Discover Walla Walla

Beautiful, at half the size.

I’ll be honest. As a trout fisher, it was an adjustment leaving Alaska.  But the Walla Walla Valley has many great things going for its fly fishing: beautiful and accessible water, a long season, and no grizzly bears wanting to take your fish. On the other hand, you don’t normally find a trout, twenty-five inches long and shaped like a football in the Touchet (did I say, Alaska is a fly fisher’s paradise?).

During my last, local fishing excursion my fishing partner and I only caught a few fish and the best trout was less than fourteen inches long; but I remember thinking as I released it ‘Wow! What a beautiful trout.’

I once read something to the effect that when you start fly fishing you just want to catch a fish, any fish. As you progress, you want to catch a lot of fish and then you want to catch a big fish. Finally you want to catch a lot of big fish.  Now I think there is another stage having to do with appreciating fish on an esthetic level.  I also think that Walla Walla has helped me achieve it.

In Alaska, I let myself get caught up in a “numbers and size” game. I competed with friends to see who could catch the most and/or the largest fish. I’m meeting several of these friends in Alaska this summer for one of our favorite trout trips. We’ll see if I can convince them that there is beauty in all trout, not just the big guys we like to take photos with. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t but it should be fun campfire conversation.

In any case, I’m also going to spend some quality time on our local waters this summer: the Walla Walla, the Touchet and the Tucannon Rivers, and Mill Creek. I know that I am going to enjoy every, beautiful fish that I catch.

Tight lines!