4 minute read
Trishana Israel: ‘You’re Doing Great, Girl!’
There’s a small but incredibly strong pocket of amazing women anglers in the Pacific Northwest.
I’m truly inspired every time I’m out on the water. To look out and see other women across the water, we wave at each other, we encourage each other. We tip our lucky fishing hats as if to say, “You’re doing great, girl!”
I can’t speak for all women, but I feel the most beautiful when I’m fishing and have fish slime on my face and I’m covered in fish scales and scent.
I can pretty much pinpoint the precise moment that my passion for fishing was sparked. I was 4 years old and my father handed me a fishing rod at Lake Chelan. I spent the entire day chasing what were probably northern pikeminnow and kokanee. I was so upset when I had to go to bed and I couldn’t wait to return to that same spot the next morning. From that moment forward, I was hooked.
You can often find me on my modest little 10foot fishing boat on Puget Sound stalking coho, blackmouth and the beloved king salmon. It’s an old fishing boat and it has very little creature comforts, but it has welcomed its fair share of nice fish aboard.
Some of the best days of my life have been on the water and the next adventure cannot come soon enough. When you’re fishing really hard, racing 12TH against that tide change, feeling the power of the water and the strong currents, there’s something really amazing about that and I get to return Real Annual to it over and over again. Other things in my life continue to change, but that reference point is always there. It’s a really great way to check into a bigger perspective. Nor westOF FISHING
Being a woman angler definitely has its challenges. But at the same time I feel like it’s not that challenging. If you show up and if you are dedicated – do the work, fish hard – you’re respected.
Even though I’m not as physically strong as some of the male fishermen around me, I’m equally as dedicated and at the end of the day we’re all physically exhausted from chasing chrome, filling the freezer and creating stories to last a lifetime. –Trishana Israel Trishana Israel’s boat is mighty small, but it’s also mighty fishy, as this late July Puget Sound hatchery Chinook
PICTURE
PICTURE
Among the anglers who can’t wait for Wickiup Reservoir to get back to full pool and its kokanee fishery to recover is Kaye Smith, here with a beauteous landlocked sockeye from the Deschutes River impoundment’s “good old days.” (KAYE SMITH) “I was so happy I was shaking,” says Toni Pollock-Bozarth after landing her first salmon in four years, this South Sound coho. Earlier last summer she tried for pinks with one of her sons but struck out, and she didn’t have much faith on the next trip with her other son, but with a little help from a Slag Pile sharpie, she got a takedown. “My only sadness was that neither of my sons got to experience salmon also,” she writes. Always next season, Toni! (TONI POLLOCK-BOZARTH)
An overall slow fishing day turned into quite a productive one for Elizabeth Swopes when this 3-plus-pound rainbow bit for her at a Spokane-area lake this
spring. (LES LOGSDON)
Whether from shore or boat, you can bank on Maralee Moore catching all sorts of species around the western Columbia Basin – smallies, walleye, rainbows, sockeye, not to mention both summer and fall Chinook! (MARALEE MOORE)
Rhonna Schnell’s no fairweather fisherman, as pics of her decked out in raingear while salmon fishing and bundled up for winter kokanee prove. “She is a real trooper and the best fishing partner anyone could ask for,” says husband Tom.
(TOM SCHNELL)
12TH Real Annual
