Fishin': Meeting My Waterloo

Written by Bob Ellsberg

Saturday, 01 October 2011 00:00

The drone of the little outboard was putting me to sleep. Getting up way before light had cost me some rest that my old body really needed. I would have dozed off if my knees weren’t screaming at me. They were so cramped up after hours of trolling up and down in Steve’s tiny boat that they weren’t about to let the rest of my body escape from the tedium of yet another fishless day!

We all have a favorite kind of fishing—a fishery where we have had a lot of success in the past, plenty of good stories and a lot of tasty meals. I have a bunch of different kinds of fishing that I truly love. But I also have one that is my Waterloo. Despite years of trying, I still have one scaly pursuit that is going to drive me into deep therapy. My most miserable moments have to be the time I have spent trolling for salmon.

Now the ocean fishery is a really good salmon producer. Fish are feeding actively, and one rarely seems to have a slow day. But the problem for me is my proclivity toward getting deathly ill when the big rollers bounce the boat. Even a great bite is tough to take when one is turning greener by the minute. Putting bait on the hook can cause your lunch to come back to haunt you. So, to avoid getting seasick, I am mostly reduced to trolling for salmon when they are coming up the Columbia to spawn or are in the tidewaters of some of my favorite rivers.

Tough Venue
The various salmon species, with bodies changing into the spawning mode, don’t bite nearly as readily as those feeding in the ocean. They do hit on occasion, but you can dangle a herring or a spinner in front of a thousand or so before one might decide to chomp away, just for old time’s sake.

The really frustrating part of the fishery is that I have a lot of friends who are just great at hooking salmon as they motor along. Unfortunately most aren’t quite good enough friends to take me on their “fish-full” adventures. They’ll call me up, and e-mail me pictures of their daily limits, share just enough information to get me thinking that maybe I can mount a successful trip, but then I end up spending hour after hour getting miserably skunked!

This year was my worst year ever. To date I’ve gone out nine times, spent fifty hours trolling up and down, and don’t even have one bite to show for the effort. The three buddies who shared our boat ride were similarly blessed. We tried a myriad of different baits, fifteen spinners and ten spoons, all kinds of flashers and attractors with no takers at all. Our efforts included fresh and frozen anchovy and herring, served whole, plug cut and filleted, everything short of putting them on a pizza. Not so much as a nibble!

The variables can drive you crazy. Should you fish at low tide, high tide, incoming, out-flowing, first light, last light, deep or shallow, slow or fast? A million ways to do it. We watched everyone else and our efforts seemed to mirror those of the fleet, the only thing different was the results we got.

Now I could handle all this skunking if other folks were having a tough time, but we’ve been out fishing when landing nets have been swinging in the air so thick it looked like people were chasing butterflies. Sea lions swam up next to our boat, chewing on fat chinook, as we trolled sadly past. The hoots, hollers and high fives from a fleet of happy anglers easily carried across the waters, driving us crazy when they called over to us, “How are you guys doing?” It got so bad that we decided to use that old standby, “We just got here,” even if we’d been at it all day.

Getting Checked Out
Finally, the last straw floated down, breaking my aching back. I had just spent a full day out with my brother in law, Andre, trolling fruitlessly in his big cruiser. As we pulled into the dock, after yet another day of fresh air, sunshine and no fish, the state police and Oregon fisheries checkers met us at the dock. “How many did you guys catch today?” called out the fish counter.

“Not a bite,” was my frustrated reply.

“You didn’t catch anything?” queried the game officer, looking in disbelief at our slime-free deck. “Folks are averaging better than four fish a boat.”
I could tell that he was thinking we were trying to sneak in some illegal fish, maybe an overgenerous limit, or a few wild fish that we shouldn’t have. Glancing toward our fish box, he offered up a challenge, “Nothing in there?”

That was about all I could handle. “Come on aboard officer, check out everything!” I volunteered, shaking my head in frustration.

That was all he needed; the young patrolman hopped over the deck, went though our ice chests, holds and bilges, sniffing around for a trace of blood or even a few telltale scales. Naturally, he came up empty and with an apologetic tone, unknowingly gave us the ultimate put-down. “Sorry I didn’t believe you,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “They were just biting so well today, I didn’t figure anyone would get blanked!”

The next day when my buddy Steve called up to try to talk me into trying yet another trip (after all, he had some hot tips and a new spinner), I decided I had to stay home and wash my hair.

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