Well, I had to take the Toyota to the dealer for "dealer maintenence" so I was in Chehalis and we decided to kill time by fishing the Cispus river. Spent most of the morning there looking for the fish they dump around the mouth of Yellowjacket Creek, but they were MIA. I don't know how fast they move or disperse so it was more of a scouting mission than a fishing trip. Caught some whitefish incidentally, which were very large for white fish standards. The fish probably fell back into Lake Scanewa by then or hid somewhere.

On the way back we stopped at the Barrier Dam and for labor day it was packed. Everybody was out, counted 17 guys at the boundary, that had been fishing all day with only a few fish on stringers. I asked around and only four or five fish had been caught for at least a hundred anglers. The plunkers down in the handicap area were not doing too well either, but I wasn't going to let that deter me. We had an hour before we had to leave to pick up the car so I waded out to fish the meat run, they had dropped the water level for the holiday so it wasn't that bad. Lots of line on the bottom, got snagged a couple of times. I reeled in a big wad of line that took me about another ten minutes to untangle, which was frusterating and I didn't want to retie even though there was a knot in my 8 pound leader that I noticed right before casting. I figured I'd make this last cast and then cut it off, nobody was catching anything. What are the odds? I was in the middle of a conversation with the guy upstream from me about waders and reels or something when I got the bump bump bump I'd been waiting for. Set the hook and fish on! I had to play it carefully, on account of I knew there was a knot in my leaders, but even so I missed the pull of a bright chrome fish trying to yank your shoulders straight out the socket, after all the trout and bassless bass trips I've made this past month. Nothing like a big fish jumping around and head shaking. Even though it was a baby, I played it out and got it to the bank, and my pops missed the whole show on account of he was up at the boundary.

Anyways not bad for an hours worth of fishing. Great day great scenery. I was drift fishing an orange size ten corky on a 1/0 hook with 8 pound leader. Broke in my new rod on some nice fish. Grilled it up on the george foreman grill tonight and man, it was delicious, dark red meat.

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