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Can you spot what it is?Yesterday was such an enjoyable day that CG and I decided to give it another try.
Regrettably, this time it would have to be without Rod, Nina and Lew.
Hopefully one of these days we can hit the flow with them again.
At 4:30 the alarm goes off. Wowsers, this is kinda early I think to myself. But I can’t keep CG waiting at the restaurant so I stumble to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. A quick peek at the weather forecast, fire off a few emails and out the door I go. I arrive at the restaurant at 5:35. Oh no! I’m 5 minutes late! I breathe a sigh of relief when I look around and see no leaf mobile in the parking lot. I sit and wait in the truck, cleaning yesterday’s scraps of fishing line out of my fanny pack. About 10 minutes later the restaurant owner comes outside to tell me that Chris will be there shortly. I could have posted a reply to Chris’s report, I think to myself.
5 minutes later Chris shows up and we enjoy a hearty breakfast. While we eat we decide to try the Chehalis for Steelhead first, and maybe look around for some Cutthroat later if the weather isn’t too bad.
After breakfast Chris transfers all his gear to my truck and we are off!
45 minutes later we pull into the Chehalis Hatchery parking lot. After getting all geared up we hike down to the river to find it still quite high. We are not able to cross the side channel there so we bushwhack our way upstream to find a suitable place to wade across. Half an hour later we have made it all the way to the bottom of the Easter Seal run, and we decide to fish the tail out there instead.
Steve, a Fraser Valley Trout Hatchery employee who is there with Nick to capture brood stock, is just wading across the tail end of the run as we arrive. Nick already has a 10 pound wild female in the tube, and one lucky angler has already killed a hatchery fish. We fish the tail out for a while and Chris has a chat with a few of the dozen anglers that he knows. I walk to the top of the run and have a chat with Nick. On the drive over Chris and I discussed the possibility of a not too far away creek having some Steelhead present, and that we may want to fish it if there are too many people on the Chehalis. I ask Nick a few questions about it, and he tells me it’s still a little early for that run of fish, but there’s a possibility of hooking one or two in there. After talking to Chris, we decide to give it a try. We leave Nick, promising him that we’ll let the hatchery manager know he has a fish in the tube so the staff can come pick it up.
We make our way back to the hatchery parking lot, and on the way I marvel at the amount of Coho spawning in the now flooded ditches along the roads.
These ditches will dry up almost as soon as it stops raining. We notice that there are no wild fish among the hundred or so we see.
Chris snaps a few pictures and we move on.
After letting the hatchery personnel know they have a Steelhead to pick up from Nick, we make our way to ‘our’ creek.
On arrival we are pleased to see that visibility there is much better than the 18” we could see in the Chehalis. We decide to split up, Chris heads downstream of the bridge and I go upstream.
The water in the creek is quite high and there are not many places that look like good ‘holding water’. I get a bite from a small fish below a large boulder, and that’s it.
An hour later I make my way back to the truck, having decided to come back when the water is a little lower. This creek has some potential, and I enjoy fishing small creeks, especially when there are Steelhead to be caught!
I arrive at the truck to see Chris is already back as well. We remove our drenched raincoats and hop in the truck to warm up a little. It’s not cold out, but the rain hasn’t let up at all. It’s lunch time and we go to meet Steve and Nick at the golf course restaurant. While we eat we talk about how the Cutthroat brood capture program is proceeding, and we hear they desperately need more wild males. This seems to be the case every year, as a lot more females are caught especially earlier on. We also hear from Steve that he and another hatchery worker caught 6 large Cutthroat for brood stock yesterday morning. This happens to have been in the slough where Rod, Nina and the rest of us fished yesterday afternoon! No wonder we didn’t catch much, these guys don’t miss too many!
Chris and I don’t feel like we’re done for the day, so after lunch we decide to make another visit to where we fished yesterday. Half an hour later we pull up to the place where we had gotten skunked 24 hours earlier. Chris is quite sleepy from the nice warm ride and a full belly, and decides to continue his little snooze for a few more minutes.
"I’ll call you if I catch anything" I tell him.
After donning all my wet gear, I cast into a likely looking spot. Two drifts later I decide to change to Coho roe from the single Chum eggs I had been using. About three feet into the drift the float disappears below the surface! I tighten up on it and feel a good fish on the other end. With a quick jerk I set the hook into a beautiful 19” wild male Cutthroat trout. I quickly net it and shout at Chris. “There’s some fish here!”
Quickly I get a tube from the truck and gently place the fish into it. Chris calls Nick, who is already at home, to see if we should keep the fish at 1:30 on Saturday afternoon. I cast to the same spot again and WHAMMO!! Another fish on! It’s a little wild female this time, about 15”. Chris still has Nick on the line, and Nick tells him more than one fish is worth their time to come out to pick them up, especially if one is a wild male. I carefully put this fish in the tube with the male; it would sure be embarrassing to lose it now that everyone knows we’ve caught it.
Been there done that!
After hanging up the phone Chris comes out to join in on the fun. He walks downstream a ways to give it a try there. I continue to fish the ‘honey-hole’ as I now thought of it. My opinion had sure changed from yesterday, as we were skunked at the exact same spot the day before! I continue to fish it for another 45 minutes, landing one 9” whitefish and a feeder sea run Cutthroat of 11 inches. Chris has come back up and fishes a little above me. He lands a beautiful Coho smolt about 5” long. I hook a big red Coho buck around 8 lbs., which Chris helps me land.
Things slow down a little and we decide to move to a place that Rod and Lew had fished the day before.
We are amazed at the amount of fish present now! Almost every drift results in a bite. We each land a few Cutthroat, three of the hatchery fish having the left vent fin clipped as well as the adipose. We also land a few wild ones, one of which is a beautiful 16” female!
It is getting a little later, so we decide to take this fish to the tube and call it a day.
After successfully tubing her we make our way back to Chilliwack, where we drop off Chris’s camera film to be developed.
I had forgotten my digital camera, so you guys will have to wait to see the pictures.
Hopefully we can post them soon!
We fill up the truck with fuel and head to Chris’s place. We’re both quite tired as we were up early and the weather was quite draining with that much rain. It hardly let up all day!
On the way home we decide this day had been just as good as the day before, despite the rain trying to dampen our spirits. We arrive at Chris’s place and I help him gather his stuff from my truck. I can’t believe how much gear (junk) some people need for a day’s fishing.
After saying hi to the Gadsden family I make my way home, quite content that the day was good.
Cheers
George
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Topic: Another day on the flow, January 22nd (Read 5171 times)