Natural Lefty
09-01-2012, 08:01 PM
Return to Washington State
(AKA Robert and Eunice's not-so-excellent adventures)
After my wife decided that air travel to the eastern U.S. was too expensive, we decided to drive north to Washington state which we had never gone to together. I lived there for a while a long time ago, but hadn't been there since 1986.
This trip involved a whole lot of driving in the Honda Insight hybrid car we bought in April, as well as sightseeing but there was fishing also. Unfortunately, my wife decided it was too expensive for her to get a fishing permit in Washington State so only I did. We actually went all the way to Vancouver, B.C. but we left quickly when we found it was so expensive there (although we liked the area) and didn't fish there. We also skipped fishing in Oregon since there were lots of places to go in northern California and again that represented added trouble and expense. (See any themes here. Yeah, we are cheapskates but at least we go travelling.)
I caught fish in Washington but certainly no lunkers. I did catch my personal best Brown Trout later in California, but my bar for Brown Trout was set pretty low in the first place.
The first 3 days of the trip, from August 13 - August 16 were basically spent driving. When we got to British Columbia, after waiting a while at the border crossing, we got stuck in probably the most horrendous traffic jam we had ever been in. Here I am "driving" toward the tunnel. Apparently, 5 lanes narrow into 1 lane in that area. I think they need a bigger tunnel.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Vancouvertrafficjam.jpg
We ate in a Chinese restaurant in Richmond, near Vancouver, which was nice. However, Canada has apparently been doing better than the U.S. economically. When I was in Seattle before, 1 Canadian. dollar was worth about 80 U.S. cents. Now, it's worth about $1.20 U.S. dollars. This area has a very large Chinese population now. Most of the rest seem to be an eclectic mix of Asians and Indians. We wound up at a nice little cottage place that cost $134 dollars, and even more in U.S. dollars. Noplace else was much cheaper.
The next day we toured beautiful downtown Vancouver. The radio reported that Vancouver was declared one of the world's most livable cities, but at the same time, some people are leaving it due to the high cost of living there. I can see why both of those things are true.
Later, we headed back to Washington state. We stopped at Cabela's on the way to our destination, Tacoma. It was a huge store that even had huge aquariums; while there, I got a 3 day fishing perrmit for Washington state, plus a fishing equipment organizer and some bait.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Cabelasstore.jpg
We had two of our scariest moments that day, though. On the way south, a car had a kayak fall onto the freeway in front of us. Everybody had to slow down, but the big rig behind us was following too close and too fast down the hill, so the driver had to slam on the brakes and pull onto the right shoulder to avoid hitting us. I could tell that he was frightened by the incident, too, as he drove very slowly after that. Later on, while looking for the hotel in Tacoma, I got lost (one of about 10 times we were lost) and after consulting a map in a parking lot, I made a right turn. I saw a small white car well behind us, but somehow my vision was obscured and I didn't see the approaching pickup truck, but he swerved to the left, I swerved to the right, and we were all okay.
On the way through Seattle, I turned onto some semi-familar streets, got lost again, but at least found the University of Washington where I used to go to school. While there, I noticed some familiar bushes -- Blackberries with lots of ripe fruit. We stopped for a while and snacked on them.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/MewithBlackberries.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/UWBlackberries.jpg
The next day (August 17), we planned to go to Mount Rainier National Park and down to Yakima. That is sort of what happened, but I missed a turn, nad missed the main part of the national park. The route we took went downhill from the park and alongside a river with beautiful turquoise colored water called the American River. I stopped and took a look at it, and saw a grungy looking Salmon that appeared to be in the final stages of its life; it had fungus growing on its head and tail. Eunice wanted me to fish for it, but with the complex Salmon regs in Washington State, I wasn't sure I could fish there. It turns out that this part of the river is closed to fishing. Eunice wanted me to catch Salmon, but I was only aiming for Kokanee since I figured I would stand little chance of standing on the bank of some river and reeling in a 30 pound Chinook or 15 pound Coho on my 6 pound line.
