My son, Richard and I went to the Stamp Thursday and Friday with Murphy's Guide boats. Rolly took us out both days on the upper river, above and below the hatchery. Thursday it poured rain for about six hours. There were lots of coho around in their fall red colouring, some sockeye and the odd spring. The steelies were there but very tight lipped. We were fishing with single egg and yarn and gear rods. Hooked and lost about 7 steelies. Had two up to the boat and they flipped off. Caught probable a half dozen resident rainbows from 10 inche to 4 lbs. Beautiful colours on these 'bows and were they chunky. Caught the biggest one on a pink jig. The water was high which made moving around the river and its channels easy. Sight casting for summer runs was fun. Rolly was working hard to get us into fish. But the summer's were tough on us. Saw a bear swimming across the river just below us. He got caught in a back eddy and had a bit of a challenge getting out of it, but finally did. Richard caught a couple of nice coho and a pretty 12 inch cuttie. I a well coloured spring and coho. Fun day over all.
Friday we went out again and the day was great, overcast but no rain. We started fishing above the hatchery at a gravel bar. We got the fly rods out and were chucking egg sucking leeches. I caught a nice rainbow of the first cast. Both of us hit some more small rainbows. Changed over to jigs and single eggs on our gear rods. I caught a nice rainbow around 15 inches...very chubby guy. Went down to the long run below the hatchery and started to hit steelies. Richard landed one about 8 lbs, buck, on a blue Hotshot. Caught some more coho and sockeye plus one very old chinook. Bumped a couple more steelies, on and off again. During the whole we conitually saw steelies moving through, but could not get them enticed. Saw one swim by that could have gone over 12 lbs. Rolly decided to take us down river to fish the confluence of the Ash River and Money's Pool but one the way down, we encountered a large cedar tree that had fallen into the river and spanned the entired width except for a very small opening at the shore. Couldn't get the boat through so back up river we went. Good thing we hadn't been down river and the tree decided to fall in then!!
Fished for another hour up river hooking into a couple more choho and rainbows then it was time to call it a day. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience doing our father and son summer steelie trip sight casting to these beauties.
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Topic: Stamp River, November 11th & 12th 2010 (Read 1977 times)