Hi Gang, Happy New all, nice to see the board finally back in action (kinda like our steelhead gear).
Well I must say that the stamp provide 3 friends and I with a trip to remember! Bug Pumper, Steely Ryu, a buddy Rob, and I all headed over to the stamp for a 2 day trip.
The first day we arrived on the stamp an hour after day break and fished various pools that were marked off on a map we aquired at a local tackle shop. It was more of a casual day as none of us had fished the river in years and we all were basicallt newbies to this particular river. We fished 4 holes over the space of the day and that produced 1 wild buck about 5-6 lbs - not terribly exciting results.
Its a beautiful river to fish, lots of nice water, the river that day had a good flow and color too...everything looked great. Its quite a big river tho and being new to it, we just couldn't find where they were hiding.
This particularly worried me as the next day we had booked a guide (2 jet boats) and the trip was a significant investment for all of us; I was really hoping we would all get into fish.
Well, the next day rolled around, and we were all very excited to be out on the stamp with a professional. we launched at about 8am and headed up river. The first spot our guide wanted to fish already had a boat in it. I was quite surprised at the activity on the river....there were 10-12 boats working the river that day.
Well it turned out that the first bit of good luck was having that boat beat us to that spot. We settled into another lay and started fishing. Now the guide had told us that these fish usually hit things on the first cast so when 20 minutes had passed with not a hook up I started to wonder if the fish were going to cooperate. Well shortly after that they did!
Out of that one section of river we finally ended with 7 or so hook ups 3 for me and 5 for my buddy Rob - 5-6 of those hook ups were boated. The fish were all caught on roe bags, my first time really using this bait so that was quite a valuable experience. Another interesting thing about it is that the strip of water we were fishing was water that rob and I both admitted we would have probably walked right past it with out a cast!
After that section seemed addiquately fished we moved up river to start fishing the pockets. After each pocket was fished thoroughly the guide would nose the boat over and we would take a look into the hole. More often than not we would spot fish in the hole, hunkered down, not biting.
Had we just got lucky and hit a morning tide with some fresh moving fish? At that point that was my best guess, but I figured the rest of the day was propably going to require a lot more work, hammering these pockets and seems. Fishing from a boat tho, that type of fishing is very enjoyable as not much time and effort is wasted hiking in and out of different holes.
Indeed we eventually did find another 3 or so fish in the choppy stuff, one of which for me was a 14.2lb hatchery doe! That single fish made the trip for me as it took us thru several rapids and made some huge runs before we were able to slip it into the net!
After that we headed back down river to the area that producd so well for us in the morning. That run did yield one more 12lb wild fish and that essentialy marked the end of the day. We also bumped into Bug pumper and Ryu at that time and I think they had 6 or so fish to their boat too.
All in all it was a great trip, well worth the $300 I spent on the guide/gas/food/ferry etc. I think the info I took away from that trip will pay large dividends this season on the vedder...when I actually find the time to make my first trip!
We all have some great pics so stay tuned, we will get them pulled together soon hopefully! And I am sure that once bugs wakes up this moring he will have some more to ad after a month of not posting!
Author
Topic: Stamp - Dec 27-28th (Read 4833 times)