Friday, dropping in to high bank at G & L a truck sized piece of clay calved off. Amazing display of natural power it was, too bad this was only halfway through our float as the entire lower river blew out

Saturday on the Duc - A pair of soaking wet eagles let three equally wet fisherman row within five feet of them...

Along time ago...fished the upper river from the bank one morning...took a nap, walked three miles back on the road and fished the same stretch from the bank again, right in my own tracks were that of a younger cougar, probably a juvenile. It sure seemed to get dark fast that day...

H20 Mother Nature sure has a way of bringing us poor feeble humans back to reality. We're still just a cog in the wheel. Observations like yours are common to us all.....nice to see someone recognize it.

Picture this... two boats drifting side by side towards evening almost to the takeout. We were joking back and forth as we passed a decent buck standing knee deep in the water, coughing blood with one ham chewed off (best guess). It looked as if it was cougar almost-kill or hit by a truck. We didn't talk much until the takeout after that. If we could have, we wanted to put it out of its misery.

speaking of falling objects...several years ago while fishing Anderson Bar, a lone banky ventured away from the crowds at Blue Creek and perched himself on the riverbank. He stood there for awhile fishing and tying up rigs. The whole time he was pelted by pebbles and small rocks that were falling from the high bank behind him. Everyone on the bar was chuckeling at him. A sled that was anchored in the hard-hat area had enough of the debris from the mass wasting landing in his boat and moved out. Not the bankie, he was determined to fish there until a small landslide cut loose high above him, knocking a boulder free, half as big as he was, that came crashing down, stopping short and landing not more than arms length away from where he stood....and talk about being paralysed with fear...the whole time he did not move an inch. He saw it coming as we all did. If it had hit him he would have been just a greasespot...glad it missed...wouldn't want to carry that memory around.

Many years ago a group of us (including Grass Hopper from this board) decided to hike from the middle Situk cabin up to nine mile bridge. This is all near Yakutat in SE Alaska. High brush and a stiff noisy breeze all the way. Halfway up we found the trail marker, a 4 foot long 4X4 formerly sunk in 18 inches of concrete. It lay fractured into two pieces along the trail with four claw gouges raking the length of it. A bear had recently taken it out, including the concrete base, with one swipe.

On the walk back we found a huge pile of bear poop steaming in one of Grass Hopper's footprints pressed into the mud only an hour earlier.

We are truly insignificant critters in nature.

Was fishing steelies in S.E. Alaska (1999) in a huge windstorm (gust up to 65 mph). The boat in front of us had a guy standing up in the bowand fly casting to a pod of fresh fish, as they drifted.

In a matter of seconds, a 70 foot plus cedar was uprooted, and fell just off the bow of their boat. It snapped his Winston Fly rod, right in his hands. Another 6 inches, and two guys would have been fish food.

FISHING FOR SUMMER RUNS 3-4 YEARS AGO AT BLUE CREEK BELOW THE POINT I HEAR SOMETHING GOING THROUGH THE BRUSH UP ON THE CLIFF BEHIND ME WITH AN OCCASSIONAL PEBBLE FALLING HERE AND THERE.THEN IT SOUNDS LIKE A SMALL SLIDE HAS CUT LOOSE. LOOK OVER MY SHOULDER AND SEE A DEER FLYING TROUGH THE AIR WHICH SPLATS ON THE ROCKS BREAKING ITS NECK LESS THAN THIRTY FEET FROM ME.SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME

Well, this isn't exactly on the river, but going to the river. In the 60's my dad was heading up 101 on the Oregon Coast to do some Steelhead fishing and an Elk jumped off a ten foot enbankment and landed on the passenger side of his Volkswagen bug. A farmer found him unconscious in the field on the other side of the road. The car was totaled but luckily all my dad received was a broken nose. Also the day before my dad had a buddy with him who would have surely been killed as the passenger side took the brunt of the impact.

To think how close I came to not existing.

Couple more...

Bank fishing on the upper river (shocker!...), heard really strange sounds coming from a log jam, walked up to investigate and found a mostly drowned cow pinned in the rubble, with only her face poking out of the water...

Blue Creek on a typical rainy December day, every three seconds some one would yell fish on!! Every thirty seconds someone would yell ROCKS!! Yelling COW!! really threw most people for a loop until they saw it come tumbling down the cliff ass-over-teakettle!

I was drifting down the upper Skagit last summer floating around a bend into a deep pool. Standing in the water sunning herself was what I beleive to be the girl from the perfection fishing line washing her bikini top in the river.

We watched a guy and gal go at it one day on the Rogue.. no not that, they actually were fighting, fist fisghting, and she got the better part of him.. kicked his @ss..

I also watched a guy launch his new 21' Jetcraft, pulled his truk up, ran back to the boat that his wife was in... must have forgot the plug.. it sank right there tide up to the dock.. ouch!

"Honey do you have everything?," "What's this for?"

Here is another Blue Creek Story -

Dec 21 (can't remember what year) we are on Anderson Bar on a ****ty rainy day, when one of the Army decides to climb the hill. He makes it pretty high up before giving up the quest. This cut a parabolic rift into the muck laying on the hillside. We didn't think much of it until the next day, when that entire patch cut loose. We were Knee deep in the river when it hit and it drew the water out from under our feet and threw back a wave twice that high. I believe that that climb is what led to the catastrophic slide on Super Bowl Sunday (The one that killed one and entirely blocked the Cowlitz for a couple of minutes)

I saw two guys from the Midwest crack off a handful of nooks in short order. When I turned around, the guy that was running the boat, had pieces of his body falling in to the river. He was also starting to retain water. Ouch.