Bussard Lake: Old Faithful
As soon as we get to Chateau Schatz, Wayne usually heads straight down to Bussard Lake to go catch large mouth bass. This year was no different except that I went with him as soon as the sun was up on our first morning. We had both bought brand new fly-fishing rods and were eager to try them out. After my disastrous C&O Canal experience, I felt that it could only get better.
We started casting from the dock and lo and behold there were bites. Later on, we took out the “Yellow Lady,” (Rich’s rather lurid rehabilitated row boat) that Wayne was convinced would frighten off all the fish. His fears were unfounded. We hooked a fair number of good-size bass near the reeds, on the edge of the water lily pads and by the boat dock across the lake. We don’t keep them--catch and release only.
Wayne, of course, is the maestro and his casting looks so effortless and his line goes way out. My casting has a way to go but I was getting my line to go where I wanted it to go (anywhere away from me!) and I was actually catching bass.
We went out on Bussard Lake a number of times that week and always caught fish. Sadly, I was not with Wayne when he caught the biggest bass he had ever caught on Bussard Lake--about 14 inches+ long and big and fat. He was over the moon and later discovered that it was full of roe as well. As far as I know, it went into Rich’s freezer for a later day.
I loved casting from the dock--either early in the morning when I could practice everything that Wayne and Rich had taught me last year; or in the evening when you could combine fly fishing with imbibing good red wine and, on one happy occasion, some of Wayne’s outrageously good cigars.
In the photo on the left, the sky looked pretty ominous one evening but nothing much happened. On the right, you can see Wayne, complete with cigar, having a Zen moment as he makes contact with yet another bass. Bussard Lake has never let us down. Stay "at home" and we always catch fish. It was still a bit early in the season but Rich would report later than a lot of bass were jumping as it got warmer.
Waitts Lake (Day One): Troubled Waters
That same evening, Yvette cooked all the fish in butter with garlic and lemon. The Rainbows had the most delicate pink color and literally melted in your mouth. There isn’t a restaurant in the world that can equal the taste of fish that you have caught yourself just a few hours earlier, washed down with some Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay which itself hails from the Columbia Valley in Washington State.
Here we are all assembled around the festive board. (Actually, this picture was taken on a different night when Josethe joined us for a shrimp curry that yours truly made--except that I had to downplay the curry part because Josethe does not like very spicy food)! From L to R: Wayne, Kirsten, Josethe, Rich, Reimes and Yvette.
It was clear that Waitts Lake was not so far away that the IRL (Inverse Ratio Law) could kick in. Accordingly, we decided to go back the next day.
Waitts Lake (Day Two): The Great Rainbow
Based upon our success on Day One, we had big expectations for Day Two. Wayne and I had bought our rather expensive Washington State fishing licenses and felt that we really needed to catch the maximum number of fish permitted (3 persons x 5 fish each =15) in order to bring down the cost per fish. (All three of us had bad memories of last year when we had each bought British Columbia fishing licenses for the whacking sum of $52 each and had only caught three fish!!).
In spite of a lot of banter and ribbing and disputes over how the Commodore was steering the boat, who was supposed to net the fish and who was more responsible for a catch (the linesman or the netter), we were catching fish. That is, Schatz and I were catching fish. Wayne seemed to be having a bad day. After catching about two fish, he got his line all tangled up and spent ages trying to get it untangled. Then he lost his lure because it somehow became tangled in the engine. I cannot honestly remember the whole series of strange events that befell Wayne but we could see that he had lost his touch. He wasn’t the “conference in Larry” guy whom we had so admired a few days earlier. What was going on? Wayne was our cool guy and he was disintegrating right before our eyes.
Now, I have a theory about what was happening. I know that Wayne is not going to agree with me but I am sure that what I am about to tell you was a contributing factor. I have to take you back to the very beginning of our trip to explain my theory.
I had met up with Wayne at the airport in Phoenix, Arizona. He had been in Chicago for his son-in-law-to-be’s bachelor party the night before and had flown in on a different plane to me.
