Oh, Another fish story! I was out this afternoon enjoying the calm weather and I had my fly rod with me, but there wasn't much going on. Just before sunset I decided to head back to Steilacoom from the east end of Fox Island. It's about a two mile crossing. I saw a big tractor tug coming up from the south and behind him about a mile was a big freighter. We don't get too many large ships south of the Narrows Bridge, but there are a few that go to the port of Olympia. I thought that I would cruise across between the two boats. When I hit the wake of the tug, the freighter was still about a mile south of me, but now I could see four patrol boats, those red inflatables with the hard bottoms, two huge outboards and a 50 caliber mounted on the bow, escorting the ship on all four of it's corners. They had there blue lights flashing so I figured it had to be a military ship. I knew that one had just off loaded the equipment for a stryker brigade that had recently returned to Fort Lewis from Iraq. I was about 45 degrees off of the bow of the ship when I saw something that I have never seen before. In 250 of water, a school of large salmon was feeding on the surface. They were showing all of their backs as they came out of the water not 50 feet from the boat. These were 10 to 15 pound fish. I couldn't believe it :shock: . I had broken down my rod at Fox Island, so I stopped the boat and went forward and grabbed my rod. I was fumbling getting it together while these salmon were still on the surface. I finally got the rod together and was just about to make a cast when I heard the siren. Oh crap. I looked back and here was one of the gun boats closing in on my stern, a blue light special! I knew my best move was not to move, so I waited while they closed in. They stopped and the man at the gun on the bow, dressed in full combat gear, gulp, called out to me that I was to "move towards shore until the ship passed." I said (like I had a choice) "sure thing," but then I added as I continued to hold my fly rod like some kind of lame excuse, " you see all of those salmon?" He turned out to be quite chatty and said "we saw porpoises just south of here" The blue light was still flashing and I knew that I had no chance of even one cast to a pod of fish the likes of which I will probably never see again. I moved on as the USNS Britten passed 1/2 mile to starboard with three corners guarded, and one patol boat straying a bit towards Chambers Bay.
