I’m sorry for the delay in getting this posted. Between being gone and then reading such funny posts on here that I didn’t want to cover up so quickly, I left everyone hanging in the air on my fishing update. So, here you go…finally!

This last weekend was a busy one - Saturday had all of my family over at Mom and Dad’s house. Both my brothers and their families came over for some fun - and my brother, Todd, and I decided to go fishing on the Snake River. We originally wanted to do some bass fishing, but because of the last week’s high temperatures, knew we’d be hard pressed to find some smallmouth willing to cooperate with those plans as the reservoirs have all been rising way too fast. We started up through the mountains to Wolf Creek and about a mile or two from the top, had to stop and let Todd’s pickup cool down. He’d been having problems with it over heating, and we weren’t wanting to take any chances of being stranded on this remote road - remote enough that it had hardly any traffic on Memorial Day weekend! We made it into our favorite cove where Wolf Creek melts into the Snake River, and surprisingly enough, had the entire cove to ourselves. We fished for about an hour for bass - I caught two, lost two more and had another bite. Todd lost one before the wind hit. This was no small breeze - it was a gale that just about knocked us off our feet! This was serious business and it really ruined the bass fishing. Besides being very difficult to cast, from all I’ve ever heard, bass really head for cover when winds like this hit - and I can’t say that I blame them. We promptly decided to start fishing for catfish.

The catfish fishing started off slow - while the wind was blowing hard, I had a few bites, but it was really difficult to tell as the wind blew hard enough it was difficult to tell if we were getting bites or if the wind was causing our bait to dislodge from the bottom and causing the sinker to bounce. But I had a few “for sure” bites. The wind finally died down to a reasonable breeze, and the fishing picked up considerably. We started hooking catfish left and right - I used my steelhead rod, opting for the long cast into the deep, while Todd used his lightweight Zebco - opting for shorter casts, but more fun when hooking into a cat on a panfish pole! Todd hooked into a blue cat that was as dark as any catfish I’ve ever seen - it looked like a small shark while it swam in the shallows. It is as black a fish as I’ve ever seen, without doubt.

We finished up catching about 13 catfish in a couple hours ranging from 5 - 7 pounds mostly. I ended up catching one that we guessed at about 15 pounds. It was a brute and liked to have chomped my thumb off - it sure tried! I was posing for a picture when this fish decided it had had enough and chomped down on my thumb, which really hurt and caused me to drop it - except this thing still had his jaws clamped and wouldn’t let go! I did learn my lesson - it had been a while since I caught a cat that big, so next time I will be more careful!

A man and his daughter showed up after the wind had died off - and I enjoyed watching them as they completely enjoyed themselves, despite not hooking many fish. They came over and talked to us for a while - as they hadn’t been catching much, I think they were curious as to what we were doing. It was plain to see the pure joy in the little girl’s eyes and her dad was equally happy to have her there to share in the fun.

Here is the biggest catch of the day - 30 inches long and seriously strong jaws!

Here is Todd with his black cat.

On Sunday afternoon, my wife and I packed the car and headed for her folks’ place in Washington - about a 5 1/2 hour drive. Our plan was to do some walleye fishing on one of Washington’s best fisheries - Moses Lake. We had been up there about a month and a half earlier and were told by locals that we were too early for the real good walleye bite. This time, we stopped at the local outdoors store and the guys down there said we were too late for the big walleye bite! The recent warm weather as well as the high winds they’d had recently, had really hurt the fishing, but they gave us some ideas as to where to try to pick up some bass or trout. We fished a little lake not knowing what kind of fish it even had in it because it just looked fishy. However, it wasn’t very fishy that day! We packed up and headed for a string of lakes known as “Seep Lakes.” Here, we fished for bass or trout with spinners, jigs, and worms. I finally caught a small trout on a Blue Fox spinner. After fishing for a while, I went to where my father-in-law had been fishing and noticed a coiled up rattler. I commented on how he must be feeling friendly to fish in such close quarters with that thing, but he hadn’t even noticed it despite only being about three feet from it. We looked at it closer and found that it was headless and tailless - apparently someone before us believed in the notion that the only good snake is a dead one. I tend to agree when it comes to rattlers. We were all amazed at how well they blend in with the lava rock - we were certainly more careful about where we stepped from that point!

Finally, we cruised back to Moses Lake to just try and see if we could hook into one of the smaller walleye that the locals claimed were still biting - although they warned us not many people were having luck from the shore. We weren’t any exception. We gave it a good run, but just couldn’t come up with any fish. I had one small nibble towards the end of the trip, but that was it. My in laws apologized for the poor fishing, but in reality, I though it was just real nice to be outside in new country. I was able to see some pretty neat country that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen, and that made it all worthwhile.

• Last Call for Brownlee 2008
• First Time Cats
• Spring Has Sprung
• Purple Freight Trains
• Return to my Roots

May 30, 2008 | 7 comments | Fishin' Stories | By Tom Sorenson

(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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