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Where you fished as a kid?

7K views 105 replies 82 participants last post by  Jon Brengan 
#1 ·
Iveflone's thread the big swirl and responses to it got me thinking about a place i fished as a kid and how fishing them was once an adventure but now are too adventurous.

I used to fish a little tributary to the middle section of the Washougal. It was a chore to get in and out of and even to fish. Bushwhacking through nettles and devils club, scaling waterfalls wading through log jams all for the pretty little dark colored native cutthroat who maxed out at 11 inches and then only in the biggest deepest pools which are few and far between. If I'd head far enough upstream you start running into ancient plank dams , sluices and a little debris left behind by miners and loggers. It always made me feel like i was really out in the middle of nowhere.
There was even a spot with a patch of logan berries. I wish i was a kid again, the sense of wonder and adventure isn't there anymore, at least not for myself, i get that feeling helping other people on their adventures which i don't get to do near enough.

You're turn.
 
#95 ·
Grew up fishing a couple of different spots when I was a young kid. Only close spot in the middle of Tacoma was China Lake. I’d have just enough time to strap my rod to my bike and get to the lake to fish for about a half hour or so before needing to be back to check in to not get into trouble. Never got caught and caught lots of small bass/panfish.

Every so often the family would go out to one of the family or friend beach cabins on south sound. Sea run cutthroat were the target and very few would get caught, but there were a few. I vividly remember one day fishing under the treasure island bridge from a paddle boat on a hot, sunny day at low tide. I dropped down a small clam neck and split shot about 10 feet below the surface and watched it float about in the clear water while being surrounded by perch when a giant fish bolted out of nowhere and inhaled the bait as I was watching it. I set the hook and it came right out of the fish’s mouth. That is really when the addiction started. To this day, I still have no idea what it was but I imagine it most likely being a big cuttie or resident coho.

A couple years later (I was maybe 11-12) I was casting small spoons off the beach at dusk when I got an arm wrenching tug by a rather large fish. It fought hard and gave up quite the fight on the ultra light with 6lb test. I landed it, it was a 23 inch cutthroat. My uncle lost the picture but confirms the size.
 
#96 ·
Middle teens,middle 60's. Damn.I used to hitch hike 90 to the denny creek turn off than hike the Lake Anett trail , camp in an old army blanket with a 6" black iron pan , couple boiled spuds and some bacon. Trout were better tasting , water was safe to drink and damn cold. Anything you threw the trout would fight over. Oh yeah, ritz crackers that usually turned to crumbs.
 
#97 ·
Giant 6" cutts right behind the barn. Which, amazingly, is still there 50 years later. Fully expected to find a Walmart when I google mapped it. Also remember catching golden shiners, sculpins (naturally) and being freaked out by nests full of brook lampreys. My parents would be in jail these days for letting a 7yo kid run loose fishing a wooded creek alone, but I'm still here and wouldn't trade those memories for anything. Still remember my 1st "big fish" when I snuck across the road and caught a 14" cutt in a shaded pool that likely hadn't been fished in decades.

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#98 · (Edited)
I grew up in a number of places and in two continents. Fishing started in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Had to travel but parents would let us camp out in out of the way places. Then it was Montana, "the World with dew still on it" (River Runs Through it). Fished The Thompson River just outside of Thompson Falls and met Joe Brooks who was already my fishing idol. Prospect Creek was just on the other side of the Clarks Fork river. Hard to throw a stick and not hit great trout waters. Then a 4 year hiatus in Australia, with no fishing and a lot of surfing. Then back to college in Bozeman Montana, the epicenter of some of the best trout water that a 20 year old could find. Then out of college with a small family to raise and I end up in Wenatchee with rivers that are a bit lacking but I can't complain. Now I have a one year old grandson that needs to fish with his grandpa and my job is to collect gear for him and make sure it works well . I am still not grown up, still learning more things about fishing and fish.
 
#99 ·
Nice thread, Rob. Talk about sweet memories....

I grew up in trout fishing paradise (Western Colorado). Sadly, I didn't get into fly fishing until a couple years before we moved to Texas...

We had a small creek that was a tributary to the Roaring Fork at the bottom of the hills we lived in outside Glenwood Springs. It was about a mile and a half from the house, and it made many a lonely, boring day go by quickly. Lots of trout, mostly under 12". Suckers for worms and salmon eggs. Wish I'd had more time to fish around there with a bug rod....
 
#100 ·
Dad was a fly fisherman. My 5th through part of the 9th, I lived in the Hungry Horse/Martin City, MT. along US Hwy 2. Fished the Middle Fork of the Flathead nearly every day during seasons as I lived about a block and a half from the river. Mainly flies, aquired intially from a local hardware store, and the real treat was a fly shop stop along the highway nearing Kalispell. The old boy who owned the shop was full of advise.
 
#104 ·
Arvada, Colorado was where I grew up. My grandfather was born in Pine and took me up to the North Fork of the South Platte to catch my first trout. He took the tip off his old three-piece cane rod and had me lob cast and drift worms upstream with just enough lead to keep ticking the bottom. Not unlike upstream nymphing except you wouldn't strike until the fish gave a solid yank.
Last year I serendipitously discovered that a guy who I'd met on the Missouri and travelled in a group with to Belize grew up just 5-blocks away and had also fished little Ralston Creek in Arvada. Small world for sure.
 
#105 ·
There used to be a little vacation cabin resort on Heritage Lake in the Pend Oreille region of NE Washington. The log cabins had been built by the couple that owned the place. There was a little store where we could buy Bit-O-Honey candies and little spoons for trolling (only the silver, fish-shaped spoons with an orange painted "head" worked). Every cabin came with a row boat. There was a swimming beach and on the opposite side of the lake was a collapsed settler's cabin that sometimes contained a bear (we found out the scary way one day). There was also a gas station with those "visible" gas pumps having a glass tank at the top. I remember my dad filling up the rambler station wagon with leaded gas. My dad would row us around the lake and we'd catch pretty rainbow trout. I'm afraid to go back there. I've hear that the lake was ruined by introduced bass. But I'll always remember what it was in the '60s.
 
#106 ·
I have been fishing since my dad made the mistake of giving his family the choice of a family vote. Either we could trudge uphill to some scenic view-spot or we could go fishing. Well my mom voted with us kids and wherever we were, they had just stocked the stream and we all caught fish. My dad then bribed me and my brother with the yard, which had to be mowed and clipped before anyone went fishing, my brother and I could get that yard into shape on a weekend night and we were off to fish some stream or river on the weekend. We used to fish on the Tolt river where it joined the Snoqualmie, we always caught trout, but my mom hooked her first Steelhead there too. Every summer we went on a week long family camping trip and the goal was to catch the biggest fish. At that time my mom had this huge cast iron fry pan and nobody caught a fish that was that big, but given the challenge we eventually caught one that didn't fit that pan. Later we found a tributary of the Snoqualmie that was barely a creek but flowed out of some beaver ponds near Carnation - we had many great fishing journey's in that drainage. Some time later my grandparents moved to southern Idaho and we started the majority of our fishing out of state. But it was there that I was introduced to a fly rod and reel by my grandmother and I've been fishing that way ever since.
 
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