THE ANTI-BUCKET LIST - Bill Herzog

There are a handful of incredible fishing spots on this planet you must see at least once…and some I’ve seen I do not want to ever see again.

 

My good friend walked in the place through the sliding door, carrying all ten of our rods we just put together from the flight. Cue the ceiling fan, the natural enemy of rod tips. Yes, every single rod we brought was now an eight piece. 

 

I am one of the truly privileged anglers. I’ve got to travel to the mighty Skeena and her legendary tributaries decades before the wealthy fly fishermen took over and prices to do it went into the stratosphere. I got to see our steelhead fisheries here in Washington State be as phenomenal or better than anywhere back when Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath were brand new. Born at the right time, they said… 

But like every intense angler, I have my places yet to see. The ones they call “bucket list” places. Places of wonder and fishing that layman fishermen cannot even wrap their egg-stained hands around. Like most on the list, they are far away places, costing much more than I can ever imagine coughing up that kind of lettuce. But it’s great to dream. 

My bucket list spots are few, but oh my…Fortress Lake in the deeps of British Columbia, where Nipigon strain (the largest on earth) brook trout commonly grow to over 20 inches and 5 pounds; to South America, the Rio Grande River in wind-swept Terra Del Fuego, where ever increasing runs of mega sea-run brown trout go easily 20 pounds and larger. To the far north, to the Canadian Arctic for tropically colored trophy Arctic Char. But if I could pick just one, ONE, for the list it would be the Holy Grail to Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and the Sopochnaya River in early October, to swing a beefy Spey rod for the healthiest run of giant steelhead left on Earth. As a nut case steelheader, that would be the one. But, like all of them, I could buy a new luxury SUV with the cost of one week’s entrance fee. 

  

  

  

  

As you can see, nothing in the warm saltwater world interests me enough to invest a bucket, but throw in trout and steelhead…I’m in! Done the Mexico thing and all the hard fighting fish everyone slobbers over down there, cool times, but, meh. I always say, about any fish, “Yeah, but they’re not steelhead!” Speaking of meh, and things many would consider pretty bad ass, even some folks would consider bucket list agenda as I wanted to at one time. I’ve experienced a half dozen trips that no way in Hell I would ever do again, an “anti-bucket list” you may say.

Here are several that, as you will read, fit the sour milk flavored criteria of never wanting to drink that time again. 

Let’s begin in Mexico. With some good friends about 15 years ago, down to East Cape, just north of Cabo. Really jazzed to go, never been there, heard all about the warm water opportunities and the weather. Our rental place was on the beach, and that’s where the festivities started bursting pimples in our oatmeal. My good friend walked in the place through the sliding door, carrying all ten of our rods we just put together from the flight. Cue the ceiling fan, the natural enemy of rod tips. Yes, every single rod we brought was now an eight piece. It was just this—“BOB!!!! LOOK OUT FOR THE CE…(SCHWAAANG)” We wound up using the gear the guides had, but if anyone has spent time with the “quality” of rods you get to use down there, well…one of the reels worked without jamming and screeching with every turn. 

Out on the water, the next day. Oh, wait, before I get ahead of myself, that first night. One of our guys gets up in the dark and starts cursing like a Tourettes sufferer at 78 speed. “Which one of you lazy moth-proofers (not exactly what he said) was eating peanuts and left the mothproofing shells all over the kitchen floor!!!” Flipping on the lights, there were no fewer than eleven thousand cockroaches rapidly scurring for shadow. It wasn’t peanut shells home boy was stepping on in his bare feet…

  

  

   

   

I woke up the next day at daylight, opening my eyes to the Jurassic Park sized scorpion a foot above me on the headboard. After my whatintheeff yell and throwing shoes, one of our guys says, “Oh yeah, check your clothes and shoes before you put them on, there’s scorpions all over the place. Gets better. Brushing my teeth, looking out the sliding glass door I look down, only to see not one but three palm sized furry tarantulas scratching at the door to get in, like puppies. “See those big holes all over the back yard?” Dude says, “There are all tarantulas. Here. Look in this drink pitcher on the counter, I already caught two of them coming in the house this morning!” 

Down to the docks to get in our cruiser, with visions of dorado, sailfish, yellowfin tuna, jack trevally and roosterfish. Far away from crittertown at the rental house. Six miles out in the ocean, our captain says the motor has broken down. The deck hand opens a door on the floor next to the motor, reaches in and removes some sort of valve release, and scalding boiling water and steam explodes all over all of us, of course I was at Ground Zero a mere two feet away. The third degree burns all over my scalp, face, arms, legs and body made for such a pleasant next few days, along with the comfy plane ride home.

