We have arrived at November and I still have 5 days of unreported protein failures from September which were feeling neglected... With another 6 days of personal futility in October I'm going to need to compress the stories a little bit to catch up:
Going on a Bear Hunt 2.0
After coming so close to bears on my first attempt, this was a return to reality. I didn't see or hear a bear for the whole weekend. I even tried crawling through their tunnels in the swamp but all I could see was evidence of their passing. The tree raking at 8 feet in the air was pretty humbling.
I am also concerned about the sustainability of the choke cherry harvest as most of the trees I came across looked like this:
As far as mega fauna went, I only saw two small bucks. I had really been hoping to hear some bugling during the elk rut but they must go somewhere else for their naughty business.
Queets 2019
The next day I was 4 hours to the west, on the coast, and trying to rekindle the Queets magic. Actually, that is not fair, being on that river always feels magical to me. The beginners luck has worn off but that just means I'm not carrying back mountain lion/bear bait in the dark.
This year's highlights were: watching a family of otters crunching away on fish, my first mink spotting (Jeremy had to point it out and ID it as a mink), seeing the river had transformed the bluff hole into a new double eddy configuration that looked really fishy but just ate lures, and finally seeing the coho running on the Salmon River.
Humptulips 2019
Just a quick trip to downstream of the hatchery. I only managed to catch someone's lost gear but I watched a few locals sprint downriver and come back an hour later with 4 fish... I couldn't hear the dynamite but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
