Having missed ALL of steelhead season due to working out of the country, I finally made it back to the Vedder today, mid-week no less! I arrived at the river at about 6am and was surprised to find that I had already been beaten to the spots that I was hoping to fish first thing. Not wanting to crowd others unnecessarily I opted for solitude and made my way towards a part of the river that had always treated me well in the past (but was inaccessible last season). I was delighted to find that the river had changed once again and the run was accessible! Filled with jubilation over my good fortune, I continued to hike in and sang at the top of my lungs to keep the bears at bay
. The first thing I notice was the abundance of sockeye. They were absolutely everywhere surfacing, rolling, jumping.
I casted into the head of the run for half an hour without even a nibble and decided to work some slower water downstream. First cast and the float shot down with a slightly coloured spring on the end. After a tough fight and a bit a walking, he finally relented as I landed him in a side channel.
The next hour of fishing was quite slow as the sun had fully risen and I'm sure all the fish in the pool had seen my big dumb head bobbing around. I decided to switch over to an 8lb fluorocarbon leader and a size 4 hook and walked down stream to give the run a rest. I casted into some relatively shallow, smooth flowing water and the float shot down. To my surprise, a small feisty jack was on the end and gave me quite a fight.
I decided to leave it at that and not push my luck. Miraculously, no sockeye were touched on this trip!
Although I usually release all of my catches (for personal reasons) I decided to bonk these two. My girlfriend had been questioning whether or not it's worth it for me to drive so far and not actually have anything to show for it. I had to do it to defend my right to fish
. Now for the bbq.
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Topic: Vedder Report July 24th 2008 (Read 2815 times)