Al James is a musician and avid fly fisher based in Portland, Oregon.  Al has carefully combed the banks of the Deschutes River for over 10 years, and offers 5 hard-earned lessons for fishing this beautiful waterway.

Drop everything and fish the salmon fly hatch

It’s estimated that there are more than 3,500 Wild Redside Rainbow Trout per mile on the Lower Deschutes River in Central Oregon which stretches for 100 miles from Pelton Dam down to its confluence at the Columbia River. That’s a helluva lot of football-shaped, blood-red trout that –pound for pound– might be some of the strongest fighters in the salmonidae family. Mid-May through early June is a special time on this glorious river with the yearly explosion of gigantic salmon flies that hatch and provide a non-stop old country buffet style feeding frenzy for these aggressive lunkers.

This year will be no different and most guides and shops that service the river are predicting a mid-May hatch which means there’s a 2-3 week window to head over to the Deschutes and experience one of the most epic trout fishing experiences on the West Coast. If you haven’t tried it, make the trip. There is plenty of river, tons of access, and like I stated before, lots and lots of hungry fish. I’ve fished this hatch on and off for a decade and here are some basics I’ve learned over the years:

Fish the banks. I’m serious about this one. If you are wading up to your knees (unless you’re fishing toward the bank) you probably spooked all the fish in the area. I wear waders, but try to step in the water as little as possible. The fish on the Deschutes hold right up against the bank. This is good news because it’s a big river. It’s not about long casts here. It’s about breaking the river into manageable pieces and working the banks with short, careful casts.

Keep moving. Work a section of river and then move on to the next one. If you hook and lose a fish, give it a rest and come back in a half hour. Head up or downstream and then revisit spots where you’ve seen or hooked fish. The more you move, the more fish you’ll find. Last year a monster Redside broke me off three times under the same overhanging branches in the course of one weekend. I’d visit the spot in the morning, the afternoon and in the evening every day I was there. I’ll be back this year to the same exact spot with heavier tippet.

Come early or late. Often hitting the Deschutes just before or after the hatch by a week or two can yield incredible fishing. During the peak of the hatch the Redsides are often too full to feed. You don’t have to hit it perfectly. Check with online reports from Central Oregon fly shops for current details.

Spring has arrived here. This means you’ll likely see an awesome array of critters and wildlife: wild turkeys, river otters, mallard ducklings, mergansers, osprey, mountain goats, and on the downside, poison oak and rattlesnakes. For all the cool stuff pack a camera and binoculars, for the other two bring Technu skin treatment and a cautious step when you’re hiking around the riverbanks.

Check in with the experts. Fly shops in Eugene, Maupin, Portland and Welches start posting up-to-the-day reports on the hatch starting in May. They’re on the river every day and are monitoring it as it develops. They’ll post when and where the salmon flies are starting to show up. They’ll also steer you in the right direction for fly selection, but then again, that’s the beauty of this hatch. The flies are big and simple and in most cases, foolproof.

In a society where many people are far removed from the processes put in to food preparation, professional butchers like Zeph have taken the age-old craft in to their own hands.  The 31 year-old Portland, Oregon resident has spent the last 6 years developing and espousing an unique approach to butchery focusing on positive stewardship for both animal and environment.  If you’re lucky enough to procure meat from Zeph, you can literally have a hand in the preparation yourself.  Find out what else separates the Proletariat Butcher from the rest of the pack below.

What attracted you to working as a butcher?
It was a very pragmatic implementation of larger more abstract philosophical, theological and environmental convictions. I wanted to have a pursuit that integrated my life in a very full sense. I get to provide people with the highest quality meat at a very affordable price.  It’s also very hands on.  I need to be active in what I do and this most certainly accomplishes that desire [Laughs].

Where did you learn this trade?
I learned to butcher at Seabreeze Farm off the coast of Vashon Island.  At this farm, the animals were raised, slaughtered, butchered and cured all on site. So, from the seed that grew the pasture to the sausage finally offered, we were involved.  I’ve been interested in meat for 6 years, and seriously pursuing butchery for 3.

