Thicker than Ticks on a Dog by Cameron Scott

Cameron Scott

Thicker than ticks on a dog is an expression I first heard at the local post office while talking with someone about smallmouth on the Snake River.

Late afternoon and ready to get home, I immediately responded with a whistle, but as my new friend continued talking long after I’d locked up my post office box, I began to lose interest. 

It isn’t that I don’t like talking about fishing, or running into folks at the post office. And it wasn’t that I didn’t like catching smallmouth: smallies were often the hardest species to catch when, as a kid, I would visit my family in Minnesota. They fought harder, caught the sun better, and were coveted more than the bullheads, sunfish, largemouth, pike, perch, and even the occasional walleye we brought to the boat. While the behaviors and habits of fish can differ from place to place, I’ve had a hard time trusting the many fly fishing articles about “amazing” and “lights-out” smallmouth fishing in eastern Oregon. And while fishing the ocean isn’t fishing a lake isn’t fishing a river, from all my experiences fishing my summers away in the Midwest, smallmouth didn’t seem like a particularly easy fish to catch.

Besides, it was the fall, and fall means the start of steelhead season, and steelhead means everything.

As I wiggled my way out of the corner, we said our goodbyes and I hopped back in my truck to continue running my Wednesday afternoon errands. Barely ten seconds out from the post office my cell phone suddenly rang with an unidentified number.

“Hello” I answered. “Hey, is this Cam?” the person on the other end of the line asked in a slightly bro-bra river rat voice.

“Yep.”

“I’m calling because I heard there was a pretty good chance you might be down at Cow Creek steelhead fishing this weekend.”

“Yep. I’ll be there starting tomorrow night.”

“Well, I’m running a kayak trip on the Snake with a buddy and was hoping you could pick us up at Dug Bar on Sunday. I’ve tried Winding Waters and a few other friends, but none of them are available to run a shuttle. I could kick some cash your direction if you could do it. I’m kind of out of options at this point.”

Though I hadn’t made the extra hour and a half drive to Dug Bar yet, I was a little strapped for cash and the thought of doing a good deed while paying for my long weekend of steelhead fishing sounded pretty good. “Sure, I think I could do that, just let me know what time you need me to meet you.”

“Alright, awesome man. This will work out great. See you on Sunday.”

“See you Sunday.”

. . .

When I wake up Sunday morning to another bright, hot, sunny fall day after three evenings and two full days of camping and steelhead fishing on a tributary to the Snake, I’m ready to head home. 

It isn’t that the ice in my cooler melted overnight, leaving the hatchery steelhead I caught and filleted the previous evening sloshing around in a somewhat cool liquid broth, soon to turn lukewarm, soon to turn. It isn’t that I’ve been sweating and pounding around in my waders for three days without a shower. It isn’t even that the road to Dug Bar is a steep-sided, pot-holed, wash-boarded, rocky mess. It’s that I’m exhausted.

Cramming down my last dry bagel, I slip into my waders, crusty pant legs pushing up against my calves. Even though it’s eight in the morning, I’ve been up since first light, irritated at the agreement I’d made to drive to Dug Bar, and now, with a hot sun promising to only get hotter, I have four hours to burn before running the shuttle.

It’s only fishing, I tell myself, as I tromp through the Russian olives, blackberries and red osier that line the river’s bank. After twenty minutes, the run feels like a lost cause. If there ever was a steelhead, it is long gone. Even the trout and whitefish are uninterested in my drifts.

Reeling up, I stumble back through the rocks, along a footpath. Emerging from the underbrush onto the road, a white Ford Ranger with someone sitting in an easy chair in the open bed of the pickup slows down, brake pads squeaking. “Nice,” I shout up to him. “How’s the steelhead fishing,” he shouts back. “Not as good as your ride,” I yell as they bounce out of view around a bend.

With three hours left, I walk slowly back to the truck, wet boot prints marking each footfall. Trying to make the most of not wanting to fish, I sit down in the shade to read, then give up. Dig through my food box, empty of everything except for coffee, honey, peanut butter, and a box of uncooked mac n’ cheese. Sort through a fly box. Sort through another fly box. Might as well fish, I mutter, slamming the tailgate and topper, opening the front door and starting up the truck.