The way I accidentally went, headed by a lake called Bumping Lake that was supposed to have a lot of Kokanee, so we went there. It turns out that all the fish were at the other end of the lake, where only people with boats can go. I tried fishing in the outlet, but people were jumping off the spillway into the pool, and some woman even commented that I was not welcome there -- some welcome to Washington State fishing that was! The weather was in the 90s, which is like 110 here, so the people there thought the weather was awfully hot. It would have been just a normal summer day here.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/BumpingLake.jpg
After striking out there, we headed for Rimrock Lake, which also is supposed to have lots of Kokanee that can be caught from shore. On the way there. we noticed a public fishing place where there was a pond. I wound up catching and releasing something like 15 tiny Pumpkinseed Sunfish there mostly on flies, although I did manage the unique feat of catching 2 of them simultaneously on the same worm and the same hook. One was on the hook, and the other one was simply hanging onto the worm. They were certainly voracious little critters. I also caught a small chub (I think) of some sort, with 2 faint red horizontal stripes, also on the fly behind a bobber.
Rimrock Lake was also a disappointment. The only place I found to fish, I had to stand on top of a cliff about 20 feet above the water, nothing was biting and teenagers were jumping into the water on the other side. The teenagers said that they saw a bunch of large Rainbow Trout there earlier in the day, but who knows? There was no evidence of them when I was there.
Yakima was nice, but we decided to move on the next day. First, we went to the Yakima Nation Cultural Center at my wife's behest.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Yakimaculturalcenter.jpg
Actually, I liked this place, too. Later on, we went to a Yakima Nation food stand and bought some fruit such as Tomatoes and Nectarines there which was really good stuff, although the hot peppers were awfully spicy. We ended up giving most of the hot peppers them to my parents' caretaker Maribel after returning home.
Eventually, we made our way up into the mountains around the south side of Mount Rainier. My first fishing stop was at Dog Lake near White Pass. I caught 4 Brook Trout there by or in the outlet, 2 on a Mosquito pattern fly behind a clip on bobber, 2 on worms. I only kept the biggest one which was about 9 inches, though. It became part of my dinner and was delicious, with beautiful, orange meat.
After a while, we decided to move on, though. We went over White Pass, and a short distance beyond that we saw a small lake of about 3 acres. It had the strange name Knuppenburg Lake, and looked inviting, with the same sort of beautiful, turquoise blue water as the American River had. Meanwhile, we noticed some berries by the parking lot. I didn't know what type of berries they were, though, and few of them looked ripe. I went to fish, and left Eunice with the berries. It looked like the best access and fishing would be by the inlet, so I worked my way over there, having made the mistake of bringing my cooler with me. I saw fish surfacing from time to time, so I tried my Mosquito, but nothing bit it. Next, I tried worms under a bobber. Nothing bit that, either, so I tried worms on a drop-shot type rig, and a nice size fish of about 12 inches took a swipe at it as I reeled in. Later, I had two nibbles, set the hook, but missed. It looked like there were some nice size fish in the lake, bedautiful water and habitat with a good spawning creek, downed logs, and deep, clean water. I was hoping for just one fish, but it didn't happen. Finally, I decided to head back to my wife. It turns out that she was having fun with the berries, without me. She had discovered some ripe berries that I recognized as Salmonberries, plus a few ripe Thimbleberries, which I later discovered were the unfamiliar variety of berry. We both had a nice berry snack at that point.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Knuppenburgsign.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Salmonberries.jpg
This morning, I did some internet searching, and found to my surprise that Knuppenburg Lake has 3 types of trout -- Brook, Brown and Rainbow -- is stocked from time to time, and is fairly heavily fished, which might account for the fish being less numerous than I would have expected.
Finally, we made our way back to Mount Rainier National Park and the Ohanapecosh River. This river has fly rod only fishing and is supposed to be quite good. When we parked, we noticed a board explaining the different kinds of berries growing in the park. There were also signs identifying some of the plants in the area. Naturally, Eunice went straight to berry picking, despite my warnings that you probably aren't supposed to do that in national parks. Well, they do allow fishing... Anyway, I couldn't resist chowing down some of the Red Huckleberries as well. Eventually, I got down to fishing. It turns out that the Ohanapecosh is another one of those ethereal, blue colored waters in that region, and the only one we got any photos of. As for the fishing, there were no fish visible, and nothing bit. If there were any fish in the area, they must have been hiding. I saw two other guys who also appeared to be going biteless just downstream. Perhaps a less accessible area of the river would have better fishing.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Berryidentificationarea.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Ohanapecoshflyfishing.jpg
We continued our long journey on the road that travels the south side fo the park, and got some great views of Mount Rainier.]
