The Olympian, Olympia, Wash., Outdoors Column: Little Luck but Lots of Fun at Mount St. Helens

By The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.

May 18–SILVER LAKE — I started out early Wednesday with visions of big rainbow or cutthroat trout from Coldwater Lake at Mount St. Helens.

By the way, today is the 27th anniversary of the 1980 eruption — which created Coldwater Lake when millions of tons of rock blocked Coldwater Creek.

Coldwater, which is near the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center, is one of the best lakes in Western Washington for big, wild trout.

Anglers catch wild cutthroat or rainbow trout that push 20 inches or more.

But troubles found me, and I didn’t catch any of those trout.

I rigged up my float tube and settled into the seat for a day of trolling a wooly bugger fly behind 90 feet or so of sinking fly line. This is the best — and sometimes the only — way to hook up to trout in this lake. The trout lurk in deep water unless fly ants or termites or midges hit the surface.

No flying bugs means slowly kicking your fins or slowly rowing while your fly pulses down in the deeps. It’s not the most exciting way to fish, but it gets plenty exciting when the fish whack the fly.

I didn’t get far from the launch ramp before my 4-year-old waders split a seam and sent a jet of icy water to a very sensitive part of my body.

I guess I’m buying a new pair of waders this year. The burst seam meant I was out of the game at Coldwater, which is a cold place to fish even on a warm day.

Then I thought of Silver Lake, which is right on the way to Mount St. Helens on state Route 504. The Silver Lake Resort rents boats, and some of the biggest bass and crappie in the state swim in the lake.

I drove the 42 miles back down Route 504.

I rented a boat at the resort and putted away for a favorite area of lily pads, brush piles and shallow water.

I had the sinking feeling that the largemouth bass were done spawning. The resort bulletin board had Polaroid shots of happy anglers holding up pot-bellied bass, but all of the photos were taken a couple of weeks ago. The easy fishing was over.

I started wishing I’d brought along a spinning rod and a bunch of plastic worms, but all I had was fly gear.

I rigged up with a popping bug, which looks like a space alien — it’s the green body, the yellow feathers and all the spidery rubber legs — and floats near the lily pads.

You pull on the line, and the bug gurgles and bobs near the pads without snagging on them.

I had two half-hearted swirls on the bug, but I suspect that I was spooking bass instead of making them mean and hungry. Post-spawn bass — at least how I understand them — are kind of listless and lazy. They’re kind of like humans in that regard.

I changed my rig to a small, silver wooly bugger and started fishing for crappie around the many downed logs and brush piles in the lake.

I couldn’t get any crappie to bite. Good anglers at Silver Lake commonly land crappie of a pound or more.

So, I watched some good anglers — copying is cheating in school and work, but encouraged in angling — and noticed that they were dropping little jigs straight down into the underwater jungles of downed brush and logs.

I’ll never make the Flyfishing Hall of Fame — is there such a thing? — because I promptly let my fly hang below my rod tip and let it sink down into the cover like it was a jig.

I jiggled that fly — a 9-foot-long fly rod is just like a very expensive cane rod — and the bass and crappie started biting.

I didn’t land anything to brag about, but it was fun. And that big, blown-up mountain was sitting there right in front of me.

Outdoors columnist Chester Allen can be reached at 360-754-4226 or callen@theolympian.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.

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