While the prospect of fishing where I’d already fished over the last few days wasn’t great, it beat the alternatives, which I was still having a hard time coming up with. Death? Sure. Taxes? Sure. Work? Probably.

Maybe I’ll just drive around a bit and fish when the moment strikes. Glancing down at the gas gage to make sure I have enough fuel for the rest of the day, I notice something strange: the battery is a few ticks down from full. That’s weird, I think to myself. It must have drained a bit over night. Making a split decision, I flip a U-turn and begin driving toward Dug Bar to re-charge the battery.

Windows down, my thoughts drift back up the long bumpy canyon. I begin day dreaming about mowing my lawn. Whacking some weeds. Maybe even fixing the broken sliding door. The more I think about all the things I have to do, the less I actually want to do them. Suddenly I remember being cornered in the post office, and Thicker than ticks on a dog seems like the best conversation I’ve had all week. Maybe I can catch a smallmouth or two, I think, as I continue driving deeper into the canyon.

. . .

The USDA Forest Service website describes Dug Bar as a “multi-use year round recreation facility” and “the only drivable facility which accesses the northern end of the Snake River on the Oregon side in Hells Canyon.”

What it turns out to be is an hour and a half shake-down, for which I’m grateful to have high clearance and off-road truck tires. Similar to the drive to Cow Creek, but with a literal end of the road, middle of nowhere feel, Dug Bar is all but empty, minus a rattlesnake that greets me before slinking off into some boulders and hackberry bushes down by the river’s edge.

Removing my fly rod from beneath the windshield wiper, I tie on a streamer, leave the truck running to recharge the still uncharged battery, and wander down the boat ramp to take a look at the huge expanse of the Snake River stretched out before me. While I don’t mind fishing big water, especially because there tend to be less people fishing it, I’ve only ever steelhead fished the Snake during the winter.

What the heck, I think to myself and chuck out a short cast and begin twitching the streamer. Twitch. Twitch. Wham! An eight inch smallmouth sprints over the concrete edge of the ramp and demolishes the streamer. Lipping it in the water, I remove the hook and watch its tail push back and forth.

A turkey vulture passes by overhead. A warm dry wind rustles my shirt. I begin to smile. The pull of line from the drag, the bend of rod glinting in the sun, splitting a cluster of branches on my back cast, I begin to plug back into planet fish. Wham! Another smallmouth darts out from behind a boulder, but I miss the hookset.

It turns out sometimes opportunities abound or are boundless, and this is one of those times. My mood lightens as I begin boulder hopping my way into fish after fish. They come fast and easy to the streamer, and though none top ten inches, I’ve almost caught more smallmouth in an hour than I have my entire life.

Suddenly I hear a shout. Looking upstream and expecting to see the kayakers I’m picking up, instead I see a spin fisherman hauling a big smallmouth out of a giant eddy while standing ten feet above the edge of the river on a basalt cliff. Sure enough, after watching for a while, I see two more people spin fishing and then spot the white Ford Ranger that passed by me earlier in the morning, parked off to the side of them, half hidden by a small hill.

I reel up and wander up to say hi.

Nearing the three of them, I wave, the one who was riding in the easy chair waves back. “Great day to be out fishing,” I offer. “Yep,” he replies. A cooler sits beside him, either full of beer or fish or both. Getting the feeling I’m intruding, I change the subject. “I’m a bit worried about the battery in my truck. Are you guys planning on sticking around for a while?”

“For another hour or two,” he says.

Just then I spot the kayakers swinging into view. “Great,” I say, offer a few other pleasantries, then head back to the boat ramp to meet the kayakers.

. . .

“Hey,” Matt shouts when he gets within earshot, followed by a belch. “Howdy,” I shout back. Because the river is moving slow near the ramp it takes a while for them to pull in, the silence begins to stretch, so I run back up to the truck to pull off my waders and put my fly rod away. When I get back I notice Matt and his buddy are happily drunk. As they pull off and out of their kayaks, empty beer cans pinging around, he offers me a warmish full. “Thanks,” I say, though I know I’ll need to stay awake the four and a half hour ride out to Terminal Gravity where I’m dropping them off to meet another friend of theirs who will then drive them back to La Grande. “Yeah,” he says, “we got lucky and came across a rafting group with a lot of extra beer.” 

