Aluminum marks the spot

Chieftain column, March 9 2011

I don’t just pinch pennies. I squeeze those things until Lincoln complains of migraines. People have tried calling me cheap, but I don’t pay attention. I never pay if it can be avoided.

So there are times when I wonder about my attraction to fly fishing. Plopping fake insects in the water can get expensive. I’ve seen fishermen on the river with enough fancy gear to equal my entire earnings for the year. And they see a guy in duct-taped waders with a garage sale flyrod equal in value to the change under their sofa cushions.

So I don’t enjoy losing flies when I’m fishing. That’s two bucks you just left on the river bottom. Lost one the other day. Hooked a steelhead, he came up shaking his head and, snap, broke my leader. Despair.

Fishing guide Tom Farnam told me to stop sobbing. I recovered and hooked a steelhead again twenty minutes later. When this one surfaced, Tom said he believed this was the same fish. Got this one to the bank and removed my fly. Then I got back my other fly that had broken off and was still hooked in his mouth. Tom was right. Same fish. So that’s one way to economize when fly fishing.

The steelhead train from Minam Motel to Rondowa along the Wallowa River isn’t running this year. When I rode the steelhead train last year it had a bunch of happy fishers on it, staying at local hotels and motels and discussing dining options at the LT, TG, Lear’s, Mutiny, Friends, et cetera. I heard plans to bring families back in the summer. I heard the sound of economic stimulus actually working through a unique interaction with Wallowa County just like the train people said it would. Then I heard they stopped running it. Okey-dokey. At least it’s a pretty shade of yellow on those parked rail cars we’re storing. Yep. Sure are pretty.

The good news for steelheaders is that some outdoorsmen have devised a way to make it easier for out-of-county fishermen to find the good fishing spots along the Wallowa River that you can access next to the highway. Most popular fishing spots have been clearly marked. Just look for the cluster of Keystone Light beer cans. Sometimes Coors. Or Bud Light. Mostly Keystone though. This marking system cuts down on the time you might waste scouting for good fishing holes. Also look for remains of warming fires, sometimes with charred Gatorade bottles or half-burned Styrofoam bait containers. It really spiffs up the outdoors. Looks great.

Coors Light used to flow from that culvert before the recession.

Instead of the Adopt-A-Highway system, where volunteers pick up other people’s mess, how about we lift fingerprints off the Keystone Light cans, then call the mother of whoever left the garbage and tell them to get their kid back out there to clean up their mess.

This is like a high school senior portrait, where 18 year-olds
lean on a branch, looking like they're trapped in shrubbery.

I’m not usually concerned with things being spic and span. The floorboards of my truck look like an archaeological dig and it’s time to wash dishes at my house when you can’t balance one more dirty cup on the teetering pile in the sink. But I don’t leave old receipts and junk mail in other people’s rigs and at least offer to do the dishes when I’m at someone else’s house for dinner. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m guessing the same folks leaving garbage on the riverbank wouldn’t be OK with me tossing my trash in their yard. Anglers would start showing up at their house, thinking it must be a good fishing hole.

If these beer cans were made in a pleasing shade of yellow I might not mind so much.