2025 was a year of condensed fishing opportunities. Chances and times to fish were not consistant throughout the year, but when they happened, they happened biggly.
Christmas Island
I made my second trip to Christmas Island in February. Man… hard to express how much I love this place. I really can’t wait to go back. My wife has agreed to a 4 year cycle. This place really does occupy a lot of my fishing daydreams.
Did I get some big GT shots? Yes. Did I catch that big GT? No. Keeps me wanting to come back.
Fished out of Christmas Island Lodge, with friends, and it was a really good week.
Idaho
I went back to Idaho, this time for 2 weeks. I fished every day, even if it was an after-work drift or some time in a creek. My boy was there the whole time and that was pretty special. I’m certainly looking forward to getting back there (which I hope to do next summer). I’m planning on having a new trailer when I go back, which might aid in the whole “blowing a tire” sitch, which was very much not in the plans.
A bit of margin fishing.
There were some other days with fishing in them, even if they weren’t “fishing days.” I had a weekend fishing with my friend John. I fished some private ponds on the way to drop my son off at soccer camp. I fished my home water after my dad’s service. I fished the the Bay a couple times.
Lost a fishing partner… my dad.
My dad went on to The Great Fishing Grounds Beyond this year. That’s a loss, for sure, but it is also comforting to know his suffering is at an end. Those last few years were rough and seeing his decline was hard. A holder of stories, fishing and family lore, is gone. His loss will echo for a long, long time.
He loved fishing. He loved the Klamath river and steelhead. He loved half-pounders. He was a fly convert. He fished with me in lots of fun and interesting places. He passed his love of wild places on to me and I am passing that on to my children. He was a kind man, an honest man, a good man. He was an excellent father.
There are rumbles of restrictions to DIY angling in the Bahamas again. This story isn’t super specific and details are lacking, but there are guides with a long history of trying to get the government to stamp out DIY angling.
The funny thing is, hearing a Grand Bahama guide saying DIY is impacting guided fishing in Grand Bahama makes very, very little sense. You can’t drive or walk to about 99% of the flats on Grand Bahama. So, if you are a guide running into DIYers you are not burning any gas and I’m going to say that’s on you.
I mean… tell me if I’m wrong, but I’ve been both guided and DIY on Grand Bahama and I’m never fishing the same places. There are very few DIY flats in Grand Bahama compared to what is available if you have a skiff.
My dad first fished the Klamath River near Orleans on Labor Day weekeind in 1952. He was 10. It left an impression.
His last day fishing that water on the Klamath was on Labor Day weekend in 2019.
Every Labor Day of my childhood (save maybe one when a fire might have prevented it) we’d go to the Klamath. For most of my childhood that meant Klamath River Lodge, a collection of three cabins with a nice grass lawn, a pool and a gazebo overlooking a really nice steelhead run.
This isn’t a lodge in the way we tend to mean that today. It was lodging, but didn’t come with meals or guiding or cocktails. It was just a place to stay. It was remote and simple and kind of perfect. I don’t believe it has burned in these most recent fires, but I fear for its future. There is a lot of wilderness to burn up there and it is hotter and drier than it was back when I was a kid.
There were other days of fishing on the Klamath on other parts of the river, but when I think of fishing the Klamath, I think of this place.
There are so many memories here it is hard to condense them all down into a single written piece.
We often went here with family friends, the Quins, from Mt. Shasta. George was a fishing buddy of my dad’s, although he would maybe get to the water a little bit later and get off the water a little bit earlier.
There were the bears, which we’d see pretty much every time we went.
There were the frogs. Sometimes there would be thousands and sometimes dozens, but I always spent some time goofing around with the frogs.
There were the blackberries, which stained our fingers on the way down to the river and the way back up.
There were very early mornings as dad and I (mostly it was my dad and I as I think my brother stopped fishing around 10 or 11) would rise early and head down to the river with only a hint of sun in the sky as we sought to fish the “morning rise,” even though the fish didn’t rise and we were mostly fishing bait and spinning rigs.
There were the diners in the gazebo where we’d enjoy the view, maybe take a dip in the pool.
There were afternoon naps as we’d come up from the river when the sun was high overhead and head back when the sun started dropping behind the mountains.
There were games of catch on the lawn.
There was a lot of reading when we were off the water.
There was no TV and later no internet or phone service.
