick as the one I brought. It looked like the steelhead rods I’d seen at some outdoor store. And I don’t know the real term for the rig but it had a heavy 3 oz. lead ball on about a 3 foot leader, separated from another 4 foot leader with a spinner at the end of it. I thought that was kind of cool because I always like the spinner type lures. They move like little fish in the current or when you pull them through slower water. I use those pretty much exclusively for trout and they work well.

It took a while to get the hang of this reel, and how to work that rig in the water. Probably an hour until I felt I had a groove going. I moved upstream to work the close edge of a shelf that Shawn had pointed out. I was looking for ripples and changes of current. That’s where trout hang out, and if nothing else I knew salmon and steelhead are the trout’s closest cousins so maybe they like the same water. Every few minutes you’d hear a splash and whip your head around to see a wake spreading in a circle. Sometimes a fish would jump in your sight, and you’d be astounded at its size, and then turn to your buddy and laugh or shake your head like can you believe this?!

Two men fishing on a rock outcropping upstream of me quit for the day so I made my way to their spot. It was at the confluence of the smaller Cedar Creek with this north fork of the Lewis. Cedar Creek looked like an endless flow of Coca Cola spilling into the clear water of the Lewis. The only fish I saw in Cedar Creek was a 3-foot long algae-covered salmon that floated by dead. It’s spawning season for Chinook, which is the only reason for them to be this far inland, and of course they die soon after.

A sea gull swooped down in slow motion crying like an eagle and snatched some sort of fish from the water. It looked like half a fish, and not a very fresh one. The gull dropped it a foot above the water and flew away disgusted. This was near a little sand bar just across the confluence from me. I had been seeing a bunch of fish flops for an hour in one spot a few feet off the sandbar. It was too far to cast, and I couldn’t cross to it without getting wet and cold. It was more than waist deep in the middle and I was only waterproof to the ankles. A half dozen gulls had been hanging out on the sand bar but they were being hassled now by a couple blue heron. One heron took off with a racket so loud and disruptive that people on the shores stopped their casting to watch it.

By now I felt my line was ineffective. I had gotten the hang of slinging it out there, but I was still in the learning curve as far as the reeling goes. I didn’t feel like I was getting close to or appealing to the fish. They were jumping all over the place, huge black bodied salmon with bright red sides, and some smaller silver-tan steelhead. I was casting to those areas as soon as I could after seeing a flop, playing it along the bottom and getting snagged half the time, until I figured the fish just weren’t seeing it cuz that’s not where they were. I mean, they were jumping, they were at the surface. This rig was 3 feet off the bottom.

I took the spinner out of my pocket, the one Shawn liked. It’s a 1 oz Mepps, an oversized version of a 1/8 oz lure you use for trout. It has a spoon hinged loosely at one end of a metal rod ornamented with red and yellow balls, and a big treble hook at the end. In the water, with the spoon flapping and banging against the rod, it’s like a big dragonfly buzzing underwater.

I threw that dragonfly all over the place. It casts a lot further than the trout lures I’m used to. Downstream, upstream, through that coca cola syrup. Over by the sandbar, way out in the middle where the water was fast and deep. It sinks a lot more than a 1/8 oz lure, but nowhere near as much as that 3 oz lead ball. So it was always in the top half of the water, flashing in the sunlight, swimming from low to high just like a dragonfly would. I sped up or down on the reeling, trying to find a natural pace through each different speed of water.

At some point I made a prayer to catch a fish. A little later I got that feeling of ‘this isn’t working’, I should change lures or move to another spot or take a break. But I gave it more time, and said to myself gosh you’re good at keeping on with something longer than it seems like you should.

Then I felt the hit. It was stronger than a trout. A burst of little tugs – bam. bam bam bam bam. I not so much remembered as repeated to myself the words Drew had given me the night before: You have to let it hit three times, then set the hook. That was one. Another set came a second later – bam bam bam. tuug tuug tuug. I waited and just held onto the pole, not breathing. Bam bam bam bam – and without thinking I gave a monumental yank and started reeling fast. It was on there, I could feel the weight. The line was taut and driving all over the place. Halfway in I saw the fish for the first time and it was big – long and thick, greenish tan on the top. It looked like a gigantic trout, and I thought it must be a steelhead. I started scrambling down from my position on the outcropping 3 feet above the water. Carefully – the rock was wet and my boots had no kind of traction for it. I finally got down to the water and saw the line angled straight down and under the big flat rock I was standing on. The fish was taking evasive action, trying to cut the line, doing barrel-rolls, but somehow I wasn’t worried. It was thick line and there weren’t many snags or cover in the water and this rock had smooth edges. I pulled him out from under the rock and he broke straight back toward the middle of the river, then in a slashing circle, then finally onto the rock. I saw the hook just inside the corner of his jaw. Not deep or difficult to remove, but also not escapable. I let him back in the water just to keep him calm and alive while I figured out what to do. I let out a whoop like I had heard twice that morning across the river. I waved at Drew and Shawn a hundred yards downstream. They looked up and I gave some kind of frantic hand signal. They seemed to understand.

