So it was Thanksgiving. I had no obligations, and Mr. B was free until 1pm, so you know what that means! We were going to take a stab at some of those awesome cutthroat in Lake Chitwood!

It had been raining, but Ma Nature was very kind on Thursday. We were only sprinkled on a bit. But the rain leading up to Thursday plays a big role in the adventure.

We were up early and pounded out the hike, making it to the lake in a timely fashion. Only to find that ... where we usually stand to cast was under water. The lake was up a foot, maybe a foot and a half. Normally it's first cast fish on, and then you have to work it to get any more. This time we pounded with worm, castmaster, fly rod ... only 1 bite in an hour, zero fish.

Now we KNOW that there are fish in here. We've been here before. We've had great luck. We didn't even bring our rubber rafts as we didn't expect to need them. So we eventually work our way down to where the outflow creek crosses the road and ... what the heck!? A mini-swarm of trout goes darting past! Probably a dozen of them, from 8 to 13 inches approx, go scooting out into the outflow creek!

"Lake" Chitwood is really a swamp, for all intents and purposes. It only exists as a lake at all because they built the logging road across it, essentially making a dam. Even in its current state, I dont think it's deeper than 8 feet at the most. So the trout were accustomed to being all over the place originally, and this is what they still do. If the water is high, they apparently go rooting around in the newly flooded areas looking for stuff to nibble on. So from what we could tell, the trout were still in the area, just not in the deepest spot that we normally catch them.

This left us at a loss. Regardless of the potential regulatory issues of fishing in a creek / swamp / whatever it is once it goes under 10 feet of bridge and becomes "outflow creek", we couldn't effectively fish in 2 feet of water in a bramble even if we wanted to. So what to do?

Well, the night before I had been looking at the map, and the Stillaguamish River seemed just north of the lake. I suggested we see if we could hike to it. Should be just up the right hand road, around the corner, by a gravel pit. And there were three MONSTER holes in the satellite images. Mr. B seemed skeptical, suggesting he was unsure of it's current regulatory status. I countered with who cares, that's a concern for #1 if we can get to it, and #2 if it is fishable, which doesn't seem super likely given the blown out status of our lake. He didn't have a good reason not to, so off we went!

Up the road, around the corner, found the gravel pit, and yes the river is maybe 200 feet away. But along with 200 feet away, it's 200 feet down a cliff!! Cant even really see it through the trees. So we backtrack down the road a couple hundred feet to where the forest seems pretty soft. It was thinned maybe 30 years ago, so there are lots of small fallen trees but not really any brush. Ok we can do this. We pound straight through the forest. It seems pretty easy! Mr B is having more trouble than I am, as with 70 extra pounds he is breaking more tree trunks than I am. The cut trees are so old and rotten that I am crushing 4 inch diameter trunks with my weight. We make it ... I'm going to say pushing 1/4 mile, and then the terrain gets a little worse. A little more brush, a little more slope, and then after maybe 200 feet of that, the terrain DEFINITELY gets worse. Much steeper, much more brush. Until we can see the river. Which looks like ... chocolate milk, put in a blender so it has a white froth on top. Sigh. AND it's still down a cliff, perhaps of 40 feet. So now we have to turn around and pound straight back up the hill.

Well, going up was worse than going back down. Twice on this little hike, Mr. B fell through up to at least his shoulders, if not his neck. It was rough. He was mad. He made lots of comments which can't be repeated here. By the end he blamed me for our ridiculous treck to Lake Julia, and blamed me for this idea, and swore that he would never go off trail to chase one of my silly ideas ever again. Sigh. Apparently I'm too much of a maniac even for Mr. B.

So by this time it was maybe 10:30am. We had 2 hours to kill. We were wet and dirty and scraped up from the bushwacking, and only had 1 bite and zero fish. Mr. B was fairly hostile. My mood, of course, was aggressively positive, as always! So we walked back down to Lake Chitwood, and tried an arm of the logging road we hadn't been down before that also went toward the river. It went up past the lake and came to a little turn around, and a little camp site. And a cliff ... well, not really, just a steep spot. That LOOKED like it went straight down to the river! Long story short, Mr. B was having none of it. Our exploring for the day was over. Sigh.

Off we went back to the lake. I had two more bites. One was really heavy - slow head shake, all indications of a monster, but both threw the hook after only 5 seconds and I didn't get to see either of them. Oh well.

So at that point, Mr. B had to go, so we hiked out and went home.

I didn't really have anything to do at 1:30 on a Thursday afternoon, so I drove to Bitter Lake, inflated my raft, and rescued the castmaster I had stuck in a tree. While I was there I made sure to drop a few casts and get rid of the skunk, even if it was with municipal stockers. They remove the skunk smell just as well as any other fish. Pic is of 1 of them which I kept which I cannot explain why, plus my castmaster, plus the misc junk I found in the tree while rescuing my castmaster. That orange thing ... WOW!

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