The fishing was sometimes good, sometimes OK and sometimes poor. We’d have 20 fish weekends and 2 fish weekends. The fish we were after were the half-pounders, young steelhead that would come back up the river in waves (maybe ripples) from their first taste of the salt. They were silvery, trout-sized fish that would pull harder than their unsalted relatives. Sometimes there would be an adult steelhead in the mix, but these early fish tended to be the half-pounders.
Dad loved these fish and even had a license plate that read “hlfpnder” or something like that, which confused all but the learned.
He loved that place and those fish.
Back in 2019 we knew something was up with dad. First, he was falling fairly regularly and had the bruises to show for it. He also had developed a bend while walking that made him look like the letter “C.” We didn’t know why this was happening, but that it was happening was undeniable… unless you were my dad, in which case “everything is fine.”
When he announced he’d be heading back to the Klamath for Labor Day my brother and I discussed how unwise this idea was and we came up with another plan… I’d go with him. Ya know… to keep him out of trouble.
I hadn’t been up there for years because, life. With modern life kicking in full gear, it was hard to get up that way for Labor Day. I’d first have to fight my way through Bay Area Labor Day traffic and it was about a 430 mile drive, the last part pretty windy as the road followed the river.
I think he knew this was probably the last time he’d be there, so there was an undercurrent of lament to the whole affair, but we were on the Klamath on Labor Day and it was hard to be too down about that.
There’s about a 0.2 mile walk to the river from where the lodge sits, which wasn’t too far for dad. However, it is downhill and then over rocks, which was a concern.
In the morning, dad and I headed down to the river after rigging up (the photo of dad on the porch of the cabin on the morning we last fished the Klamath remains one of my all time favorites). I had brought a folding chair with me, in case he got tired or just needed to take a seat. We were picking our way down the grassy slope and just as we neared the blackberry lined section dad slipped on the grass and landed heavily on his side.
We took some time to get him back upright and the seat came in handy as he took a rest for a bit in the chair. His back was hurting from the fall and we let things settle before we continued on.
The river has a very gradual entry. You can wade out 20 feet and be only 6″ or 12″ deep. Once we walked arm and arm over the rocks to get to the water, dad got in a position where he could make his spey casts (we had both converted to fly fishing a couple decades before) and I left dad to fish while I moved upstream to do my own fishing.
I managed to get a couple of smaller half-pounders on the swing, but as I watched dad I was a bit concerned about the grandual slump I was seeing as his body curled into that “C” shape. He also was barely out into the river, which was both understandable because of the slippery rocks, and not great, because he couldn’t get the casts he wanted.
I had a solution. I got the folding chair, set it in the water and suggested maybe he give that a go. It worked. Dad was abel to get a little bit further out in the river and his spey casts were able to get out into the current.
Dad even managed to get a fish from the chair. I’m not totally sure if the one pictured was his or mine, but either way, it would have looked pretty much the same. It was a half-pounder, a young steelhead, the fish that my dad loved so dearly.
After we had done a bit of fishing dad started to tire and so we called in a wrap and started the process of getting dad back up from the river.
It took a while. It was slow going moving back up the hill and by the time we made it to the cabin it seemed an awful lot of work to get down there and back. The idea was brewing that maybe this wasn’t a thing we would be able to manage a second or third time. How he thought he’d be doing this on his own, I have no idea.
We called an audible. We packed up and we left the Klamath and Klamath River Lodge. This wonderful place where my dad and I had so many memories was just now a little out of reach. Another day of fishing her waters would be hard and maybe even dangerous.
On the drive back to Dunsmuir we called The Fly Shop and found that guide Kris Kennedy had a spot open. We booked it and the next day we went out on the Lower Sac with Kris. We caught fish and dad got to sit the whole time. Kris was great with him and we enjoyed a good, solid day of fishing. I think this was the last really good day of fishing my dad and I had, although we’d manage to get in at least two more days on the water, maybe three.
Things were changing fast. Things that were doable were becoming hard or even impossible. It was hard to watch that decline, and I’d imagine even harder to experience it. Dad knew things were changing, although he always thought he was maybe a bit more able to do things than his body was actually capable of pulling off. It would be 2 more years until he would be in a float tube with Scott Embry and wouldn’t be able to kick to the shore by himself. Shortly thereafter he’d lose is driver’s license and move down to Alameda and then to Oakland.
It moved fast, that shrinking of his world, that taking-away-of-things perpetrated by old age and disease.
I was so glad I was there to get him on the Klamath River Lodge water one last time. I’ll miss the bend in his rod and the “Hoooooooo” that would accompany a hooked fish from down the run.
