Fishing Trip Nearly Turns To Tragedy

A massive, ominous dark cloud, mostly black but tinged with green, boiled up out of the south.

The swirling cloud was headed straight for us. I pulled my pontoon boat close to the shore, pulled the hood over my rain jacket, leaned over the front part of the boat so wind wouldn’t lift up the pontoons and throw me back, grabbed a big rock, hunkered down and turned my head away from the fast-moving cloud.

The wind picked up and tore at my jacket. Then rain and hail came down. The big hail pellets pounded my back. Visibility dropped to zero. All I could see was a wall of rain and hail.

My friend, Al Stier, and I had arrived at the Columbia Basin lake about 10 that morning. We had learned some fly fishers had been catching wild, high-jumping 18-inch rainbows on flies in the lower end of the lake.

In his haste to pack his pontoon boat and equipment, however, Stier forgot the pontoons. A pontoon boat without pontoons, as everybody knows, will sink.

Nothing left for Stier to do but hike to the end of the lake and fish from shore.

Nothing unusual about leaving something essential at home. At one time or another, we all forget to load an essential piece of equipment.

I rigged up my pontoon boat, assembled my favorite rod, a 9-foot, 4-weight Loomis, attached a reel loaded with a floating line and plenty of backing, tied on a No. 16 Black Swunnundaze chironomid and started rowing the half mile to the end of the lake.

Periodically, I saw Stier hiking over sharp rocks, around poison ivy and brushing up against sagebrush from which ticks were waiting for blood. I knew he was aware he was walking through prime rattlesnake country. What he didn’t realize when he left was the neoprene booties he was wearing would make his feet feel like chopped liver. But he didn’t have a choice. He felt every rock.

There had been nothing to indicate we would be hit with a powerful storm that could have been a tornado.

Some cumulous clouds moved slowly under a pale blue sky. Not even a breeze riffled the water. Anglers in three boats trolled slowly; the wakes behind the boats barely disturbed the mirror-like water.

I stopped momentarily at two or three places to cast my tiny midge pupa pattern. When he could get down to the water from the steep, basaltic rocks, Stier also made a few casts. But we didn’t hesitate long. We wanted to get down to 18-inchers that would run into our backing.

When I arrived at the lower end, I heard water rushing out of the lake. Considering the fact the run-off was over in the Basin, I was surprised at the volume of water moving through the lake and down to the next lake in the chain.

Because the lake was still unruffled by even a breeze, I didn’t drop my anchor. I cast the midge pattern and watched the indicator for any sign a fish had taken the fly. Two or three casts later I moved closer to shore after seeing a couple of rises.

Suddenly, we became aware of the massive black cloud south of the lake. I rowed to shore to put on my rain jacket. The fast-moving storm hit us minutes later. I bent down and hung to a rock. Stier also found a little protection.

As the rain and hail pounded me and the 65- to 70-mph wind tried to dislodge me, I started to worry about getting roasted by a lightning bolt or killed by golf ball-sized hail stones.

My graphite rod was tucked into a slot next to me. I knew that graphite attracts lightning. In fact, anglers who are fishing with graphite rods quickly get off lakes and streams when lightning strikes.

If the hail pellets got larger, I knew, I might be killed or seriously injured. They already were a half inch in diameter and getting bigger.

The wind made one more effort to blow me and my pontoon boat out into the lake. I lost my grip on the rock, but grabbed a thick stem of a bush. My boat spun around. The tip of my rod somehow got into the bush and broke.

The 20 minutes seemed like an hour. Then the storm was headed east. Stier and I gave up. I rowed back to the public access and he stumbled over the rocks.

As I rounded a cliff and approached the access area, two men and a boy, who were finishing bailing out their boat, looked at me in surprise.

“We were just getting ready to go out and try to find your body,” one of the men said. “We saw you just as the storm hit and then we couldn’t see you anymore. We thought you had drowned.”

Stier and I packed up and left the lake. A half-dozen waterfalls, created by the heavy rain, were plunging into the lake.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-Review