Outdoors
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Friday, December 31, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Finding Delight:
An angling year in review
DENNIS
DAUBLE
THE NATURAL WORLD
A
recently published book by the
award-winning poet Ross Gay
puts an ever-changing world
into proper focus. Ross’s recent col-
lection of essays, titled “The Book of
Delights,” captures moments of delight
in the people and places he encoun-
ters over the course of a calendar
year. Inspired by his writings, I leafed
through a bedside journal to revisit
angling highlights from this past year.
The year 2021 began with high
and roily water on my home stream,
the Walla Walla River. After the flow
dropped and the water cleared, two
trips yielded the catch (and release) of
four large adfluvial rainbows, two bull
trout, and three wild steelhead. Ain’t
life grand?
Early February yielded my largest
walleye ever, a spawn-swollen
17-pounder, caught trolling a deep-
diving Bandit plug at night. This
accomplishment I expect to savor for
more than a year and a day.
March finds me in a pontoon boat,
trolling Wooly Buggers and Leeches
for stocker trout on a Central Wash-
ington desert seep lake. Meanwhile,
my boat trailer sits in a shop waiting
for repair. Elation best describes the
feeling when I am told a new axle is
not required.
Vaccination provided newfound
protection from COVID-19 and the
freedom to once again share motel
space with fishing buddies. An April
trip to Lake Rufus Woods brought
home a mixed grill of red-meat triploid
rainbows up to 8 pounds and a stringer
of 20-inch walleye from Banks Lake.
Can you say, “Hold up those fish and
smile at the camera?”
Anglers flock to flooded backwa-
ters from the Columbia and Snake
rivers when bass move in to spawn in
late spring. No different for this busy
retiree who shared a “40 fish” day in
May with a friend who couldn’t stop
grinning during a non-stop evening
bite.
Spending quality time in June with
two long time pals on the Little Naches
River made up for only raising one
6-inch cutthroat to the fly. Moments
of levity included watching hungry
robins dive-bomb chokecherry trees
for ripe fruit and a side trip to a local
brewpub.
The summer of 2021 brought triple
digit air temperatures and a strong run
of upriver-bound sockeye salmon to
the Hanford Reach of the Columbia
River. Consider this scenario: Anchor
your boat along a shoreline current
seam, place gear loaded with spinner
and shrimp rigs in rod holders, and
wait for a pod of sockeye to swim by.
Laughter pierced the air when rods
bent double and mint-bright “sox”
were led to the net.
There’s more. I ended July on
the South Fork Walla Walla River
during “hoot owl” closure with my
16-year-old grandson. In his first trip
to these hallowed waters, he hooked
and released over a dozen wild rain-
bows and stuck a bucktail fly in his
lower lip. The latter challenge was
removed with a minimal amount of
pain and suffering.
What could be better than har-
vesting a limit of 12 Dungeness crabs
from the Pacific Ocean on a blue-sky
Luke Ovgard/Contributed Photo
Macyn Nagao and I first met in Hawaii, where we bonded over our
shared love of food and fishing. Macyn caught this beautiful yel-
lowtail coris from the Kailua-Kona Pier.
Whipping
it in Hawaii
Dennis Dauble/Contributed Photo
LUKE
OVGARD
The author shows off a handsome 3-pound bass caught trolling a deep-diving plug in John
Day Reservoir on a cool November day.
CAUGHT OVGARD
K
AILUA-KONA, Hawaii — “Whipping, huh?
Howzit?”
“Pretty slow,” I replied.
“I’ve caught some big omilu here whipping. Keep on
‘em!”
My first trip to Kona, Hawaii’s “Big Island” had been
productive by all measures but one: whipping. Here on
the mainland, we call it casting lures, but in Hawaii, it’s
whipping.
I spent about five minutes whipping every hour.
Whipping was also the method of choice at sunset.
Tragically, I just had little to show for it. I’d taken the
kind of whipping no angler wants to endure almost
every time I tried, landing just a single orangemouth
lizardfish for all my troubles. It was a unique fish, but it
was overmatched by my gear, and I definitely whipped
it before it knew what happened. I snapped a quick pic-
ture and let it swim into the twilight sea.
Having struck out trolling for spearfish (hebi),
wahoo (ono) and yellowfin tuna (ahi), I even tried whip-
ping from the boat on the open ocean, but to no avail.
Once again, my spirits took the whipping.
Dennis Dauble/Contributed Photo
This two-angler limit of sockeye salmon ranging from 17 to 23 inches in length was caught
along the Hanford Reach shoreline in early July.
day in September? Not getting sea-
sick while doing so, for one. The chill
of autumn also meant return of upriv-
er-bright fall chinook salmon to the
Hanford Reach, hours of mindless
trolling, and finally, fish on!
My angel card read “contentment”
on the balmy October day I returned
to the South Fork of the Walla Walla
River for a solo trip that capped off
stream trout season. Cottonwood
leaves flutter down to coat the bottom
of the river, wild rainbows rise eagerly
to the fly, and the softness of a wooly
bear caterpillar in my hand.
According to a fishing buddy,
“Bass go deep when water tempera-
ture drops below 50 degrees.” A brace
Dennis Dauble/Contributed Photo
Bull trout move from headwaters of the Walla Walla River to the lower mainstem to forage
during winter flow conditions.
of 3-pound smallmouth caught with
deep-diving plugs in John Day Reser-
voir validated his prediction. Mid-No-
vember also brought mountain white-
fish to fall chinook salmon spawning
areas. An ailing friend’s spirits lifted
when he reeled in a female “white”
that weighed less than pound short of
the state record!
Rather than mope because the
Hanford Reach and tributary streams
within 100 miles of my front porch
remain closed to steelhead angling, I
find a weather window in December
to try for yellow perch. Anchored in a
backwater of the lower Snake River,
my neighbor and I fill the bottom of an
80-quart cooler with these tasty mid-
western transplants. An hour’s worth
of filleting led to enough fish tacos for
merrymaking.
That’s the feel-good version of
2021. My angling life once felt com-
plete when aspirations focused solely
on fly fishing local streams for trout
and steelhead. However, I now find
delight in the full range of fishing
opportunities that regional waterways
present. This year-long affliction leads
to an annual New Year’s resolution:
organize the ever-growing collection
of rods, reels, and accompanying gear
in our badly cluttered garage.
———
Dennis Dauble is a retired fishery
scientist, outdoor writer, presenter
and educator who lives in Richland,
Washington. For more stories about
outdoor adventure, including fish and
fishing in area waters, see Dennis-
DaubleBooks.com.
Local expertise
Despite my failures whipping, I’d done very well for
reef fish and morays while sitting on bait. It required
constant attention, quick reflexes and a soft touch but it
was still bait fishing. I wanted to catch a gamefish on a
lure, and I refused to admit defeat even as my time in
Hawaii drew to a close.
Enter Macyn Nagao.
Though we’d never met in person, my brother’s
friend from college, Macyn, lived in Kona. I’d long
admired his spearfishing posts, and I figured spear-
fishing would be fun to try if he was teaching. He
offered to show me his ways. Alas, the weather was
not cooperative for someone with my complete lack of
diving experience, so we opted to just fish with rod and
reel. We started on the pier, grabbed some lunch then
moved to the rocks behind his apartment complex as
the sun began to set.
See, Hawaii/Page B2
Luke Ovgard/Contributed Photo
The bluefin trevally, or omilu, is one of the most beautiful fish I’ve
ever seen. Add to that the best per-pound sport value I’ve experi-
enced, and this just might be my favorite catch of 2021. It crushed
a Rapala CD-9.