2012: The Gentle Art of Fly Fishing

Every year since time immemorial (well, since 2008), I have gone on a road trip with my old ADB buddies, Rich Schatz and Wayne Rusch.  We all meet up at Rich's beautiful log house about forty miles north of Spokane in Washington State.  Canada is just up the road, Montana and Idaho are off to the right and Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula are somewhere to the left.  In other words, the scenery is out of this world.  It sure beats D.C.

Chateau Schatz is located on the shores of Bussard Lake and is surrounded by pine forests and misty blue mountains.  Moose, bear, deer, horses and Canada geese share Bussard Lake with Rich and his family.  So do our other ADB friends, Fred and Makrina Mesch, who have a great house just up the road from Rich.

We decided to dispense with a road trip proper this year and focus upon four days of intensive fly fishing on Bussard Lake and other nearby lakes. Both Wayne and Rich have been fly fishing since they were in nappies (a.k.a. diapers) and are world-class experts.

I have never been fly fishing in my life but I like the concept.  Hey, I have even seen "A River Runs Through It" with, of all people, Robert Redford, who is Wayne's look-alike.  Fly fishing looked pretty simple to me.  There's an old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.  Well, for the last four days Rich and Wayne have been trying to do just that!

In spite of my cognitive disabilities and total lack of coordination, Rich and Wayne taught me the rudiments of fly fishing on Bussard Lake.  They were endlessly patient, enthusiastic and helpful--even when I was tangling their lines, getting fish hooks stuck in the reeds, using bad language and generally flailing around.

I practiced on the dock at Bussard Lake early in the mornings.  Rich taught me the Spokane Side Swing (my terminology) which is a sort of sideways casting which comes quite naturally if you have ever lassoed cattle or horses.  We don't do too much of that back in Wales so it all felt a bit alien.

Wayne taught me the Wisconsin Whip (my terminology again) which consists of whipping about 400 feet of line back and forth with sharp wrist actions and directing your yellow "popper" ( a sort of float) and fly to a very specific point where you instinctively know that a large mouth bass is lurking.  There was altogether too much information and action to assimilate all at once but I persevered with both techniques and understood the theory at least.  Of course, Wayne and Rich made it look easy and when I attempted to copy their smooth, laconic movements, I looked more like Buster Keaton on crack. A further complication was then added.  I was informed that we were setting off on Friday morning for Davis Lake about two hours away at the top of a mountain and all three of us would be fly fishing from a small boat.  Yikes!

It is one thing to cast a fly line from a stable dock with plenty of air space around you.  It is quite another matter to sit in a small boat with two other guys and cast your line and "popper" without hooking somebody's toupee or ripping out an eyeball.  But I knew one thing:  I had to perfect my Wisconsin Whip because there would be no room to perform the extravagant Spokane Swing that required plenty of elbow room.   Davis Lake was absolutely pristine--not least because no internal combustion engines were allowed on the lake.  Rich had an amazing whisper-quiet, battery-driven motor and our small craft slipped through the calm water like a greased beaver.

We cast our lines for about two hours but very little was happening.  Amazingly, I managed the Wisconsin Whip without capsizing the boat or seriously injuring anybody.Constantly casting, you enter the zone when your line, fly and yellow "popper" arc out into the blue void and land with a faint plop twenty feet away, exactly where you want them.  The fish think it is a fly or bug landing on the water.  Unfortunately, the fish in Davis Lake were either too smart or did not get the idea.  At one point, I started telling a long story which had a few quite innocent "f" words in it.  Rich and Wayne sat there impassively but then said: "Behind you."  I turned around and was shocked to see an elderly couple fishing right behind us and looking a bit grim.  It is so quiet up there that you can hear the fish breathing so the old couple undoubtedly had heard my "f" bombs.  Rich politely asked them how the fishing was.  The man did not reply but the woman, after a suitably frigid pause, managed to say "Fine" through pursed lips and gave me a look that would usually be reserved for Mitt Romney.  They later left the lake.  Strike one, Newport!