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/TakingmountRainierphoto.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/LakeLouise.jpg
That's Lake Louise way down there. The map made it seem as though it was right next to the road, so I was thinking we could both go fishing there (no license needed in the national park), but after seeing the lake, we opted not to try it. We did pass by 3 small lakes in the park on our trip -- Tipsoo, and Reflection Lakes -- but they are closed to fishing as are the associated streams, I think.
Eventually, we made our way out of the park and down toward the Tacoma area. We wound up in a motel in Spanaway for the night after a very long day.
The next day, August 19, we decided to make it simple. We headed south toward Oregon, and stopped at a lake named Silver Lake which has a good fishing reputation, along the way. It is only 7 miles east of the 5 freeway, so no big detours were required.
We found a resort at Silver Lake that allows visitors for $5 per person and allows fishing from its docks. After parking, we noticed a bunch of Blackberries right in front of us (seeing a theme here?). After chowing down on some of the Blackberries, I went out to the docks to fish. At first, nothing was biting, but after a while, I caught a good size Bluegill by dropping a worm between two logs near the end of the dock. A little later, I found a larger gap of about 3 feet between 2 logs just a few feet away from where I caught the Bluegill, and started getting regular bites. In the next couple of hours, I wound up catching 14 Yellow Perch and 8 Bluegills, keeping 9 perch and 6 of the Bluegills. Mmehe spot I discovered and gave him some maggots, and he quickly caught 3 of them. He also caught a couple of Yellow Perch a little ways away from there. My new friend told me that he and his son caught 6 trout there 3 weeks earlier, 2 Browns, 2 holdover Rainbows, and 2 stockers. He said the stockers tasted lousy but the other ones tasted good. He also mentioned how the Crappie fishing used to be really good there, but it has declined in recent years. The other guy showed up later, and was Crappie fishing. He said he had a few bumps from Crappie, but hadn't caught any when I left. He mentioned that his son lives in Chino Hills and float tubes Perris Lake a lot. He also said that he fishes Silver Lake nearly every day, and had caught a 5 pound Bass there from a boat that morning.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/SilverLakeResort.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/YellowPerchSilverLake.jpg
That concluded my fishing in Washington State. I didn't get to fish any of the places I had previously, and didn't catch any Salmon or personal bests, but I must say we had quite an adventure and the berry picking was primo, the best I ever had. We headed south after going to Silver Lake and wound up in Oregon that night to continue our trip.
(AKA Robert and Eunice's not-so-excellent adventures)
After my wife decided that air travel to the eastern U.S. was too expensive, we decided to drive north to Washington state which we had never gone to together. I lived there for a while a long time ago, but hadn't been there since 1986.
This trip involved a whole lot of driving in the Honda Insight hybrid car we bought in April, as well as sightseeing but there was fishing also. Unfortunately, my wife decided it was too expensive for her to get a fishing permit in Washington State so only I did. We actually went all the way to Vancouver, B.C. but we left quickly when we found it was so expensive there (although we liked the area) and didn't fish there. We also skipped fishing in Oregon since there were lots of places to go in northern California and again that represented added trouble and expense. (See any themes here. Yeah, we are cheapskates but at least we go travelling.)
I caught fish in Washington but certainly no lunkers. I did catch my personal best Brown Trout later in California, but my bar for Brown Trout was set pretty low in the first place.
The first 3 days of the trip, from August 13 - August 16 were basically spent driving. When we got to British Columbia, after waiting a while at the border crossing, we got stuck in probably the most horrendous traffic jam we had ever been in. Here I am "driving" toward the tunnel. Apparently, 5 lanes narrow into 1 lane in that area. I think they need a bigger tunnel.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Vancouvertrafficjam.jpg
We ate in a Chinese restaurant in Richmond, near Vancouver, which was nice. However, Canada has apparently been doing better than the U.S. economically. When I was in Seattle before, 1 Canadian. dollar was worth about 80 U.S. cents. Now, it's worth about $1.20 U.S. dollars. This area has a very large Chinese population now. Most of the rest seem to be an eclectic mix of Asians and Indians. We wound up at a nice little cottage place that cost $134 dollars, and even more in U.S. dollars. Noplace else was much cheaper.
The next day we toured beautiful downtown Vancouver. The radio reported that Vancouver was declared one of the world's most livable cities, but at the same time, some people are leaving it due to the high cost of living there. I can see why both of those things are true.
