Fog on Lower David Powell

The fog is still with us here in Seattle.  This morning I decided to just get out and enjoy it and headed to the Snoqualmie River at daybreak to fish what was my favorite stleelhead run a few years ago when there were summer hatchery fish.   On the hope that a few wild fish are in the system now I decided to hit it but mainly I was tuning up my spey casting for a trip to the Wenatchee.

I arrived to a heron fishing the top of the run.  There were pink salmon carcasses littering the shoreline and gravel bars on the river plus a few on their last fin fighting the currents.  As I moved through the run casting, swinging and stepping down  I saw a few much larger tails and fins in the water, coho or kings still moving up river to spawn.   A raptor flew overhead.  A kingfisher was chattering and buzzed along the shoreline and a water ouzel was dipping into the water by some rocks.   I fished to the end of the run and carefully fished my favorite rock where I’ve had grabs from a dozen steelhead over the years.   I had one trout grab that woke me up but that was it for action. Steelhead fishing is always more about being out in the river than actually catching fish and is a very meditative way to start the day.

Since I had the foggy palette leftover from yesterday’s painting I just decided to go ahead and paint the river from this morning today.  I had to add in a bit of cad yellow and red to the palette to get the closer leaves.   Not quite as happy with this one as yesterday, I keep tweaking at it but am going to stop for now, maybe I’ll revisit it later in the week.

I can’t believe I’m a week into the 30-Day Challenge already, about one quarter of the way done.   It has been going by pretty quickly and so far I haven’t gotten stuck trying to figure out what to do.