The Eagle Outdoors

There are times, believe it or not, when I ask myself just what constitutes "the outdoors." I am, after all, supposedly an outdoor writer. Not an outdoor "rider," a pursuit of which I've been accused on more than one occasion. I do, from time to time, ride through the outdoors. For the past 33 years, I've made my living, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, writing about the outdoors. To some, I was a 'hook and bullet' guy; a scribe of the consumptive order. A fisherman. A hunter. The hook and the bullet. However, it wasn't just hunting and fishing. There were stories on camping, mushroom harvesting, rockhounding, gardening and canning, dog training, outdoor education, bird identification, medicinal plants, flowering trees, carpentry, and social interaction. Yes, sir. All of these were outdoors. Lest we forget compost.

Thanks to this incredibly broad definition of the word "outdoors," my career, per se, has never been categorized. I never did this or that. I've enjoyed a rudimentary job description. As a result, my resume - be that what it may - reads like Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in both length and A-to-Z variation.

I say these things, dear reader, as a means of explanation. Outdoors, you ask yourself, having finished yet another weekly diatribe printed on page five of The Eagle. What does 'X' have to do with the outdoors? The answer is nothing and everything. If one looks hard or long enough, almost everything that touches our daily lives is in one way or another connected to the outdoors. Made from, courtesy of, thanks to, in sync with, etc. We are all outdoors people. I've just been blessed by the fact my world revolves around it. Perhaps yours does, too? With that, I, as Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin wrote in 1969, must "ramble on."

Fishing Report

Julie and I spent the week of Aug. 25 camping at Cape Disappointment State Park on the edge of Ilwaco. To say the salmon fishing from the North Jetty was exceptional isn't doing this year's run of silvers any justice. Please note I'm not a 'numbers guy,' but I felt it justified here in hopes of emphasizing my point. Our group coolered 36 coho and two beautiful chinook in four short days of fishing. This, Julie and I agreed, was comparable to 2015 when every silver in the ocean swam past the North Jetty armed with a strong desire to live in our freezer. Fresh anchovies under a bobber was the definite winner. However, I caught my king on a one-ounce Mepps Syclops spoon in red/pink/blue, a.k.a. rainbow trout. Mepps Flying C spinner in pink was also a hot ticket item.

Salmon hunters pushing out of the Elochoman Marina are shaking hands with Mister Good Days/Bad Days. One here, one there, tules, sea lions. Good sticks and highliners, or accomplished anglers, are finding some fish. I spoke with an extremely nice lady on Monday whilst delivering her fresh cucumbers and Italian plums, courtesy of my wife and our yard, who at 11 a.m., said she and her companions had "been back for two hours after tagging their fish." Another gentlemen, also on Monday morning, said he and his partner had made the run down to Tongue Point and had coolered their four – two kings and two silvers – in under 90 minutes. They're out there. One just needs to invest the time.

Diabetic Raccoons?

A note before I switch gears. Cape Disappointment State Park will be closing on Sept. 16 to reopen, I believe, on May 1, 2026. Major remodeling and reconstruction is the reason. Sadly, all of the campsites along O'Neil Lake at the park are slated to be removed in their entirety. This is unfortunate, as those were our favorites.

With regard to raccoons, the park is absolutely overrun with the crafty little creatures. Last year, Julie and I learned the hard way to make certain everything, including our tightly zippered jetty fishing packs, were stowed indoors. Goodbye, full-size Snickers bar, and so long, Three Musketeers.

This year, Julie went looking for her container of sugar. You know the one; tall, cylindrical, blue cardboard with the plastic top and metal bottom. There was no reason to think anyone (or anything) would wander off with the sugar, but no. A search of the area turned up half the container and both the top and the bottom. Of course, there was no sugar. Lesson learned, I reckon. While I don't consider myself a vengeful man in most instances, I do hope the culprit - or culprits - develop multiple cavities and don't have dental insurance. A man can dream, right?

NPM bounty season winding down

Looking to earn a little extra cash fishing? The 2025 Northern Pikeminnow (NPM) Sport Reward Program will come to a close Tuesday, Sept. 30, unless, that is, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the agency who funds the program, closes it early, as they did in 2024. This was due to a case of having spent all their money. Please note the Washington and Oregon Departments of Fish and Wildlife administer the program and BPA fronts it financially.

Fishing is really heating up in the Cathlamet area now. For the week that ended Monday, Aug. 18, anglers checked 930 NPM meeting the 9-inch minimum requirement, up from 810 the previous week. According to pikeminnow.org, these were posting a 9.9 fish per angler catch rate for the period. The first three weeks of August saw some 2,708 legal NPM turned into the Cathlamet check station. Even on the low ($6 per fish) end of the scale, that's $16,248 paid out to Cathlamet area anglers in 21 days. Now there's an outdoor activity I should put on my resume.