I have been dying to get out on Lake WA this week and chase coho's up north and even checked out the Magnussen park boat launch on Tuesday and was planning on taking like a half day off Friday morning to fish~ well I got an interesting phone on Wednesday from a guide I use over on the coastal rivers confirming the trip I booked on the 10th for a trip on the Humptulips! I guess I booked it at the sportsman show and sort of forgot but of course was excited to float the river for those big boys out of Gray's harbor.

He informed me the river was running way too low and clear and he would rather take us on the Satsop which was fishing good on the lower river. Now I have also always wanted to float that stretch as my buddy Craig has a drift boat and I have a pontoon that I think would do okay there, so was excited to get the chance to do this!

Craig had made plans to be in CA this weekend so called the chef at Jimmy's on 1st/ Silver Cloud hotel to see if he wanted to go and since the Sounder's game was a night game was cool to go! ( ha! now it's a business trip!)
We met the guide at Montesano Chevron at 6:15 and dropped off my truck at the take out by highway 12 and piled into his vehicle to drop the boat in at the West Fork launch.

Slid the boat into the river just as it was getting light and floated down to our first stretch of the river to start fishing~ he told us we would be mostly twitching jigs and maybe pull plugs so I was excited to learn the art of this type of fishing as I have always thought it was a deadly approach to Coho fishing but have never really mastered it.
As we approached our first pocket Preston casted into a brushy area and got an immediate fish on! A cute little jack to start the day!

We worked this hole for a while longer but no taker so worked out way down to the next hole, I did miss one at the last hole so was determined to get the hang of this! We dropped anchor, made some casts and as I was bringing mine in along I felt some resistance on my retrieve and slammed it and it was fish on!!! This was a chrome beast that ripped up and down river before succumbing to the net!

I caught the next one and then it was back and forth between Preston, the guide and I as we worked our way down river until when we were 1 fish away from our limit by 12:30. He said ok boys, let's make this one count and I was making a retrieve had a huge chrome silver follow the jig right to the boat and take a swipe at it but miss!! Casted out again and this time picked it up half way in and came to the surface twisting and turning and it was a beast!! Hit the surface thrashing and threw the jig back at us! Darn! Estimates were in the mid teens on this one a chrome bright but alas did not make it to the net~ did finish up though with a nice buck so limited out by 1pm!

Pulled over to the bank for some Kodak moments, had lunch and floated back down to the launch! Great day on the river and even though was looking forward to Lake WA was glad I was able to get the experience of twitching jigs! Can't wait to try them out on the green!

Cleaned and filleted mine out at home, vacuum packed them and it was funny, that when I went to this site there was a video on cleaning salmon but one thing I might add is I learned this from Tom Douglas ( well known chef/owner in Seattle) that he fillets them, he scrapes the meat off the carcass and uses them for his salmon burgers and also adds to his seafood cakes! Check out how much meat came off the carcass by just scraping with a spoon along the carcass after you fillet it! Salmon burgers tonight!!

Rain is a coming so things are just going to get better and better!! See you on the water!!