Highly skilled fishers, Bald Eagles of North Idaho have dazzled and amazed me since the first one I ever saw fishing. This West Coast Canadian specimen was captured on the take by outdoor photographer Don Whittaker of Calgary, Alberta.
When you're not catching enough trout under hot sun, clear sky days of summer, stay late by the river and brew a rich cup of Camp Coffee...think things over.
Camp Coffee
Have you ever experienced a hot summer day fly fishing where no matter what you tried you couldn’t hook enough fish? I have–more than once–and I know my insects. When that happens, there’s only one thing to do. Renew yourself with the real reasons you go fishing in the first place. It’s not about numbers. It’s about the whole experience of being outdoors, of connecting to the river and the life that’s in it because that’s a reflection of you, of who you’ve become and what you’re doing in life.
You have to humble yourself and think things over–replenish the dream–know what I mean? I fish because it connects me to the deeper things. When fishing becomes a chore, when I lose touch with the real reason I’m there, it’s time for a break. Pull out the camp coffee pot, dip into the grounds, eat dinner first and then sit around sipping rich black coffee the way Montana cowboys drink it.
Camping out is great
I love to camp out and I confess I go often enough. Recently I had a chance to sit around a well-built campfire with friends and talk about life and how great it was to be outdoors and to count stars between forested tree tops on a crisp moonless night. I listened to the river sounds flowing and wondered what animal caused that noise in the dark.
Drinking coffee under those conditions keeps you awake for the best of all reasons: to experience the excitement of life, to set aside the stresses we take on, to put away the responsibilities and the obligations for just a little while and live again like a kid.
Unbelievably rich
I’ll tell you something really important: if you’ve never smelled fresh ground coffee cooked the old-fashioned way, starting with cold mountain water, brought to a boil and perked in the open cold air of a Rocky Mountain night–you’ve just not lived!
So you sleep-in a little the next morning, so what! You’ll wake up excited. You’ll fish better, appreciate more and go back to town with a happier gait to your walk.
~Dwayne Parsons Twitter.com/#!/ifishwrite
This colorful 11" Yellowstone cutthroat displays the typical gold-color with medium uniform spots on its back and above its red-painted gill plates. Westslope cutthroat are generally less colorful and their spots in this area are irregular in size. Note the thickness of the bright-orange markings running nearly full length below both sides of its mouth.
One Cast to Gold
With too little time and awesome scenery, I found a road-side wash in the Skalkaho Creek drainage where a thoughtful presentation yielded this nice Yellowstone Cutthroat trout.
I’ve caught far more Westslope cutthroat in Montana than Yellowstone cutts and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. I did a search to better understand and here’s what I found: The black spots on the top and sides of a Yellowstone variety near the front of the fish are generally uniform in shape and size; whereas those on a Westslope are not uniform in size. Yellowstones also tend to be more gold-colored than their close cousins, the Westslope.
When it gets down to the catching, it makes little difference to most of us which one we catch. They’re both sought-after prizes in anyone’s hand and that’s the reason why a number of waters such as the Skalkaho now carry regulations requiring the release of this species.
I caught this one on an attractor pattern size 12. It was more a matter of reading the water and placing the cast properly than the choice of fly. She took just downstream of a rock on the seam side where the current brought any hapless prey her way with time to get at it.
That one cast completed my quick drive up a new stream and instilled the notion to go back again.
~Dwayne Parsons Twitter/#!/ifishwrite
This bright, fat rainbow took a Wooly Bugger where receding heavily colored flood waters on the Clark Fork River were met by a clear, highly oxygenated tributary.
Until the Waters Clear
We’re in mid-July, 2011. It’s a year when most of the larger bodied rivers are still flowing chocolate brown with sediment thick in the flow. Many people travel some distance before discovering the waters they came to fish are unreasonable.
So what do you do? Where do you fish? How do you find trout in water like that? I had this challenge coming back from a long drive to Salmon, Idaho via Hamilton, Montana. The Salmon River looked just like the Clark Fork, still high to the bank, running the color of a morning latte. The Bitterroot was clearing and looked fishable but I didn’t have time for a float and most of its banks are on private land.
