During one of the chat sessions a while back, Spooled hollered at me and said that I needed to come down and fish with him.

Naturally, I took him up on his offer. After some emailing back and forth, we set a weekend adventure date for the 11th and 12th. It was going to be my wife and I, fishing with Spooled and Lance Deuth, expert local guide with Pacific Coast Adventures .

We showed up Friday evening and had a wonder dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Spooled at a local restaurant. Conversations were aplenty and we eagerly talked about the all the Springers that were gonna get bonked that next morning below Bonneville!

Up by 3:30, we met Lance Deuth around 4:30. On the Big River by 6:00. In all, there probably wasn't any more than a dozen boats in the good bouncin' slots. Not wasting any time, we joined the party and started to fish. Three of us were always bouncin' while we had one rod with a diver and K-15. We fished and fished and fished. Saw less then 6 fish caught the entire day, of those, most were jacks and 1-2 were keepers. Here's a shot of us bouncin' away first thing in the morning. Nice sunny day,but very cold and very windy.



After a while, Lance finally hooked a jack and let my wife fight, land, and release the fish. We moved around a bit and fished HARD the entire day. Had a few more "bites", but nothing that would stick. Lance worked his butt off for us. As guests of Pacific Coast Adventures Micaela and I can't thank Lance enough for his efforts on Saturday. The guy just kept on trying and trying. Well above and beyond the call of duty. I'd highly recommend Pacific Coast Adventures to any one! As it turned out a good number of fish (8,000) went over the dam that day. I've never seen so few fish caught for so many fish going over the dam. I still have no idea what "the bite" never came on.

That night, we had another fun dinner with Spooled and his wife and even got to try out the "Worlds Best Coca Cola".

The next morning found us batting cleanup on the The Leaurent River. Or, as Spooled calls it, The People's River. Fine, some of you probably know it as the Clackamas. Another fine, but slow day on the river.

After being blanked in the first Secret Hole of the day, we scoothed on down to the "One A Day" hole. Got some chews, but nothing would stick. During this time, I discovered that a little duckling was hanging upside down in some sticker bushes. Apparently, Mom and ducklings had jumped down a cliff to the river. One little guy got stuck and was peeping away.

Here's that softer side to Parker: Awwww, cuuuutte lidddle ducky:



Both Spooled and my wife firmly believed the Fish Gods were going to look kindly on Parker's efforts to free and release this little duck. Probably would have until I blurbed out "Be free little ducky, so I can have something to shoot at later next year!". Ooops. I think the Fish God and Duck God are good buddies.

As it turned out, my wife caught the only steelie of the day! Nice little native fish that was released without a photo.

Spooled and I got so frustrated, that we made my wife row! After this picture was taken, I heard the comment of "Call up Nick, 'cuz I'm rowing the Oxbow!!!!"



In all my wife and I had a great weekend with Spooled, his wife, and Lance. Wonderful and very hospitable folks!

You Da Man, Spooled!

Sounds like it was a fun trip and Spooled and friends are good people Glad you enjoyed your trip and your wife looks good on the sticks! It's bad enough that you are always wanting to row, now I have to let your wife row too? Just kidding, she can row anytime. [Bleeeeep!], pretty soon I'll be able to sit up front in my drift boat and have "The Parkers" row me all day. I like the sound of that!

I see The Kid's plan is starting to work. First, get parker in the boat and tell him how cool it is to row. Then get parker to pass this ridiculous idea on to his wife.

NOW, sit back and let the parkers squabble about who "gets" to row this time, while The Kid assumes position in the front seat where he can eat, drink, or just take a little nap while he waits for his rod to hammered.

Good work, Justin.

Hey Parker, I heard you were complaining about how tough it was to row the "Spooled Caddy Boat". Shoot, he won't even let me sit in the rowing chare. He keeps calling me his "RB"

Last time I heard about a lady rowing the boat went down. Wait....your lady has class Glad you had a good time. Sorry about Spooleds inability to get you into fish. He's like that sometimes.

Yeah, I made some comment about Spooled's Willie being a "barge".

As we found out later, just about any drift boat is a "barge" if one leaves the anchor partially in the water and tries to row!

Damn boat wasn't moving and tracking for crap with that anchor in the water!

Thanks for the fun weekend Parker and Micaela.

I loved it when Parker was calling the Willie a barge and I was taking offense to the comment. He was crying like a baby back there about how the boat was handling. Micaela was calling him Nancy which amused me. After he wore himself out rowing in some easy water, I offered to take the oars back. We just switched seats without anchoring. First thing I notice is the thumping of the anchor on the bottom . Well, I just pulled it the rest of the way up, and the boat handled just fine. :p Funny. Micaela didn't have any problem rowing like Parker did. Look how at ease she looks rowing "The Barge". Of course she knew to pull the anchor all they way up.

Thanks to Lance from Pacific Coast Adventures for all the hard work Saturday. He is a great guide to fish with.

Also thanks to Justin, Joe and Parker of Vision Hooks for the samples. I have seen good and bad comments on Vision Hooks on this board. I bought some before Parker came down from a local tackle shop (around $2.00 for 10 hooks), so I could make my own opinion of them. I didn't want to tie up all my leaders for the weekend with them, if I didn't like them. The first cast I used the hooks, I landed a chrome hen. True story. The fish stayed hooked up, so they worked fine for me. They are sharp and reasonably priced. The fish Mrs. Parker landed was also on a Vision Hook. There are many good brands of hooks out there, in my opinion Visions work just fine. I will buy more without hesitation.

Thanks again for the great time.