The Missing Chums

I’m not going to pass up a great title even if it isn’t completely apt and also needs to be credited to the Hardy Boys. The fall chum salmon aren’t really missing (I hope) just late in arriving to the creeks at the eastern end of lower Hood Canal near Belfair. Perhaps we should call on Frank and Joe to solve the mystery of what’s keeping them or at least to find out where they are. The brothers’ motorboat, Sleuth, would come in handy.

The Missing Chums is the fourth volume in the Hardy Boys mystery series. Originally released in 1928, the book was written by Les McFarlane and published under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon. Sleuth is important in the story because two close friends of the Hardy Boys have been kidnapped by a gang of bank robbers and are being held on an island.

Chum salmon are already splashing up other creeks in central and south Puget Sound to spawn in the final phase of their life cycle. Last Sunday I saw a dozen anglers in waders in Dyes Inlet near the mouth of Chico Creek trying to snag a salmon dinner. There were chums in the creek too, most near the entrance but some as far up as the Chico Way bridge. I also checked Coulter Creek, which flows into Case Inlet’s North Bay. The salmon run there was light, but clearly it had started.

I read in the Kitsap Sun that the chum salmon run will be down from last fall’s run but still respectable with some 450,000 fish expected in central Puget Sound’s rivers and creeks. Hood Canal will be a bright spot this year with a run that will be larger than originally predicted.

On yesterday’s bike ride I checked Big Mission (sign shown in photo), Little Mission, and Stimson creeks for the fall run’s vanguard. All three are salmon streams that flow into the lower Hood Canal a few miles from Belfair. I didn’t ride as far west as Cady Creek (it’s on next week’s list). Nothing. No salmon at the creek entrances, none waiting to splash through culverts, no fish resting in the shade by downed trees and snags, keeping place with a periodic flick of their rear fins and tail.

The delay isn’t due to a lack of rain. Creek flows could be higher, but there’s enough water in them for the salmon to swim past the natural and man-made obstacles (easy for me to say).

After a series of adventures The Missing Chums ends with the Hardy Boys using Sleuth to rescue their friends and help capture the bank robbers. Although the lower Hood Canal salmon haven’t been kidnapped and Hood Canal doesn’t have any islands, Frank and Joe could probably still motor out and find them. Meanwhile mystery lovers will just need to be patient.