Next, we steelheaders all pine to go to places far away, to see rivers we have only read and heard about, to catch our favorite fish in newly discovered (to us) bucket list waters. Imagine my excitement when I was offered to go fish the Umpqua River, one I’ve read so much about for so long but never had the chance to go. The big fish, the unique scenery. Plans were made for a March trip for three days with, well, I’m going to use fake names for all involved just to protect the innocent. Let’s just say the fun meter dipped below negative integers for the trip. 

Our intent was to make a spoon fishing show, using my favorite technique in 
a place I’ve never fished. Great concept, except it’s been raining since mankind first walked on the moon and both forks of the Umpqua featured the visibility of a brick. Six inches, tops, and still raining. Did I also mention it was freakishly cold the few days leading up to our trip, and it snowed several feet. Which was now melting in the incessant 34 degree half frozen rain, making the river higher and dirtier by the hour. This made any notion of swinging spoons (which you must have at least two plus feet of visibility to use effectively) right out the old proverbial window. 

  

   

   

   

I figured, seeing this chain of beyond crappy weather events, that there would be no chance to fish. “Oh, not at all!!” said Leroy, one of our guides, whom the others just chimed in in full agreement, “The river (in this case the South Umpqua) fishes best when its this color! There are a lot of hatchery fish around, we are gonna do great!!” Now, I’ve been around steelhead rivers for a time or two, and I’m fairly confident when the water features less than six inches of visibility and rising you go sit in the coffee shop, rather the front of a drift boat. Plunking soft edges with big Spin-n-Glos and gobs of eggs at best. 

Not with spoons, plugs or the like for sure. I was told the four drift boats lined up for the trip would all be using bobbers and beads. Real shock, there, and how odd as you rarely see any anglers trying for steelhead today with this setup… 

First morning, we are launching above the hatchery. The river looks like cookie dough. And let me just say, ladies and gentlemen, it is effing raining. Like you ain’t looking up rain. Bailing the boat every twenty minutes rain. Some old man with a long beard gathering animals two by two rain. As miserable in the near snow deluge as any humans could be, no means of rain gear could keep you dry for more than a few hours, tops. My captain hands me one of their outfits, because my rods with spoons tied on have no shot in this mess. Each rod had this sawed-off bobber on it, set several feet to a weight and a six-foot leader to a bead, pegged six inches or so above the hook. 

    

Conditions on the Umpqua River were perfect on this fine winter day. Troy Bloom and guide Travis Price get ready for a productive trip. 

 

I played along, as each boat made the same 100-yard drift along the outlet from the hatchery. And over again. And again. As each drift boat had a small outboard on the back, they could after each presentation buzz up to the head in of the long run and do it again. And again. And again. We fished no where else for two days, the same piece of water ad nauseum for hours on end, in the freezing ass rain while using this skill optional beyond boring technique. 

Every part of being a steelheader I have learned, been taught and preached had absolutely zero to do with whatever this was supposed to be. As my first cast moved into position, I naturally raised my rod to mend the downstream belly up and above my float and was immediately chastised by Frodo. “Don’t mend, let the belly pull the float downstream!” But, I argued, the float is not at proper vertical attitude to the weight/lure, its laying down… “It’s supposed to!” Dafuk? Ok, when in Rome… 

To my complete amazement, there were steelhead being hooked here and there. In our boat, also. I was curious, however, why we had to employ a six-foot leader in near zero visibility. There was no chance a fish would be spooked by our weighting system. “It just works better!!” was the standard issue answer. Now, I am more than aware that hook ups with beads commonly feature hooks placed on the immediate outside of the top or bottom lip. Beads are great for this feature, there is virtually no chance for a deep mortal hook job. However, each fish I saw landed during that trip was hooked in the top of the head, below the jaw, in the pectoral fins, unusual placements. Then it all made sense. Fishing in zero visibility allows lines/lure to actually run into steelhead without them being spooked, and the only reason to have such a ridiculously long leader is all the fish I saw hooked were being lined. You read that correctly. Bobber-dogging like that, with long leaders using neutral buoyancy lures was the perfect method for lining steelhead. After I figured out this game, I put the rod down for the trip as I wanted no part of this shameful activity. The worst part (and there was plenty to wear that championship belt) is there were at least fifty anglers doing this. I don’t care if they were hatchery fish. I was embarrassed to be there and embarrassed for the anglers who use this technique. No wonder the fishing was best in zero visibility. Steelhead will bite beads very well under normal conditions but not like this.

