Outdoors | This revered Umatilla River fishing hole is a perfect afternoon getaway

I admit it. I left Nancy to deal with a plumber while I went fishing. I had no choice. After working on a plugged kitchen drain pipe for three hours, our marriage was headed for the rocks.

“Face it, plumbing is not your forte,” she said on my way out the door.

It’s possible an earlier event at our cabin prompted her hard-hearted remark. I replaced the temperature control valve for the shower like I do every spring when we turn the water on, but the hot water feed remained non-functional. Rather than deal with it while mayflies hatched on the river, I left for an afternoon of fly fishing. A lukewarm shower is not a major inconvenience when you own a rustic cabin.

In the current domestic situation, I swallowed my home handyman pride and called a 24-hour plumbing service. The plumber arrived while I got my fishing gear ready. He was a strapping, handsome fellow, but appeared trustworthy. I informed him Nancy would oversee his efforts and left to fish for spring-run Chinook salmon.

There was a method to my madness. Two weeks earlier, counts of springers had reached four figures over McNary Dam. On a drive back home from The Dalles I “just happened” to have drift rods, assorted gear, and cured roe in the back of my truck. Arriving on the lower Umatilla River with no other angler in sight, I dropped a ball of roe into a swirling hole downstream of a location known as “the falls.”

When my weight banged the bottom, I reeled it up half a crank, and waited for something good to happen. The roe washed in turbulent current for a several minutes before I reeled in to embellish it with a liberal squirt of lunker oil.

Squatting down with my back to the river, I heard a loud, dull “thack, whack, whack” on the rock shelf behind me. I looked over to see a mint-bright, 10-pound springer flip-flopping several feet from the edge of the river. Crazy as it seems, the salmon had leapt the nearby falls and landed on immovable basalt instead of moving water. I sent my gear scattering with the idea to grab it and put it back in the river, but the salmon made one last wild flop and knocked itself out before I could get a grip. That’s when I noticed its adipose fin was missing. Surely, no wild salmon would have made such an ill-fated leap.

What else could I do? I marked the required information on my catch card, transported the salmon to my truck and packed it on ice for the ride home. Lacking a credible witness, who would believe my story?

After that manna from heaven, all I could think of was when I could sneak off again.

Hence, the recent decision to go fishing and leave plumbing to a professional.

The well-worn path to the lower Umatilla River leads you through a tangle of brush willow, poison hemlock, and reed canary grass. Musty odor from a nearby grove of Russian olive trees floods your nostrils. You wade across a side channel to approach to a large basalt shelf bounded by shallow rapids and plunging falls. A flock of American white pelicans often gather in the shallows, hoping to scoop up a downstream migrating smolt. Low water exposed nearshore rocks crusted with algae.

The revered fishing spot, known as “Chinaman’s Hole,” is no secret. Anglers show up from as far away as North Dakota to secure a favorite spot. Combat lineups at dawn are the norm when salmon are running. However, my preference is to stroll in after the crowd thins and find an open place along the bank to cast a line. Such is the case on this warm spring day.

I begin in a location where twice I caught a springer on my first cast of the day. At the same location, I hooked one with discarded roe picked off the rocks. A nearby angler nods hello.

I notice he has a nice springer tied off on a rope. My expectations rise.

Cumulus clouds mask the sun as they roll across the sky. A dozen or more cliff swallows conduct aerial acrobats over the water’s surface. Downstream of where I stand, water swirls and churns. The sound of rushing water is unrelenting, mesmerizing, hypnotic. Occasionally, a salmon jumps the falls, after which I think, “How dare it get past without striking my lure?”

Four hours later I give up. My prior good luck appears used up when a guy sidles alongside, drops his bait next to mine, and hooks two salmon in rapid succession. I return home to an unplugged kitchen sink and a smiling wife. Near as I can surmise, no monkey business took place although the invoice for the plumbing service is three times higher than what I imagined.