Till the Cows Come Home

I was caught up in the spring doldrums. My afternoons were full, and I really enjoyed coaching my high school track kids, but my fishing effort was almost nil. The river season for steelhead had slowed to a crawl, and to make matters worse, they shut down the Columbia River season for spring salmon the day I finally got my boat in the water!
Sturgeon fishing was not only slow, but we were in the two-week “no keep” slot, so I couldn’t keep my dinner even if I did catch it. I had to get out on the water before I completely lost my touch.

A quick call to my buddy Jim McClain landed me a partner for the evening’s activities. We decided to go back to the basics, dug up a can of worms, and headed off to a local slough. This backwater of Young’s Bay had a variety of fish, and the water was slowly getting warm enough to spur them into a feeding mode.

A couple of hours before dark, we drove out to a country road and parked. Then we grabbed our gear, crossed over a few strands of wire, went past some feeding cows, and set up our fishing camp on a gravel road that traversed the slough.

We had already set up our bobber outfits, so it took no time to hook on a fat wriggler and cast out into the muddy waters. Most of the water plants were still pretty stunted from the winter cold, so there was a lot more open water to fish. Looking on both sides of our stone bridge, we could see the flash of gold as a carp finned in the weeds, and a big bass leaped skyward after some bug or another. We were ready for action!

Holsteins Approach
Unfortunately, it was a tad slow in coming. We had been plunking worms for the better part of an hour when Jim took a peek back toward the truck. “Hey Bob, it looks like those cows are coming to visit,” he mentioned casually. I looked up and sure enough a dozen or so Holsteins with a few brown buddies of unknown origin were coming our way. After a couple of more minutes, the whole herd was massed just about ten yards away. Not knowing exactly what they wanted, I proffered a guess. “Think they want to get to the field on the other side,” I offered. “The grass is always greener there!”

Jim ignored my lame joke but suggested that maybe we should vacate the roadway for a few minutes and let them cross over. After all, the farmer who had graciously let us use his land probably would like to have his moo-moos well fed. With a quick crossing in mind, we propped our rods up against some rocks down by the water and moved ourselves to the empty field to free the walkway for the cows.

It didn’t take long to realize that we had screwed up. A couple of cows ambled out to the center of the 50-foot long bridge and just stood there. After they had held their ground for about ten minutes, Jim had an unhappy thought. “What if they want to get a drink?” Somehow, that possibility had been ignored. If they went to the water, they would climb down the bank with a good likelihood of trampling our rods and reels!

Sure enough, within minutes the first cow headed for the water. Thankfully the path they took cleared them of our gear, but there were 20 more behind them! The cows did appear to be very orderly. While the first two drank, the others amused themselves on the rocky structure. Most of their activity consisted of staring blankly at the slough.

Dumbfounded
Jim chuckled and offered an observation, “Those dumb cows look like they’re sedated; they just stood around for half an hour staring at the water!” I would have been a bit more critical of the critters except that we had been doing the exact same thing for at least an hour before they arrived! But my trouble-making buddy had another thought that really got me worried: “What would happen if a big carp hit our worms?”

This would be a big problem—a good sized carp taking off through the weeds would haul our outfits right into the water; my Loomis rod and Shimano reel would set me back a couple of hundred bucks! If either were trampled or dragged off into the tulles, I’d be in big trouble. To make matters worse, we’d never been skunked in this hole; something evil was probably eying our bait that very moment!

We considered retaking the bridge, then thought better of it. Those half-ton critters were a tad spooky and if they turned and ran, our gear would be trampled for sure. So we waited and waited, and waited. Finally after nearly an hour, the gentle giants had sated their thirst and crossed over to the fresh field.

Sliding out of the brush in the growing dark, we surveyed the damage the black and tan monsters had wrought. Jim’s backpack had been thoroughly slimed; every cow in the herd must have licked it before they crossed the bridge. Likewise the handle of my rod was covered with goo, but otherwise everything was fine.

Cutting our losses, we packed up the gear and headed back to the truck. Jim shook his head as he slid his slobber-drenched pack over his shoulder. “I guess we couldn’t have picked a better day to get skunked!” That was so true; a good bite would have cost us a couple of hundred bucks in a flash! We laughed all the way back to the rig!

Bob Ellsberg’s column, Fishin’, appears monthly in RV Life and rvlife.com.