I was waaaay looking forward to the new year as my wife and I have alot to celebrate as we’re expecting the birth of our son. He will be a fly fisherman and taught to appreciate the outdoors and all of our resources. I just hope that our conservation efforts will have a good effect on the fisheries for generations to come. Korean usually spend New Years day enjoying family time and food. Probably the most popular dish share with family is a rice cake soup called ‘dduk gook’ dduk meaning rice cake, and gook meaning soup. The dduk is not really a cake or sweetened as it would sound, but rather it looks more like a glue stick that is cross sectioned into oval slices of about 1/4″ thick. This dduk can is boiled in a beef or chicken broth based soup and served with scallions, egg and often with mandu or filled Korean dumplings. The dduk symbolizes long life and good health, as similar for the Chinese to enjoy noodles on a special occassion or the Japanese with their Mochi (sweetened rice flour) dishes.
While this isn’t a blog about cooking, since I enjoy cooking and eating, its likely that I will take that format into 2010 with my fishing trips to also document how I like to prepare fish, crab, clams and perhaps some duck if I am lucky. I would like to give a whirl at duck hunting if the opportunity arises and Im able to get down to Oregon to shoot on a private ranch.
I did get a chance to try my luck at some squid jiggin’ but it proved to be nothing but a fruitless effort. I’ve been squid jiggin’ a few times now and its been as good as my steelheadin’. Perhaps I should stick with salmon and crab, seems like a more consistant and better haul for me. We did briefly consider going on the razor dig at Ocean Shores, I’ve never dug up razors and considering the time and the night dig and the fact that the weather was just blistery, we opted to not go. Even with the crabbing, Im considering not making those outings unless I am already fishing for salmon. Its just alot of work to set up, bait and pull traps for the hopes of a few crab. I know a great local market that sells dungees for $2.79 a pound. I’ll burn through that much gas for the guaranteed purchase of a few big male Dungees.
My next outing will likely be for steelhead… but you’ll have to wait for that report. It will be an interesting one as I’ve entered into the darkside as some flyfisherman would put it and purchased a centerpin reel. YIKES!
It’d been 2.5 weeks since I’d wet a line and I was itching for a tug at the end of my line. The local outing to Beaver lake was a bust for triploid trout, so I decided to layer up, and man up for the 2.5 hour drive to hit the Ford. Shawn Y. decided to join me as he was also feeling that cabin fever and needed the pull as well. I was surprised to find out that he’d never fished RF before. I usually hit the Ford once a year, usually in Dec. or Jan. when there is nothing else going on. The salmon run has tapered off and I wasn’t particularly interested in chasing dark Chum on the Nisqually. I’ve tried my luck with Steelheading, but to this date has been a big zero on my fishing journals. With the eastern WA stillwater opener several months away it was not going to fulfill the need, the need for big fish on little flies.
The pass was clear, and 19 degrees, just roasting. We stopped in Cle Elum to gas up and pick up some corn dogs, Jo Jo’s, and fried Chicken tenders, a meal fit for the cold weather fly fisherman. When we stopped into Ephrata, I like to visit Darce and find out how things are going. We talked fishing a little but wanted to head out and catch some fish.
The high was supposed to be 18 in Ephrata and Im sure it was a degree or two colder at the Ford. I was glad I brought all my cold weather gear. 1000 weight Duck’s Unlimited neoprene waders, full head ski mask, fingerless neoprene gloves, layered Patagonia fleece and capilene with down vest and of course hand warmers. I was downright sizzling with this outifit and was comfortable and cozy in the get up.
I’d picked up several pigs above the spillway hole. The secret sauce fly was a size 14 snowcone bloodworm and size 16 orange scud under a Thingamabobber with 6 lb Fluorocarbon. I set Shawn up with the same set up and within a few casts he’d induced a couple of nice trout to take, but was tougher to stick the hooks into those fish. Oh well… at lease he had a couple of head shakes and got to see the piggies that live in the trout pond.
I know most folks either love the Ford or despise it. It can be extremely challenging most folks as the sight of big trout just feet away and not being able to induce them to bite with all your offerings. We fished for 5 hours and I picked up a few more fish near the hatchery zone and decided it was time to pack up and leave for the drive back. I was glad to make the trek to fish, and Im glad that Shawn was able to connect, hopefully the next time he visits he’ll be able to net one of those footballs.
