This story goes back to the first week of September of last year where, already hooked on this new river, I manage to bring to the net an aprox 30" wild resident rainbow only to loose it inches from the net. That one fish has haunted me ever since and the entire spring and winter was used in preperation to go back. Beads, and a wide assortment of flies where bought and arranged, new rods purchased and trips planned because of that fish. Don't get me wrong, many nice fish were caught there in the later trips but knowing that this river can hold much much larger fish had me addicted.
This weekend had me having only Sunday to make the treck in search of rainbows. I haven't been at this river this early in the season so I didn't know what to expect. If anything at least some salmon could be caught if the rainbows didn't want to come out and play.
I leave the house at 5:15am to make the 2.5 hour drive to meet my friends at the river. The sun is out and the day should be a good one.
The river was a little low when arrived but things looked promising as a little rainbow was spotted right off the bat. The hordes of chum salmon that I was so accustomed to seeing later in the season still haven't made it up the river. At this stretch of water there were no salmon to be seen.
We are using a variety of streamers and egg sucking leeches as well as beads to entice a strike from the rainbows. Where there are salmon, there are rainbows as they follow them up the river wating for them to drop their eggs or when the salmon die feed off their decomposing flesh.
My buddy and I head up river to try that stretch first and we spot our first batch of king salmon. Promising, we continue upward and find a deep pool with over 30 salmon. Kings, sockeye and pinks all swiming around the pool together. Up river from the pool would be our first area to fish.
Three drifts with a bead and I manage a descent fish. Not the biggest but the color on him was intense. I LOVE these colored up rainbows. WOW.
As I make my way up to net a fish my buddy has hooked I notice a limb in the water with some line swining down river with a small Dolly Lama fly at the end. I make note of it so I can retrive the fly when I have worked that bend. I net my buddy's fish and remain fishing there with him. I hear a splash to my left and looked down river to see that that branch had caught a fish! HAHA. Rainbows so plentiful that even a tree can catch a fish! I release the fish and retrive the fly. Pretty cool sight to see.
Further up river we come apon a great looking run with some king salmon in it. We drift beads with no success. We then switch to some egg sucking leeches and manage a few. We notice in the middle of this run were two very large shadows. These are not kings as they are not blushed red. These are large rainbows. Many drifts with no succes but at the last fly swap I do manage a subtle strike and I set the hook. This fish catapults itself about four feet in the air completely veritcal and pops me off! I saw it in it's full glory, that is why I came here. Wow what a rush. His buddy never came around to play with us so we moved down river.
We arrive at a spot where the pool is deep but the current is slow. There were salmon choked in this section, primarily pinks with a few sockeye and kings. Although rainbows were our targeted species I coulnd't resist catching at least one pink and caught one with the same fly I had retreived from that limb up river. HA!
Down river is where the bow show finally began. It was insane at times where we would pull out 10 fish from a single hole. If you can get a drift under the log jam or branches you will hook up. In one spot I pulled three small rainbows drifting under a fallen tree. A fourth larger fish was also caught and moments later my buddy hooks into a very large and fat monster from the same area. Wow.
Further down river we go and more fish caught. It was the day I was looking forward to for almost a year. Although I didn't catch my white whale on this trip I did meet his brother for a brief second. Perhaps next weekend we can finally meet. Now until the end of September that place will be home.
Tight lines, enjoy some more pics.
A double rainbow! What does this mean?!