It took me several passes through the airport lounge in Phoenix to realize that the red-eyed guy slouched behind a day-old copy of the New York Times at Gate 34 was not the Lee Marvin figure out of “Cat Ballou” but my road buddy and prospective Hertz rental car driver!
Holy mackerel. It must have been quite a party. When questioned, Wayne did indicate that he was the oldest guy there (even his son-in-law-to-be’s father was only 46!); and for a guy who rarely drinks (true) he had had to down an awful lot of beers at a White Sox game and then in a bar in the north of town in the rather short time of six hours before he excused himself to go back to the hotel to get some sleep.
He must have had a good sleep on the plane to Spokane because he approached the Hertz desk with some gravitas, muttered “Rusch”, obtained the keys and then drove us from the airport to Bussard Lake in record time. Although he looked OK the next day, my sense was that he was still very tired and that the debauch had finally caught up with him. It is only a theory; but some form of delayed post-traumatic bachelor party stress (what we call DPTBPS in the medical field) was at play out there on Waitts Lake that day.
Back to the story. Wayne had managed to collect himself somewhat. He was fishing with my pole while I was untangling his line which had encountered further difficulties. Suddenly his (my?) rod did this amazing half-moon bend. A fish! A big one. We were all galvanized and Wayne started to pull the monster in. Rich pulled in his own pole to focus on the steering of the boat and readied the net for the big catch. This was "Old Man and the Sea” stuff.
With rod still bent until it was almost touching the water, Wayne fought, slowly pulling in the big one. He really is an expert fisherman and you could see that all his earlier problems had evaporated. Conference in Larry, I said under my breath, conference in Larry. Rich was at the tiller, tense but calm. I was all of a lather and just hoped that the damned thing at the end of that line would not plonk on top of me when they got it into the boat.
[Break for a moment. It is time that I make my own sad confession--I can’t bear to come into contact with fish. Worms are OK but a wriggling fish scares me to death. I don’t mind catching them but someone has to get hold of them and get them off my hook. Wayne has always been the one on our road trips; and Nikolai has always been the one on Chesapeake Bay. All I could think about was the horror of some large demon fish from the depths of Waitts Lake thrashing around in the bottom of the boat and gnashing at my naked, lily-white feet].
But I digress. I could see something surfacing out there at the end of Wayne’s line. Not a form but a sensed presence under the surface. O Lord, isn’t this how “Jaws” started? I could even hear the pulsing music. Now I saw a glint of silver in water. It became white water and finally there was a big silver back cutting through the water. Wayne had seen it too, his jaw firm, eyes narrowed, fists tight and knuckles white, pulling, pulling, pulling. I thought I would faint. Schatz is now leaning on the tiller to get the net in a better position as Leviathan approached. My God, this was the life. Man against beast. I was in the presence of gods. This is what fishing was all about--being part of something so primal that you lost yourself in the struggle and blood lust. Our distant ancestors had lived through moments like this.
I don’t really know what happened next but the monster suddenly changed direction. One moment Wayne had it on his side of the boat and the next moment it went behind the boat and then appeared on the opposite side. Schatz lifted the net out in one huge streaming arc of water and plunged it back over the other side of the boat. “Get the net under” I was saying to myself, "get the damn net under the fish” as Nikolai was always shouting at me when we were trying to bring in the big 40-inchers. I could see the wretched thing thrashing around just below the net, the water boiling as if a Russian submarine was coming to the surface.
And then it happened. The world shuddered and everything went into slow motion. I was sitting in the prow; Wayne was in the middle facing away from his catch; and the Commodore in the stern was struggling to net Wayne’s still invisible monster fish.
I could see Wayne with his arms up in the air, trying to raise the beast up out of the water. His his whole body was rigid but he was facing in the wrong direction because the fish had darted behind the boat in a last desperate attempt to elude him. (I did manage to get this slightly blurred photo of Wayne in spite of all the turmoil). Schatz was almost lying over the side, his arms outstretched with the net deep in the water, trying to drag it up against the massive pressure bearing down upon it.
