Mount St. Helens termites and Cowlitz River chinook

• Published September 15, 2008

Hey, have you seen any big, winged termits flapping around?

I sure have, and it makes me think now is the time to toss the float tube in the Volvo station wagon and rattle up to Coldwater Lake at Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

Coldwater, which has some huge wild rainbow and cutthroat trout, is a slow troll with sinking lines most of the year, but the big winged termites -- they're about an inch long -- bring the fish to the surface.

I was part of the news media blitz at Mount St. Helens a couple of years ago when the crater started to rumble and belch. I got tired of watched us journalists interview each other, so I went down to Coldwater Lake on my lunch hour -- just to look around.

I strolled out on the boardwalk -- sandwich in hand -- and saw those termites helicoptering down from the ridges into the lake. Big, fat trout were waiting for them. A trout rising to a big termite looks more like a bass slurping down an unlucky frog.

I went back to Coldwater a few times that week -- after I filed my stories -- and enjoyed some hot fishing for surface-rising fish. I've gone back every fall when I see termits flying around here in South Sound. Sometimes I find Trout-O-Rama, and sometimes I don't. But it's worth the gamble. All that dead timber around Coldwater hosts millions of termites, and I suspect the trout key onto the big bugs every fall.

Just don't launch a float tube onto Coldwater if the wind is nuking. You may get blown all the way to the other end and face a long hike back.

In other fishing news, the Cowlitz River is now open for fall chinook. Anglers can keep one adult chinook a day. I've heard that the chinook are biting well -- and so are the summer steelhead.

I may just spend some time near the Cowltiz -- and Mount St. Helens -- this week.

Chester Allen