“How was the river,” I ask. I immediately like Matt, and although his buddy is quieter, the two of them are friendly and gregarious as we load their gear into the back of my truck, deflating one kayak, and tying the other hard shell kayak to the roof rack. “How’s the fishing?” he asks back.

When everything is loaded, and Matt’s buddy somehow crams his way into the bucket seat behind us, my heart skips a beat. The battery is almost dead.

“What’s the matter,” Matt asks.

“I’m not sure. Battery has been acting up all day,” I say. But I am sure. Suddenly the word alternator pops into my mind. “Hopefully we’ll get out of here, but I’ve got a feeling the alternator is dying.”

“Well, thanks for getting us,” Matt replies unconcerned.

Two miles out from Dug Bar, on a short section of flat road between steep climbs out of the canyon, the truck dies. We push start, kick, and cajole the truck another thirty feet before it dies again on a corner.

My heart begins racing. My blood pressure goes up. I suddenly descend again into my three-days-sweating-in-my-waders attitude. I pop open the hood again, fiddling, tinkering. Smack the battery with my wrench once or twice praying for a miracle. Nothing.

While I’m rummaging around and reading the owner’s manual, Matt lights up a joint and passes it back and forth with his buddy then cracks open another beer. I give up and sit on the tailgate watching the bunchgrass slope drop off all around us.

This late into the fall at Dug Bar our options are limited, not that they would be much better in the middle of the summer. One road in, one road out. Empty landing strip two miles back. Maybe we could catch a ride with a rafting trip, but that would put us even farther from our eventual goal of getting out of here.

“Well, we can walk,” I say, but with several hours of distance to the nearest ranch, and the sun riding low on the horizon, I’m the most unmotivated of the three of us. Sitting there, I think of the three guys back down on the Snake, fishing. Sure enough their headlights pop into view as they, too, begin the slow climb home.

“Can you give us a ride to Imnaha?” we ask as they pull alongside my dead truck. They roll up the window and confer amongst themselves. “Well,” the driver says, rolling the window back down again, “You are going to have to be ok with riding in the back. And you gotta be ok with us lighting up and drinking the whole way out.” It is a stupid decision. A dumb decision. Stories about people who have driven off the road or rolled down the steep sided canyons around here are always in the back of my mind. 

“Right on,” Matt immediately chimes in.

Letting go completely, I climb into the back of the Ranger. With sharp corners, rocks, pot holes, and long steep drops at every turn, the sun sinks below the horizon, then night comes on. Stars plaster the sky above the canyon’s rim. Every once in a while the truck cab lights up from the warm glow of a lighter.  I’ve had the foresight to pack up my steelhead rods and bring the steelhead fillet with me instead of leaving it in the cooler, but not to put on a heavier coat. Seventy degrees quickly drops to sixty then fifty as our breath begins to form in front of our faces. I try not to pay attention to how close the tires come to the edge of the road. It is the longest three hour drive of my life.

. . .

Rolling into Imnaha, the Ranger drops us off at the tavern so we can call on the land line and get a hold of Matt’s friends to come pick us up. In a few minutes I’ll be eating piping hot chicken fingers and fries, then later trying to keep from puking them up while I’m soberly hunkered in the middle of the backseat on a second hair-raising, too fast, curvy, drunken, and stony ride up to Joseph. I’ll end up falling asleep on a couch at midnight, still forty minutes from home. And tomorrow I’ll have to return all the way back down to my truck at Dug Bar with two truck batteries and the help from a good Samaritan who will drive me there and follow me back as the sun once again rises and sets.

But for the moment, cold, grateful, and still alive, I offer my steelhead to the guys in the Ranger for driving us to Imnaha. “Sure,” they say, and when they open up the cooler I’d seen next to them on the river bank, they find just enough space to fit the steelhead on top of a huge haul of one to four pound smallmouth. An explicative rolls out of my mouth. Then another. “Right?” The driver chuckles, “Those smallmouth are thicker than ticks on a dog down there.”