I am an incredibly happy guy. I just spent five days with my wife Eileen, exploring the Oregon Coast with only one stop planned. On that stop I met Kevin Brown who returned to me my favorite fly rod that I lost two years ago. I finished the week having my daughter come over for Father’s Day weekend and taking her fishing at her favorite lakes.

Although we like to have wide open itinerary when we hit the road, Eileen insisted that we schedule a time to meet Kevin Brown, who lives in Battleground. You see, Kevin is a special guy. He called me last fall asking if I knew anything about a fly rod made by Bill McGuire. Of course, I said. Bill was a dear friend and made three rods for me. One I had lost after a trip to the Deschutes River in Oregon two years ago. Well, Kevin said, he just happened to have that rod. It had Bill McGuire’s name on it—and mine. He had found the rod at the Goodwill Store in the Dalles, Oregon. After he did some research and learned what a legend Bill McGuire was, he knew I would be thrilled to have it returned to me. Kevin is a serious angler and there was no question about what to do with that rod. He was going to get it back to me. He had made a special case for the rod and had sewn a cover for it. All he wanted was the $50.00 he paid for it at Goodwill, and the promise that he and his Dad could come up and go fishing with me sometime.

Eileen and I spent some time visiting with Kevin, learning about his love of fishing for all kinds of fish all over the country, and how his Dad had instilled a love for the sport from a young age. There is a kinship among anglers. When we meet as strangers, after talking about the joy that fishing has given us over our lives, we part as friends. Others may have put that rod on eBay and probably could have got some serious cash for it. That thought never entered Kevin’s mind. Putting that rod back in my hands was all the reward he wanted. I am looking forward to meeting Kevin’s Dad and spending a day or two fishing with them. It will be like old friends getting together after a long absence. It isn’t much to take them fishing compared to the sentimental value of this rod. It’s great to have it back. This week’s photo is of Kevin with me and my Bill McGuire rod.

My daughter came over for Father’s Day weekend, and of course we went fishing. She loves going to Banks Lake, so we headed up there on Saturday. The weather turned sour. It was gray, drizzly and a stiff breeze was blowing when we launched. Whitney is my good luck charm when it comes to walleye fishing, but even her presence did not work. We tried trolling the shore along the Million Dollar Mile. We got some bites, but no hook ups. I ran up to the sand flats at the south end of Steamboat Rock and got one bite. We tried our luck in Devils Punchbowl and got nothing. We had a total of eight bites that took most of our nightcrawlers and called it quits. She loves fishing for smallmouth bass, so that is how we ended our day. We had a blast catching smallmouth on lizards along the east shore. When we got to the launch it was busy. Whitney asked if we could put out a line while we were waiting, so I put a crank bait out behind the boat. Before I had let all the line out, a smallmouth hit it and it was the biggest of the day!

On Father’s Day, I took my daughter Whitney to her second most favorite place to fish—Lake Chelan. We have had a blast catching kokanee on the lake, and it looked like the weather was going to be nice, so off we went. I left the downriggers at home, figuring the fish were going to be in the fairly shallow water near Lakeside Park. I put three ounce sinkers on two rods and two ounce sinkers out the back. I had a selection of the new Copper Series blades and orange squids on our rods and all were baited with white shoe peg corn, scented with Graybill’s Guide Formula Kokanee flavor. I looked and looked for schools of kokanee and didn’t see any, but we were catching fish. It wasn’t hot, but we were hooking and landing fish here and there, trolling a path along the buoys in about 40 feet of water. The boat chop got worse and worse as the jet skiers and wake board boats appeared. We ran up above the park and got into a nice bite in the afternoon. When we had enough of the boat chop we headed for the launch with 13 nice kokanee in the cooler.

The buzz on the street about what to expect for salmon fishing this summer is getting louder. As the usual July 1st opening day approaches I get more and more questions, and I thought I would share my best guess on what is going to unfold for this season. If the summer run fish show up as expected, which should be close to what we saw last year, we will have the same fisheries at about the same time as last year. That means we will be fishing off the mouth of the Entiat, at Chelan Falls and in the Brewster Pool. The season will open late, but we should be able to keep one hatchery Chinook. The real bright spot is the forecast for sockeye. They are already coming over Bonneville Dam in numbers that support the forecasts. When I looked at the dam counts last week, sockeye are coming at a rate that is almost four times what it was last year at this time, and above the ten year average. This not only means we will likely be fishing for sockeye on the Columbia River this year, very possibly Lake Wenatchee. Better get your supplies. Sockeye gear will go fast this year.

It would be hard to beat the wonderful times I had last week, but hey, summer has just begun!