My Master’s Degree Dissertation in Cispus River Salmon Fishing Accompanied by the Detroit Super Band Kiss

Sitting at The Bridge restaurant on the Kris River in Oradea, Romania back in 2011, drinking Leffe Blonde Beer, I could only dream of wading into the cold Carpathian runoff with a rod in hand. Wide and dark, the water ran from the heights of northern Romania into Transylvania, a region stained red with blood from Vlad the Impaler’s thirst for violence. What sort of fish ran in this river, I wondered? How could they be caught? Who before me had fished in this very spot? 

So it was only right and proper that when me and the boys pulled up to the Cispus River to fly fish for Coho Salmon on an early August evening towards the end of 2016 that we began the enterprise with a toast of Leffe, remembrances of old, promises of the new. Kurt (repeat offender in my fishing blogs), Brad, Justin and I clinked bottles and laughed, nothing but expectations and promises of salmon grandeur before us. I joked, “Isn’t this how all backwoods horror movies begin… four friends, drinking, merry, alone, out in the wilderness?” We laughed even more, just as the doomed characters in a movie would have laughed, right before they were picked off one by one. That was a moment… a certified moment. Then we got serious, attending to our gear, preparing, readying ourselves, now individual fishermen keen to conquer the river and its progeny, as much hunters as we were fishermen.

I had never fly fished for salmon before. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of fish I’d caught on a fly rod; all small rainbow trout. So my desire would have to rise above my lack of experience. I could have spin fished. God knows I’d earned several Master’s Degrees in that over a lifetime, but I was determined to fly fish. I was determined to learn the old sport, elevate my skill, and become someone who could populate a Norman Maclean or Ernest Hemingway tale without feeling guilty for being there. So, with my 4-piece Echo Solo rod in hand, I trod upriver, searching for a likely spot, whatever a likely spot looked like.

I’d never seen Salmon in a river before. While I’d fished and caught salmon on the Columbia River, that revered body as wide and as deep as a good woman’s soul, I’d never seen them near the surface. The only way I saw a salmon on the Columbia was when I’d been able to land a twenty-five pound monster in a boat (thank you Chuck). So when I turned a corner of the Cispus, the sun falling behind me, turning the tips of the waves and rivulets into silver daggers, and beheld half-a-dozen salmon laddering up some rapids into a pool, by heart caught in my throat. And as much cliché as that sounds, that’s exactly what happened as you of the salmon river fishing brother and sisterhood can attest.

Busy with laddering and spawning, they ignored me even as I approached, more goggle-eyed school boy than experienced fisherman. After a minute of reverence and confusion as to what I should be doing, I selected a fly with red, green, and black coloring. I don’t know what it was called, but Kurt said it was tied by a local guy who knew these waters. Assured the knot was perfect, I unloaded some line, then tossed the fly above roiling salmon and let it drift.

Bam! My father had told me over the years about his experience Steelhead fishing in Wisconsin when he was in college. He'd often reminisce about how the fish would strike and then take off like a freight train. This was another cliché proven true, because that salmon grabbed my fly and headed up river like the Chattanooga Choo Choo on methamphetamine chased by an angry battalion of highway patrolmen. I kept my left hand grabbing the line, so the fish was unable to engage the drag. The line grew taught, then stretched, then snapped.

Oh - Period - My - Period - God - Period. 

I immediately realized what I’d done, but that didn’t do much to fill the hollow that grew in my gut. 

That fish… that salmon… well, it was immense.

I shook my head to clear it, then with shaking hands, opened my gear and selected another fly, this one green and black. I’d thought that maybe I might find a salmon or two, but was really here to fish for cutthroat trout. That I’d stumbled into a mess of salmon was beyond anything I’d ever dreamed, standing there just moments ago, Leffe in hand. I had trouble controlling my breathing. It didn’t help that out of the corner of my eye I could see their backs breaking the water as they slashed back and forth, eager to reach higher elevations to spawn and fertilize. My eyes were having trouble seeing, even with the magnifiers I slid onto the bill of my hat. My hands were still shaking. I closed one eye, then the other. Sweat beaded into them. I was like a blind man trying to slide my tippet through the eye of the fly. It took twenty minutes that was really five and three miss-ties to get the fly ready. 

Five minutes later I was into another fish. For fourteen minutes I fought the damned beast. I learned more about drag and playing a big fish in those fourteen minutes than I had the entire time I’d been fly fishing. One moment of not paying attention and it leaped, gave me the same dour look I’d seen from my former mother in law on too many occasions, then shook free of my fly.

Damn. That was two. And during those minutes, I discovered I had a problem. My tackle was too light. I was trying to catch fifteen- to twenty-pound salmon on 5wt tackle. That was no less true on the next salmon that took the fly. For forty-four minutes we fought… well, that’s perhaps an exaggeration. I tugged and held. It moved a few inches right or left. And we stayed that way. My tackle wouldn’t move it. God bless my rod, but it didn’t have enough power. Then the Salmon decided it had had enough fun playing with me, surged forward, and even with my drag, it moved fast enough to separate me from yet another fly and yet another fish. Where the first two salmon were lean and thick, this hog was a beast and my gear was no match for it.