Moby Dick finally surfaced, a bright silver flash in the charged air, his gleaming body contorted into an S-shape, seemingly suspended right in front of Schatz. He was huge. He was magnificent and would not be vanquished by three old farts in a slow-moving boat. He’d seen the movie and knew the ending. With one toss of his monstrous head, and snapping out of the impossible S-shape, Moby shook himself free of the hook. Thank God he did not smash down into the boat and drown us all.
I am not kidding (even though you may think I am being overly dramatic), but this massive Rainbow trout just hung there for a few mili-seconds, letting Schatz and I gaze upon it like some veiled dancer suddenly removing the gossamer strands for one mind-blowing second. And then it plunged back into the water with a huge slapping sound and disappeared beneath the foaming water.
I guess Wayne had finally got himself turned around but it was too late. He did not see his Moby Dick and the look of anguish clouding Wayne’s otherwise handsome features was wrenching. Then the world came back at full speed and someone was shouting a bad word (not me) and arms were flailing and nets and poles were going all over the place and the air and water were in frenzy all around us. Only a memory remained of the Great Rainbow. I shall never forget that beautiful shimmering body of roughly 20 to 25 inches looking like something from the centerfold of Field and Stream.
I have scoured many magazines and googled "jumping Rainbow trout images” but have not found anything that really comes close to the perfection that Schatz and I saw; or the almost impossible S-shape that the monster fish had achieved. Sorry, Wayne, I can only offer this pale substitute below--like flashing a photo of some generic blonde instead of the full Marylin Monroe montage.
It was over. Schatz was shouting. Wayne was shouting. I was shouting. We could not believe that the Great Rainbow had gone but we were trying to relay to Wayne the sheer magnificence of his catch. What the hell, I thought. Wayne had caught that fish fair and square. Yes, it had escaped but there was something heartening in the thought that it would live to fight another day; and that we could still look forward to to catching it all over again.
We fishermen are all Captain Ahabs at heart.
That day we caught 14 superb fish--Browns and Rainbows--which were duly taken home, cleaned by Rich and put into the freezer for a later date. It had been a wonderful day--one for the blogs.
Wayne was back in top form. Lee Marvin had climbed off his horse and disappeared. Robert Redford was back!!
Browns Lake: All Quiet on the Western Front
One morning we put the boat on the back of the truck and headed two hours’ North to the Colville National Forest where you can find the legendary “fly only, no power” Browns Lake. Rich had often told us that this was where is father and uncle had taken him fishing as a kid. Originally, we had planned to spend a couple of nights up there camping and fishing but somehow our other activities had only left us enough time for a day trip to Browns.
The setting was spectacular. You bump along a forest road for a couple of miles and arrive at this pristine lake where we were the only fishermen. There was a palpable quickening of the pulse when you push the boat out onto glass-like water, surrounded by trees, seemingly alone in the universe, and can only hear the gentle plop of the oars as Schatz rowed us out into the middle of the lake. While the Commodore navigated, Wayne and I started casting our flies and waiting for them to be gobbled up by voracious cut-throat trout.
We kept casting and Schatz kept rowing. He took us around the lake, to choice parts of the lake, through a tiny channel and into another small densely-reeded lake, back out into the main lake, along the side of the lake, back to the middle of the lake, and to a few more choice parts of the lake. After about 3.5 hours of gentle casting with only a few nibbles, we looked at the Commodore and shrugged. What was going on? We continued.
Whatever else was not happening, we saw a beautiful moose come down to the water to drink. She looked at us from afar and decided that we looked a bit threatening and slowly turned back and disappeared into the forest. That was the most excitement we had on Browns Lake that day. We decided to call it a day. While we had not caught any fish, we agreed that it really did not matter.
Sitting out there on that beautiful lake, in almost perfect stillness, we had lapsed into unaccustomed silence, just drinking in the majesty of the forest and mountains.
But Man doth not live on beauty alone. Time for lunch. We headed off to the little town of Usk (near a town called Newport) where Schatz remembered having a great hamburger. Sadly it was closed. The only chance of food was in a bit of a dive next to an abandoned realtor’s office and a closed launderette.