Well, the overwhelming urge to wet a line and the sheer rain and blown out rivers was driving me crazy. It’d been a couple of weeks since I was able to fish, so I decided to rig up the prams and head out to Beaver lake with my dad. Jeff H. was already on the lake but there wasn’t much going on when we got on around 11. When Dad and I got to the launch there were two trollers coming off, their report wasn’t too inspiring. They’d be on since the gates opened but had nothing to show for it. We weren’t worried since in the past dad and I had done well on the Beav. Last year, when it was stocked with those fat triploids we had a hey day pulling orange marabou buggers with intermediate lines and sink tips. Today was not that day… I was humbled by the outing but good to get some fresh air and wet a line. I was reminded today that it was the reason why they call it fishing, not catching. My poor catch rate or non catch rate was due to the fact that I was fishing with the new rod: 10′ 5 wt. GLX streamdance.
Not really, but since Thanksgiving is a little more than a week away and my wife and I decided to do the Turkey this year, we wanted to try our hand at deep frying a bird. After all, I’d purchased a propane fired turkey frying kit not for turkey, but for my Dungeness crab hauls and for the fish frys. God forbid that it would be used for anything that doesn’t swim in the ocean.
After hearing of many fires from improper hot oil handling, I did some research on the proper techniques. I did look at some recipes for the dry rub, but decided to put something together based on my own ingredients in the cupboard and with some imagination, came up with this recipe.
I liberally coated the turkey with sea salt, afterwards I added Taco seasoning, paprika, and coarse ground pepper. I let the dry rub stand for two hours and come to room temperature. We had a little learning curve with the temperature, but once we found the sweet spot, @ 350 degrees, it was the lucky charm that brought our first turkey to golden crispy perfection. We shared the KFT (Korean Fried Turkey) with our friends, my wife made a killer cranberry sauce with cinnamon, orange juice and persimmons….suweeeeeeet! We also had some corn bread stuffing, roasted Italian potatoes, sauteed green beens and mushrooms and pumpkin pie to top it off.
Posted in Discussion on November 6, 2009 by yellowlab
I’ve never really been a gun guy or thought of owning a gun, but recently I’d purchased a handgun for a variety of reasons, but mostly for personal protection. I figured that since I have a responsibility of owning a gun that I should be familiar with the complete operations and mechanics of how it works, how it doesn’t work, how its stored, cleaned, and properly used. My first experience with guns was in 6th grade, having grown up in Colorado, all the kids in the class were required to go through a hunters safety class through the public school system, imagine that here in Washington?!?!?. We learned about the safety of guns and how to handle them properly and finally got to shoot a .22 rifle. It wasn’t enough to keep me interested, even though I had friends who hunted upland birds and the occassion deer hunt, but it was fun to go out once in a while and shoot clay targets with skeet and trap shooting.
My buddy Sun Y. owns guns and I never really knew the fascination about them other than it was fun to shoot up in Alaska a couple of years ago. When I shared with him that I was thinking of getting a pistol, he brought me up to speed with the questions to ask and to do more research on what I’d be using it for, etc… I ended up shooting several guns: Springfield XDM, Glock 23, 17, 19, SIG Sauer, H & K, but settled on the Glock 17.
It felt right and balances well in my hand, and after firing off a couple hundred rounds through it, I decided that it was the gun for me. I like the fact that it shoot 9 mm, a cheaper ammo to shoot, but yet still pack a punch if it were ever to be used for self defense. I hope to God that it never happens. I guess owning a gun is like having an insurance policy, you’re glad its there when you need it, but hope that you never have to use it. Im sure there are pro-gun and anti gun advocates that can agree or dis-agree, but I guess I choose to hinge on my right to bear arms and to familiarize myself with the complete operations.
Now that I am a gun owner, I guess I wonder why I never bothered to have one early, not that it would have saved me in any past situation, but it might have given me some peace of mind especially when I used to ride my motorcycle into the back country. One generally doesn’t worry about anything happening, BUT you never know. I was a boy scout and tend to be overprepared and in this case, the motto applies. “Always be prepared”.
I was joined at Wade’s Gun Range in Bellevue with a friend of mine, John B. who also happens to own a Glock 17. He’d originally purchased the gun in 1998 new from Wades and had upgraded it with a laser sight, which was pretty interesting to shoot with. Here are some photos and video from todays shoot. We topped off our session at the new Palace (Koong) restaurant in Bellevue, eating grilled meats after some shooting made me feel like a hunter after a successful kill. Maybe Im still a city boy, but its interesting to wonder if I’d gotten interested in hunting how things would have turned out for me. I’ll stick with the fishing for now, no need to invest in another expensive and time consuming hobby.
Today was the day that Shawn Y. and I decided to head out to fish for Hood Canal Chums. Last week we’d fished for river Coho, but our love of the salt took us down south in search of the toothy dog salmon. We’d heard of good reports from Hoodsport, but wanted to try a few other places along the way on up towards the Dosewalips, but ended up stopping at Eagle Creek as its known for an earlier run of Chums and Cohos.
