Another sunny day finds me heading out for half day fishing. Arriving about 1:30pm, it is windy & chilly in the shady area. The lower river is quite muddy, 6" max. Mid river is hopeless. Wash-out area around 18" visbility (wow watch out those big holes in the road, why no one fixing them
). Upper river above Ranger is reasonably good, around 2-3' visibility but the flow is quite high and strong, so the usual runs are quite turbulent.
Judging on level and clarity, I choose to fish tight spots where a fish sitting there just can't miss my repeated presentation. On one of those highly fishy spots I drifted first a big worm but no taker. Knowing the fish may prefer ghost shrimp in late season as now, I changed up to a ghost shrimp imitation. While I was changing up, a guy walked down from a higher run & drift his presentation right in front of me. Luckily he was separated from my spot by a small slough and his presentation tends to lift too high when it drifted so far down to my spot as he was holding his drift. Without delay I casted out my shrimp to the deadliest spot. Wham! The float dipped ahd a strong steelie took the presentation. Alas, my hook set was not too strong, and the heavy fish was starting to run into the heavy current. It made a jump and both me and the guy saw that it is a large specimen, a bit longish, and with a tint of colour. I estimated it to be a buck around 15-16 lb range but can't tell wild or hatch. There was no way I could control the fish in the fast current and it kept on going down river using the current to take line. I walked gingerly along and raise my rod as high as I could. Eventually, I got stopped by a small jam of lose branches and bushes, and I could not go further. All I could do was to hold and fought the beast there. The current was too strong to have any chance to ease the fish up. Then, as expected, the hook popped and the line went limp. Gosh! I turned to look up to the guy and he made a large-fish sign back. Sigh! Expecting there may be another fish, I did some clean up of that small jam before I went back to fish again. But it is not to be. Only one chance and I lost it. But I have got to be thankful for the chance to fight that strong late season fish. Nice weather and a nice day out.
Author
Topic: Vedder March 27 (Read 2728 times)