I can’t believe it’s come to this: I’ve now caught fish on a fly — something called a “wooly bugger’’ and another one that looks almost identical but has an even nuttier name, a “peacock willie.’’
This is my annual report from Coldwater Lake on the north side of Mount St. Helens, where each spring I fish for a day with Ed Wickersham of Vancouver.
He’s a retired federal game warden, long-time member of the Clark-Skamania Flyfishers, activist in the Coastal Conservation Association and one of three Southwest Washington representatives to the state’s Columbia River Salmon and Salmon Recreational Anglers Board.
Anyone who’s been reading this column for the past 30-plus years probably has figured out I’m not a fly fisherman. I do know that there is a famous fly called a Royal Coachman. There’s one called an Adams and, something called a black gnat.
Well, I’m not certain on the black gnat.
And I was told once that if I wanted to catch smallmouth bass in the Columbia River Gorge I should use a “muddler minnow.’’
To catch trout, you troll with a worm. If you’re bank fishing, you use salmon eggs. To catch salmon, mostly you troll with a herring — or maybe a spinner.
These are the lures and baits of the common man. I’m part of the hook ‘em-and-cook-’em crowd. I once had a T-shirt that had just three words: “Catch. Cook. Eat.’’ I bought that shirt in Yakima decades ago at a store named “Guns, Ammo, Gifts.’’
The flyfishing thing feels too high-brow for me, too close to the 1 percenters.
Wickersham is a hybrid. He knows that to catch salmon, you use herring. To catch steelhead, a plug.
While he’d never stoop to using worms or salmon eggs for trout, or add a dodger or other attractor to his line, he at least acknowledges their effectiveness.
A year ago, we went mano-a-mano in mid-May at Coldwater Lake: His flies against what he calls my “whiz bangs’’ (spinners, wobblers, hoochies).
At the end of the day, the whiz bangs won 15 to 13.
The rematch was last week.
But after about 90 minutes of trolling, he had six trout on a peacock willie, which is an indistinct bunch of blackish feathers. I only had three trout, one on a purple hoochie, one on a silver Smile blade spinner and one on a green frog No. 1 Needlefish.
So Wickersham tied a leader on a wooly bugger and persuaded me to use it. It seemed goofy not to fish it with some sort of attractor, so I put it on about 18 inches behind a silver Arrow Flash dodger.
To summarize a day of fishing, the final numbers ended up 12 for Wickersham and 11 trout for me.
For the uninitiated, Coldwater Lake was created in May 1980, when the eruption of Mount St. Helens created a natural dam at the outlet of Coldwater Creek.
The lake is about 750 acres. The Forest Service built a small, but nice, boat ramp and heated restrooms at the lower end of Coldwater Lake.
Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife stocked Coldwater Lake once, back in the 1980s, and decided to manage the lake as a quality trout water.
The lake is not stocked, but depends on natural reproduction by the fish. There’s rainbow and cutthroat trout.
Coldwater is open year-round with a daily catch limit of one trout at least 16 inches. Internal combustion engines are prohibited. Selective gear rules also apply, which means single, barbless hooks and no use of bait.
While we did not measure the trout, Wickersham caught two that I’m confident topped 16 inches and I landed one that length. They are nice, full-bodied trout.
So of my 11 trout, eight came on either the wooly bugger or peacock willie.
At least we were trolling.
I can’t imagine what’s next, maybe casting a Royal Coachman to rising fish as they nibble at the surface?
