Little Dale and the Big 'Bow - A Story From My Younger Days

When I was around 16 years old, just old enough to have a driver’s license and be able to take myself fishing, my friend Doug and I decided to go see if we could catch some trout at one of our favorite stretches of Crab Creek.  

Old Railroad Trestle Crossing Crab Creek

His parents insisted that we bring his little brother Dale with us.  I have an older brother named Dale, so Doug’s brother was referred to as ‘Little Dale’, who was about 10 or 11 at the time.  The stretch of the creek we were fishing was west of the town of Edwall, WA, at an old railroad trestle with an old road bridge that we never felt safe driving across but had no problem walking.  Under the two bridges was a stretch of water several hundred yards long that had a good population of 6 to 12” Rainbows, an occasional German Brown and a plethora of shiner minnows.  I am not sure how long we were there, or how many fish we caught, but I do remember that at a certain point Little Dale became frustrated because he had not caught a single fish.  We knew how to fix that.  We used to catch the shiner minnows to use as bait in our crawdad traps, so we knew how to catch them easily.  All you had to do to was to tie on a small black fly (even though we were using spinning rods), and go stand on the old road bridge, which was about 8 to 10 feet above the surface of the water.  If you let out just enough line for the fly to reach the water directly below and dance the fly off the surface, you could catch shiners to your heart’s content.  We suggested that Little Dale do that so he could catch a fish, which he did, and he began catching the shiners.  Soon the tears left his eyes and he was beginning to have fun.  I was fishing from the bank about 10 yards upstream from the bridge where Little Dale was standing.  I had been there for at least 15 minutes throwing a little spinner up and downstream in a section of the creek about 8 feet wide and 2 to 3 feet deep, all the while Little Dale was catching shiners.  At one point Little Dale lowered the fly to the surface and began dancing it around to attract the shiners, when out from underneath a clump of grass directly across the creek from me, a very large Rainbow emerged and began swimming downstream towards the bridge.  This fish had been under there the whole time I was there, and was well over 20 inches long, by far the largest fish I had ever seen in that creek.    I yelled up to Little Dale "keep dancing that fly there is a big one coming."  The big bow cruised down the creek directly under the fly, went passed it by about 3 feet and slowly circled back.  Little Dale was almost shaking with excitement, but the big bow once again passed under the fly on his way back upstream.  I told Little Dale to keep doing what he was doing.  The fish continued to cruise upstream this time about 4 feet past the fly.  Then, with a flurry of speed the big bow suddenly turned back downstream and attacked the dancing fly with a vengeance.   Little Dale had zero chance against this brute.  Standing 8 to 10 feet above the surface of the water, with 6 pound test line, a #20 fly, on an ultralight spinning rod and the emotions of a 10 year old that just hooked the biggest fish of his life… the fight lasted about 3 seconds before the line broke and the fish took off downstream at warp speed..... leaving Little Dale once again in a fit of tears.