SEATTLE and SAGE

Peter Brigg 

The trip to Seattle on the NW coast of America was our second to the area and primarily on this occasion to be with our daughter for the birth of her first child. It was preceded by a nightmarish 50+ hour flight from SA involving delays, missed connections, a 3 hour wait to pass through immigration control and a night in a hotel in Chicago. However, once there and settled in it looked as if all plans, which included fishing, would fall into place and the nightmare would be a thing of the past.

I was wrong, but probably largely because of my own poor decision to accept an invitation from my daughter's neighbour who claimed to be a keen fly fisher and who offered to show me around. Plans were adjusted and dates set for the last few days of our holiday. Relaxed and full of anticipation we settled to enjoying the rest of our time with our American family and new baby.

I visited all the fly fishing stores I could find and my favourite outdoor stores Filson and REI .

I spent time at the fish ladder at the Chittenden Locks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_M._Chittenden_Locks) watching Chinook, Sockeye, Coho and Steelhead, pass through on their spawning journey from Puget Sound, into Lake Union and from there into the Columbia and other Rivers of their birth.

Perhaps the major highlight of the trip was a visit to Sage (http://www.sageflyfish.com/) on Bainbridge Island a 40 minute ferry ride across from Seattle city centre. I was fortunate to be the guest of Eric Gewiss, Sage's Marketing Manager and who kindly gave me a guided tour of their operation. I was hoping to meet their chief rod designer Jerry Seim, but he was away at the time of our visit.

What struck me was the scale of the business being conducted in such a small, unpretentious premises

tuckedawayinabeautiful,quiet forested area amidst firs, cedars and spruce.

The operation was eye-opening in the sense that it is a combination of science based R&D, the use of high tech materials and careful design and yet it still takes a large percentage of handwork by individuals to bring the final quality product together.

Their recently released One rods were 3 years in the making. They are a combination of beauty and practicality - using Konnetic technology which puts line control and accuracy onto a whole new level. In the words of Jerry Seim, “Accuracy starts with your eyes and ends with the fly in front of theirs”.

As the days passed so my anticipation for the fishing grew. An early morning outing to Lincoln Park on Puget Sound for a little salmon fishing with borrowed equipment and two days later a visit to the Snohamish River (http://www.wvba.org/nwfishing/sections/rivers/snohomish.html) in a remote, or so I thought, location to suit my passion for light lines and trout.

The first outing although a pleasant one with good company ended with me using a borrowed 5 wt rod seriously under-loaded with only a half line and the ensuing struggle to cast large heavily weighted pink saltwater flies. The others were using spinning rods, but none of us manage even a touch.

Fishing the Snohomish River for salmon

I resigned myself to the thought of some decent river fishing in the next couple of days. It started with a drive of about 45 minutes before sunrise, a walk in the dark and finding a spot on the river bank - I recall thinking that the place looked well used and that this wasn't quite what I had expected. Judging by the width of the river my Sage TXL F 0wt was best left in its tube and so I was back to the borrowed 5 wt, but now more suitably loaded with full 6 weight line. Again my two companions prepared their spinning rods with lures the size of the fish I had been hoping to catch. The river literally boiled with salmon moving up stream on their ancient spawning migration - I was out of my element and knew that the plans had gone pear shaped again - I should have checked and never changed from the original arrangements to fish one of the forks of the Snoqulamie River around North Bend - a river I had fished before and thoroughly enjoyed.

As the sun rose I realised that we were not alone and in a stretch of some 300 m I counted no less than 30 spinner fishermen, fishing not for the sport, but for the table. The place resembled Durban’s Blue Lagoon during the Shad season. For the next few hours I stuck it out with not so much as a touch while a few salmon were taken up and downstream of us. I was eventually pleased to see the last of the place with its smell of gutted fish, litter, discarded nylon and bits of tackle. It was a bitter lesson and even my host realised it and couldn't stop apologizing - he had acted on the advice given to him by a friend.

Nearer home - the Bushman's River

The moral of this story is when in a foreign land, hire a professional guide who will get you onto the water to suit your particular interests. Don't rely on a friend of a friend who professes to be a flyfisher unless you know him well and make sure of your facts first.  With just two days left before our departure, there was simply no more time to reschedule another outing and so ended a very disappointing experience from a fly fishing point of view. A tough lesson which I'm almost too embarrassed to relate, but I do so it the hope that others will not suffer the same fate - the grass is not always greener on the other side and one is never too old to learn.

On the long flight home I settled into my signed copy of John Geirach's new book "No Shortage of Good Days". A thoroughly enjoyable read and importantly, it put a smile on my face again.

I now look forward to returning to the mountain streams I know so well, the places I have a history with to pursue my fly fishing passions in a pristine environment, where I can enjoy the solitude and share it with a couple of like-minded companions.