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[typhoon]

My brothers were in town last weekend for our annual sturgeon trip, and we (plus my buddy Bill) decided the Stave would be a better bet than the Vedder.
We arrived a bit late at 7:30 and I was happy to see the gate open at the toilet bowl. I normally park on the other side of the dam but the 'warnings' from the other thread scared me off. We launched my Zodiac in the toilet bowl and headed over to the islands.

I was fly fishing, Bill was baitcasting, and my brothers were chucking spoons on spinning rods.
The tide was high and still coming in when we first got there and once wer reached our destination we were doing quite well on huge chum. There were many willing takers but we would still foul hook a couple - nothing worse than a 20lb chum coming in sideways.
I switched to a type 3 tip, and switched them to lighter spoons to try and keep the hook higher in the water column and force the fish to come up.
This helped to improve valid hookups, though by this time the tide switched to going out and the spoons were becoming a lot less effective.

Once the current stopped ripping out it seemed that a large pod of fresh fish came in that were very aggressive.
Bill had switched to short floating jigs and it was insane. He was fishing about 2 feet off the bottom (well above the fish) and they were absolutely smashing his peach over chartreuse jig. After a few fish the jig was mangled, but still drawing hits.

After battling a couple large fish on my 8wt I decided to rest. Everyone was catching fish and we were no longer foul hooking fish.

After lunch I even gave the bait caster a try (I had never casted one on the water). First 12 casts were only about 10 feet with small birds nests, then finally I got one with decent distance.  Unfortunately I made a really big birdsnest and was looking down trying to clear it when Bill yelled "your float went down". I set the hook, which of course only made the birdsnest worse then proceeded to fight this big chum by running up and down the gravel bar (acting as tension on the line) and finally Bill was able to tail a very fresh, very large buck (with 40 feet of line still out). I guess if I'm going to start using the baitcaster I need to get in a bit more practice

Everyone was happy from a successful day on the water, though everyone was very tired and sore from the fighting so many fish.
No coho seen anywhere, live or otherwise.

[redtide]

a few years ago caught a nice large male that just by girth alone would have been at least 25lbs...just a massive body on that chum. took me downstream a ways and 15 minutes later was beached by my fishing bud. a couple more like that and the arms were about to fall off. took a rest break and just kept nailing them on the peach wool setup. just love the stave for the chums alone.

[bigsnag]

Hey Typhoon, just curious, what kinda shape were the chums your group caught? Were they silver,somewhat silver? Most info on Stave chums is that they come in all coloured up and at best have a hint of silver to them.  Those with a hint of silver are the "clean ones"

thanks