Fishing wasn't exactly red hot on the Wallowa or Grande Ronde for the steelhead float we just did, but Paul, his brother John and Jeff Yanke did see a live version of Wild Kingdom when they floated up on a young elk that had just taken a swim across the river. They looked on the opposite bank and saw three wolves laying down, watching the elk. Two black and one gray. The wolves considered a big blue raft floating by a good enough reason to get up and head for the trees.

No collars or tags were visible. The wolves were on the left riverbank as you face downstream, above Grossman Creek on the Grande Ronde in the Wild and Scenic section.

It happened too fast to get a camera out, so no pictures.

The rest of us came along and wondered what the deal was with the spooked and dripping wet elk trying to climb up the banks that were too steep to negotiate.  

Later we saw two small herds of elk up high, same side the wolves were on.

Aside from the wolves we saw more bald eagles than a Colbert Report intro, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, river otter, elk, deer, gaggles of geese, heard the loudest frogs in the universe having a shouting match next to our campsite . . . the only animals we didn't see were bear, cougar, Bigfoot or chupacabras.

Here's a Bigfoot-quality photo of the goats:

 Majestic blurry white dots.

We didn't see too many steelhead, sad to say. River was on the cloudy side but Mike Baird had it figured out, landed a steelhead and had good luck with nice, big, feisty trout.

There were a few other hookups with steelhead that didn't get to the bank. Nice trout from 16 up to 20 inches. And we exercised the whitefish population pretty well. Here's Baird packing his hatchery hen back to camp –

Had one beautiful afternoon of t-shirt weather, followed by a night with rain that was helpful for drawing my attention to a hole in the fly on my tent. Luckily my face was directly below the leak or I might have just slept on through, rather than waking up with the benefit of being able to really pinpoint the problem.

We had to observe a new rule on the river when we came across this addition to the signs along the bank –

Hard to stop a raft midstream, but rules are rules so we backstroked and looked both ways to make sure the coast was clear. Might have been an elk swimming across. Never know.

Great to get on the water and while the river is on the high side right now, there's still time for things to settle down for the rest of steelhead season and we'll be watching to see what the weather does to the river conditions.

Check your calendar and pick a slot to get out there on the water.

Give us a jingle at Winding Waters River Expeditions and let us know if you've got a whitewater trip on the Snake River in Hells Canyon in mind, a float trip on the Lower Salmon River, or a tour through our backyard rivers on the Wallowa and Grande Ronde. Who knows, you might even see a wolf. Or three.

Ahoy. Wallowa Valley is bursting with our typical magical March weather. By that I mean it seems like February. On a scale of being cold or not, it's pretty cold. But there are hints of warmer weather. I ran into Jim Shelley in the grocery store and he said he and Anne just got back from Mexico.

From a fishing standpoint I'll take the cold to fend off more snowmelt and river blowoutage. We had a bout of warmishy weather with a dump of wet snow and bushels of rain last week and just look what it did to the Grande Ronde River –

It jumped up like a third-string basketball player in the quarter finals of the championship when the home team has a commanding lead and the coach sends in even the waterboy so things don't turn into a rout.

That meant a downtick in the steelhead fishing and brought on such alternatives as reading dogeared fly fishing magazines, tying a bunch of ugly flies, I don't know, maybe ordering a new fly rod.

Good idea. I believe I will order a new fly rod. Here it is. A ten-foot 7 weight Ion from Echo. 

Farnam convinced me the added length of a ten-footer would bring all sorts of advantages with line control, high sticking, getting caught in the brush hiking to the river. The ladies would suddenly pay attention to me, no more sand kicked in my face. I was sold.

So far I've made some outstanding casts, if I do say so, to various gopher mounds and clumps of grass in my yard. I look forward to trying this thing on the water. More to the point, I look forward to a stress test with a Wallowa River or Grande Ronde steelhead attached to the other end.

And we're taking steps to make that happen. Paul, myself, Mr. Mike Baird and a cast of bandits are embarking this week on a run from Minam to Wildcat, the same stretch we do for supported steelhead trips where you do the steelhead fishing and we do everything else. Except this time we're doing the fishing too.

If that aggravates you and you want to be catching steelhead all day with your new fly rod and then sitting in a warm wall tent at night, playing poker with a full house up against a three of a kind your brother-in-law Chad is betting furiously, then you need to visit the Winding Waters Steelhead Support page.

It'll be good to trot out the rafts for the first float of 2012.


How To Tie the Nail Knot – A Guide To Getting High Blood Pressure

Doing the weapons check for this upcoming trip got me replacing a fly line that's become a little haggard.

To do this, you should first take off the bread sack twisty things and allow the line to explode on the floor in a Gordian nightmare. It will look something like this –

But mango orange.

Take an hour or so to untangle it and remain calm by breaking a lamp, putting your foot through your TV, whatever works.

Now we'll tie the Nail Knot, a process that was developed during the Spanish Inquisition.