So I watched for a particular kind of water situation on the Clark Fork as I drove through the mountains toward Coeur d’Alene. I won’t name the inlet tributary (sorry, but over pressure isn’t good), but I can tell you that watching the lay of the land I reasoned where a clear running freestone stream might feed its oxygen rich cold water into the discolored Clark Fork.
I didn’t have much time. But I stashed half an hour allowance to check my theory. I parked my SUV at a point where the walk down across public land to the conjunction of waters wouldn’t take too long and followed the fast flowing freestone to its destiny. I stood on a shallow gravel bar and cast a 2-inch weighted Wooly Bugger on a float-tip 5 weight line. I took this rainbow on the second cast and had two others of similar size on the gravel bar by the end of my allotted time.
Until the waters clear, you’ll have to be innovative. The tributary was a little too strong; but where these streams met was fishable and good trout were there.
~Dwayne Parsons www.twitter.com/#!/ifishwrite
This Pend Oreille River walleye took a Shad-Rap crayfish crankbait in 7 feet of water.
Fresh Caught Walleye
I now release most of the trout and bass I catch, though some make it to the table. I like to eat fish knowing they are good for me and my guests, but some fish populations can’t take heavy cull ratios. So they go free.
But walleye…that’s a different thing. I’ve been on two trips now to Lake Roosevelt to fish with Jim Meskan of Kettle Falls. Both times I’ve come back with a limit of 8 about the size of the one above that I took off my dock in the Pend Oreille River.
A wild rose compliments this basket of dinner-sized walleye taken from the Columbia River recently above the China Bend launch. It's an abundant fishery of fine tasting tablefare.
I’m a gourmet. I love to cook, especially for guests. Cooking was my profession in the early days when writing was far more elusive. Now it’s a daily hobby and a creative outlet. From time to time, I will post original recipes of fish I choose to kill.
I believe in releasing young and even large fish back into their environments, especially in areas where fishing pressure is great. But there are populations that need culling in order to produce larger fish.
Managing the ecosystems of various fish habitats can be challenging. But knowledge accrues and we’re seeing some fine success stories on waters like Lake Pend Oreille where the population of inland freshwater sockeye salmon known locally as Kokanee nearly collapsed for a number of reasons. Ultimately it was realized that an over abundance of predators in the lake system were taking out greater numbers of kokanee than we had reproducing. The culprits were Lake Trout and Gerrard Rainbows. I’ll get into that later; suffice to say, the bounty set on those two species achieved its intent. Kokanee (the next best plate of fish in American waters) are returning in numbers sufficient to lift the ban on catching them–probably next year.
For now, a monthly trip to Lake Roosevelt and membership in the Kettle Falls Walleye Club seems reasonable, even intelligent.
What’s your favorite dinner fish?
~Dwayne Parsons www.twitter.com/#!/ifishwrite
A Pike Minnow like this healthy 2.5 pound Pend Oreille Lake example have a very high protein content, if you can figure out a way to cook them.
In The Same Water
Pike Minnow, that’s the politically correct name, but it’s a Squawfish by colloquial standards and most fishers still call it that, with no intent to offend anyone. “That’s what it is,” they say, shrugging their shoulders over the political thing. You might not believe this but I like catching Pike Minnows–especially if they have any size to them. This two and a half-pounder being held up by Go Fish! Charters guide, Chad Landrum, is half the size of what they can grow to be.
Just about everyone considers this a trash fish. It’s a rather voracious eater, fends for itself along shoreline structure and runs easily over deeper water, generally near the surface. It spawns on the sandy shore beaches in June. I noticed a Pike Minnow spawning bed in the shallow water sand along our beach this spring. They do very well in the larger rivers like the Clark Fork and the Pend Oreille. In the Columbia they have a bounty because they eat salmon and steelhead fry coming down toward the ocean in their first year of life. A five pound Pike Minnow can eat a lot of young fish.
One friend says, “If you find the Squawfish, you’ve found the bass.” He’s referring to small mouth bass because they like the same structure and feed on the same things: smaller fish, crayfish and insect larva. When you see a big splash from a rising fish on flat water, it’s generally a Squawfish. They like to put on the show–kind of a competitive thing I imagine. You’ll find Pike Minnows competing with trout as well.