Later, we headed back to Washington state. We stopped at Cabela's on the way to our destination, Tacoma. It was a huge store that even had huge aquariums; while there, I got a 3 day fishing perrmit for Washington state, plus a fishing equipment organizer and some bait.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Cabelasstore.jpg
We had two of our scariest moments that day, though. On the way south, a car had a kayak fall onto the freeway in front of us. Everybody had to slow down, but the big rig behind us was following too close and too fast down the hill, so the driver had to slam on the brakes and pull onto the right shoulder to avoid hitting us. I could tell that he was frightened by the incident, too, as he drove very slowly after that. Later on, while looking for the hotel in Tacoma, I got lost (one of about 10 times we were lost) and after consulting a map in a parking lot, I made a right turn. I saw a small white car well behind us, but somehow my vision was obscured and I didn't see the approaching pickup truck, but he swerved to the left, I swerved to the right, and we were all okay.
On the way through Seattle, I turned onto some semi-familar streets, got lost again, but at least found the University of Washington where I used to go to school. While there, I noticed some familiar bushes -- Blackberries with lots of ripe fruit. We stopped for a while and snacked on them.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/MewithBlackberries.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/UWBlackberries.jpg
The next day (August 17), we planned to go to Mount Rainier National Park and down to Yakima. That is sort of what happened, but I missed a turn, nad missed the main part of the national park. The route we took went downhill from the park and alongside a river with beautiful turquoise colored water called the American River. I stopped and took a look at it, and saw a grungy looking Salmon that appeared to be in the final stages of its life; it had fungus growing on its head and tail. Eunice wanted me to fish for it, but with the complex Salmon regs in Washington State, I wasn't sure I could fish there. It turns out that this part of the river is closed to fishing. Eunice wanted me to catch Salmon, but I was only aiming for Kokanee since I figured I would stand little chance of standing on the bank of some river and reeling in a 30 pound Chinook or 15 pound Coho on my 6 pound line.
The way I accidentally went, headed by a lake called Bumping Lake that was supposed to have a lot of Kokanee, so we went there. It turns out that all the fish were at the other end of the lake, where only people with boats can go. I tried fishing in the outlet, but people were jumping off the spillway into the pool, and some woman even commented that I was not welcome there -- some welcome to Washington State fishing that was! The weather was in the 90s, which is like 110 here, so the people there thought the weather was awfully hot. It would have been just a normal summer day here.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/BumpingLake.jpg
After striking out there, we headed for Rimrock Lake, which also is supposed to have lots of Kokanee that can be caught from shore. On the way there. we noticed a public fishing place where there was a pond. I wound up catching and releasing something like 15 tiny Pumpkinseed Sunfish there mostly on flies, although I did manage the unique feat of catching 2 of them simultaneously on the same worm and the same hook. One was on the hook, and the other one was simply hanging onto the worm. They were certainly voracious little critters. I also caught a small chub (I think) of some sort, with 2 faint red horizontal stripes, also on the fly behind a bobber.
Rimrock Lake was also a disappointment. The only place I found to fish, I had to stand on top of a cliff about 20 feet above the water, nothing was biting and teenagers were jumping into the water on the other side. The teenagers said that they saw a bunch of large Rainbow Trout there earlier in the day, but who knows? There was no evidence of them when I was there.
Yakima was nice, but we decided to move on the next day. First, we went to the Yakima Nation Cultural Center at my wife's behest.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Yakimaculturalcenter.jpg
Actually, I liked this place, too. Later on, we went to a Yakima Nation food stand and bought some fruit such as Tomatoes and Nectarines there which was really good stuff, although the hot peppers were awfully spicy. We ended up giving most of the hot peppers them to my parents' caretaker Maribel after returning home.
Eventually, we made our way up into the mountains around the south side of Mount Rainier. My first fishing stop was at Dog Lake near White Pass. I caught 4 Brook Trout there by or in the outlet, 2 on a Mosquito pattern fly behind a clip on bobber, 2 on worms. I only kept the biggest one which was about 9 inches, though. It became part of my dinner and was delicious, with beautiful, orange meat.
