Just shy of the dam we hit the fishing spot.  Fishermen stand high overhead along the jetty with huge fishing poles outfitted with heavy-duty monofilament.  They are lined up almost shoulder to shoulder trying their luck at catching a big sturgeon lurking down in the deep cold water below.  The current out beyond their lines is too swift to paddle against.  We need to ply the shore eddies if we are ever to make progress, but fishing lines lace a monofilament fence across our course.  Tom’s quick thinking produces a solution.

“Hold your poles out!” he shouts between heaving breaths hoping they can hear.  “Hold them out” he keeps repeating to the fishermen above and we begin to steadily navigate the narrow corridor between lines on the river side and shore to our right.  Our powerful strokes inch us along under this bridge of fishing poles until one fisherman tries to reel in.  He isn’t quick enough.  I feel a tug on my PFD. 

“Tom, I’m caught,” I yell, “Stop!”  From the bow Tom attempts to maintain our heading and momentum but we immediately start to drift backward while I frantically fiddle myself free of the hook in my PFD.  “OK, I’m free,” and we dig in to keep muscling onward, Tom continuing to yell.   I can’t help but think, “Are they swearing at us up there?”  I can almost feel it in my bones.  Two canoeists going against this powerful flow is no doubt a strange and unexpected sight on the Columbia River.