Generally speaking, no one will eat them. One of the universities in the area did a study a few years back (I think it was Washington State University) to determine if Pike Minnow meat could be utilized commercially. They are just too boney to cook in the fry pan or bake–worse than Pike, hence their comparison name. Yet the study reported Squawfish have some of the highest protein content of any freshwater fish, if I remember correctly from reading the study.
People eat Carp, why can’t they eat Pike Minnow? The study recommended this abundant fish might be used in Surimi, flavored to taste like crab. But that went nowhere because a producer has to label the contents of a food package in the U.S. and too many people, evidently, know that a Pike Minnow is trash fish. What a label–trash fish! Consumers won’t buy it. So they tried cat food and garden fertilizer. I rendered fresh-caught Pike Minnow to my cultivated ground several times in earlier days of gardening, but found it attracted neighborhood dogs and skunks. Oh well!
I won’t give you the recipe here, not yet. You’ll have to come back. I’ll show you a way to can Pike Minnow that makes for happy guests at the hors d’oeuvres tray. Canning, of course, renders all the bones to a semi-crunchy, highly digestible calcium in the “flavored Pike Minnow paste your eating with that cracker.”
“Yum, it’s good!” they exclaim, going back for more. Most evening guests have no clue what a Pike Minnow is, I guess. It certainly won’t kill them. It’s a just reward for not reading my blog. The fact remains, canned Pike Minnow paste–the way I prepare it–disappears from the cracker tray faster than any other fish condiment.
Yes, I eat Dandelions too.
~Dwayne Parsons twitter.com@ifishwrite
Here’s a fine Black Crappie brought to the net by one of my fly fishing companions on a wind-protected North Idaho slough.
Wouldn’t Life Be Better…if you fished this weekend?
Cooking fresh trout outdoors adds a flavor you can't beat.
We’ve all waited a long time for the summer sun to show and the rivers to drop their run-off fury. Whether you get away for camping over the weekend or a long morning drive to a favorite spot, a fish fry like this will put a lasting memory into your heart. You’ll find it builds on friendship, too; and aside from those blessed features, cooking fresh trout over an open flame adds to the memory of an experience you must have.
Clark Fork River Outfitter’s Donn Dale (spelling of his first name is, incidentally, correct) landed this monster female rainbow on a black Wooly Bugger just last week. Most of Montana’s rivers are still running high, though flood waters are beginning to recede. There’s always good flat water and many streams are clearing of silt; so pack up your rod, call a friend and go fishing somewhere.
She came to a black Wooly Bugger beneath Donn Dale's skillful hands.
Are we having fun yet? This is the kind of experience available for anyone willing to learn the art of fly fishing. Those willing to put a little extra cash into the gas tank (especially in these times) can take themselves to fine trout waters almost anywhere in the Western US or lower reaches of Canada. There’s nothing like mountain therapy to take away the winter blues and wash away spring-time frustrations.
One thing is sure: You won’t catch fish if you don’t put yourself somewhere on water that holds them. Fishing remains one of the world’s great get-away adventures. It doesn’t cost a whole lot and it builds memories that last.
What else can I write? Go fishing, my friend. Catch something to remember.
~Dwayne Parsons Twitter@ifishwrite
I've had no greater pleasure this year than fishing with Les Graham of Spokane, the man who first introduced me to the sport more than 5 decades ago.
It’s Who You Take That Makes It So
I can’t say I know why I learned to fish and to love it as I do. I only know that it’s true. Last week I had the great opportunity to return a favor. I took fishing the man who first took me 58 years ago when I was only 5.
Les Graham and I went to Badger Lake in Washington near Spokane. We had a great day. He out-fished me on the cutthroat trout of his favorite lake. It was appropriate for him to catch the most, I felt, a kind of honor lived out.
I remember the day he took me and his son, Larry, for the first time. Before we went, Les had us practice casting with little Zebco outfits, if I remember right, throwing bobbers at a Hoola Hoop target on his front lawn. When he felt we were proficient enough, he took us down to the Spokane River to a reasonably safe place where he could fish while we toyed at the idea.
Larry and I stood on rocks above a clear pool trying to catch little perch that chased our worms. I don’t remember catching one, but I remember seeing them with their black perch stripes and feeling the nibbles.