Can you describe your distinct approach to butchery?
At Proletariat, we strive to create a close looped cycle where everything from the ground in which the animals forage to the meat you eat are well taken care of through responsible stewardship. We up-cycle our edible scraps to pigs in order to create something useful, and the hides are tanned and then made available for our customers to take home. We sell animals by the quarters, and this has a few main purposes:  first off, none of the animal goes to waste because you purchase the whole quarter, not just particular cuts. It also affords the best price for the consumer. You receive a Frenched rack of lamb for the same price you buy seemingly less desirable cuts like lamb shank, ground lamb or bones. We want you to see every cut as equally healthy and delicious. In short, we take meat from an abstract commodity in a typical retail setting to what it actually is: an animal, in which we strive to honor and be a good steward of.

Where do you source your animals?
The animals are sourced from local, family farms that practice good animal husbandry. We rely on our personal relationship with the farmer instead of external rules to discern whether the animals are being raised in an efficacious fashion that focuses on good pasture management.  We prefer the term “pasture raised” instead of “grass fed” as the latter is not a very accurate portrayal of a farmer’s reality in animal husbandry.

What are a few things that you think people misunderstand about butchery?
There isn’t too much of a misunderstanding, rather than a total lack of understanding and awareness for the craft. In many ways, it’s easier that people don’t have many preconceived notions about butchery so we can help people understand the craft from the ground up. Still, people are always surprised that we cut by hand and use old carbon steel knives.  Many of our clients are also surprised at the variety of cuts they get from us. There is more to a cow than New York steaks, rib eye, and ground beef. Also, people are always baffled by Old World preservation methods.  When we salt bacon, pancetta, or hams for customers and encourage them to hang them in the pantry we receive a lot of blank stares.

What makes your company different than others?
There is little about this company that is similar to any other butcher shop. We are taking what we like about butchery and reinventing the rest. Everything is handcrafted, no accelerating the process via machinery, artificial climates, or chemicals. It’s very basic and beautiful. We harbor an intentional pre-industrial, agrarian posture toward meat consumption.  Our sales structure is very different from a typical retail setting, rib eye is the same price as ground beef.  We also strive to involve our clients by letting them be involved in the butchery if they would like to. We want to integrate our customers further into the experience and ingrain responsibility for good consumption.

What’s your favorite meat or meal?
My favorite hunk of meat would be the “butcher’s cuts.”  I take the seemingly less desirable cuts and turn them into delicious meals. It is encouraging, as it shows us that you don’t need a NY steak to be satiated.  You simply need quality meat, good cooking methods, and an open mind to provide for you and yours.

John E. Riutta was formerly head of binocular and spotting scope development for Leupold & Stevens, Inc. He now publishes The Well-Read Naturalist, writes extensively for various outdoor publications, and whenever possible sets aside his laptop in order to write on real paper with the fountain pen that he’s used since college.

Back when I was a boy I spent untold hours in my father’s body and fender shop watching him carefully undo the damage so many of our friends and neighbors had either done, or inadvertently had done, to their automobiles. While the pulling of dents from doors or the pounding out of creases in crumpled fenders was always interesting, it was his preparations for repainting the portions of formerly bent metal he had restored to their proper shapes that really captured my boyish curiosity.

Slowly, meticulously, and with a level of practiced attention I have to this day yet to witness anyone putting into any job, he sanded the surface to be painted with increasingly fine grits of sandpapers until he was at last working with one so smooth to the touch I could not for the life of me understand how it could ever make the slightest difference to the surface he was sanding. Then, when he was finally satisfied that all was ready, he would finally begin to apply the paint. When he was finished, a pane of glass could not have been smoother.

One day, I recall asking him why he put so much time and effort into his work; after all, he could fix more cars if he didn’t take so much time with each one (I think my class was studying a unit about the invention of the assembly line in school that week). He gave me a compassionately serious look and told me “you get out of things what you put into them.”

