Salmon were in good mood; anglers as well

THE OLYMPIAN | • Published August 25, 2009

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I didn’t have high hopes when I drove up to Dash Point Park one morning last week.

Dash Point, near the mouth of Commencement Bay, is where 700,000 pink salmon heading for the Puyallup River are swimming within a short cast of the beach.

The spots where humans and salmon connect can be downright weird.

Some anglers lose their marbles when they see thousands of big, bumper-bright fish, and some of them lose their poise.

These addled humans squabble over hard-to-find parking places, jockey for places on the Dash Point fishing pier – and can get downright aggressive.

Salmon – especially bright, clean, gorgeous fish still in saltwater – can bring out the worst in humans.

But on this day the salmon seemed to bring out the best in my fellow anglers.

I got to the parking lot, which is wedged into a residential neighborhood that is pleasantly quiet until the pink salmon start arriving every other August. Then the neighborhood is jammed full of anglers and cars for a few weeks.

I always check for a parking spot at Dash Point, but I often wind up driving a couple of miles away and parking at Dash Point State Park, which also offers terrific fishing for pink salmon.

I think the beach at Dash Point tends to hold the big schools of salmon for a longer time, and that’s why I always check there. Most of the time, it’s too crowded for my taste, and I end up going to the state park. I also usually eke out a pink salmon or two from the state park beach, so it’s still a good deal. Catching two gleaming pink salmon in the gleaming, soft light of early morning never gets old.

But I got to the Dash Point parking lot very early on a weekday, and there were plenty of parking spaces.

One angler, who was clearly racing off to the work, gave me a thumbs-up as I pulled into the parking lot.

This kind gesture was unexpected, and I half expected “The Twilight Zone” theme music to start playing on the internal sound system that most of us cart around in our brains.

It was low tide, and few anglers were fishing near the pier. As I rigged my fly rod, a patch of wrinkled-looking water started moving toward me.

Pink salmon schools often swim near the surface, and they create a ripply disturbance on the water – what anglers call a “push.”

I tied on a long, slinky, hot pink, no-hackle Woolly Bugger – a fly that was inspired after a fly-tying conversation with a new friend the week before.

I dropped the fly in front of the push, made two strips of line – and hooked a gorgeous pink salmon on the first cast.

I brought the fish in, released it, and cast back out.

Another pink ate my fly – and pulled line off my reel in long, lunging runs. A few minutes later, the biggest pink salmon of my life – it was probably 8 pounds or so – finned at my feet.

A nice angler on the beach – he was showing his grandchildren the pink run – offered to take my photo. I then let the fish go – and had a nice talk with the guy.

As I talked, I looked around.

A few other spin and fly anglers were on the beach – and hooking into fish – but everyone was relaxed, casual and without the ugly, aggressive greed that you’ll sometimes see where humans and salmon meet.

Then a huge school of pinks pushed into the area. A guy in a nearby boat told me that the school stretched about a half-mile long.

Wowsa.

I was lucky enough to have the right fly – and I was hooking up on every other cast. This kind of Salmon-O-Rama hardly ever happens to me, and I wallowed in it.

Each bright fish fought hard. Pink salmon hit the right fly like a ton of bricks.

But I had 14-pound-test tippet, and I could get those bright fish in fast and slip out the barbless hook very easily. I didn’t even have to touch the fish.

Another angler came down the beach and started laughing at my ridiculous streak of salmon fortune.

I waded over and gave him a couple of my flies – which is what I was taught to do by the old men who taught me how to fish decades ago. Sharing – and making friends – was as important to those guys as catching fish.

The angler, whose name was Darryl – I was too busy having fun to get his last name – started hooking fish like crazy.

It can be like that when thousands of snappy pink salmon are swimming 30 feet away. We cast our flies onto the clear water – and saw the blurry flash of pink salmon walloping our flies.

We laughed together, and Darryl kept a couple of pinks to take home. I already had a couple of smoked pinks in the refrigerator, so I was just fishing for fun.

And it was clean, relaxing, friendly fun.

As I walked back to the Subaru about an hour later – I had work to do in Olympia – I thought about how all those pink salmon popped out of eggs less than two years ago.

Those tiny fish immediately raced for Puget Sound and then the cold, rich, dangerous waters of the North Pacific Ocean. Most of them didn’t make it, but millions of gorgeous fish are returning to our rivers this year.

And seeing huge masses of salmon is a glimpse of how salmon fishing once was all over Western Washington – and how it should be.

These wonderful pinks are a gift for all of us to share.

As I left the parking lot, another angler driving a paint contractor’s truck rolled in. I gave him a thumbs-up.

And I never heard “The Twilight Zone” theme.

Chester Allen: 360-754-4226

callen@theolympian.com