After many hours of reading and learning from posting on here, i decided to head out today and give the Stave River a try for the first time. I made my way into the parking lot at the rec site which i think is where peopel call, the toilet bowl. Upon parking my vehicle around 09:30am another white car with 2 asian gentlemen parked right beside me. They happened to be getting dressed into their fishing gear so i decided to chat them up. Extremely friendly gentlemen, after a few minutes of chatting i asked them if they could point me in the direction of where to start since this was my first time and they actually said to come on with them.
I followed them to an area which seemed pretty busy to me, maybe 15 fishermen packed into about a 75 foot long area? At first i just took my time gearing up and was trying to take notice of how everyone was fishing and where the fish seemed to be. I did notice that most of the people there were indeed flossers, most leaders were well over the 3 foot length but a couple people were using spinners and 1 guy was using roe. Majority of people were using just plain pink wool including the two gentlemen that i was with. So i tied up my 10lb mono line with a piece of small pink wool and gave it a go. While i was trying to cast into different areas and adjusting my float depth to stay off the bottom i noticed that almost everyone was getting to play fish. Alot of the flossers i saw down from me were dragging fish way up onto the rocks by their tails and backs and whatever followed up by the popular kick back into the river. But i was determined not to let these people ruin my first outing.
After about my 5 cast i was watching my line and at first i said to myself, " hey where did my float go?" then the stun of realization settled in, holy cupcakes fish-on! I set the hook and OMG i was not ready for the fight that ensued. Jumping, thrashing and bending my rod like i never seen!
When the day was all said and done, i had managed to land a 14.3lb nice male, and a smaller 6.5lb female. In total i played 12 fish, all chums and all but 2 were hooked inside the mouth. The 2 that were fouled actually freed themselves from my line on their own accord. Both the 2 i kept seemed in good shape, although since these were my first chum salmon i have ever caught i wasnt sure what to really look for? Obviously there was no white rot on them, wounds, etc.
The 2 gentlemen i was fishing with both got their limit and were leaving at the same time as me and offered to take me to the area where the coho hold up, so i was supposed to meet them down the beach a little ways but when i remembered to look at my phone to check the time, i realized it was 12:18pm and i had to be at work at 1:30pm, so i had to leave. I did not get a chance to tell them thank you for all their help during my first outing which was a great time. With all the bad reports about beeks and such showing up at the Stave, i was very grateful to have met these two super friendly guys, i hope you two are on this website and read this because you two helepd make my first Stave trip very memorable.
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Topic: Stave River, November 4th 2011 (Read 3568 times)