The lady who greeted us at the counter confirmed our worst suspicions. Apart from looking like Dr. Spock’s aunt, she indicated that if we wanted breakfast (which we did) we had better darn hurry up and order it before the cook moved onto lunch. A real friendly gal, I thought.
We hurriedly ordered and went and sat down at a big round table. No, no no, we couldn’t sit there she told us. It was “RESERVED”. OK. We squeezed onto a table for two with three chairs while she glared at us. Of course, nobody ever came to sit at the big table even though it was the lunch hour and only three other people were in there.
When we went over to pay, I attempted to be friendly and told her that we had been fishing at Browns Lake but that we had not caught anything. Her face lit up and she became a little less Vulcan. “Oh man, there’s nuthin' up at Browns these days. You gotta go Power (Powell?) Lake. We go up there all the time, catch big trout, man, and eat ‘em right up there”. I had visions of her and her Vulcan tribe eating raw trout by the side of the lake. She proceeded to give us directions but they seemed to be impossibly complex--confirming my fears that she was, indeed, out of Star Trek. We did not have time to try find Power/Powell Lake and decided to give it a miss.
So, we headed home. Browns Lake had proven that it was too far away and that that old inverse ratio law was at work again. Getting home in the late afternoon, Wayne headed straight for Bussard Lake, climbed into the blue paddle boat and caught his 14 inch large-mouth bass--the biggest fish he has ever seen in Bussard Lake. (That is NOT the 14-incher in the photo)! The IRL is infallible.
And just in case you thought that we were merely incompetent fishermen on Browns Lake, I found the following blog when I googled “Browns Lake WA location” to find out the name of the National Forest where it was located. From the following extract (click on/paste the link below for the whole article), it does seem that someone messed up Browns Lake by stocking it with the wrong (predatory) fish! Maybe they will get it right in the future so we can enjoy both beauty and plump cut-throat trout the next time we make it to Browns. Alternatively, we can join the Vulcans at Power/Powells!
http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/forum/index.php?threads/browns-lake-dont-bother.79863/
Brown's Lake? Don't bother.
As soon as we get to Chateau Schatz, Wayne usually heads straight down to Bussard Lake to go catch large mouth bass. This year was no different except that I went with him as soon as the sun was up on our first morning. We had both bought brand new fly-fishing rods and were eager to try them out. After my disastrous C&O Canal experience, I felt that it could only get better.
Wayne, of course, is the maestro and his casting looks so effortless and his line goes way out. My casting has a way to go but I was getting my line to go where I wanted it to go (anywhere away from me!) and I was actually catching bass.
We went out on Bussard Lake a number of times that week and always caught fish. Sadly, I was not with Wayne when he caught the biggest bass he had ever caught on Bussard Lake--about 14 inches+ long and big and fat. He was over the moon and later discovered that it was full of roe as well. As far as I know, it went into Rich’s freezer for a later day.
In the photo on the left, the sky looked pretty ominous one evening but nothing much happened. On the right, you can see Wayne, complete with cigar, having a Zen moment as he makes contact with yet another bass. Bussard Lake has never let us down. Stay "at home" and we always catch fish. It was still a bit early in the season but Rich would report later than a lot of bass were jumping as it got warmer.
This lake is about 14 miles away--the lake where Linda once lived when her husband, Wayne, was still with us. Waitts Lake has always been kind to us. Rich gives credit for that to Wayne who fished that lake day in and day out and taught Rich where all the good spots were.
They were great mates and Rich has many wonderful stories about him and Wayne and their scrapes with the law (Natural Resources Department). You are strictly limited to five fish each and you have to catch those five yourself. The Fish Police (my term) keep a close eye on you--sometimes through binoculars from the shore and sometimes by boat patrol. Hard to believe that privacy is about the same as on the Internet out there.
In this lake we fish with worms, not flies, for brown trout--sometimes called German brown trout because they were introduced into the States from Germany in 1833 (thank you, Google, for this info). And these German fish tend to favor guys with names like Schatz and Rusch over Welsh guys called Newport.