You will need an instruction book, the patience of a thousand-year-old tree, one bottle of bourbon, a short piece of drinking straw (for the knot, not the bourbon), scissors to trim the ends, ice for the bourbon, a thesaurus to look up four-letter words once you run out of your own and smaller fingers than mine.

That list may seem long, but take into consideration that you won't need the scissors because you'll never get to that stage.

Now, here are the handy instructions –

 

Looks simple. And it is, if you add my extra step of giving up on it and using an Albright knot instead.

Hope that's helpful and we'll see you on the river.

Fisherman/Chef Jake Leatherman of Triple Creek Ranch fame rolled through the Wallowas last week with Trisha Turner from Blacksmith Brewing over in Montucky.

This is how Jake shops for groceries.

They roped into some hardheaded fish after Mr. Steelhead Tom Farnam blindfolded them and took them to one of his secret locales.

While they were fishing the Wallowa River, Cam Scott and I ventured down to the lower Imnaha. Along with a bunch of other people, it turns out. We found wet bootprints on a bunch of trails, saw campers and tents that had set up shop . . . lots of fisherfolk down there. One hole had blood on the rocks where evidently someone whacked two hatchery steelhead and from now on I'm calling that spot Double Homicide.

I'm not opposed to keeping hatchery fish, it's just hard to focus on casting when you're trying not to smudge what looks like forensic evidence on the riverbank. 

This Cameron guy landed 3 fish the first afternoon pretty much before I'd even finished tying up my rig. Boy was I happy for him. Yessiree. Very supportive.

I got one the next morning and Cam caught another. Here's some footage and photos from that expedition, complete with marriage proposal by Cam to the Imnaha River. They make a cute couple.



As always, we'd love to go fishing with you. Check out the Winding Waters fly fishing page for info on guided day trips or supported steelhead floats down the roadless stretch of the Grande Ronde.

See you on the river.

This is weird.

Tom and I went for steelhead on the Wallowa River Saturday, March 3rd, with Bill, Woody and Wes. As we finished putting on waders Tom noticed a camera on the picnic table.

Woody says he picked it up out of the grass and figured it was ours. No.

So we leave it sitting on the table in case the owner notices it missing and retraces their steps. We go fishing.

This is also weird: Despite favorable conditions the fishing was not what you would describe as white-hot. In fact, you could hold your hand to the fishing and not be burned. It's like the old saying goes: "Saturday, March 3rd 2012 looked like it would be a great day to catch steelhead, but the fish weren't playing along for reasons unknown." My uncle used to say that all the time.

Nevertheless, these guys took to nymphing right away and fished very well – here's Wes with what I believe was his first fish on a fly rod. A mountain caucasianfish.

So. We fish the day out and are heading back to Joseph. As we pass the picnic table the camera is still there. We pick it up so we can run lost and found announcements, reunite camera and owner and watch our karma balance shoot through the roof.

Here's where it gets odd. Back at Tom's place he turns the camera on to see if he might recognize anyone in the pictures so we can figure out the owner.

And he recognizes someone right away. Here's the picture:

The important thing to know about this picture is that it's a picture of Tom, the same guy holding the mystery camera hoping to recognize someone in the pictures. It took us a while to mop up the spattered brains because our minds were blown by this coincidence and then we tried to piece it together.

First mystery: why would someone take a photo of such a small fish? The clarity isn't great because what you see above is a picture of the display screen, but you can tell it's a wee trout. Not something to necessarily document. But then I once took the following self-portrait, so, you know –

As far as The Case of the Missing Camera With a Picture Of Tom On It: we called the other guy Tom was fishing with on February 8th, the date that photo was taken, but he's not missing his camera.
So it could belong to Paul and Winding Waters, which would mean it sat in the weeds for nearly a whole month, which wouldn't be against quite all the odds, but most of them . . . to have it found by Winding Waters.

Also, our goodwill of returning it to ourselves would probably cancel out.

But it's still a mystery because Paul's still on his way back from his trip to Norway and I can't get ahold of him to settle this. Also, there's pictures of a dude on there that is not Paul.

So Paul is either a shapeshifter, or . . . I don't know. If you lost a camera Saturday give us a call, explain how the hell Tom got on your camera and we'll give you your camera back.

Also give us a call if you want to go after Wallowa River steelhead with a fishing guide who is so familiar with the river he shows up unexplained in photos with fish on stray cameras lying in the weeds.

Check out rates and dates for fly fishing the Wallowa and also know that I just heard positive reports from the Grande Ronde, where Winding Waters guides John Feeser and Mike Baird did a driftboat float and reported good catch rates.

Those fish are headed up into the roadless section and Winding Waters can take you there. Check out the supported steelhead option, where you fish all the livelong day and we set up camp and pour your martinis.

Buckets have lists that include doing this trip before they kick themselves.

All righty, musketeers. Go about your business, we'll see you on the river and if you can explain this camera mystery to me, the lines are open and operators are standing by.