I turned back to the fish and he was alright – in the water trying to get away. A lot of chatter went through my head, none of it comprehensible. Adrenaline was pumping. I needed to figure out if the fish was wild or hatchery, which is the difference between mandatory catch and release or fisherman’s choice. The way to tell is by the adipose fin, a little apparently unneeded fin halfway between the big dorsal fin and the tail. If it’s a hatchery fish, there should be a little nub where they clipped it off. That’s what it had – almost nothing, just a bump along its back. The skin was green fading to tan with a pale pink streak down the sides – the markings of a rainbow trout. But the mouth was trademark salmon – two big beaks opposing each other, so curved they don’t seem like they can close together. I thought I remembered seeing a picture of a steelhead and it had those same jaws. By the size too, it wasn’t as big as the black and red salmon that were jumping all over the place.

Drew and Shawn finally arrived. Shawn was happy for me and very approving of the fish and they way I’d hooked it. ‘You got him fair and square’ – I think meaning he wasn’t just snagged, nor hooked too deep. I showed them the clipped fin and they agreed, it was legal and a keeper for sure. I said, So what now? I’m no beginner but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything else to do first. I pretty much wanted to keep it and eat it like I usually do with trout. But then I started thinking about it being a steelhead. They’re sort of the mythical symbol of western stream fishing. It would be like eating a unicorn.

‘You hit him on the head with a rock, that’s what now.’

I looked at the ground and there were no loose rocks, just little pools of water and one pool of dark blood where the previous fishermen had killed their catch.

‘I don’t know if I really wanna do that.’

‘Well you can put him back.’

‘Yeah, I guess I could do that.’ I didn’t really want to do that either, but I had to make a decision and it just seemed right.

Drew was quick enough to remember to take some pictures. Shawn got the hook out with his pliers while I held the fish with a finger through its gills. They were a little sharp. And there were 2 teeth on the lower jaw.

I laid the fish back in the water and gave it a little nudge toward the current. It floated lifelessly for a minute the way fish do when you let them go. The guys talked him through it. ‘Yeah get out to the current, get some oxygen running through those gills’. And it worked, after a minute the fish seemed to wake up, right itself, point its head down and disappear.

‘Yep. that was a real nice Chinook you caught there.’

Wait wait, a what? A chinook? I thought it was a – errrrrgh. I just let a salmon go? I was still full of adrenaline. Man, I thought it was a steelhead! Looking back now, I was confused by the markings, but I should have known better. The justification is, a salmon’s gonna die in a few days anyway. A steelhead returns from sea to stream year after year.

But I didn’t regret it too much. Until a few minutes later. And more a few minutes after that. That’s a lot of fresh delicious fish! I didn’t let any of this out of my head, I felt so stupid. I know plenty of people practice catch and release, but not me so much. I catch and eat if I can think of any excuse to. It’s the freshest meat you can get, and this one would have fed a bunch of people. We had him at 15 pounds.

Ah but it’s good fishing karma I figured. You let your first go, another comes to you. Drew has been up here 2 years and has yet to catch anything. There were 20 or 30 people in sight at that bend in the river that morning, and only 3 of us caught anything. I told the story the other day to someone who grew up fishing here, and he’s never caught a salmon. He was mad I let it go. I don’t know… beginner’s luck? That prayer? Maybe. But I also think I’ve learned a lot from all the times I got skunked fishing in Arizona. In places like Minnesota, you go out on a lake and you’re assured of catching dozens of fish without even trying. Arizona, you’re lucky to catch anything more than a buzz. That adversity makes you experiment and think and try to figure out what the fish want and where they hide. Both other times I’ve caught fish up here, they were hiding out in eddies behind big rocks. Different rivers – Skate Creek south of Mt Rainier, and the Deschutes River in the Oregon desert. Both times I had been trying for hours and was about to give up. Then I got silly and decided to cast right at a big rock, bouncing the lure off it and letting it splash into the water. Both times the fish took it the instant it hit the water, and wound up being the biggest trout I’ve ever caught.