I expected so much more from this revered river. This was as much real steelheading as someone playing Putt-Putt golf is to a PGA touring pro. Fingers frozen, soaked and chilled to the bone, I got the hell out of there disappointed beyond measure. Not my monkey, not my circus. That bucket on my list was full of overused kitty litter that spilled all over Grandma’s table set for Christmas family dinner. 

There are possibly a dozen more anti-bucket list trips I can think of, but I’ll leave y’all with one more. Here we go, eh…

    

    

    

    

My good friend Gary and I back in the early 90s one mid-October were on our way to the beyond scenic Bella Coola Valley, in central British Columbia, to fish for a week on the Atnarko (a smaller trib that I once found quite a few wild summer steelhead ten years earlier) and the main Bella Coola River for huge wild coho and world record sized chrome chums. Yes, this was a bucket list, I always wanted to get back one more time to this amazing fishing and scenery. Our Canadian friends who work at the border had other detours for our plans.

Let me set this up properly. We were going to fish spinners and these new BC Steel spoons for summer runs and coho, but just in case we brought five large coffee cans loaded with boraxed chum roe. It doesn’t matter how squeaky clean you and your vehicle may be, I always get little butterflies going through the border. We pull up in line, we show our passports, they check my license plates, etc. All looked good, until the uniformed fellow leaning out the window like the Wizard of Oz caught a glimpse of my buddy Gary’s forearm tattoo of a marijuana leaf. His expression changes to that of someone watching a baby duck get run over. Told us to immediately pull over into one of the bays for vehicle inspection. 

No sweat, baby, we cool. We brought nothing with us that could get us in trouble. No booze, no smoke, nothing. Homey made us get out of the truck and stand “four feet in front of the vehicle, hands behind your back.” Fine. We watched Barney Fife take gear out of the canopy and methodically take it all apart-clothing, fishing rods (bastard unapologetically broke two tips dropping them out of the tube on the concrete), fishing gear, scattering it on the wet pavement…dick…and then, he found them.

Our rods and waders were on top of those five large coffee cans. Mind you, each one was of course topped off so all you could see if the lids were removed was a lot of white, powdery, granulated and chunky substance, borax of course. Apparently not to a border agent, as he ripped the lid off one of the cans, threw a loud oh my God out there and took off the other four lids. The horror was all over his face. He stood up quickly, yelling “WE GOT ONE!!!!! WE GOT ONE!!!” All the while arms in the air, turning in fast little circles and snapping his fingers. Out of the “office” came four border patrol officers jogging in line like 1950s gas station attendants. 

The conga line parted when the General or the Master or who ever he was pushed his way to the coffee cans, wet his finger, shoved it deep into the borax and then shoved the borax coated finger into his mouth, apparently ready to taste the quality of the Bolivian marching powder. Watching his eyes become wide, then begin to retch, choke, gag, spit rapidly and almost yak was more than Gary and I could take, and we started laughing. I said to Spitty McSpitterson, “Yes sir, that is 100 percent pure uncut Mule Team Borax, under that you will find the finest cured salmon eggs in the Northwest. I got it from my favorite dealer in the Safeway laundry aisle!! And it’s not (snicker) for sale.” 

  

    

  

  

Somehow, we were detained for a few hours, and then sent back the good ol’ US of A and told by Spitty we may not travel into Canada for 30 days. So much for getting that bucket list trip filled, thanks to Bob, Doug and Gordy there. 

I’ve never seen a redder faced, more pissed off human in my life. And yes, we could not stop laughing. He went mental, had my truck ripped to shreds, the motor cover under the hood torn off, the upholstery behind each seat opened and all the rest of our gear strewn all over that Barney missed earlier. Gary and I still laughed our asses off at that officer all the way home. 

If there’s a lesson to be learned here, do not laugh (OK, maybe a little snicker) at the honorable, stubby fingered, halitosis ridden, bad comb over, big eared, overly flatulent, lisping, hockey watching, cheese fondling, chain smoking, cross eyed, snotty nosed, tiny peckered, yellow toothed, bow legged humorless uniformed fellows working so diligently, protecting the Canadian border from the bad guys. No matter how much they had it coming…

So never give up on your dream fishing trip, that real bucket list. But for your sake, do a little research than I did before you go! 

 

 

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