We also fish for Rainbow trout and the big ones definitely seem to prefer Welsh guys! On our first day at Waitts, we caught nine fish in total--including the three big Rainbows below.
We would probably have caught more but the weather turned on us. It started out looking all postcardy. After a couple of hours, the temperature suddenly began to drop. I did mention the drop in temperature to my companions but they were too busy fishing to listen. I also told them that if the wind got up, that might not be a good sign. Still no response. At some point the sky began to darken. Sure enough, the wind started to blow. Our boat, which can only just manage to carry three old farts on calm water, was powered by an engine connected to a small car-battery. We were in the middle of the lake. Commodore Schatz slowly began to take note of the sky and wind. Hmm. But it was the sight of several gas-powered boats making for the shore at great speed that convinced him that we might have to head for the land ourselves.
Accordingly, he directed our small craft at a point far to the left of the boat jetty in the hope that we would get blown towards said jetty if our car battery gave out. It seemed to take a long time to get there with the wind throwing up some interesting waves and the rain beginning to come down. But thanks to the Commodore’s navigational skills and his sure hand at the tiller, we landed exactly where we needed to land just before the heavens opened. Natutrally, it was the Welsh guy who was deputed to jump into the water fully clothed to pull the boat in. Luckily when I jumped overboard, the water only came up to my ankles! Such drama.
Here we are all assembled around the festive board. (Actually, this picture was taken on a different night when Josethe joined us for a shrimp curry that yours truly made--except that I had to downplay the curry part because Josethe does not like very spicy food)! From L to R: Wayne, Kirsten, Josethe, Rich, Reimes and Yvette.
It was clear that Waitts Lake was not so far away that the IRL (Inverse Ratio Law) could kick in. Accordingly, we decided to go back the next day.
Waitts Lake (Day Two): The Great Rainbow
Based upon our success on Day One, we had big expectations for Day Two. Wayne and I had bought our rather expensive Washington State fishing licenses and felt that we really needed to catch the maximum number of fish permitted (3 persons x 5 fish each =15) in order to bring down the cost per fish. (All three of us had bad memories of last year when we had each bought British Columbia fishing licenses for the whacking sum of $52 each and had only caught three fish!!).
Rich and Wayne are ready to fish....
...when I get the boat in the water and in a place where
they can get in without taking their shoes off!
In spite of a lot of banter and ribbing and disputes over how the Commodore was steering the boat, who was supposed to net the fish and who was more responsible for a catch (the linesman or the netter), we were catching fish. That is, Schatz and I were catching fish. Wayne seemed to be having a bad day. After catching about two fish, he got his line all tangled up and spent ages trying to get it untangled. Then he lost his lure because it somehow became tangled in the engine. I cannot honestly remember the whole series of strange events that befell Wayne but we could see that he had lost his touch. He wasn’t the “conference in Larry” guy whom we had so admired a few days earlier. What was going on? Wayne was our cool guy and he was disintegrating right before our eyes.
Now, I have a theory about what was happening. I know that Wayne is not going to agree with me but I am sure that what I am about to tell you was a contributing factor. I have to take you back to the very beginning of our trip to explain my theory.
It took me several passes through the airport lounge in Phoenix to realize that the red-eyed guy slouched behind a day-old copy of the New York Times at Gate 34 was not the Lee Marvin figure out of “Cat Ballou” but my road buddy and prospective Hertz rental car driver!
Holy mackerel. It must have been quite a party. When questioned, Wayne did indicate that he was the oldest guy there (even his son-in-law-to-be’s father was only 46!); and for a guy who rarely drinks (true) he had had to down an awful lot of beers at a White Sox game and then in a bar in the north of town in the rather short time of six hours before he excused himself to go back to the hotel to get some sleep.