As our aquatic friends were not exactly leaping out of the water, we repaired to nearby Lake Pierre where we were told you could catch big mouth bass.  It was a magnificent lake but neither big mouth bass nor any other form of underwater life disturbed its glass surface.  Although not a productive day fishing-wise (Wayne had slumped into a coma), the scenery was magnificent and the drive home along the Columbia River was stunning.  Spirits soared when we hit the Hunter's Inn in a small town called Hunter and got some Moose Drool beer down.  I saw the first fish of the day on my plate--along with a pile of French fries!

The next day, Rich took us to Waitts Lake where he swore we would find fish.  But this would not be fly fishing.  We would be trolling with both flies and worms, a deadly combination and probably illegal.  It worked like a charm.  We caught magnificent rainbow trout and German brown trout--fourteen in all.  You are only allowed to take out five fish each so we were pumped.  Wayne was in the middle of the boat and had to do all the netting for Commodore Schatz and for me.  He also had to remove the fish from my line because I am a bit squeamish about actually touching live, wriggling fish.  I know, I know.  What a wimp.  But I have fought crocodiles with my bare hands, drunk Guinness for breakfast, ripped worms in half and survived English boarding school, so there.

We were not neglecting our social life either.  Rich's sister, Linda, invited us to dinner one evening and gave us a wonderful three course dinner replete with huckleberry cobbler, a rare treat indeed.  Huckleberries only grow in the wild and you have to know exactly where to find them.  Rich's daughter, Josethe, and her boyfriend, Logan, also joined us.  I just hope us fishermen didn't stink too much of dead fish and severed worms.

Another evening, we went for dinner with Fred and Makrina.  We had dropped off some fresh-caught trout for them earlier that day and Makrina had baked it with tomatoes, onions, spices and cilantro.  You cannot believe the sheer joy of eating the delicate pink meat of a rainbow trout that has been caught only a few hours earlier.  There was also a scrumptious pork adobo and a Thai chicken dish, all washed down with excellent Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Syrah blends from Washington State.  Masarap!

One evening, Wayne went out by himself in this paddle boat contraption (left).  He paddled into the small lake right behind Bussard Lake and told us later that he had had the best bass fishing in his lifetime over there, catching and releasing over 25 large-mouth bass.  They were on steroids.  In order to further refine my fly fishing skills, he took me out one evening in the paddle boat to the same small lake.  Sure enough, the bass were leaping out all over the place.  However, I performed so disastrously that I think I may never fly fish again.  I got my fly hooked in the reeds.  My reel dropped off as a result of my improper grip and lousy casting action.  I tangled my line with Wayne's and he had to spend precious time untangling them.  I got about twenty feet of my line wrapped around the the paddle pedals and it took ages to disentangle.

And to top it all off, I was making a half decent cast (with my line and popper going exactly where I wanted them to go) when my rod came apart in two halves and went sailing through the air into the lake.  Poor Wayne had the worst fishing experience of his life with me screwing up every five minutes but he remained calm (although I later found teeth marks in the side of the boat).  Like the cool Wisconsin boy he is, he just kept catching fish as if there was no idiot on board.  At least I didn't fall out of the boat.

And so four days passed by in a haze of fly fishing, trolling, eating and drinking.  We talked endlessly, told stories, discussed politics, critiqued basketball and football coaches (I had to remain silent on this subject) and reminisced about our misspent youth, our Manila days, our many unrecognized achievements, our Medicare bills and what on earth Wayne would do in retirement. He was the only working stiff among us but he got a very good idea of what joys (and dangers) lie ahead from Schatz and me.  That's why he has decided to keep working until he drops!

Fly fishing is a delicate art.  I can safely say that I have not mastered it, in spite of the excellent tuition given by Wayne and Rich.   I have not even come close to understanding how to avoid strangling myself on the line or embedding the hook in my neck as I attempt the Spokane Side Swing or the Wisconsin Whip.  Both continue to elude me.  But I had the best time and, even though they won't tell you this, I caught the biggest fish of the expedition on our trolling one day on Waitts Lake.  Some incipient skill unexpectedly surfacing, maybe?  Nope.  Just dumb luck.  It has always worked for me!

Until next year.......

NOTE: The original blog was published on August 1, 2012.