Northwest Wild Country Radio Station

Please explain this time and space continuum to me: Why does time whiz by when the “FUN!” button is set to maximum, and the clock grinds to a halt when we’re forced to participate in grueling activities?

Example: The hours spent at destination lodges featuring too-good-to-believe angling versus being forced to spend days with relatives you would rather see fed into a wood chipper than sit next to at the holiday dinner table.

One roars by. The other? Time gets sucked into a black hole and nearly reverses.

I get this. The part that bothers me most, though, is the time leading up to said activities. Waiting for the fishing vacation is endless, while tick-tock to the Gulag is far, far too short.

Summer and winter for this long-suffering Mariners fan exists in the same paradox.

The calendar leading up to warm days, well, months seemingly go on for 70 days apiece. Summer itself, blink, thanks for coming. Put the shorts away until Halley’s Comet comes back around. Winter is here, again, oh Lord. Sixty-six months of dark, cold and wet. When you think it won’t get darker, colder, or wetter … surprise! It does.

The suicide rate during Seattle winters is so high only because we’ll cut off our own arms just to see some color.

The seemingly countless fishing opportunities of spring and summer are now being replaced by the handful of rivers open during cold times. Our choices fewer than someone in solitary lockup in federal prison on Date Night.

But I – yes, loyal Northwest Wild Country listeners, I, the hater of all cold-weather activities - have this thing figured out. This winter is gonna fly by like an F-15 pilot with explosive diarrhea, flying over the mid-Atlantic looking for a porta-potty.

Embrace it. Love it. Lemonade out of lemons, etc.

One person I know is giddy over winter, that would be my garbage man. Fish carcasses give off far less stench in 42 degree weather rather than 85. Possibly add my neighbor to this list. But his dog craps in my front yard, so he may enjoy the remnants of salmonid until his tiny white yapping rat learns to go in his own yard.

See, all I have to do is immerse myself in all that is winter fabu-locity. Make it crazy fun, the frozen fumbula will pass quicker than the Seahawk’s playoff chances.

And here’s my formula for squeezing winter like a back zit:

Dash away, dash away ... to the West End
First, I'll jump headlong into the hatchery steelhead frenectica. I’ll traverse the Peninsula’s Bogachiel and Calawah in December. There should be a few thousand 4- to 6-pound chrome, very eatable steelhead between the Trout Hatchery boat ramp immediately above the Calawah mouth all the way down to “The Uterus” where the Bogachiel and the Sol Duc meet.

Bring on the rain and the 50/50 2/5-ounce BC Steels come out and I reign havoc in tailouts.

Around the days of the fat man in the red suit, I’ll be stalking the upper reaches of the Hoh River looking for the first push of native steelhead. The largest fish of the winter show now (not during March and April, as one may think) and they eat large profile swung flies and 2/5-ounce spoons like a fat kid on Free Hot Dog Day.

Auld Lang Sol Duc
Geeee-zus. There’s New Years Day … honk, wheeee, drink too much and create a few “Cosby Sweaters” (when you eat a lot of colorful food and hurl it all over the front of someone’ shirt), watch football and then wonder what the @#$% to do the other 30 days.

January is the calendar’s version of the surprise colonoscopy. On par with yanking all the hairs off your butt cheeks one by one with a pair of needle nose pliers. Festive. Hatchery steelhead are done, not yet decent numbers of wild fish. Except for the Sol Duc River, which sees more than fishable numbers of wild steelhead all January.

Although the Quillayute system gets native returns from December through mid-May, the Sol Duc sees over half its wild run in January, when other streams are just getting the first trickle. I’ll be there, walking the banks, sporting a forced grin like a politician on camera. And landing hard, bright steelhead 6 to 16 pounds on wobbling metal and giant 7-inch pink worms under a float.

Perhaps a few pushing or exceeding 20.

What's that oncoming light?
At last we see a light at the end of the tunnel not attached to the front of an oncoming freight train. February 18 marks the opener for Sekiu blackmouth. Last year, this fishery was psychotic sizzling, automatic limits. Trolling cut plug red-label herring and Coho Killer spoons right on the deck at 120 feet (which closely mimic bottom dwelling sand lance) produced double-digit days on immature feeder Chinook 6 to 20 pounds.

No reason not to expect the same this winter, all this points to the excessive number of blackmouth present all summer long. I’ll be mixing this saltwater giggity with chasing the late winter natives of the Sol Duc, Hoh, Bogachiel and Queets rivers.

Tick-tock.

And before you know it ...
It’s mid-April, spring king fling wingding, zing, it’s May. Kokanee on American Lake. Rufus Woods trophy triploids. Columbia River sturgeon. Halibut and ling on the Straits.

Throw in a trip to Cabo San Lucas, and wow, lookit that. Winter flew by.

Watching Old Man Winter fall and break his hip was never so endearing. Mariners baseball will be here before you can say “Safeco Field World Series.”

Hey, I hated the taste of Guinness beer until I drank it ice cold. Perhaps adding cold to my angling calendar will create the same pleasant reaction.

Metal To The End,
-“Mr. 300”

PS- That’s right, Seattle area bowlers, “The Landlord” is back. My first game out of the blocks last month in the Commercial League at Federal Way’s Secoma Lanes I crushed the front 12. Senior PBA Tour, here I come!