He must have had a good sleep on the plane to Spokane because he approached the Hertz desk with some gravitas, muttered “Rusch”, obtained the keys and then drove us from the airport to Bussard Lake in record time. Although he looked OK the next day, my sense was that he was still very tired and that the debauch had finally caught up with him. It is only a theory; but some form of delayed post-traumatic bachelor party stress (what we call DPTBPS in the medical field) was at play out there on Waitts Lake that day.
Back to the story. Wayne had managed to collect himself somewhat. He was fishing with my pole while I was untangling his line which had encountered further difficulties. Suddenly his (my?) rod did this amazing half-moon bend. A fish! A big one. We were all galvanized and Wayne started to pull the monster in. Rich pulled in his own pole to focus on the steering of the boat and readied the net for the big catch. This was "Old Man and the Sea” stuff.
With rod still bent until it was almost touching the water, Wayne fought, slowly pulling in the big one. He really is an expert fisherman and you could see that all his earlier problems had evaporated. Conference in Larry, I said under my breath, conference in Larry. Rich was at the tiller, tense but calm. I was all of a lather and just hoped that the damned thing at the end of that line would not plonk on top of me when they got it into the boat.
[Break for a moment. It is time that I make my own sad confession--I can’t bear to come into contact with fish. Worms are OK but a wriggling fish scares me to death. I don’t mind catching them but someone has to get hold of them and get them off my hook. Wayne has always been the one on our road trips; and Nikolai has always been the one on Chesapeake Bay. All I could think about was the horror of some large demon fish from the depths of Waitts Lake thrashing around in the bottom of the boat and gnashing at my naked, lily-white feet].
I don’t really know what happened next but the monster suddenly changed direction. One moment Wayne had it on his side of the boat and the next moment it went behind the boat and then appeared on the opposite side. Schatz lifted the net out in one huge streaming arc of water and plunged it back over the other side of the boat. “Get the net under” I was saying to myself, "get the damn net under the fish” as Nikolai was always shouting at me when we were trying to bring in the big 40-inchers. I could see the wretched thing thrashing around just below the net, the water boiling as if a Russian submarine was coming to the surface.
I could see Wayne with his arms up in the air, trying to raise the beast up out of the water. His his whole body was rigid but he was facing in the wrong direction because the fish had darted behind the boat in a last desperate attempt to elude him. (I did manage to get this slightly blurred photo of Wayne in spite of all the turmoil). Schatz was almost lying over the side, his arms outstretched with the net deep in the water, trying to drag it up against the massive pressure bearing down upon it.
Moby Dick finally surfaced, a bright silver flash in the charged air, his gleaming body contorted into an S-shape, seemingly suspended right in front of Schatz. He was huge. He was magnificent and would not be vanquished by three old farts in a slow-moving boat. He’d seen the movie and knew the ending. With one toss of his monstrous head, and snapping out of the impossible S-shape, Moby shook himself free of the hook. Thank God he did not smash down into the boat and drown us all.
I am not kidding (even though you may think I am being overly dramatic), but this massive Rainbow trout just hung there for a few mili-seconds, letting Schatz and I gaze upon it like some veiled dancer suddenly removing the gossamer strands for one mind-blowing second. And then it plunged back into the water with a huge slapping sound and disappeared beneath the foaming water.
I guess Wayne had finally got himself turned around but it was too late. He did not see his Moby Dick and the look of anguish clouding Wayne’s otherwise handsome features was wrenching. Then the world came back at full speed and someone was shouting a bad word (not me) and arms were flailing and nets and poles were going all over the place and the air and water were in frenzy all around us. Only a memory remained of the Great Rainbow. I shall never forget that beautiful shimmering body of roughly 20 to 25 inches looking like something from the centerfold of Field and Stream.
I have scoured many magazines and googled "jumping Rainbow trout images” but have not found anything that really comes close to the perfection that Schatz and I saw; or the almost impossible S-shape that the monster fish had achieved. Sorry, Wayne, I can only offer this pale substitute below--like flashing a photo of some generic blonde instead of the full Marylin Monroe montage.
