It was a painful Saturday as I had to stay home and attend to family business (although I love spending time with my daughter who will be 3 in a month). I woke up at 3:55 Sunday morning and lay in bed for another hour, excited but trying to sleep nonetheless. Given the rain, my father and I put on our waders before we left the house and hit the road at 5:45. Crossed the border at Sumas at 6:00 and parked on the river at 6:50. Still there wasn't enough light to fish so we used a flashlight to make it down to the river.
Water conditions - fairly low with a nice green tint and 4-5 feet of visibility (maybe more). Weather was changing constantly - it was cold in the morning and a little rainy now and then, but became a nice sunny afternoon.
We took a literal stab in the dark and picked a spot we had not fished in years, not too far above Vedder Crossing. It was a nice long tailout with walking speed and slower water. Fish were rolling all over, although we guessed (and later confirmed) that most of them were pinks. There were lines of pinks hugging either bank in about 2-3 feet of water.
At first light, I put on a small pieced of pink wool and some freshly cured pink roe from a chrome doe I caught a couple weeks ago on the Vedder (cured with the plain white pro-cure). It took a little while to get the right depth, but I ended up with about 2 1/2 feet from float to lead (and a 2 foot leader). That kept my roe from dragging on the bottom. I think I missed a few strikes but it was barely light enough to tell since my eyesight is fading from my @#$% job (staring at a computer monitor all day - oh, this is probably not helping). Before 7:30 a.m., I had an obvious pulldown and it was an energetic fish dancing all over the place that I hoped was a coho. After a few minutes, I got him close enough to see the flash and know it was a fat coho.
My dad waded in and attempted to tail it, still not knowing if we had a wild or hatchery fish. It went between his legs and of course took that opportunity to take his first leap out of the water! After a couple minutes more fight we saw an adipose fin, so I handed the rod to my father and tailed the fish for this picture:
I had forgotten how chunky coho are! I felt honored to land such a gorgeous fish (it has been years since my last coho - I moved away from the area for years and had a child before getting back to fishing the Vedder in full force last year). At this point, I was excited and confident that we would get more coho to the bank since it was only 7:30. How wrong I was. Many bites and a couple of lost coho later (at least they fought like coho - we never saw them), we were out of roe and patience. Anglers to the left and right of us were using hardware (and some were flossing pinks) with not much to show for it, so I didn't see a point in trying anything else here.
I should also mention the coho that we saw jumping up the river with a hook in his mouth and lead, line and float all attached. My dad made a skillful cast and hooked the gear, but the fish got free - at least we got the hook out of his mouth!
Back to the car (no, our tires weren't slashed!) and a quick bite, we decided to see if we could get another chrome spring to take home. We went to a busy spot below the crossing, and saw one decent spring on the bank so we knew we were there. I put on more lead and a thumbnail size piece of peach wool (with a dot of red). I squeezed in between two flossers (it wasn't that busy at this point - we couldn't touch rod-tips without stretching). I drifted all across the run and didn't have an immediate reward, but I knew there were fish rolling and they were being hooked farther upstream. I had to move aside for a few springs coming downstream, most of which were foulhooked and/or ugly. One of which was carried back upstream and cleaned next to me - a truly ugly ripe female spring that had a white growth on its dorsal fin. When they cleaned her, the eggs flowed out like water, and the belly was paper thin and floppy. In spite of the comments from nearby fishermen, they happily bagged it up for dinner (or fertilizer?!).
Anyway, after an hour or so, I hooked into a nice lively fish that fought like a spring. After a 10 minute fight, I got a nice 13 lb chrome male to the bank.
Fished for a couple more hours, took a couple falls on the riprap, broke the top foot off my rod, and called it a day.
On the way back, the border agent asked if we had gotten our tires slashed. We were confused. He said 25 US cars had there tires slashed on the river yesterday (Saturday) and some more today (Sunday). I guess I got off lucky with a broken rod!
Anyone know how I can fill my tires with toxic gas for next weekend?
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Topic: Chilliwack River, October 9th 2011 (Read 2729 times)