Jed Whalen Stewart's Senior Project: Let's Catch Some Fish

I'm supposed to write a self reflection about my progress towards the goals of my project, and I'll get to that, but first I think I ought to fill you in on what we have done this week. This week we planned a trip to Braden's family's fishing cabin at Camp Sherman on the Metolious River. Kellen and I shopped for all of our meals which (which were nothing short of spectacular) and just like that we set off early Wednesday morning, arriving around 12. We fished during the afternoon, after dinner, and again in the morning on Thursday. The Metolious was very different from any river that we had fished before in the project; an abundance of food, very large and smart fish, and jarringly clear and cold water. We tried lots of different techniques and took advice from the local fly shop, but unfortunately came up empty handed. Then Saturday afternoon, we had what I might characterize as the coolest experience of our project so far. We got the opportunity to sit down with Dr Je...

I honestly don't know how I would classify the story that I am about to tell you; probably funny for everyone other then me, and actually it was funny most of the time, just slightly tramautizing in the moment. On Thursday, Kellen, Braden, and I set off to fish Milo Mcgyver Park on the lower Clackamas for a second time throughout the project. We decided to fish a different spot then we had fished earlier in the project in search of bigger fish. We fished this one riffle for about half an hour and were having all sorts of luck catching very small fish; pretty much every cast if you would let the dry fly sink a few inches below the surface, you would hook into a 3-6 inch rainbow trout. However, across the river and in a deeper pool, we saw what we were sure were some larger fish surfacing. I've built up a bit of a reputation throughout this project as being the riskiest person when it comes to precarious wading situations so it wasn't much of surprise that I walked across t...