It had been several years since I last fished Purdy.

Every time I intended to go I was either cut off by traffic coming over the Purdy Bridge or there were already too many cars (and fly fishers).

But today I made the decision – I would hit the beach there.

Sunday mornings are typically quiet with little traffic and I was able to get in and park right above the beach access point.  I knew we had a flood tide, which typically isn’t best for this location – the ebb fishes well, which is one reason the beach has been so popular. The ebb current brings out all the food sources to hungry sea runs north of the bridge. I’ve had good luck on the ebb in past years and was able to catch a fair number.

I got to the beach about one hour after the low tide and there was little tidal current. But the wind was blowing a good 7 to 12 knots – the wind with the mid 50s temperature meant I pulled the hood up to protect my ears.

One thing about a flooding current and tide. You need to pay attention to how deep you wade.  The rule of thumb is never wade in Puget Sound deeper than your knees.

I typically go a few inches shallower just to make for easier and safer wading. But even today, slowly wading along the beach in a foot of water meant dealing with the changing beach bottom depth – and several times I was in above my knees.  I typically pick out a shore rock I can see that sits above the tide and watch as the water creeps closer – for me it’s a good reminder to think about what I’m doing.

The other thing is with a flooding current and a wind pushing against you it’s easy to lose your sense of balance as you’re walking in the water. But a tip I picked up from Kelly Galloup, a Montana guide and fly shop owner (Slide Inn) worked well: hold your rod tip pointed and touching the water in your downstream hand as you walk. The rod isn’t acting as a staff but it seemed to stabilize me perhaps by having me keep my weight under me and standing more upright.

The casting was challenging with the 5-weight I was using (an older Winston Alpha+), even though that rod easily casts 6+ line weights.

If there were fish there they were out deeper than I could cast – and mostly I dealt with a good deal of kelp caught.

A few geese were feeding and I watched as a flight of three took off and flew past me about 10 feet out at eye level – that was really cool.

I talked to a guy who fishes there every day and he said he saw a few salmon rolling on the surface yesterday – could be returning Chinook or Coho.  I would have liked to see them today.

Back up at my car I met a guy named Jeff who had been fishing yesterday but drove off after leaving his rod, that had been leaning on the right side of his vehicle – he said he typically has a set of checks he does, but he was focused on a college visit for his daughter. It’s easy to see how that could happen. It’s one reason my standard practice is to try to at least look on every side of my car wherever I park it.  I hope he’s able to get his rod back.

One experiment.

Everyone seems to be recording video for everything. So I decided to see how this would work.

I discovered a few things right off. I had to convert my .MOV from my iPhone to .MP4 using the iMovie app on my iMac. Then I encountered the file upload limit in WordPress.  A new Plugin corrected that and I was off to the races.

This is a non-narrated view of Purdy from the top of the beach. I still need to work on developing my delivery to sound natural before adding narration.