"Many men fish to get away from women, but now they have to accept the galling reality that they can't escape."  -The New York Times, Aug 8, 1994.

Some call local chum fishing “picket fencing”, others call it “combat fishing”, but most call it fun fishing.

My wife, Ana, loves to fly fish.  She is most certainly not a Joan Wulff, the current Deaconess of the fly casting world.  But Ana holds her own.  Her graceful thirty to forty foot casts put many machoistic slap-it-on-the-water male fly anglers to shame.  When salmon are on our beaches Ana is often more hot to trot than me.  If she can convince me or a fly fishing girlfriend up she’ll be off to locations like Point no Point in a flash.

“It’s up to you if you what to come along.” She’ll inform me.  “But I am not waiting.  The tide is low and I have a good feeling.”

One November Saturday afternoon not too long ago Ana was after me to go picket fencing for chum salmon at Chico Creek.  Her justification was that the tides were right.  Well, maybe she was not so much after me as after a passel of new chum flies.  She does not tie flies too often, I do.  The point is she was ready to go and I had better get hot at the fly tying bench.

When we arrived things were “Chico Creek chum-run normal”.  There was hardly a place to park.  Thirty-five or forty anglers were lined up knee-deep in the estuary like, you guessed it, a picket fence.  They were all having a ball combat fishing.

This particular afternoon the line-up had formed a hundred-foot semicircle around a pod of maybe 500 frightened chum salmon.  Lures of every sort and kind were flying everywhere.  Confused fish were rolling in futile attempts to miss the lure pandemonium.  Three of four macho fly anglers were among them.  From the looks of things they had been taking fly casting lessons from treble-hooked Buzz Bomb throwers.

A young lady of about 12-years of age squealed in delight as her rod doubled over from what looked like a dark purple-striped male hooked on some nether part of its anatomy.  “Back up, back up!” her dad kept yelling.  “That’s a good smokin’ fish. Don’t you lose it!”  The young lady squealed again then dutifully obeyed dad’s continuing spate of orders.

Ana looked at me and said, “Let’s go down there, away from the crowd.”  She was pointing toward some shallows in the west end of the estuary where maybe twenty five undisturbed fish were fining.  Ana was off and fly casting without even turning around to see if I had followed.  I had not.  I sometimes find it far more of a pleasure to watch her fish than to fish myself.

A couple of macho fly anglers waded in near to where I was standing.  One said, “Jeez! Look at that woman cast.  Does she think she’s trout fishing?  I doubt if she get anything on that wimpy outfit!”  They had no idea she and I were soul mates.

The other macho fly angler didn’t respond.  He looked at his partner with an expression that appeared halfway between agreement and mock disdain.  He was obviously disgruntled at thought of a graceful women fly angler going after Mac truck chum with what he obviously considered a “trout” rod.  Just as he glanced back toward Ana she was fast into a substantial fish that she had legally hooked inside its mouth.  She had a number more that afternoon, more legally hooked fish than anyone else on the beach, including me.

In the car on our way back home Ana turned to me and asked, “Why didn’t you fish too much?  Then she followed her inquiry with, “Let’s stop at the Silver City Brewery.  Maybe you can tell me over a sandwich and a stout?”

I just smiled.  It had been another wonderful angling afternoon.

I think it was in the early 1970’s that I heard rumors of a few fly anglers float tubing and catching gargantuan chum salmon off the mouth of the French Creek Hatchery in Hoodsport on the Hood Canal.  The tip proved to be worthy indeed.  One could get towed up and down beautiful Hood Canal October beaches by these fish.  It took some years, but the sport caught on so well that it is still a planned annual migration for many anglers today.  French Creek chum.

In more recent years the chum salmon runs in Chico Creek estuary in Dyes Inlet have recovered to the point where thousands of fall returning fish provide great sport for lots of anglers.  This is where Ana and I most often go.

There is no trick to catching chum if one is a marginal fly caster.  Don a fluorescent chartreuse “Chum Candy” on the end of a 9-foot, 12-pound leader and a floating fly line.  Cast the fly in front of a moving school of fish. Move the fly just enough to keep it off the bottom, no more. Wait for a bombshell.

Richard Stoll is a biologist and environmental scientist. He can be found chasing chum, among other species,  all over the Pacific Northwest. Contact Richard here: rkstoll (at) yahoo (dot) com