On our way up we stopped by a local state park where we could see some Chum in the distance jumping and finning on the surface, however the NO TRESPASSING sign made it tough to access that stretch of water and rowing the distance from Potlatch would be a good workout to where the Chum were seen. We decided to proceed north towards Hoodsport to see how the action was. It was an incoming tide and a very poor tide change to note. There were about a dozen fisherman in the water, a couple of boats, and a guy in a kayak all fishing at Hoodsport. Not my thing, but we did note that there were fish on stringers and some pods of fish milling around the bay. I’ve seen years on Hoodsport where there are just huge masses of fish, but none could be seen today. We briefly spoke to an enforcement officer about Eagle Creek and asked how it was fishing. He said he’d seen several fly fisherman working it recently and thought there might be fish around.
We headed up further north, about 6 miles and pull out and viewed the surroundings. Some Chum could be seen breaking the srurface, and the best part was that there wasn’t anyone else fishing. Shawn and I quickly rigged up and decided that these fish weren’t too far out that required the prams, so we opted to wade it. One thing that would’ve been handy to have was our stripping buckets. Oh well…
Within 5 minutes, I’d hooked up with my first Chum, but it was fouled and released. After about 30 minutes of casting I hit another one, not exactly lights out fishing but again it was fouled???!?! There weren’t many fish showing themselves but how could I have fouled two fish in that big of a water shed and both of them were top snagged? I did have a couple more on, and a couple of strikes but who knows how they were, so after a couple hours we needed another plan.
I’d received a call from Jeff H. who mentioned that he might venture to fish today, he indicated that he wasn’t too far from our location and was doing quite well, having landed 7 already. We packed up and decided to join Jeff to see if there were more fish to be found. When we arrived, this is what we saw.
There was a flotilla of debris and around that debris was Chum after Chum millling around. We’d never witnessed this type of behavior before and if you didn’t know, it looked like a school of carp or bonefish tailing in a flat.
And this is what I caught on camera of Jeff, he’d landed a few more Chums in the time it took us to get down to that location and it looked more promising for us!
I put in many casts with my full intermediate line but nothing seemed to like my offerings. I switched flies, changed my retrieve speed and style, but no fish could be enticed. I think swapped out the full intermediate with my RIO versitip with floating tip and put on a small green charlie and casted away. Boom! Hookup. Judging by how many fish there were around, it should of been lights out fishing, but it was nice to explore a few new spots and be able to witness the amount of Chums that were present at this spot.
We felt that the run is still late, hopefully with the coming raing it will be good by next week. It was good enough to warrant a return trip in hopes that we’ll find more fish, especially the ones that will chase down our flies with more aggression.
On our way home we stopped off at Palace Korean BBQ on South Tacoma Way and enjoyed a full course dinner of Grilled Pork Bellies with all the fixins’. Top rated on the menu was a seasonal Squash Soup (Hobak Jjook), Korean style miso soup (doejjang chee gae), of course the pork bellies (ssamgyupsal), and the persimmon drink for dessert (soojunghwa). I was surprised that Shawn had never had the Squah soup or the persimmon drink. I found someone who was more white bread than me! I want to try the new Palace (Koong) restaurant in Bellevue, they have a $4.99 lunch special, and the dinner special is $12.99 versus the $15.99 we paid for dinner at the Tacoma location.
On our way back, I shared with Shawn that I’d like to visit our motherland, Korea and especially fish for Cherry Trout. Here is that website Shawn: Cherry Trout
Rod: Scott A2 9′ 8 wt. 4 piece
Line: Cortland Clear Camo 9 wt. and Rio Versitip 8 wt.
Flies: Chum Candy, Charlies, Spiders, Hot head marabous.
Went to the cascade river yesterday and had an awesome day fishing for coho’s. Had a great time nymphing for cohos. It makes me smile everytime that float goes down and a salmon comes up shaking its head at me. I think yesterday was probably my best coho fishing day ever given the quantity of fair hooked coho. As a added bonus, I also got a steelhead yesterday. That makes the second steelie this fall for Gilly.
After Gil C’s. report of many many many Coho from the previous day, we decided to but out to hit the river once again for another day. Today we were joined by Shawn Y. a fellow I’d met recently at Orvis days, and had conversed with on a popular fly fishing internet forum.
We left Bellevue at 7:30 am to make the long drive up north, weather forecast looked ok, with no rain, but there was a little bite to the air temp. It was good however to see the leaves and smell the mountain air, really brings me alive. When we got to our launch site, I noticed the river was up a bit from my previous outing with dad from last week. It made for a couple of faster heart beat crossings, but we all managed out ok.
