Photos
Details
My salt water trips are done for this year so it’s off to the rivers. After working the weekend I was ready for a fishing day on my (one) day off this week. I called up Nate Treat and invited him on my “tin can” for some Snohomish river coho action. Gotta give a guide a break from guiding and just relax on the river. I told Nate “no video, this is just a day of relaxed fishing”.
We launched at 7am from Cady Park and motored up river to the big island and headed right. Found a likely spot and started casting my homemade chartreuse green spinner, size 3, toward shore. Within minutes I had fish on. It was a nice buck, probably in the 8-9 pound class. Well hooked, and after a fun fight that included several out of the water jumps (now I regret no Go Pro!) Nate netted him. We fished this area for a while longer and then decided to explore further up-river. My original plan was to run all the way up to the rock cliffs and spend the day fishing back, but the water level was pretty low, the fog pretty thick, and my memory of the channels pretty dim. So we went up a half mile or so and fished our way back, with no success. We did have a couple hits on plugs but they came un-done.
We anchored up just below the big island where another boat was having some success. Casting spinners, corkies and spoon did not do us any good. Bored, we decided to do some side drifting down to the Pilchuck area. This proved to be effective as Nate hooked and landed a 5 pound hen on eggs. I landed a surprisingly alive humpie on a red spinner size 3.
The sun came out, as did a bunch of anglers, and this area started getting crowded. We ran down to the Hwy 9 bridge and were surprised to see the river empty of anglers. This was around noon and close to high tide. We decided to do some trolling. Nate picked out a couple kwickfish type lures, let out 40-50 feet and off we went, downriver. I will be honest, I thought we’d just have a pleasant boat ride. I was running the kicker, eating lunch, minding my own business when I hear my reel screaming. Nate called out fish on and I grabbed the pole, getting to play a fun 6-7 pound buck. I was amazed. This fish came out of nowhere and just crushed the kwickfish. Nate said it was the coolest take down he’d ever seen on a plug (again, where was that Go Pro!). The reel had a nice backlash from the violence of the take down. Fortunately the fish came at us so that wasn’t an issue.
We called it a day not long after that. A trifecta – fish caught on hardware, eggs, and plugs. Pretty cool!
One thing of interest – when I got home and filleted the fish, one of them was full of white, round nodules that burst liquid when poked. It didn’t look too appetizing so that fish became fertilizer.
Comments
Why is this comment inappropriate?
Delete this comment? Provide reason.