One of Les Graham's Badger Lake Cutthroat Trout.
I remember as well the nice rainbow trout about the length of Les’ forearm. He caught it on a spinner or spoon. It’s frozen in memory, glistening silver, with pink-purple swashes on both sides speckled with black spots heavier against its dark green back.
I dreamed of fishing at night and by day from then on all through childhood. That was the hook set in me and it’s remained these many years. I’m now 63.
Something happened that long ago day. Some divine imprint was placed into my spirit that told me fishing was part of my life. I’ve always been happiest when I did. It’s been my connection to reality, to life and to other people.
On Badger Lake
Thank you, Les, for taking time to give me that childhood memory. It was enough to settle in me for life.
~Dwayne Parsons Twitter@ifishwrite
It's hard to resist the waggle-down action of a soft plastic Sink-N-Fool worm.
They Like Structure
In normal years we’d be fishing the rivers by now for trout, casting flies and nymphs; but North Idaho is like everywhere else in North America: mid-June waters are swollen with run-off from mountain snow packs far in excess of normal years.
Bass fishing has become the reprieve for most of us. For me it’s also the enjoyment and the discovery. Fishing with men like Rick Lawrence of Fish-N-Fool Lures, I’ve learned more about consistently catching bass in two months than I had previously understood over years of fishing.
Lawrence is one of those guys who hates not catching fish. Honestly, if he hasn’t boated a bass within 10 minutes, he’s ready to move elsewhere.
What’s the secret to feeding such a voracious appetite for catching fish?
Structure. You cast onto, into and around it. You fish every kind of structure you find from weed-bed edges to submerged stumps, rock ledges, beaver channels and their stick lodges.
On this day, we put in on what appeared to be flat, weed-infested water. My first thought was, “Structure? What structure?” But as we fished, my eyes opened to the hundreds of pockets, weed coves, undercuts and floating islands this lake had to offer. Bass were everywhere. Most were caught by casting right to the cattails or even into them and gently pulling the weedless soft plastic out into the drop. Most of the bass, some to four and five pounds, were hugging the shadows and roots of the cattails in waters I would never have thought to fish before.
If you think a lake has no structure, take another look. Go to the edges, cast against the reeds, hit every little separation of foliage you can because something big might be lurking there. Just before the fish in the photo above was landed, I had on the largest bass of my life. It almost took the rod out of my hand when it hit. But that’s another story. I’ll talk about hooks and sharpening hooks in another post.
Find the structure; fish the structure.
# Dwayne Parsons Twitter@ifishwrite
There's no greater pride than a loving pride. It swells the breast with joy and wins a thousand arguments, lays low the petty things and lifts up the great.
They Find It On Their Own
How bitter-sweet when the child you once cradled grows to adulthood and bears her own. She goes away and marries. You wonder where the time has gone; you seldom took her fishing, never really taught her how. She comes home from clear across the States, from where she found her husband and brings him here to live.
A year passes by and she gives you a grandson, Max. “I’ve bought a fishing license,” she tells you–two years in a row, but you’re absorbed elsewhere with life and other things.
She persists.
In the third year, when you’re fishing again, she insists. By golly, she’s serious. You take note; you find the time; and there you are on water you’ve known since childhood with your little girl grown up.
Her husband Todd and his dad have joined you this day too. The sun is warm and welcome. The water is high and a little cold; so you explore until you locate a bite. Several smallmouth are boated, but none take Sarah’s lure.
” Had a nibble,” she says, but isn’t sure. “It might have been a weed.” Still, she persists.
I hand her my rod with one on. I want her to experience the catching.
“No,” she refuses with furrowed brow and smile. She is here to do this on her own, “thank you very much.” She casts again with earnest intent.
You begin to worry she’ll lose interest. But then you look at her casting well and understanding things you’ve said about the bass, where they are and why. You stop casting and watch her. She has the heart for it, still pursuing when nothing takes. You marvel a little, quietly, behind the scene. She doesn’t know you’re watching. She persists.
We’re about to leave when her rod bends suddenly. She has one on and fights it well. Keeps her rod tip down and let’s it play out. When it comes to the boat, Todd nets it for her and the day is complete.
~Dwayne Parsons Twitter @ifishwrite