Now, the Klamath runs free, undammed. Dad didn’t get to experience that, but some time here in the next few years I plan to get there on a Labor Day Weekend and swing a fly through those waters and when I do, I’ll be thinking of my old man and the love he had for that place.
In 2004 my dad brought me to the Babine River, one of the best steelhead fisheries in the world.
It was a big trip to a special place. My dad had fished Norlakes Lodge with his father (Strom) as a much younger man and he had started to return to the river every few years. The river had been important to Strom as well, as he had spent a lot of time there, even helping to build a cabin on the lower river “The Camp Water,” and there was a pool called “Strom’s Pool” on the river, named after him.
My dad had always said he’d bring me there one day and this was him making good on that promise.
It wasn’t cheap. A destination lodge like this is several thousand dollars, not to mention the gear one tends to buy for such a trip, the flights and various other expenses.
The way it worked was that each guide would take his anglers and move them around the river. You didn’t fish from the boat, but he’d pick you up and move you to a new spot, help you out for a bit, then go and move the other anglers in his group to some new bit of water.
Norlakes Lodge is located on the Babine River, which is about in the middle of British Columbia, North/South and East/West. It is in a rugged wilderness and the lodge is mostly only reachable by boat. It feels like Alaska, Grizzly Bears included.
Dad and I would fish together at times and other times we’d be some distance apart, fishing on our own.
On one such occassion when we were apart, dad was fishing with the guide at a creek mouth and he happened upon a sow grizzly with cubs. As the story was related to me the guide had a “Bear Banger,” a device that basically shoots a large blank, creating a very loud bang that is designed to scare a bear away. The first “bang” turned out to be a flare, which Ms. Griz didn’t appreciate and she ended up charging. The second “bang” was an actual bang and the bear pulled up 30-40 feet shy of my dad and ran away.
It left an impression (foreshadowing).
On the last day of the trip the guide brought my dad and I to a long run. He set my dad up toward the bottom and me at the top and put our lunch on the shore about half-way down and then he went to go move some other anglers.
This type of fishing was all “on the swing” fishing. You cast out, quartered down and let your fly swim across the the river in the current, your fly tight to the rod, and you wait for a tug/pause/fish. You take a cast, let your drift happend and then take a step down and do the same thing. There’s a zen quality about it.
As I was making my way down the river, wading out about 20-30 feet, I heard something on the shore to turn around and see a frigging massive grizzly bear helping itself to our lunch, left by the guide on the bank. The bear was 25-35 feet from me.
Earlier in the week hunters had been on the river looking for grizzlies and had been stalking a bear that happened upon a moose. The bear ended up killing the moose and the hunters had to call off their pursuit, as you can’t shoot a bear on a kill.
It occured to me I was a lot easier to chase down than a moose.
I started making loud sounds, smacking the water, issuing the “HEY BEAR” calls and generally trying to pursueade the bear to go somewhere else than anywhere near me.
My dad, seeing this/hearing this decides to help.
“BANG” he yelled. “BANG” he yelled again.
I guess the idea of the “bear banger” had really stuck in his head and so when he wanted to encourage the bear to move along he decided to mimic the “bear banger” by just yelling “bang.” Surprisingly, it was less effective.
At the time I was a bit worried/scared of this massive griz, but in the back of my mind I did think “That’s funny and I’ll laugh about it later, if I survive this.”
It should be mentioned that the bear didn’t seem to mind me at all, or my dad. It was singularly focused on the shore lunch and proceeded to eat a fair bit of it. I kept moving down river, away from the bear. It hardly looked at me.
Later, I got to rib my dad for his yelled “bang” and we had a good chuckle over the campfire that night.
It was an amazing place I got to share with my dad, as he had shared with his dad. I got to fish Strom’s Pool (lost a couple fish and I think I landed a salmon there). I managed an 18 pound buck steelhead on a skating fly on my first day. It was an amazing trip my dad and I talked about for the next 20 years.
My dad counted fish. He ENJOYED counting fish. To he fair, he counted everytying.
He was an avid bird watcher and bird watchers are counters. His life list came out to just shy of 2,000 birds and he would usually have binoculars with him as he was throwing a line for trout or steelhead or whatever he was fishing for.
He also calculated his own gas milage and would keep track of every tank, back when he could still drive.
He had little notebooks that he’d have on the water with him and he’d write down where he was fishing, who with and every fish hooked and landed. Like I said, he liked to count things.
