Getting back on the reporting wagon with a very quiet, truncated trip. The weather was already getting too nice to justify many trips into the frigid basement and then the 10 year old hard drive was experiencing a slow decent into senility. I'm still trying to master the new software and hardware of a Mac... But enough of my excuses, I hope to bring you lots of mushrooms, some fishing and turkey hunting as well as some travels from this spring and all that before sockeye/pink salmon arrive.
March 9th, 2023: A couple former coworkers joined me for a guided trip targeting winter run steelhead on the Cowlitz River. The Cowlitz is know for its late run and there were at least 20 other boats on the bank or launching predawn from the Blue Creek Hatchery to chase these silver ghosts. While not a remote river, it is big enough that you feel set back from the neighbors and there was a steady of stream of eagles, geese, etc to keep us distracted from the cold. While it was warm enough to avoid frozen line/guides, it wasn't any hotter either. The approach was to drift beads and/or bait along the bottom through sections that looked a lot like every other piece of water that we passed over. We were like pampered children on this trip because we had a guide and a deckhand. All I had to do was hand back a rod for new bait or untangling and a new rod would materialize at my side.
That level of service wasn't enough to convince many steelhead to bite but I got to start things off with a pretty large whitefish. The guide was still processing why anyone would want to eat one (or even take its picture). Before I could convince him that whitefish is a popular midwest target, the deckhand had it back swimming in the river... Jerm was on the board next with a sucker fish and nobody volunteered to eat that one.
Our salvation came about an hour into the morning when our third member hooked into a modest hatchery steelhead and got it into the waiting net. We didn't know it but we would spend another 5 hours without even hooking into a fish... Surely some percentage of that was my incompetence but even the guide was feeling down about our chances and at the first drizzle of rain, he offered a partial refund and we called it a day. It was a tough outing but I haven't given up on the Cowlitz yet and will try for a rematch next year.
