Species: Steelhead
Date: January
Location: Western Washington
I met Corey the bubble guy at the bridge while contemplating some things over a pita lunch on the tailgate. Corey had some heavy bass thumping as he parked next to me. He was friendly once we struck up a conversation. I was intrigued when, after asking if he was fishing, all he said was something about soap bubbles. I was a bit confused.
He pulled out a bucket full of a homemade concoction of Dawn, glycerine and one other ingredient I can’t remember, two 5-foot bamboo sticks tied together with rope and his Amazon video glasses for his yet to come soap bubble content creation. I followed him onto the bridge to watch and make pictures. He’d put the bubble kit together for his 8-year-old daughter, who soon lost interest. But Corey didn’t. He liked watching the bubbles live on the air as long as they could.
Some were huge, floaty and shape-changing in the gentle breeze, descending in a mesmerizing rainbow blob onto a very steelhead green run below. Others were too heavy, or the ingredients not quite right, and would pop, the few remnant drops of liquid falling to the water. They reminded me of the ephemeral nature of things.
I’d come close to possibly dying twice two days before. The first time thanks to an oncoming vehicle turning left that didn’t see me coming at 50 mph until the very last moment. The second thing that nearly got me was the quicksand. It had crossed my mind as I was walking out of a fishing spot that had left me a little disappointed because I hadn’t found the slow pace of water and depth that steelhead like. I changed course to avoid one area of wet, sticky sand, turning toward another hidden trap. Quickly, I was nearly knee deep in the non-Newtonian liquid and then horizontal, covered in sand as I flailed about in panic. Which is not what you’re supposed to do. I blacked out a bit and am not exactly sure how I was able to free myself. Things had almost popped like those rainbow bubbles on the air.
On the river, the morning I met Corey, there was another patch of loose sand that was a small trigger. I’d stubbornly stepped into it and quickly out of it. After a sequence of casts, the patch of sand just to my right, a colorful home-tied fly got grabbed in that same steelhead green water.
The fishing was good; huge, floaty bubbles are cooler; not dying is the best.