This all came back to me not so very long ago when seated at the kitchen table one evening rubbing saddle soap into the leather of my prized Filson field satchel to which I had treated myself to last year thanks to my selling a few more magazine articles than I had anticipated. I remember the day it arrived from Seattle, its brass fittings gleaming against its dark brown leather – vegetable tanned bridle leather so thick and stiff that the pellets from a closely fired twelve gauge would likely have harmlessly bounced off it like hailstones off a flat rock.

The note included with it said that regular applications of saddle soap would slowly relax the leather. The owner of a local saddle and tack shop entirely agreed that it would – in about ten or so years. “You’re going to have to put quite a bit of time and effort into that case,” she said, “but if you do it’s going to be a real beauty.” So now once a month I empty it of my belongings, unhook the strap, lay it out on the table alongside the saddle soap and a few thick cloths, and spend part of the evening ensuring that the rich amber colored soap is well rubbed into the coffee brown leather.

In a world in which everything from blue jeans to baseball caps are mass produced in far-off lands in ways that make them look worn, faded, and long since broken-in the day they arrive in the shop, the leather of my satchel – made by hand not much more than a hundred miles from where I have lived my entire life – has, after nearly one year of daily use and regular soapings, just ever-so-slightly begun to yield its original stiffness.

My daughter, who will one day carry this satchel as her own long after I have “gone out of print,” often sits and watches me going through this monthly ritual. She hasn’t asked the question yet – but I know it is coming one day. Until then, we just talk about matters of both great and little importance while I work on the leather. Dad meant more than he said that day – it’s not just the “things” in life into which one needs to put careful attention, but then I suspect he knew that I’d someday come to understand his unspoken meaning as well.

Photos courtesy of Wood&Faulk.

Matt Pierce is a modern day jack of all trades.  Born in Kansas, the tinkerer’s interests in carpentry and mechanics were honed through interactions with close friends and family.  Eight years ago, Matt gathered the gumption to uproot, leave Kansas, and relocate to Portland, Oregon.  Currently, he runs a blog entitled Wood&Faulk and carries a line of his own craftsman goods.

What was inspiration behind Wood&Faulk?
It was based in everything that I learned growing up in Kansas.  The name comes from Woodrow and Faulkner, which are two streets on which I had previously lived.  I learned so much at that time working on house projects and building furniture and everything involved with having old houses.

How did you get started in leather craft?  What was the first piece you remember creating?
I’d tried some simple projects about 15 years ago, but the real spark for Wood&Faulk was the belt project.  I made a tiny run of belts in natural leather for people to wear-in and document how the process went.  After doing that, the requests kept coming in, so I started making belts for sale.

What brought you out to the Northwest and Portland from Kansas?
I was –and still am– just in awe of the climate, the forest and the landscape in Oregon.  It’s 1000 times different than Kansas.  I’m still shocked to see a mountain in the distance at any time here.

Where do you find inspiration?
Music, being outside, reading, taking naps… Just about anywhere.

Are you an outdoorsman?  What do you do and where do you go?
I’d call myself a recreational outdoorsman.  I have a canoe that I love to take out, love to camp and hike, but I never get super crazy about the weight of gear or the high-tech aspects.  It’s more about getting out and relaxing.  If it’s cold or rainy, I’ll hike in my Filson Tin Cruiser.

What’s your biggest project right now, and what’s involved?
Outside of work, it’s remodeling my torn up kitchen.  I hope to post more about that on the blog soon, but I’m deciding how much I want to tear out.  Maybe I’m trying to not think about that…

What is your biggest weakness? And biggest strength?
Biggest weakness has typically been taking on too many projects and not saying ‘no.’  I’ve gotten a lot better, mainly out of necessity now that the business is getting more hectic.  Biggest strength is figuring out how things work, although that usually involves buying more tools, so maybe it’s a weakness?

What is one thing you’d love to learn to do?
I just bought a recurve bow and I’d love to get better at my aim!

What artists do you look up to?
Charles and Ray Eames, Ralph Lauren, Keith Richards, Ai Weiwei.

What’s the best piece of advice you have received?
My Dad taught me how to shake hands properly and tell direction, if that’s considered advice.