EASY IN THE ISLANDS

Napalm in the Morning

Even though Rivers Inlet has earned a legitimate reputation as the haunt of distinctly large salmon-coho, particularly, tend to be bigger here than elsewhere because they feed so prodigiously in these headland waters - Legacy has purposefully chosen to downplay, if not ignore, the trophy-fishing mentality. Not that landing an exceptional fish doesn't warrant celebration; it's just that hawg hunting, as a primary focus, really isn't where it's at. Instead, Legacy prefers to highlight the totality of the island/fjord fishing experience.

The "totality of the experience," that's what I'm thinking as we motor through island-studded narrows, inlets and estuarine bays, and into the relatively broad avenue of Darby Channel. After bearing west several miles, we sidle into the curve of a hook-shaped isthmus, which lies between the seemingly endless bulge of the blue Pacific on one side and a jumble of islands, protruding like broken shards of pottery, on the other side. We ease in so close to land that the kettledrum thump of waves pounding into depressions in the rocks reverberate through the boat's hull. Gulls and pelagic birds whirl and squawk in anticipation. Legions of jelly fish of every size, color and nightmare shape ooze by in the brine, some pulsing and undulating in the current like mutant mucous membranes or huge, unhinged, amorphous lungs.

Roily shrouds of fog and cloud hung in the treetops like tufts of cotton candy. Because of its proximity to open ocean, this is one of the areas where humpbacks approach so close you're apt to be con-fronted with the great beast's breath. It's hard to describe. Think compost-drenched, methane and Limburger, rotten-scum, maggot-gagging hyper-halitosis. Now think whale-sized compost-drenched, methane and Limburger, rotten-scum, maggot-gagging hyper-halitosis. And you begin to get the picture.

Speaking of monumental odors, Heath bent over and pried open the lid to the herring cooler, the same cooler (and contents thereof) that had resided at the back of the boat for the last three days. God's truth, I'm not making this up. Heath stood ramrod straight, deeply inhaled and then gleefully observed, "Don't you just love the smell of herring in the morning?"

Buoyed by irredeemably pungent jack-tar humor, Heath just couldn't pass up the opportunity to pay homage to the immortal words of Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now 1979): "You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Or moldering herring...

Although the boat-dock staff instructs clients to follow an almost clinically detailed procedure for threading plug-cut herring onto mooching rigs, Heath shrugged it off as another "ritual" of the sport. He maintains that if you're fishing in the right place, at the right time, at the right speed (achingly slow for kings, much quicker for coho) and at the right depth, you're going to hook salmon on herring, any herring (fresh, ripe, or v-e-r-y ripe) whether it's executing a perfect barrel-roll or merely flopping around like a dishrag. "Forget all that stuff about getting the right roll," says Heath." If you just get that herring-any crippled looking herring will do-in front of fish, they'll take it. It's an easy meal and salmon are opportunists."

Maybe Heath is right. On the other hand, maybe the frequency in which salmon are hooked at Rivers Inlet is more a testament to the place than to the methodology. Perhaps anglers at Legacy Lodge have been spoiled, not only by the embracing beauty of the place, but by the sheer quantities of rapacious salmon.

All I know is that the chafe of salt water, not to mention the abundant caloric content of the sea-payloads-of-prey and forage-on-the-fin-produces fish of incendiary temperament. Ocean-hooked coho light up like Roman candles.