• Hand-to-pincer — Forget the crab pots.
With next week sporting a couple of extreme low tides, the time of the bare-handed crabber is almost upon us.
If the sunny reports from the first three weeks of the summer crab season mean anything, you should find both Pillar Point and Dungeness Bay crawling with these ornery critters. Reach out and touch a few of them.
• Grand Lake — Bug hatches should be in full effect at this premier upper elevation lake inside Olympic National Park.
You must hike 3.7 miles to get there (through lush alpine meadows, I might add) from the end of Obstruction Point Road.
Yet the reward is some of the best sight fishing one could hope for, since the lake is full of hungry brook trout almost oblivious to their surroundings.
• Wildflower time — If fishing isn’t your thing, you can always bypass Obstruction Point Road and go straight to Hurricane Ridge.
Mid-July is prime season for wildflowers at Olympic National Park’s premiere vista.
And you don’t have to hike that far (maybe 50 steps) to look at them.
• Oak Bay geoducks — Extreme low tides mean one thing at Oak Bay State Park — a shot at some geoducks.
This Jefferson County beach, on the south end of Indian Island, has these hefty shellfish in the wide tidal flat between the boat ramp and the jetty.
Geoducks are highly coveted treats, but scoring one is no easy task.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: be prepared to go home disappointed.
• LaPush silvers — This might be the easy salmon score anglers will have all year (outside the pinks, of course).
The place is supposedly swarming with silvers.
All you have to do is head out to the Rock Pile and drop a line.
The fish will do the rest.
