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It was really difficult to figure out how to rate this trip, in the end I think that it was a 10 but the system pegs out at 5. Regarding the fishing, if we were fishing a Westside lake it would have been rated as a 5. Being that we were fishing for Roosevelt for kokanee and we only caught one smaller kokanee (1.6 pounds) with close to limits of rainbow tossed in for fun it should probably be rated 2 or 3. If I was to rate the trip solely on the experience again it would be a solid 10…
Originally we had planned to drive to Roosevelt early Friday afternoon, set up camp and then just relax in preparation for Saturday’s kokanee kick’n adventure. Saturday we were going to fish Roosevelt for kokanee, hit banks in the afternoon and then fish Roosevelt again for a few hours before we headed home.
Now, I am a firm believer in providence, things happen for a reason. I ended up working longer than planned Friday so we got a late start. After a quick stop at Hooked on Toys and to top off the fuel we were headed up Pine Canyon towards the Waterville Plateau. Or so we thought, about half way up the truck starts missing and I pull over. I do all the usual, look under the hood and rev the engine while listening for unusual noises and nothing seemed a miss. In the meantime a good samaritan had pulled over and offered to help. In that everything seemed ok we agreed that he would follow us the rest of the way up the hill and go from there. We get rolling again and the truck is charging up the hill without a hiccup when it completely shuts down and will not start again. Our new friend pulls in behind us and offers to tow us to Waterville and that his wife is at the bottom of the canyon so she could follow us up the hill with her emergency blinkers going.
Arriving in Waterville safely and without further incident our savior offered to put us up in his home and if we couldn’t get the truck going let us keep the boat and truck there as long as we needed. His buddy was a mechanic and after a brief consultation we all decided that after 300,000 miles the fuel pump had pumped its last gallon of fuel and gave out. It was late but we called around and there were no fuel pumps in Waterville or Wenatchee so I called my fishing buddy Tony to give him the bad news because he was going to meet us in the morning at Spring Canyon. He calls back a while later and says that he found a fuel pump and would be over first thing in the morning to deliver it. Dumbfounded and with a sigh of relief I thanked him and we hatched a plan. After hours of fellowship and good conversation with our new friend and his wife, Saturday morning rolls around with a plan in place and we all head to his workshop with the truck in tow. Everyone gets to work and a few hours later my truck is purring like we were scratching under its hood. When we offered to compensate them for their time and hospitality they refused. Our new friend had even given Karen the keys to his truck to get coffee.
We have driven through Waterville numerous times and never really noticed the town. Now as the result of a series of seemingly unrelated events Waterville is on our shortlist as a place to build our retirement home. Divined providence? Who knows but we were blessed this weekend. My friend Tony went way beyond the call of duty. We made new friends and may have found our place to retire. Retire or not we left Waterville with a gift that money cannot buy, a renewed faith in humanity.
Once the truck was running Tony, Karen and I discussed options and decided to head on to Spring Canyon, set up camp and fish for just a few hours Sunday morning. With the storm and whitecaps on the Highway, the drive was a bit treacherous but we made it to Spring Canyon by mid-afternoon. We got camp set up and started dinner. We had plenty of food and libation so as always we invited our camp neighbor to join us in what turned out to be another late night of stories and fellowship before our 4:00 wake-up call.
3:30 rolls around and I am wide awake so I get the coffee going as everyone else crawls out of bed. I think that we were in the water by 5:00 Sunday morning. We fished Swawilla Basin and the dam for a few hours before we called it a day and headed home. We were running a variety of my new Kokanee flies behind Arrow Flash dodgers in pink, green and, orange. We ran two rods off the riggers at 15’-60’ and two lead line rods running 2-3 colors. Our trolling speed was 1.0-1.7 mph and we were using tuna corn to tip the hooks with. We had fairly constant action on average rainbow, releasing all but the injured fish. Overall we fell a fish or two short of our limits but had a blast hoping that the next take-down was going to be the big one.
Sometimes it is not possible to rate a trip because the tool defines the fishing by the action and for that reason this trip is a 3. In reality the trip was one for the books, a once in a lifetime event!
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