Hi all,
I am new to this forum but, like you all, am an avid fisherman. I had the best thanksgiving weekend ever and would like to share my story! I took up fly fishing about 3 years ago, but in the past have only done well with pinks and chum....still great fun but dont quite compare to steelhead coho or springs. Anywas over the past 3 months or so I have been teaching myself how to tie flies, and have been experimenting and tieing up a good supply of steelhead and salmon flies. So Saturday I went to the vedder, and after hiking around for a bit to get away from the crowds I found a beauty hole with a huge school of coho visibile. I snuck up and started swinging and retrieving flys in front of them. I tried everything - 5 colours of muddlers with bead heads/no beadheads, mickey finns, wooly buggers, egg sucking leaches, coho blues, christmas tree, flash flys, ect. I guess the low gin clear water just makes them tight lipped...went home skunked. So anywas today I figured I would take advantage of the beautiful weather and go to a different river (not going to say what river to avoid pissing people off, and rightly so - its a gem still). I brought the 8wt single hander and a batch of freshly tied pink/purple, pink, and pink/chartruese flies to target chum. After a few hours and landing 4 monster chums I thought I saw something extremely coho like roll in the glacial water. I had recently heard this river had a small coho run but have never seen one caught in my 9 years of fishing it. Anywas I thought what the hell, and tied on a blue rabbit/chartruese/black schallpen articulated fly I had recemtly tied up. On my 5th cast, when the fly was 'hanging' at the end of the drift, with the rabbit strip wiggeling just so, BOOM! A chrome fish hammerd the fly, then went ripping upstream, 2 big jumps, and back downstream. After 5 minutes I brought about a 9lb chrome coho to the bank. My first ever coho, and on a home tied fly! What a rush!!! It was a hatchery fish but I couldn't bring myself to bonk this beauty, so gently released it to go make more
If I don't catch another fish all fall I will still be smiling! Anywas hope you all enjoyed the long weekend - would like to hear you're fishing stories!