I’m in the Portland today and I heard that they got some brown trout in Trout Lake Washington.  So I’m heading east on Interstate 84 and across the Hood River north on 141 to see if the rumors are true.

I got the GPS coordinates from another fisherman but he said it was worth the drive if I was ever in Portland. Apparently not too many people know about the area since you have to hike about 2 miles on a road that is treacherous for 4×4’s.

But he said Trout Lake Washington was stocked by Conboy Hatchery so there should be plenty of fish to catch.

After fishing for several hours, you eyes and mind tend to play tricks on you.  This is especially true when you’re out in “Black Bear” country.  Now I know what I a saw wasn’t a bear, it was something bigger, menacing, hungry and I’m sure it was Bigfoot.

Of course personal safety is always a concern when a bear comes after you, it’s the trout or you that the bear wants to eat and I prefer to hand over my catch of the day.  But this wasn’t a bear.

I hardly tell this tale, because they all say it was a bear and not Bigfoot.  But I know what I saw and those fellers Whitton and Dyer found Bigfoot’s dead body.

Now I’m not going to tell exactly you where I saw Bigfoot because it’s going to spoil a perfectly good secret that I was never planning to expose.  But whenever I’m in Atlanta, I try to make a side trip to Blue Ridge in the Northern part of GA.  You just gotta find the creek.

With all the fishing I do, my secret fishing holes sometimes gets lost and buried in the back of my mind. Of course I’ve kept maps and records so when I return I can get down to what’s important: catching fish. But for the past 5 years or so, I’ve been using the Garmin eTrex to log waypoints and GPS coordinates so that I can actually go back to the same spot within a few meters or so.

One nice thing about my Garmin is that fact that the GPS receiver is waterproof and believe me I’ve tested this fact on accident when I slipped on a slimy rock.  Both the reciever and me got drenched but the eTrax managed out better since I banged up my knee pretty bad.

Even though the hike back to the car was painful, the Garmin kept me on the right track.  That day I was really glad I had GPS and set a waypoint at my car since I could’t see where the car through the thick brush but the eTrax said I was only 100 meters away.

Alas, I found my car and headed back to the motel for some badly needed ice on the knee. The next day I used the eTrex to go to the exact spot to catch some more rainbows.  But that is another story…