The spot where I was seeing alot of Coho was completely devoid of them however, and searching for them was the name of the game that morning. Gil found a pod and quickly hooked into one, I also found another pod and brought a nice male to hand. However, we were looking for some fresher fish and a place to get Shawn into some Coho as he’d never caught an ocean returning fish, only small residents from the beach.
When we did find fish, it was a big black mass of Coho backs and fins as evidenced by the video of Andy W. putting on a clinic for us. Andy fishes both gear and fly, he started with fly in the a.m. but his desire to fish this rip rap hole that most no fisherman in their right mind woud fish due to the extreme river crossing and the angle of approach that one has to make to land these Coho. It is a sweet soft backwater that holds many many fish. You can see just how many fish there were in there by seeing the black mass, and then once he lands the fish, the mass moves out, but then re-appears. I can estimate that those Coho numbered into the 100’s in that back eddy.
Gil proceeded to put on a clinic himself amongst four gear guys that were determined to grab a piece of his action. Once I’d pointed out the black mass at Andy fishing spot, Gil notice that along a faster moving riffle, he also noticed a black band that seemed to change in size. This would only be Coho and alot of Coho must have been stacked in this waiting water. This river is the oddest river in that the Coho will hold in the typical slack water, but they also like the faster moving water that looks more like classic trout water. The day prior, Gil was intimidated with the gear guys to fish this run, but today he took charge. He stood on his rock perch and proceeded to make a cast into the mass with his purple ESL and then wham… hooks a fish! Upon seeing this 4 gear guys descend on the run and surrond him fighting for position. Once he released it, he got back into position and hooks another one! This action happened several other times with him hooking into fish with the gear guys and nothing to hand. I guess this was the rare case of fly vs. gear, fly wins!
We were also joined by Chaz W. and his fried Mark who was visiting from Texas, both fly fisherman. I’d focused more attention on fishing around an island where I could see several Coho sitting in faster moving water. They were hunkered down, and I was determined to get to them. I hooked three but could tell that they were fouled. I guess I should have paid more attention to what Gil was doing and my hook ups would have been greatly improved.
Towards the afternoon, I did some more exploring and found a side channel of about 20 yards wide that was loaded with Coho. Not fast moving water, but swift and of about 3.5′ deep. I noted tht when I tried to intercept the fish from a side position they’d hold tight into the log jams on the bank, but if I was directly behind them, they’d spread out into the river and hold in the swift water. I proceed to lace up my line and sink tip and fly and throw a long cast into their holding water. Wham! Fish on! I’d landed three fish from this spot and told Shawn to come over. Shawn doesn’t have much experience with fishing sink tips as he was using varying lengths of T-14 to achieve the desired depth. After a few fruitless casts, I gave him my set up and told him what to do. Within minutes the line stops and I tell him to set and he is onto a nice buck male. Woo hoo! His eyes were as big as silver dollars and the rod was pulsing with the pull of that nice male Coho. We landed the fish, snapped off a couple of shots before that fish decided that he’d had enough of the photo shoot and flopped back into the stream.
I was really surprised at the number of people that were fishing and that were keeping fish. Most of the fish that were keep were dark and red, with carcasses lying on the banks of some very red Coho. I don’t care what anyone says, but I won’t keep a dark fish no matter how much you smoke it. It takes me alot of effort to process and smoke up fish and I believe the quality of the product is dependant on the quality of the fish. Although it wasn’t big numbers of fish caught today, I landed 7 the whole day, but fouled just as many, I did learn about some Coho behaivour that I’ll stash in my pocket for next year.
With this trip, it will end my 2009 Coho journey and my sights will move onto Ocean returning bright Chum. I’ve heard that bright Chum are good smoker fare. I guess I’ll have to find out using my ‘new’ smoker and proven dry brine recipe that has been well received amongst the recipients of my smoked fish. Until next week… tight lines!
Posted in Uncategorized on October 26, 2009 by yellowlab
While its not exactly a fishing report, you can tell whats on my mind. The Mrs. and I met up with her sister and BF for dinner, drinks and an evening of pumpkin carving. This was aided with the use of one Harbor Freight jig saw that absolutely tore up that Jack O Lantern. I managed to have a blast with it by doing a freeform carve of a salmon. I’d wanted the cutout to look more like the mouth of the Jack O, but it turned out too big for the mouth. It was nice to pop the salmonid back in and proceed to carve a more traditional Jack O on the flip side. We spent the evening with a walk down to a private beach near three three point… definitely going to have to use that access card and fish it next time! Had a nice dinner of King salmon and Sierra Nevadas. I’d never owned a Michael Jackson CD before, so we got our carving groove on with all his oldies and songs from BAD.