After a while, we decided to move on, though. We went over White Pass, and a short distance beyond that we saw a small lake of about 3 acres. It had the strange name Knuppenburg Lake, and looked inviting, with the same sort of beautiful, turquoise blue water as the American River had. Meanwhile, we noticed some berries by the parking lot. I didn't know what type of berries they were, though, and few of them looked ripe. I went to fish, and left Eunice with the berries. It looked like the best access and fishing would be by the inlet, so I worked my way over there, having made the mistake of bringing my cooler with me. I saw fish surfacing from time to time, so I tried my Mosquito, but nothing bit it. Next, I tried worms under a bobber. Nothing bit that, either, so I tried worms on a drop-shot type rig, and a nice size fish of about 12 inches took a swipe at it as I reeled in. Later, I had two nibbles, set the hook, but missed. It looked like there were some nice size fish in the lake, bedautiful water and habitat with a good spawning creek, downed logs, and deep, clean water. I was hoping for just one fish, but it didn't happen. Finally, I decided to head back to my wife. It turns out that she was having fun with the berries, without me. She had discovered some ripe berries that I recognized as Salmonberries, plus a few ripe Thimbleberries, which I later discovered were the unfamiliar variety of berry. We both had a nice berry snack at that point.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Knuppenburgsign.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Salmonberries.jpg
This morning, I did some internet searching, and found to my surprise that Knuppenburg Lake has 3 types of trout -- Brook, Brown and Rainbow -- is stocked from time to time, and is fairly heavily fished, which might account for the fish being less numerous than I would have expected.
Finally, we made our way back to Mount Rainier National Park and the Ohanapecosh River. This river has fly rod only fishing and is supposed to be quite good. When we parked, we noticed a board explaining the different kinds of berries growing in the park. There were also signs identifying some of the plants in the area. Naturally, Eunice went straight to berry picking, despite my warnings that you probably aren't supposed to do that in national parks. Well, they do allow fishing... Anyway, I couldn't resist chowing down some of the Red Huckleberries as well. Eventually, I got down to fishing. It turns out that the Ohanapecosh is another one of those ethereal, blue colored waters in that region, and the only one we got any photos of. As for the fishing, there were no fish visible, and nothing bit. If there were any fish in the area, they must have been hiding. I saw two other guys who also appeared to be going biteless just downstream. Perhaps a less accessible area of the river would have better fishing.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Berryidentificationarea.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/Ohanapecoshflyfishing.jpg
We continued our long journey on the road that travels the south side fo the park, and got some great views of Mount Rainier.]
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/TakingmountRainierphoto.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/LakeLouise.jpg
That's Lake Louise way down there. The map made it seem as though it was right next to the road, so I was thinking we could both go fishing there (no license needed in the national park), but after seeing the lake, we opted not to try it. We did pass by 3 small lakes in the park on our trip -- Tipsoo, and Reflection Lakes -- but they are closed to fishing as are the associated streams, I think.
Eventually, we made our way out of the park and down toward the Tacoma area. We wound up in a motel in Spanaway for the night after a very long day.
The next day, August 19, we decided to make it simple. We headed south toward Oregon, and stopped at a lake named Silver Lake which has a good fishing reputation, along the way. It is only 7 miles east of the 5 freeway, so no big detours were required.
We found a resort at Silver Lake that allows visitors for $5 per person and allows fishing from its docks. After parking, we noticed a bunch of Blackberries right in front of us (seeing a theme here?). After chowing down on some of the Blackberries, I went out to the docks to fish. At first, nothing was biting, but after a while, I caught a good size Bluegill by dropping a worm between two logs near the end of the dock. A little later, I found a larger gap of about 3 feet between 2 logs just a few feet away from where I caught the Bluegill, and started getting regular bites. In the next couple of hours, I wound up catching 14 Yellow Perch and 8 Bluegills, keeping 9 perch and 6 of the Bluegills. Mmehe spot I discovered and gave him some maggots, and he quickly caught 3 of them. He also caught a couple of Yellow Perch a little ways away from there. My new friend told me that he and his son caught 6 trout there 3 weeks earlier, 2 Browns, 2 holdover Rainbows, and 2 stockers. He said the stockers tasted lousy but the other ones tasted good. He also mentioned how the Crappie fishing used to be really good there, but it has declined in recent years. The other guy showed up later, and was Crappie fishing. He said he had a few bumps from Crappie, but hadn't caught any when I left. He mentioned that his son lives in Chino Hills and float tubes Perris Lake a lot. He also said that he fishes Silver Lake nearly every day, and had caught a 5 pound Bass there from a boat that morning.
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/SilverLakeResort.jpg
http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/NaturalLefty/YellowPerchSilverLake.jpg
That concluded my fishing in Washington State. I didn't get to fish any of the places I had previously, and didn't catch any Salmon or personal bests, but I must say we had quite an adventure and the berry picking was primo, the best I ever had. We headed south after going to Silver Lake and wound up in Oregon that night to continue our trip.