2000 Fishing Trip on Bogachiel River

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After a two year absence from the wild rivers on the west slopes of the Olympic Peninsula, I felt the urge of the salmon this fall of the year 2000. In response to the quickening, a fishing trip was planned and arranged for early October.

Drift boat guides out of Forks, Washington were located and engaged using the Internet, and lodging at the lovely Forks Motel was secured. The foursome, two of my neighbors, my brother Mike from Portland, and I departed Olympia Thursday afternoon about 2:30 p.m. for the three and one half hour picturesque drive to Forks in my full time, all time, all wheel drive, Subaru Forester.

The drive to Forks was punctuated with excited banter. Neighbor Pete and I had partnered for a salmon fishing trip before, only to get washed out by a rain-swollen Humptulips River. Brother Mike and I had partnered on a fishing trip two years earlier on the Queets River, but were skunked. We both landed fish, but regulations for size and gender required us to release them. Neighbor Terry is new to the ‘hood and the trip gave us all an opportunity to get to know him better under ideal circumstances.

Hoquiam, Quinault, Klaloch, are just a few of the magic names of small towns and villages along the route to Forks. Highway 101 passes through a couple of National Forests which showcase old growth, evergreen sentinels, protected from the devastation of clear-cutting which is prominent along some sections of the drive. It has always been amazing to me that the timber barons still don’t have enough sense to leave a barrier of trees along the highway so that city slickers won’t see the full extent of their rape and pillage of the landscape.

At Klaloch, about 40 miles south of Forks, the highway snakes parallel above the Pacific Ocean, offering forest filtered vistas of the sea which are accompanied by “ooh’s” and “aah’s”.

After checking into our room at the Forks Motel, a two bedroom kitchen suite, we drove to the Smokehouse for dinner. Nancy and I have eaten several times at the Smokehouse when visiting the Forks area.

Terry, Mike and I ordered dinners from the sea. Pete ordered a steak so as not to offend the salmon gods and jinx his luck on the ‘morrow. Pete rolled a double oxy by requesting that the chef hand pick the best of the available top round, eschewing the opportunity to order a more flavorful cut of beef, and by directing that the steak be cooked between medium and medium well, so that no more than a little pink show.

Returning to the lovely Forks Motel, we watched the Mets play the Cardinals. One of the beds was a roll away. No one volunteered to take it, so trying to think of a way to resolve the issue, I suggested that we “lag” for it. No one was sure what lagging was, and someone suggested that it must require some kind of skill for which I must have practiced for at least a week.

So we decided to flip coins, odd man gets the roll away. To even things I had four quarters for the toss, which required Mike to pocket his lightweight, aerodynamic, lucky dime.

Flip. Four tails.
Flip. Two tails, two heads.
Flip. Three heads, one tail; Terry wins (he-he-he) the rollaway.

I got tired and went to the bedroom with two queen sized beds, and hit the sack. Mike, soon followed with a cocky winner’s gait soon followed, leaving Pete and Terry in the combo living room, sleeping room with one queen sized bed and a roll away. Mike was quite satisfied to have avoided the roll away.

Well, be careful what you wish for, Mike learned soon after. As it turned out, the coin toss was not really about the roll away, but who had to sleep in the same room with me. Who would have thunk? According to Mike’s report the following morning, it sounded like someone had jump-started a motorcycle next to his bed. It so happened that my bed was next to his bed.

“I didn’t get a wink of sleep until about 2:30 a.m.”

“Well Mike, that’s when I woke up because of that guy walking around in the room above us.”

The alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. Time to get dressed and meet the guides at 5:00 a.m.

That’s about the time Mike informed the world that I snored and made other body noises. My guess is that he is a delicate sleeper. My wife Nancy has suggested on occasion that I might snort once or twice during the night, but her comments have always been much more charitable than Mike’s. Shaddy has never voiced a complaint of any kind. Bygones.

We met Pat and Sam, the fishing guides I found on the Internet at the Pack & Save Restaurant just across the street from the lovely Forks Motel. We four clients ordered man-sized breakfasts and box lunches for later in the day. We picked up the tab for the two guides and followed them by car to the Bogachiel River.

The guides dropped the drift boats at the 110 bridge, and I followed them in the Forester to park their rigs with empty trailers at the take out near the Mora campground. We drove back to the drift boats in my car to meet with Mike, Terry and Pete who were left behind to guard the boats and equipment.

“Now if a ranger stops us, we’re just ‘play fishing.’” My mind whirls. What have I gotten myself into? Sam, a crusty sixty-something starts cursing the feds, and Pat, in his mid-twenties does not attempt to hide his contempt for regulations that are unreasonable and a restraint on freedom.

As I listen, it seems that the take out is on a federal regulated national forest. To a fishing guide, this means that if you use the national forest takeouts for your boats with paid clients, you have to register with the federal forest agents, fill out a bunch of gobbledygook paperwork and post some kind of bond. While that sounded fine to me, Sam and Pat were dead set again’ it. So much so, that they told me that we were “play fishing,” expecting me to play along. They were fortunate that we were not stopped by the feds.

When we arrived at the drift boats, it was dark and drizzly, and fortunately not too cold. The rainy season was late in arriving, so the “trigger” of fresh rain had not yet beaconed the salmon to begin their spawn upstream. The Bogachiel was low and the conditions were not promising.

Pete and Terry teamed up with Pat, and Mike and I scrambled in Sam’s boat. Pat began bumping his boat downstream in the low water. Sam was a crusty sixty-something who turned to fishing when the timber industry went belly-up because of the spotted owl. I saw a sign in a restaurant on a previous salmon trip that spotted owl tastes better than fried chicken. Mike and I later figured out that he couldn’t see worth a darn in the dark (neither could we). We sat in the boat for about an hour not thirty yards from where we put in, waiting for dawn light and listening to Sam wax about the good old days when you could walk across the backs of salmon jockeying up the river.

We learned how the Indians had ruined the salmon industry. No fault was ever attributed to the timber industry’s practice of logging to midstream and ruining the gravel beds and shade where the salmon spawned. Sam was indeed a righteous man.

But Sam was a fisherman. He was not very good at helping others catch salmon. He is the first guide I have used who was more interested in fishing himself than finding some way to help the customers trick a fish into the boat. Mike and I both admired the fly-fishing demonstration he put on for us. He was a master caster, confident in his style with no concern for our protection from an errant fly, cast askew. There was none. He knew where we were, and his salmon flies, on the fly, never deviated more than a foot from his head on the retrieve. It was magnificent to watch.

Pete caught two small jacks. Terry caught one. Mike and I were skunked for our second trip in a row. I had decent strike, but no hold. We think Mike may have had a strike, but we can’t be sure.

To cut it short, at the end of the day, after paying off Pat and Sam for the trip, we drove to a very special place for me. Rialto Beach, a wild patch of coast on the Pacific Ocean. Terry and Mike had never been there. This is the magic place where my ashes, Nancy’s ashes and Shadow’s ashes will be spread when we are gone. I can’t describe it. You will have to see it for yourself. It will take your words away. It is like an eternity. Sea stacks stand waist high, bracing against the forever waves of time and sea. Teal, mist, merge at the edge of water and sky; a seamless transition of what was and yet to be. A cathedral and tomb; an exhalation of the source of being.

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