SOMEONE ASKED ME recently when it was going to stop raining.
If I could predict the weather, do you think I’d waste my time as a wilderness gossip columnist?
No, predicting the weather is a highly technical, inexact science that uses the most modern satellite, radar and computer modeling to forecast the weather up to six hours in advance while only being wrong about half of the time.
Predicting the weather is a tough job.
What other profession would allow you to keep your job when you’re wrong half of the time — except for columnists or fishing guides?
Predicting the weather can be an important tool for a fishing guide.
Like the ability to smell money or levitate a half-ton of soggy humans over a gravel bar, you have to be able to predict the weather to be a fishing guide.
Inquiring minds want to know what the weather will be like on their fishing trips, even if it is months in the future.
This is not a problem for someone who has been in the business as long as I have.
I always predict rain in my long-range forecast.
It’s a safe bet around here, and that way people are never disappointed when I am wrong.
Fishing can be best when the river is dropping after a high water.
The height of the river is an effect of precipitation and freezing levels.
For example, this week’s combination of a half-foot of rain and 7,000-foot freezing levels pumped the Hoh River from 3,000 cubic feet per second of water to 29,000 cfs in a day.
Dry, cold weather can make the river drop back down almost as fast, and that’s when you want to be fishing.
This is the season we catch the native steelhead.
They are the biggest steelhead of the year.
How big are they?
Some of them are so huge they have tried to spawn with my boat.
Everyone wants to know when we can get back out on the river and catch one of these dinosaur trout.
Well, that depends on the weather.
I like to listen to the Canadians’ weather reports which, depending on your location, can often be heard on U.S. weather radios.
Lucky for me, I know how to speak Canadian, eh?
The first thing you need to know about speaking Canadian is that half of it is in French, which I don’t speak.
Even when the Canadian weather radio isn’t speaking French, it can be tough to figure out.
Canadians have funny names for things.
Wind waves and swell heights are given in knots, kilometers and meters.
Temperatures are in Celsius.
Rain accumulations are in centimeters.
Air pressure is given in something called a kilopascal, and Canadians have funny names for places like Cape Mudge.
(Where the heck is that?)
Listening to a Canadian weather report is like an adventure on another planet.
One of the announcers describes wind, wave and swell heights in a voice that sounds like she’s narrating a porno tape.
Out on the river, we call her “Miss Swell Height.”
I’ve seen fishing guides exhibit violent demonstrations of their emotional feelings for Miss Swell Height, once she starts talking in French.
It is entirely possible to listen to the Canadian weather report for hours and have no idea what the weather will be.
Often for a real-time weather report, we must rely on something called a local observation, so here it is:
The rain will stop.
We will fish again.
_________
Pat Neal is a North Olympic Peninsula fishing guide and humorist whose column appears every Wednesday.
Pat can be reached at 360-683-9867 or patnealwildlife@yahoo.com.
The “Pat Neal WildLife Show” is on radio KSQM 91.5 FM (www.scbradio.com) at 9 a.m. Saturdays, repeated at 6 p.m. Tuesdays.
