Tales from The River
March 11, 2002
If you spend enough time on the river, you’re going to see some strange things out there. Oh yes, I know of what I speak — you name it and I’ve run across it. It seems that rivers and their banks are magnets for interesting characters, bizarre situations and, sometimes, a person or event that inspires a new name for a particular part of the river. Now, here are some of the stories behind the names…
Chole’s Hole
Recently, I had a couple dudes aboard the boat on a steelheading mission — Dave Kerr and Dave Haragan. Now, those two alone are capable of doing something worthy of re-naming a portion of the river, but they were only indirectly involved this day.
As I motored back up the river for another pass at a sweet steelie run, I noticed a white plastic garbage bag in the water a few feet off the bank. I swung the boat in close and had Haragan pull it in — figuring we’d do a little litter patrol while we were on the water. It wasn’t just a plain ‘ol garbage sack, however…it contained a human head! Naw, just kidding…anyway…inside the bag were a couple large stones and a very soggy package, with some writing on it, which Haragan read aloud: “To Chloe, we love you!”
Like three wayward alley cats, curiosity got the better of us and Haragan opened the package. Inside he found a necklace and a couple of hand-knitted scarves. Wrapped inside one of scarves was something solid.
“Uh-oh…this feels organic,” Haragan said. I foolishly gave the unidentified item a squeeze when he offered me it and agreed. It felt like a hand. We all held our breaths as he unwrapped the object and we squealed like school girls when we saw that it was a dead rat in a Zip-Loc bag. Simultaneously, Dave dropped the rat, the rat hit the water and I jumped about 4 feet in the air, waders on and all.
Once the three of us caught our collective breath and realized that a little ‘ol dead rat wasn’t going to hurt anybody, we started wondering about what kind of sick bastard would send poor Chloe a rat disguised as a present. And why would anybody “send” a package via the river? Did Chloe live downstream? Why the rocks in the bag? The sender was obviously a sick pup.
Then, Haragan…er…”Ratboy” re-read the package and one little word made a big difference…it actually said “Chloe, we love you!” The absence of the word “to” made everything make much more sense. Chloe was actually the rat, not the recipient and we realized that we had just interfered with her burial at sea. Oops! Oh well, we just stripped Chloe of her earthly restraints and allowed her to go free into the rat afterlife…or is that rafterlife??.
So, Steelhead Flats will forever be “Chloe’s Hole” to me…or perhaps “Rat Boy’s Run.” It also received another name just a day later: “The Smoked Widgeon Hole,” but that’s another story…
Master Baiter’s Rapids
I once took a nice gentleman out salmon fishing who, when the fishing got a little slow, starting telling me about growing up in the little Delta town of Isleton. As he gave me the loooooooooong version of his life story, he mentioned something about meeting his wife in a bait shop.
Whoa! Back up there, buddy…you met your wife where?
Yep, I heard him right — a tackle shop in Isleton was the magic spot where cupid (dressed in Mossy Oak cammo, perhaps?) had let his arrow fly. The name of the bait shop? I kid you not: The Master Baiter!
Trophy Tale Hole
Not far below the Arden Bar Rapids on the American (and that is, actually, the real name of the rapids), there’s choppy flat that often holds steelhead. It didn’t really have a name until recently, when a dead 4-point buck showed up on a gravel bar there. I’m not sure what caused the deer to keel over — it looked pretty healthy (other than the fact, that is was, of course, dead!), and there were no wounds that would suggest foul play. Anyway, it was left undisturbed for a couple days and then I noticed somebody sawed the buck’s antlers off. Now that’s pretty low. Somewhere that nice 4-point rack is on somebody’s wall and I can already hear the yarns…
“Yep, it was storming hard the day I got this big fella. Chased him so many miles that my shoes wore right off my feet and had to go barefoot in the snow. Finally I got close enough to take a shot — it was a tough one…across a ravine, through a dense stand of timber and over a hill…but I got him right b’tween the eyes. Took three days to pack ‘em out and almost lost an arm fightin’ of the bears…”
Suicide Bend
The spot on the river known as Suicide Bend has had that name as long as I’ve been around. The name came from the fact that kids like to jump off the 20-foot cliff on the south side of the river. The drop isn’t the problem — it’s the very deep and rough water that the kids land in that gets them into trouble. These same boiling currents of Suicide Bend also harbor large numbers of salmon in the fall, and they, occasionally go on such a good bite there that you’re sure the fish too are hell-bent on self-destruction. When the suicidal salmon bite is on, there’s no better place to be.
Because the kings often go on the rampage at this spot, I fish it regularly and know it intimately. That is why I was so surprised to see a white rock right in the meat of the hole the first time I floated the river this year — on New Year’s Day. In fact, I rowed back up to the top of the pool at Suicide Bend to get another look. I stood up on the bow to get a higher vantage point as we drifted back over the rock, which was about 3-4 feet below the surface. In the greenish water, I realized that the rock was actually an aluminum truck rim and as I stared more closely, I could barely make out that an entire truck was attached to the rim. It looked like a brand new Toyota Tundra or perhaps a Ford F150. The vehicle was painted a dark color, so it blended in well with the river bottom and almost appeared ghostly down there on its side.
I immediately started thinking about the truck’s inhabitants. Hopefully, it was just a stolen tuck that somebody joyrided off the cliff and into the drink. But, maybe somebody was drunk or depressed or both on New Year’s Eve and intentionally stayed at the wheel when the truck went over the edge. That was a bad thought and for that reason, I knew I didn’t want to be around when they pulled it out of the water! I have not yet heard how the truck got there but I hope it’s been pulled out of the water.
It’s a pretty creepy sight to see something like that on the bottom of the river and not know how it got there. I do know that if it’s still there this fall, however, I’ll be bouncing my roe right off the tailgate — that’s where the suicidal salmon will be.
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