KAYAKING SNAKE RIVER FLATWATERS PART 2

I found the matches I’d thought were lost in the packing frenzy before leaving home. I’d gotten some from the glove compartment of my truck before getting in the kayak but had so much gear packed in so many places that I couldn’t find them at first and had thought I was going to be without matches. Then, I found both stashes and had enough for a whole group of people. Granola, nuts, bananas and water were breakfast. Packing for a trip the menu is always my choice. Being the cook and the customer, I have no one to complain to. But, I think next time I’ll bring fewer clothes and a greater selection of food. Although, clothes make great pillows and one never knows what the weather will be. Decisions.

Drifting close to shore the next morning and fishing on the edge of the shadows produced more bass than catfish. I changed spinners and tried some different flies but both the bass and catfish ignored everything but the black and yellow spinner. Later in the day, while digging through my fishing vest I found a gold colored spinner with no hook.

Lunch was filleted bass and catfish cooked in the small frying pan on the one burner stove that accompanied me on my 4 month, 4000 miles trip in 2000. The fish cooked up white, moist and flaky. Lettuce and other vegetables will keep for a few days if placed in the bottom of the boat where they can stay cool, as long as they can’t roll around and get damaged. Water was the drink of the day, same as usual.

The amount of powerboats and water-skiers increased as the day wore on until I got a few miles upriver. Most fishermen spent more time moving from place to place than they did fishing. Some moved three or four times in the time it took me to paddle past. The water-skiers seemed to congregate where the Richland arm joined the main reservoir and were left behind before noon. Bass boats zoomed by sounding like mad hornets but leaving little wake. The Snake River gorge is as impressive as the Columbia.

There was a lot of fishing action until I lost the black and yellow spinner. I lost the spinner to a tree while fishing from shore next to an overhanging bank. I looked for quite awhile with no success. I knew the loss of the spinner could seriously impact my food selection and decided to try to find a place the next day that had fishing supplies for sale.

The second night’s camp was spent atop the bank where I’d lost the spinner. I took a short nap and awoke as twilight approached. I walked down to check on the boat using the light Tom had given me to guide my way. Powerboats, especially those pulling skiers, can cause a lot of wave action on the shore. Once on the Columbia the wake was so big from a large boat it broke the limb my boat was tied to. Dinner must have been whatever I could find because nothing was written in my notes. The grass had grown tall and made for a soft place to pitch the tent and spread out the sleeping bag.

Day Three

The next morning I was up with the sun. Stiff muscles disappeared with cupping and my arms weren’t as tired as they had been the day before. Before breaking camp I tried various spinners and flies with no success. I looked again to try to find the black spinner but to no avail. The further I’d paddled south the warmer the water became and more algae was floating on the surface. In the morning, I’d seen large amounts of algae washed up on the shore and the shoreline rocks were covered with a thick paint like Marine green coating. Sun would dry it on the rocks, more would take its place and life in the single celled world would go on.

In NM there’s a bush called escoba de la vibora, or snakebroom in English. I’d always wondered how it got its name and on my way back to break camp, load the boat and leave I found out. Curled up on top of one of the plants was a medium-sized gopher snake. The snake disappeared into the grass and I reaffirmed my resolve to stay alert when walking where there wasn’t an open pathway. Alertness of eye, which I’ve used, and a snake bite kit, which I haven’t, have always been a successful ounce of prevention.

After packing the boat and shoving off, I paddled over to the Idaho side and began fishing near the banks that were still in the shade. Everything I had in my small fly/spinner box produced the same result; no bites. It was time to go for the gold.

With the kayak tied to the limbs of an overhanging tree I fastened a hook to the gold spinner with a small D-ring that was on a mini utility tool. Fishing became catch and release again instead of unnecessary exercise for my right arm. A lot of fish came to the side of the boat but when the sun was completely on the water, the action stopped.

The wind was light and from the north, so I decided to head south, which was upriver towards Boise, in the hopes of finding someplace that sold fishing tackle. I had no idea how far Farewell Bend was or if there was anything between where I was and there. Once I submitted an article to a kayaking magazine and got a note back that said they only accepted submissions from authors who’d kayaked the area, written about in the article, many times. Adventure to me is seeing new places and going where you’ve never been before. The horizon is 15 miles away from the deck of a sailboat ,and considerably less from the seat in a kayak.

By early afternoon, the wind had died and an overhanging bank with reeds extending out in the water was too much to resist. I paddled over and flipped the bobber and spinner in close to shore. Instantly line began to be stripped from the reel. I tightened the drag; it was like dragging your feet on the pavement to slow down an 18-wheeler. I tightened it some more and the fish turned back toward the boat, not because of anything I did, but because it wanted to. I reeled as fast as I could. The tension on the line made it hum as it went through the water. The fish was headed for the reeds and I turned the drag down a little tighter. The fish turned back again and headed for the middle of the reservoir. With very little line left on the spool, more drag was applied but this time the fish was determined to take it all or part the line. The 4# leader couldn’t take the strain and snapped. I reeled it in knowing by the lack of vibration, that my gold colored spinner was somewhere in the mouth of a large fish who was probably sulking in the depths of the river. Hooks are designed to rot quickly in the mouth of a fish, so that wasn’t a concern. My concern was finding something that fish would bite on. What kind of fish was it? My guess, since it never surfaced like most of the bass had, is that it was be a very large catfish.

About ten years before when we lived in halfway, two women had caught a catfish in Oxbow reservoir just downstream from Brownlee that weighed in at 54#. The fish tired both of them out so they tied it to the boat and it dragged them around for a couple of hours before finally giving up. They couldn’t get it in the boat and had to drag it up on shore.

Around the next bend I saw a fishing boat anchored about a mile downstream. The wind was getting fluky and coming from all directions. I paddled down to the boat where I first encountered a man who I’d meet again later that day and again the next. I asked if there were any places where it would be possible to get fishing gear and he said as far as he knew there was nothing at Farewell Bend, still a few miles ahead, and the only place might possibly be in the town of Huntington, OR. I’d been through Huntington while living in Oregon and, if my memory serves me correctly, it’s on the highway and accessible by car, but not by boat.

I told the man in the boat that I had no transportation except what I was sitting in. He asked a lot of questions like, “Where you going?’ ‘Where will you sleep tonight?’ ‘What do you have to eat and how are you going to cook?” My answers were, “Wherever I end up.’ ‘I don’t know, probably on a sandbar somewhere.’ I have food and a one burner stove.”

The wind was picking up from the south and little whitecaps were beginning to push their way back toward where I’d come from. I had no decision to make. If there was no place to get tackle that I could access then there was no reason to go further south. I wanted to go to Farewell Bend but with the wind blowing from the south and nothing there for me, the decision was made. I bid the fisherman goodbye, turned the bow to the north and got into the rhythm that puts a lot of distance behind.

In order to go long distances on foot, on a bicycle or in a kayak one has to not dwell on how far they have to go, how few miles they’ve gone or how tired their muscles are. You have to stay in tune, so you don’t overexert yourself and not become overly involved with how you feel. There’s a fine line between breaking through and breaking down. Too the best of my knowledge, that ability only comes with experience, I’ve never met anyone who came in with it. Nature gives and Nature takes away. The higher heart rate and risk taking of youth can be equaled through the experience and steadiness of age; you just have to hold her steady as she goes and not burn all your candle too early in life. Like the old story about the young and old bull on the hill watching the field full of heifers below. The young bull said, “Let’s run down and make love to one of them.” The old bull replied, “Let’s walk down and make love to them all.”