I guess the number of fishing days one has remaining depends on where one lives.  Comparably speaking, I used to fish three to four times a month for twelve months a year in the Pacific Northwest, including dress shoe days (why not - I caught fish!), which puts me at a svelte forty-something and on a track to 720 fishing days by age 60!  Other than the melanoma threat, the Florida Keys probably betters this ratio even still - and Key Lime pie to boot.

Of course after 60, with fingers and toes crossed, the days on the river will increase dramatically until the extremities fail to function, and the home stretch will bring a bitter sweet and deeply contemplative sunset to my life (you know, just like the movie ).  One can only hope.

It's suddenly ironic that the intensity of the season's memories and experiences are most intense in my mind now that the weather negates being there.  I remember being warm and energized by a sandwich and a Torrefazione espresso at Bonnie's bakery in Port Angeles while suiting up on a nice September afternoon on the Elwha, the same Elwha for whom Bruce Babbit is seeking freedom from an obsolete and illegally built dam; the same Elwha that was robbed of the only 100 pound race of native chinook run in the lower 48 by this same dam.  It is still an Olympic Peninsula jewel though only a glimmer of it's former self, the connection to it's source in the glacier field in the mountains is truncated to a mere 4.5 miles from sea to towering concrete slab.

Despite all of this torment it's a crisp, brighthearted stream nestled in a namesake valley, hosting a persistent population of salmonids that seem to survive all kinds of abuse.  The dam regulation for artificial lake level management causes temperature fluctutations and parasitic blooms that cause massive kills in the chinook population.  Atlantic salmon having escaped from nearby farms find it especially appealing, unfortunately.  Hatchery programs have pumped millions of manufactured smolts into the indigenous system, diluting and threatening the dwindling native population.  A river such as this would be the stuff of legends in another place and time, yet it remains today as a misunderstood, maligned and manipulated example of our forefather's inability to appreciate a natural treasure.

On the first afternoon of my arrival last fall, Brian Lencho and I worked the long bouldery stretch down to the second riffle without a single sign of the summer chinook that usually fill this pool.  Two fisheries jet sleds were tied to the bank, indicating a concern over recent fish kills.  The diagnosis was grave for a river that I visit often in day dreams, and whenever possible in person.  I hope my dreams and visits always stay aligned.  A dose of persistence and perhaps the futility of the passing hours took us down to the apple orchard hole, where salmon were leaping with increasing regularity as evening approached.  It was highly unusual for salmon to be first seen this far downriver in September, yet it was a relief to see them in the river at all.  Although the salmon ignored our greaselined offerings in this giant, deep pool a certain excitement came over me as the setting orange sun lit the jagged Olympic backdrop.  I reached a nicely scooped tailout favoring the far side, in which a large freshly fallen alder lay sunken.  The gravel was a driveway granularity and flows were blandly uniform at the tailout, but the deeper emerald pocket behing the undulating alder branches called to me like a siren from my berth on the right bank.

I was casting a newly obtained G.Loomis 15' 8wt Spey rod, throwing a short type II tip on a floating hybrid head tied with a long fine summer leader and a "secret" fly of my own design that can be described as a "pink caddis pupa evolving into a sand shrimp".  It's a GP variant, but far less mechanical and much more buggy - inspired by those light pink and tan caddis pupa casings that line the banks of western streams in fall.  It's unique enough not to require a GP variant name, at least.  Tied on an Alec Jackson Spey hook, it does not defy the aesthetic of being a fitting steelhead fly, in fact it has a certain delicate appropriateness for bony fall flows and the silver missles it seduces.  Let's just say it's featured in the jaws of a high percentage of steelies in my photo album.

With a double Spey cast to the mid-point of the alder, followed by a mend, I watched intently as the arc swept slowly downstream and finally straightened before crossing back across the tailout to the near bank, scribing a giant fig leaf across the surface of the pool. Brian stood upstream, perhaps unable to see the brilliance of the scene he was a part of - the waning sun on the mountains behind him and a rushing river prompting us for our next casts.  The prize of being there was already captured but both of us lusted for the prize of summer steelhead.  Only a day ago I was anxiously packing gear in Boston, and it was good to be where I was.

From my vantage point, the fly swam through the trench along the sunken alder too fast for my liking. Although I was fairly suspicious that I had received a take there, I was equally suspicious that it could have been a branch.  Shuffling down, I lofted the fly to the end of the tree instead and mended to slow the drift in the meandering wake. The dugout was just wide enough to accommodate the business end of the slow sinking tip, yet the mending was easy over the uniform current that lay between. In a nutshell, the flyline worked magically over the lie and despite the relative inactivity of the afternoon my hair stood on end as instinct, or was it mere fantasy - took hold of the moment.

At that instant it happened.  With a nickel bright flash seeming nearly as wide as the pool, the line tight-roped and pumped as hard and erratically as my heart beat in my chest.  I rose the long wand to the sky with a slicing jab, the line tearing from the surface like tape from a roll, ending in a twang at a solid anchor in the form of a gun-metal blue-gray torpedo zigging and zagging around the crystal pool before me.  It was every moment I had daydreamed in the long days before being there, and then some.

I gave a triumphant "yeeehah! fish on!" as the fish began to assess it's predicament in the depths. Brian looked over, appearing just a wee bit doubtful by the lackluster bend in the rod as the mint bright ten pounder came screaming upriver toward me and I shuffled backward onto to a gravel bar to maintain tension. He didn't have the benefit of being able to see the take or the fish, which appeared to be somewhat unthreatened by the whole affair thus far.  I looked back to see his inquisitive look as he was obligingly reaching for his camera despite the unconvincing portrayal I had offered thus far.  Just then the fish made a searing run through the pool and leapt five feet from the surface in the most perfect Lani Waller eat-your-heart-out triple twisting double somersault, sending glimmering beads of spray radiating over the surface before shattering the evening calm in the valley with it's explosive re-entry, sending my gimpy spring-loaded line sailing to coil at my feet like so much silly string.

In all of this I felt no loss, no anger - I could only smile and revel in the moment.   All was as it should have been; the spirit of the Elwha had come to acknowledge my appreciation for her just as I had come thousands of miles to be where I was.  Her silver messenger delivered the message and vanished again into the mosaic of stones that lined her domain.

Brian rose two aggressive fish to dry flies before all workable light drained from the day. Neither were landed.  We threaded our way through the healthy riverside forest back to the truck, savoring the moment.  Foiled by the river and it's mysterious fish - but with the rest of the Olympic Peninsula, Manuel's Flyshop, and 299 fishing days before us... there wasn't a moment to waste.


Juro Mukai
Reflecting during a wintry day in Boston, 1997