Dauble

A congenial dipper bird flies past, swoops under overhanging alder, and chirps at my presence when it bob-dances on a midstream boulder. Its welcome companionship and the possibility of one more wild trout rising to the fly pulls me along.

It’s 90 degrees in the sun, but comfortably cool when you wade bare-legged in the North Fork of the Umatilla River. Two hours earlier, when I entered the sanctuary of old-growth fir, a sublime state of mind took over. The well-shaded streamside trail was crowded with tall fern, thimbleberry and overhanging blackberry vines. No sign of human traffic, I kicked aside loose rocks and sidestepped pale blue butterflies that gathered over trailside seeps. Gone and forgotten were physical ailments, familial responsibility, and political discord.

Hikes up the narrow North Fork trail are a test of weak knees, as is wading upriver on algae-glazed rocks, climbing over debris jams and doing the limbo under massive fir trees that fall cross-wise to the current. I wonder if anyone would find me in this remote location if I fell and hit my head, was mauled by a hungry cougar or suffered a heart attack fighting a 10-pound bull trout. No rush to the prize, though. One thing I’ve learned over six decades of fishing the North Fork is that reward comes to those who have patience.

The two directional forks of the Umatilla River combine their flow 2 miles upstream from our cabin. A five-minute drive on a gravel road gets me to a trailhead where another vehicle is seldom found. The North Fork watershed, enclosed entirely within a designated wilderness area, maintains a constant cold flow thanks to groundwater stored deep in forested slopes that are forever protected from timber harvest and cattle grazing.

The lower half-mile or so of the river is split into multiple, small channels made impassable with a crisscross of downed alder. Farther upstream, where I first cast my line, a generous mix of plunge pools, riffles, pocket water and deep troughs lined with boulders can be found.

I pull a keeper-size rainbow from a current seam beside a leafy alder branch that fails to snag my fly. Darker in color than those landed from sunlit pools, this trout lives in the shade. Bronze flanks and visible parr marks are bisected by a pencil-thin red stripe that extends to gill plates airbrushed with magenta rouge. Dark spots the size of BB’s sprinkle its dorsal surface. Passive in the palm of my hand, it springs back to life when I bend down to release it into shallow water at my feet. Oh, the wonder of wild trout!

The timing appears right for a pre-spawning adult spring-run chinook salmon to lurk beneath nearby sheltering root wads. When present, they chase trout to secondary water. As if to confirm that notion, I hook a 10-inch rainbow in a small pocket pool located no more than 10 feet from a deep pool that did not produce a single rise. Although I haven’t seen a springer yet, pink ribbons fluttering from streamside bushes indicate that fall redd surveys are taking place.

When the river reconnects to the trail, I consider how the next exit might involve 50 yards of busting through dense underbrush. My bare ankles already show wounds from an earlier encounter with thorny vegetation. However, a majestic hole beckons where strong current swells between two logs. By now, I’ve hooked, landed and released more than 15 “keeper size” trout. Add to that total another dozen smaller trout tossed back with barely a “sploosh.”

I pause to cup my hand in the river, drink cool, clear water and reflect on the prior evening when I caught and released my largest rainbow trout in more than a decade. With an hour of good fishing left, I reeled up and put my gear away for the evening. “It could not get any better than that fish,” I replied to Nancy after she remarked, “I thought you planned to stay out until dark.”

When do you quit fishing? When you run out of good water? No way! The best hole of the day may exist around the next bend in the river. When you have caught your quota of trout? Who in their right mind establishes a quota on a fine day like this? When the best pool in a quarter-mile fails to yield anything larger than a 5-incher? Nope. Never quit on a small trout.

Reaching back in my treasure chest of angling memories, I am reminded of a long-ago backpacking trip taken into the South Fork of the Walla Walla River with my son, Matthew. We fished an isolated section of river where 16-inch trout rose to the fly in every classic bedrock pool we encountered. Some holes were so large and grand I can still picture them in my mind. After releasing his second slab-sided trout, Matthew set his fly rod down and declared, “I’m done for the day.”

“How can you say that?” I asked. “This is the best trout fishing I have ever seen.”

“It cannot possibly be better than that last fish,” he replied.

I haven’t seen the dipper bird for a while, so I wrap a fresh-caught trout in damp, spongy moss and stash it in a side pocket of my vest. Surely, I can’t be begrudged one small fish for tomorrow’s breakfast. Fried in bacon grease until crispy and brown, the trout will yield four bites of sweet meat for me. Our corgi will gulp down the head and tail in one bite.

The river trail appears once again high above the river, I wade across, climb up onto a smooth basalt shelf, and toss my fly rod upslope. Bracing one foot on exposed rock followed by a tentative handhold on a clump of Oregon grape, I crawl up the steep bank to flat ground.

One foot in front of the other, I trudge down the dusty trail. The distant drum of a wood hen echoes through thick brush. Dragonflies and winged grasshoppers take up air space in sunlit openings. The sharp tang of heat-stressed conifer wafts in a gentle upcanyon breeze. A pile of fresh bear scat impregnated with blackberry seeds catches my eye when I enter a long tunnel of shade. I once stumbled upon a bear den after exiting the trail for a try at one more last trout. Not today though.

I’m an hour past when I promised Nancy I would return for dinner — albeit a time well within the standard range of forgiveness.