There was May 18th (year not recorded) where he fished McCloud Reservoir with his friend Jack. He went 9/13, nothing too big. Fished about 4 hours.
There was a day with fished with Nick Denbow down in Mexico where he caught 3 fish and I caught a few. Dad’s notes say I had fish up to 30#, which is larger than I remember. I certainly did lose a few that day. Looks like it was a long day on the water. I don’t know if dad caught baby tarpon here or snook or jacks. Seems like he should have said what species, but he didn’t.
There was this epic day out on a private pond with his then-girlfriend, Solveig. Looks like he landed 17 and I can’t tell if at noon he landed a 20″er or a 28″er. I feel like he would have called if he caught a 28 inch fish, but maybe not.
There was this day, written down in this journal later from his little booklet. This was three days after my mom passed away from a short, brutal fight with cancer. We coped the best way we knew how. We went fishing. We fished with my friend Andrew (Confluence Outfitters). Andrew’s mom and my mom were roommates in college. We had one hell of a day. The fish were big and plentiful and the actions was fast enough to mask some of the loss. Looks like I had a couple over 20″ and several at that mark. That’s a fine, fine day of fishing with your dad and your friend.
With my dad’s passing, I don’t have anyone to take fishing (my son, yes, but we can’t just go piss off and fish for a couple of days). There is soccer practice. And work. And two games this weekend. And I’m the one who does the cooking.
But I made it out today for a bit. I haven’t been fishing the Bay much, but I needed to go fishing and I did. I even managed to catch a wayward halibut.
I was 1/1 today. Caught at about 10:14 AM in Alameda.
My father passed away in the early morning hours today. I missed the call, but there isn’t much I would have been able to do anyway. The call was that he had passed, not that he would. I had been with him for six hours the day before and read to him from John Gierach’s All Fisherman Are Liars and my brother and I remembered family trips and family stories. My brother’s partner read to him about the 49ers. My wife came and brought me lunch and saw my dad as well.
It was my brother who got there at one in the morning and took care of what needed taking care of. He’s the best son, I’m just the better looking one (and funnier).
My dad caught a lot of fish in his life. This one (pictured above) was special.
We were in the Bahamas (Grand Bahama on the East End, to be specific), our first time there, and we had each just caught our first bonefish with a guide who was very good at guiding and very bad at being a decent person (that’s a different story).
Dad was not a graceful caster of an 8 weight (and that rod is probably a 7 anyway). He never got the hang of a double-haul and it was kind of a forced, muscled cast to get the line out 40-50 feet. His casting rocked the boat in a literal way. It was more of a baseball swing-meets-wood-cutting motion. It was sometimes-servicable.
As dad was up on the bow of this flats skiff, looking out over a shallow, mottled flat, he pointed out a ray moving across the sand maybe 50-60 feet away.
The guide lost his mind.
“Cast on dat ray!” “Cast on dat ray!” the guide shouted.
I didn’t see the transaction, but I can only assume my dad was temporarily whisked away to make some sort of demonic deal which would grant him supernatural (for him) abilities. He made the cast, a cast he had not shown signs, indications or hints that he would be capable of making. He summoned the best single-handed cast I’ve ever seen him make. He landed that cast right on the back of the ray at about 60′ where it was immediately eaten by the pictured mutton snapper.
Maybe it is 12 pounds, maybe 15. I’m not a great judge of the weight of mutton snappers. What I do know is that all hell broke loose. The snapper exploded and rampaged across the shallow flat. The line raced after the fish, throwing a roostertail of water, occassionally bending down young, pliable mangrove shoots.
My dad’s reel sang as line was ripped off and his smile was wide and plastered on his face. He loved that “zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzz” sound as much as anyone and this fish provided a concert just for us.
Somehow (probably owing to that deal he made), he landed the fish.
The guide, of course, took the fish home.
Fishing is about stories and living those stories with people you choose to be on the water with. I chose to be on the water with my dad whenever the opportunity arose.
Back in 2019, my last shot was at a massive GT. I had an enthusiastic follow, but the fish saw us at the last second and pulled away.
This trip I was fishing with Ari and we were approaching a long cut that led out to the lagoon, where the boat was waiting for us. As we approached the cut Ari called out a fish on a flat just in front of the cut.
It was a GT.
It was maybe 25-35 pounds.
I had the fly I wanted to throw and I made the cast. I was a little too close to the fish, nearly on its head (back handed cast into the wind), but the fish didn’t spook and it started to follow.
