Week Two: May 24th through May 28th

     This second week of our senior project I, along with Kellen and Jed, tried to improve on the skills that we were building the week before.  This means that most of what we were working on was fly fishing itself, things such as knot tying and casting.  We also worked on planning out some things we were going to do next week, including learning how to tie flys as well as learning about conservation of native fish species as well as Oregon waterways.  We don't have a full schedule for this yet, so I expect that we'll do more planning next week. We took Monday and Tuesday to be our planning days and we went fishing on Wednesday and Thursday.  Wednesday we decided it would be best if we stayed in town, as no one wanted to wake up early and we all had things to do in the afternoon, so we went fishing on the Willamette River.  Thursday we decided to go out further, going to the Nehalem River in the coastal range. These two trips allowed us to branch out on what we were fishing for and what we were fishing with.  

The Fishing Friends Before Their Jaunt on the Nehalem River

    On the Willamette, we were fishing for bass, and Kellen and Jed were using spinning rods which are a different type of rod than we had used last week.  Then on Thursday when we were on the Nehalem we went back to fishing for trout with fly rods.  This allowed us to get practice with the two main types of fishing, while also becoming familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of each type.  Bass fishing also allowed me to practice using a spinning rod by borrowing Kellen or Jed's as I don't own one myself.  Their willingness to let me use their rods helped me to learn a new fishing technique that I would not have used otherwise.

    When we went out to the Willamette we had two spots that we wanted to go to, both of which were in West Lynn about two miles away from each other.  We spent the first half of the day at the first spot, Mary S. Young Park, where we didn't manage to catch a single fish.  During that first half of the day, we were battling gear malfunctions, as well as being in direct sun.  So we all decided that we had enough of that spot, and went to go eat lunch.  Over lunch, we discussed whether or not we really wanted to go to another spot, or if we just wanted to call it a day as none of us were having that good of a time.  In the end, we decided to go out to a new spot, Broadway Park, because Kellen needed to stay in West Lynn for a baseball game later, and we felt bad not staying with him.  When we got to the park we could already tell things would be better because there was shade.  Even if we didn't catch anything we at least wouldn't be suffering from the sun.  We fished there for a little bit when I decided to try using a spinning rod for the first time.  Kellen had gone over to help Jed get his line off a sunken log, so I asked him if I could use his rod while he was gone.  He said yes, so I picked it up and started to get oriented with it, figuring out how to open the lock to cast the line and then close it again to reel in.  When I finally got done figuring it out, I made my first cast and started reeling in.  Suddenly I felt a tug at the end of my line.  My immediate thought was that I had gotten my hook stuck on the same log as Jed, so I called Kellen over to help me get it unstuck, only to feel it start jolting to the sides as I reeled in.  Right then I realized that I had a fish on, so I started reeling more frantically.  when I finally pulled it up, we realized that I hadn't just caught a fish on my first cast with a spinning rod, but that I had caught a Crappie, a fish that is notoriously hard to catch because of how thin its mouth is.  That was the second, and final, fish we caught that day with the first being a bass caught by Jed.

The "Crappiest" Catch of the Day

    While the Willamette trip had gone mostly smoothly and successfully, our trip to the Nehalem didn't.  The problems started on Wednesday when we learned that the spot that Kellen wanted us to fish at wasn't on the Nehalem river, but instead at the spot the Salmonberry river fed into the Nehalem.  This wouldn't have been a problem, except the Salmonberry isn't open for fishing from April to November.  this meant that, while fishing on Wednesday, we needed to find another place to fish.  We went online to look for places to fish and we found a spot on the Nehalem right off of Highway 26, which seemed to be a popular spot, so we decided to go there.  We got up bright and early on Thursday and headed out to the spot we had picked out, only to learn that the place we had found was on private property, and we couldn't fish there.  We didn't want to head back into Portland as we figured it would be a waste, so we followed the river downstream until we got to a spot on the side of the road we could park and fish at.  We got all suited up and began fishing, only for a thunderstorm to roll in fifteen minutes later stopping our fishing for the next thirty minutes.  Finally, we got back out on the water and fished for the rest of the day.  The spot we found on the Nehalem, while not the place we planned on, was gorgeous, and I'm very glad we got to go there.

Thunderstorm Break!