Summer salmon, unexpected visitors, evening success
Published on August 7th, 2008 by Rodney
The first night sleep was short and rough. It wasn’t because Chris was listening to his radio at midnight. It wasn’t because of the trains that were roaming by a couple of hundred feet away from us. It wasn’t the mosquitoes. It was just too hot and the wind wasn’t able to cool things down.
At 4:00am, I heard cans rattling. I thought that perhaps they were raccoons having a good time, but it was Chris getting his truck ready. He came over and pointed the flash light at my face. “Hey! Ready to go fishing?” Mark and I quickly got ready and we were on our way to find some jack chinook salmon at 4:30am.
The method used is no different to how salmon are being fished on the coastal rivers. The bait of choice procured red roe, drifted under larger float in the 25g range because of the turbulent river current. Jack chinook salmon are males that return to the river a year earlier than others from the same brood year, therefore their size is obviously much smaller. All fish that anglers wish to take have to be under 50cm, so a measuring tape is needed if you wish to keep some fish. With a daily quota of four fish, it can make an outing quite rewarding.
Armed with my video camera, I began filming as Chris and Mark made their first casts. Mark was into the first fish on his second drift. The silver body splashed briefly under the dim light and the leader broke off. Mark thought it was a big adult chinook salmon, but I said he needs to tie up better leaders because that fish did not look big at all. While Mark was getting ready on the side, Chris also found a fish on his second cast and a fresh silver jack was on the beach in no time.
Once Mark was back into the game, he immediately hooked up and brought in some fish. Seeing that the bite was on, I finally put down the camera to wet a line too. I managed to connect with two, before the bites died down slightly when the sun emerged. We ended the productive morning at 10:00am so we and our catches wouldn’t get too hot.
We then took refuge from the heat by spending a few hours in the coffee house nearby. By 1:00pm, Mark and I were getting itchy feet again. Mark wanted to land a bow since all of his fish had freed themselves. I was determined to catch one in front of the campground after not being able to find a good tug on the nymph from the day before. After flogging the water for a couple of hours, the result once again did not reflect the effort. Defeated, we made our way back to camp. I then realized that I had lost my landing net! A walk back along the same path did not recover it. The disappointment was quickly forgotten when a herd of bighorn sheep visited our camp just before dinner.
Freshly picked apricot for dessert
Another group of flyfishers, making their way to the big T
Indicators of a healthy stream
Seeing that we had some intense surface action from the evening before, we ventured back to the same spot at 6:30pm. As expected, the risers were having a feeding frenzy again. Mark connected with one in no time but it somehow fell off the hook once again. His frustration was further built by hooking the trees on his back casts several times. In the meantime, I missed a light take, but another one soon followed. This bow was not going to get away easily because of its greed.
By dusk, I managed to tempt a few big risers and brought two to shore. Perhaps the timing of the hookset needs to be improved, since the only fish being brought in were the ones that had swallowed the big dry fly.
Mark’s curse was finally lifted when this beauty surrendered itself just before dark. What might be even more accomplishing is the fact that he landed a northern pikeminnow on the dry fly a few casts later.
The catch numbers maybe low, but the experience was very rewarding, which will be put to good use when we fish in the same situation again.