[Bedivere]

The Entiat River used to be a great trout fishing river. I was therefore baffled when I couldn't catch a fish when I put my lure in where the Ice Creek trail crosses the Entiat. I started working my way downstream, fishing all the likely looking pools and got totally blanked. I was baffled until I came to a waterfall that doesn't show on the maps. It's at approximately the 4100' level, just upstream from the junction with Ice Creek and is fairly tall, at least 30'. I worked my way around to below the waterfall and began catching plenty of nice fish, as expected. The first time I went to Venus Lake we discovered that the pools below the outlet were full of starving fish that had presumably washed down out of the lake. They would hit anything that touched the water. We had a bucket with us, so we proceeded to catch and transport as many of those fish as we could back up to the lake. Probably transplanted 30-40 fish that afternoon. Back in the good old days the Chiwawa River was open for fishing. It was a hot day so I was wearing swim trunks and sandals and working my way up the river, swimming from shore to shore where necessary and hitting all the deep pools with a lightweight rod and 4 lb test. Caught several pretty good sized bull trout and released them. Then I got to a place where there was a big boulder in the middle of a pool so I threw my lure in just behind the boulder and the biggest trout I've ever seen in a river came up out of the depths and gave it a half-hearted kiss. I was stunned, but cast again not really expecting anything as usually a fish won't hit a lure a second time like that but darned if it didn't come up and bump it again. I thought what the heck and cast a third time and much to my total amazement it took the lure this time and I had it on. I was fully prepared to reenact the scene from "A River Runs Through It" where the fisherman jumps into the river and floats downstream while fighting the monster to keep from losing it, but Bull Trout are lazy and this was the laziest (and biggest) one yet. It just let me reel it right up to the shore where I measured it at just over 24" then released it. Still the biggest fish I've caught in a river (I've never fished for salmon or steelhead in a river). Fishing in a high lake up in the Icicle area and there were some pretty good sized cutthroat in the lake. I had both a spinning rig and a fly rig with me. These trout were being picky though and the big boys wouldn't hit anything I threw at them. There were lots of grasshoppers around the lake and I even had a grasshopper pattern fly but it wasn't fooling them. So I took one of my beat up flies, stripped all the fluff off the hook, caught a grasshopper, put it on the hook and threw it in. It sank and sat on the bottom for a few minutes and then along came a nice big fat fish who sucked it up and I finally caught dinner.

[skiorkayak]

I've got a couple, I'll start with this one. I was camping with my family at Trout Lake Campground near Mt. Adams. I was there to kayak the White Salmon but promised my son I would take him fishing. Despite the name, there is no lake. But there is a little creek that flows through the campground. I didn't expect much as you could pretty much hop across the creek in most places, but this was an easy way to keep a promise. As we walked through the campground fishing this little creek I noticed several people watching and kind of laughing. Surprisingly, we actually caught a few 8-10 inchers with our 1/8 oz rooster tails. We released them as they would not have been more than a few bites for the 4 of us. We were working our way upstream through the campground. At the other end of the campground from our campsite there was a little waterfall with a deep pool at the bottom. We decided this would be the last place we fished. The rooster tail barely hit the water when this huge fish took it. The pool was too small for the fish to run, but I also had no place to land the fish and no net. Pulling the fish out of the water would have snapped the line. I was finally able to get my finger into the gills and pull the fish out of the water. A measurement would later confirm Rainbow trout just over 24 inches. No one was laughing as we carried it through the campground back to our site. I even saw a couple of people go for their poles. The ranger came by as we where preparing it for dinner. "I see you caught the last trophy" he said. "Huh" I replied. "We had a fishing derby here last weekend. 4 trophy fish were stocked" He explained, "Only 3 were caught". I told him not to mention that to those that were now fishing the creek. The 4 of us ate what we could and shared the rest with a couple of grateful neighbors camping next too us. To this day it is the biggest trout I have ever caught. Later I might tell you about the steelhead I hooked into while trout fishing on the Hoh.

[moonspots]