Earlier I’d mentioned that I’d learned more in those fourteen minutes than I had the entire time I’d been fly fishing. Well, during those forty-four minutes with that beast, I'd received my Master’s Degree in Cispus River Coho Salmon Fishing Cum Laude and now was the time to prove it.

But the sun was going down. It shone just above the horizon of the trees, blinding me when I looked that way. In the golden shade of some great trees near by, the water dappled with spears of the dying day with caddis flies swarming above. I selected a #12 Caddis. Big for a trout, but it seemed about right for these immense salmon. I moved down to the lower pool. I cast once. Twice. And on the third cast, a salmon sucked down my fly. When I set it, the fly lodged behind the armor of its hinged jaw—true a hook set as ever was.

Ten minutes went by. Ten minutes of my dissertation in Cispus River Coho Salmon Fly fishing. I was tested on drag, on rod tip placement, on when to load line and when to unload. The river asked me question after question and I answered them. I heard honking in the distance, then shouting, then loud music. My friends wanted to go. It was time to leave.

“Sorry boys,” I said to the universe. “I can’t come quite yet,” my own replacement for the song Beth-- made famous by Kiss on their 1976 Destroyer album. “Beth, I hear you calling. I can’t come home right now. Me and the boys are playing, and we just can’t find the sound. Just a few more hours and I'll be right home to you. I think I hear them calling. Oh Beth what can I do.” 

Had this fish been my first, I would have lost it. The same could be said with my second and third. But I’d been schooled by the river. The salmon were harsh masters and had given me hard lessons. Five minutes later, I netted the top half of the salmon and grabbed the bottom half. In one heroic heave, I brought the scarred and lithe beast to shore, fell on it, then lay there for a transcendental moment as I became one with every man, woman, and child who’d ever caught a massive salmon on a fly rig.

Eventually I stood, shaking. My diploma lay before me, gasping, covered in dirt and slime, dimpled and scarred from the thirty-five-mile trek from the top of the dam where it had been released. My diploma for this day was a fifteen pound twenty-nine inch coho salmon. When I was finally able to move, I broke the line, leaving the fly where it was. I shored the rest of my line, then grabbed the salmon through the jaws. Holding it at my side, the tail drug on the ground. Noticing that was yet another moment. I saw a standing pool of water separate from the river and out of respect, paused to wash the salmon clean, then  headed downriver to the sounds of honking and yelling.

Walking back to the car to my boys, having now found the sound, pole in one hand, fish in the other, was a feeling like I'd never encountered. Satisfaction. Accomplishment. Amazement. Grateful. It wasn't as simple as an old drill sergeant once said, "Success is where preparation meets opportunity." I felt more like Sir Gawain after his improbable defeat of the invincible Green Knight than I did a fisherman trying his first time to catch a salmon with a fly rod. I knew then that my walk back towards my boys, all three of them watching me, wondering where I was, then seeing me and wondering what the hell that thing was that I was holding firmly in my left hand, then closer, realizing it was a fish, then not just a fish but a salmon, and wondering, for a moment being me in my triumph, was yet another certified moment.

“Some people go their whole lives without ever catching a salmon on a fly rod,” Kurt said to me.

I glowed with accomplishment and thanked the river for her lessons in fishing. 

After pictures and several mandatory retellings of my fish story and those of my boy Brad, who’d caught a salmon just a bit larger on a spin fishing rig, we all found ourselves in a moment of silence. A moment filled with what could have beens, what had beens, and remembrances of similar moments, each of us had shared individually or together as we'd fished this great wild world. Then Kurt broke the silence. He brought out the rest of the Leffe Blonde. We opened them and drank. We’d found our sound… the river, forever running and falling, and our heartbeats, still moving fast with the epic thrill of our salmon hunt, and our blood through our temples, reminding us how alive we were, at this moment, together.

-Finis-

Some more pictures

A selfie of me and the fish. It wasn't moving, I was just too excited. I think I was actually vibrating.

Kurt filleting one of the fish at his cabin. We later smoked them.

 

Brad with another picture of his fish.

Another picture of the salmon.

 

They're almost the same size but Brad's edged mine out by about 2 inches and a pound.

The Poetry and Science of Nisqually Fly Fishing

I'm new to fly fishing but not new to fishing. When I was in Afghanistan, I wrote an essay called I Used to Be  Fisherman, where I vowed to return to fishing and I did. Growing up catching crappie from a bamboo pole when I was three, to fishing for trout in the Black Hills with worms and corn, to fishing for trout everywhere with my secret suite of rooster tails, I've caught enough trout in my life to feed everyone I've ever met at least twice over. But those are numbers and I guess when  you get to my age, numbers no longer matter. 