Courtesy: www.pinterest.com
Angling and Fly Fishing Art
It was over. Schatz was shouting. Wayne was shouting. I was shouting. We could not believe that the Great Rainbow had gone but we were trying to relay to Wayne the sheer magnificence of his catch. What the hell, I thought. Wayne had caught that fish fair and square. Yes, it had escaped but there was something heartening in the thought that it would live to fight another day; and that we could still look forward to to catching it all over again.
We fishermen are all Captain Ahabs at heart.
That day we caught 14 superb fish--Browns and Rainbows--which were duly taken home, cleaned by Rich and put into the freezer for a later date. It had been a wonderful day--one for the blogs.
Wayne was back in top form. Lee Marvin had climbed off his horse and disappeared. Robert Redford was back!!
Browns Lake: All Quiet on the Western Front
The setting was spectacular. You bump along a forest road for a couple of miles and arrive at this pristine lake where we were the only fishermen. There was a palpable quickening of the pulse when you push the boat out onto glass-like water, surrounded by trees, seemingly alone in the universe, and can only hear the gentle plop of the oars as Schatz rowed us out into the middle of the lake. While the Commodore navigated, Wayne and I started casting our flies and waiting for them to be gobbled up by voracious cut-throat trout.
Whatever else was not happening, we saw a beautiful moose come down to the water to drink. She looked at us from afar and decided that we looked a bit threatening and slowly turned back and disappeared into the forest. That was the most excitement we had on Browns Lake that day. We decided to call it a day. While we had not caught any fish, we agreed that it really did not matter.
Sitting out there on that beautiful lake, in almost perfect stillness, we had lapsed into unaccustomed silence, just drinking in the majesty of the forest and mountains.
But Man doth not live on beauty alone. Time for lunch. We headed off to the little town of Usk (near a town called Newport) where Schatz remembered having a great hamburger. Sadly it was closed. The only chance of food was in a bit of a dive next to an abandoned realtor’s office and a closed launderette.
The lady who greeted us at the counter confirmed our worst suspicions. Apart from looking like Dr. Spock’s aunt, she indicated that if we wanted breakfast (which we did) we had better darn hurry up and order it before the cook moved onto lunch. A real friendly gal, I thought.
We hurriedly ordered and went and sat down at a big round table. No, no no, we couldn’t sit there she told us. It was “RESERVED”. OK. We squeezed onto a table for two with three chairs while she glared at us. Of course, nobody ever came to sit at the big table even though it was the lunch hour and only three other people were in there.
When we went over to pay, I attempted to be friendly and told her that we had been fishing at Browns Lake but that we had not caught anything. Her face lit up and she became a little less Vulcan. “Oh man, there’s nuthin' up at Browns these days. You gotta go Power (Powell?) Lake. We go up there all the time, catch big trout, man, and eat ‘em right up there”. I had visions of her and her Vulcan tribe eating raw trout by the side of the lake. She proceeded to give us directions but they seemed to be impossibly complex--confirming my fears that she was, indeed, out of Star Trek. We did not have time to try find Power/Powell Lake and decided to give it a miss.
So, we headed home. Browns Lake had proven that it was too far away and that that old inverse ratio law was at work again. Getting home in the late afternoon, Wayne headed straight for Bussard Lake, climbed into the blue paddle boat and caught his 14 inch large-mouth bass--the biggest fish he has ever seen in Bussard Lake. (That is NOT the 14-incher in the photo)! The IRL is infallible.
And just in case you thought that we were merely incompetent fishermen on Browns Lake, I found the following blog when I googled “Browns Lake WA location” to find out the name of the National Forest where it was located. From the following extract (click on/paste the link below for the whole article), it does seem that someone messed up Browns Lake by stocking it with the wrong (predatory) fish! Maybe they will get it right in the future so we can enjoy both beauty and plump cut-throat trout the next time we make it to Browns. Alternatively, we can join the Vulcans at Power/Powells!
http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/forum/index.php?threads/browns-lake-dont-bother.79863/
Brown's Lake? Don't bother.
This was so much fun to read! Homo sapien and wildlife residents of Chateau Schatz are missing you and Wayne!
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