jazzbass, funny that you brought up a Squamish River trip, because I took him out for that in 2003 and we had an excellent day with 20+ fish each with a few chromers kept.
In fact, we were discussing last night on the way back a possible trip next week if the weather permits (which is becoming quite unlikely based on the forecast).
When I bring an out-of-town friend or new fisher out for a trip, the venue is picked carefully. It's not necessarily based on the productivity of the fishery, but its uniqueness so my friends are experiencing something that they have never done before. capohoc, a coho-less day maybe disappointing to me (the fish were found after all, just not beached), but it certainly wasn't considered a bad fishing day. We saw a breathtaking sunrise, which Iwan couldn't stop commenting about as it emerged over the snowy mountains. He got to see a jack chinook, which he has never seen before and now knows how to recognize them. We saw a coho chasing my spoon. We saw chum salmon spawning and fighting for territories. We saw american dippers hopping around us, bathing and drinking. We had very minimal amount of rain while fishing. All these factors, which we regulars take for granted, resulted in an excellent outing.
As FA said, expectation is subjective and changes throughout a fisherman's career.