What matters to me is the contest. Right now, I feel confidant that I can walk up to any trout-laden body of water and catch a trout within minutes using a rooster tail. I've caught them from thirty inches on down, in streams no wider than the desk I'm typing this on, to wide rivers I can barely see across, to lakes that seemed more like oceans. Sure, I can catch them, but it's just no contest. I want to challenge myself. I want to put myself in the most difficult position to catch a fish then do it. Little did I know I'd have to embrace both poetry and science to do it.

What matters to me is the science. I asked my friend Kurt what flies I should bring when we fished the Nisqually. He didn't know and that he'd see what sort of bugs were on the river. Bugs. I've loved playing with bugs since I was a wee tyke and now I get to play with them again. Kurt's response reminded me of Paul in Norman Maclean's semi-autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It-- that fabulous tale written about a family living in early 20th century Montana whose true religion was fly fishing. Paul believed in having the generals, those flies that are are the most common because nine out of ten times, those are what you're going to need. But there was a part in the novella also where the narrator (the author) began catching heaps of trout, leaving Paul skunked because the narrator had some exotics. As it turned out, there was a stonefly hatch and the narrator happened to have some with him. I can't tell you how much time I spent researching online what magical flies to bring and use on the Nisqually, and in the end, the science of it was nothing more than observing the nuances of nature... something the old spinner fisherman in me would have ignored on my quest to achieve a number. 

What matters to me is the poetry. Some might call it technique, but to me, watching a fisherman manipulate the fly through the air along thirty feet of fly line is pure poetry. I could stand and watch it all day. In fact, at the end of our fishing day, I watched Kurt fish a riffle I wasn't good enough-- poetic enough-- to reach through my technique. I was satisfied to stand back and watch, part in admiration and part in learning, experiencing his slower poetry in motion. I remembered the first half hour on the river. I thought my line was messed up, but he came over and showed me that I was casting too quickly. By the end of the day, my improvement was such that I'd probably tripled my casting distance... but it still wasn't enough. But that's okay. There'll be another time and another after that where I can try and perfect my poetry.

The Nisqually presented itself to us that day as a rumbling slash of silver through moss-covered Washington forest beneath mottled gray skies. We were still on the military base, so access was restricted to the area. As such, we didn't see another fisherman all day. I remember standing on the bank and staring at the river as a whole and seeing it as one thing. Then once I stepped into it, I saw it completely differently. Places I'd thought unfishable, suddenly became possible lay-bys for fish. I crept into the river, careful not to splash and found my first spot. After a life lesson in how to cast terribly, I soon figured out how to get the fly out about twenty feet. For most of the day, that was the best I could do. Still, in the second hour, I floated a rather small bi-color caddis with black on top and brown on the bottom over a promising riffle and was delighted when a trout shrugged into it, ran with it, then graciously allowed me to catch it, snuggling itself into my net, both of us hyperventilating. I actually let out a whoop! That nine inch rainbow was the first fish I'd ever caught on a fly rod in my life. At that moment, whether it had been three inches or three feet, it would always be my first and as such, I let it return to the river with its own life lesson.

I fished for another forty minutes, trying different black colored flies because I saw black fly hatches in the shallows. Kurt was sharing a new fly with me when I had a strike on a gnat I was running. Had I been paying attention, I might have landed it. I probably should have kept fishing with the gnat, but I switched flies to what Kurt gave me and BAM. Within two minutes, I had my second fish of the day. This one almost eleven inches. After landing it, I held it in my hands, coddling it until it regained its bearings, then it floated a moment, then shot for the depths. Over the next several hours I had several more strikes, but my inexperience kept me from landing whatever fish I'd temporarily fooled.

My final fish of the day hit like a locomotive. I was certain this one was twenty or maybe even twenty four inches. But then it shot into the air and I laughed aloud. Perhaps one day it might reach those legendary lengths, but today it was a mere six inches with the heart of a lunker. It fought me harder than the other two together. I let it run, enjoying the moments where a fish was dancing at the end of my poetry. When it finally tired, I landed it and the two of us stood there, in the gray Nisqually, rain pelting us, me laughing, the fish too exhausted to join in. Eventually, it got its wind back, and it left my hand, life lesson learned.

Poetry and science. That's what fly fishing is to me. That day on the Nisqually will forever be in my mind, not only as the day I first caught a fish fly fishing, but the day I truly felt I'd learned that fly fishing was more than just waving a stick about... the day I finally became a fly fisherman.

___

My friend Kurt being poetic on the river

Gear: Simms Waders. Korkers Redside Boots. Echo Four Piece Travel Rod 9 ft 5wt. 9ft 4lb leader.

Note: That essay I mentioned in the opening paragraph is now available in an expanded version in the new book called Taut Lines: Extraordinary True Fishing Stories.

Lesson Learned the Hard Way: I left my felt bottoms to my boots at home and discovered that wading on mossy rocks with rubber boots was akin to roller skating in an ice skating rink. I fell down too many times and in the end, not having the right gear limited me in my fishing choices.