Last flat. Last fish. And it is a GT.
Then, the fish saw us and pulled off.
That’s two trips with two last casts, to two GTs who both saw us last second and didn’t eat.
This was my second (and not last) trip to Xmas following my trip there in 2019. So, what changed? What was different?
The airport got a major upgrade. There’s now a legit waiting area with enough seating. So, good job to whatever government(s) got that sorted.
Things that were totally the same:
– The boats – The trucks – GTs being hard – Wind, all the time – Periods of clouds and periods of sun – Long days full of fishing – Mostly, the guides – The beauty of the place – The quality of the roads – The quality of the fishing
Things that were different:
Fished a different lodge. In 2019 I was at The Villages and this time I was at Christmas Island Lodge (which wasn’t even there in 2019 and has taken over the site of the Captain Cook). CIL has more of a truck-based program, although their second boat was being repaired, so that might not always be true. Trips to the backcountry and Huff Dam by truck were new.
Triggers were… jerks. In 2019, I had maybe 10 trigger shots and landed 2. It did NOT go that way this year. Had maybe 40 shots at adults and went 0/40. Got one little peachface, but that was it. I had three eats, zero conversions. I don’t know why it was so much harder, but it was.
My bonefishing sucked less. In 2019 I had a day where I started off going about 0/25 on bonefish shots. This year, I feel like I was more on it. I caught more fish on my own, and I had some magical/awesome sessions where I was just dialed. It isn’t that I improved so much in the last 5 years, it just went better this trip. I ended up landing 40 bonefish to 6 pounds. I maybe had half that number in 2019.
A female touch. CIL had a female guide and I think also another female guide in training. Ari, the woman guide, was fantastic. I thought she was maybe the best guide I had. She communicated clearly and often. She asked questions about what I wanted and she had a plan. 5 Star Guide and if you go to CIL, request her.
The beer was better. Flame beer, from NZ, was an upgrade from whatever we had in 2019 and we drank great quantities of the stuff. A nice, light, clean beer, best when cold and after a long day of fishing.
Hosted v. non-hosted. In 2019 I went on a hosted trip with my friend Shane. He saw to all the details. In 2025 we didn’t have a host, but Ty, the manager of CIL, sort of filled that role (in addition to everything else he did). This proved not to really feel like a big change, but was different. Shane was there at the same time, at the Villages, but his trip filled up before we could get in.
Tides. This was not a thing I paid a lot of attention to, but our tides were less than ideal. We had lows througout most of the fishing hours and that really impacted what the Korean Wreck looked like (barren). We were out there for about 20 minutes of the incoming tide and it was shaping up to be MAGIC, but then we had to leave. Boo. They say the best time to go fishing is when you can, and this fell into that sort of category. This was the week I had available and I was going to go no matter what.
More species. Did you know there are Queenfish in Xmas? I didn’t, but I caught one. Also got a sweetlips and wasn’t the only one to catch either of those species. Caught a goatfish as well, which I don’t recall catching before.
I pretty much only want to fish Christmas Island at this point. This is such a special place. I’ll be back.
In my opinion, one of the best guides currently working on Christmas Island is Ari (and not just because she complimented my casting).
Ari with Wallace, walking off the last flat of the trip.
In a place that is fairly male-dominated, Ari is a female guide working out of Christmas Island Lodge.
I had her for 1.5 days and very much enjoyed having her. She not only saw the fish and knew where they’d be, which probably all the Xmas guides can do, but she communicated well. She asked questions. She gave feedback.
The first day I had her as my guide, Phil had told her that I likely needed some sort of therapy due to my blown shot at a big GT earlier in the week. So, she set out a path for the two of us to walk that would give me multiple cuts and points to go in search of trevally. She developed a plan, quickly, that would maybe do the trick, or at the very least it would set me up to be in a good position.
In one cut we found some working bluefin and I managed to get one to hand. When I gave her the phone to take the pic, she’s the one who put it on portrait mode and took the shot below… which is rad.
The next day, I was with Ari as we were fishing the last water we’d fish… and what did we find? A GT on the edge of a channel. It was a 20-25 pound fish, or there abouts. Not huge, but a very nice fish for sure. I managed to get a good cast in and got a follow, but the fish saw us in the last 15 feet and waived off (which is how my previous trip had ended as well… but… that’s for another time).
Ari consistantly put me in a good position to get the shots I was looking for and she checked in with me to make sure we were on the same page.
