My friend Chris invited me to go fishing with him and another friend for chums today, so I decided to give it a try. Chris is new to fishing, so we were hoping to get him a fish. We arrived at Chico Creek around ten to see only four cars there which was amazing since there are usually way more than that. I normally skip this fishery because I hate the elbow to elbow craziness, but today the numbers were manageable with lots of space. We hiked to the open water just past the mouth and started casting corkies and yarn. The wind was pretty stiff creating rolling waves and stirring up the mud. The creek had also deposited a lot of leaves at the mouth which made conditions rough. After a few casts I was not feeling confident with the stained water, floating debris, and the arrival of Native American nets. They basically set nets from shore to shore across the little bay at the mouth of the creek. The nets were staggered making the fish do s patterns to reach the creek. After about 45 minutes, I started seeing fish come by me from upstream. Two guys were fishing up the creek spooking them downstream. I finally hooked up to a decent hen that I was able to land and keep for the smoker. My buddies also had a couple of fish on but lost them. The fish disappeared until about half past one when a school appeared at the mouth. I caught four more which were pretty dark and let them go. My friend Chris caught a nice male for his first chum ever. Our other friend caught a nice hen. The fish finally went up the creek, so we called it a day around 2:30. We had a good time. We saw some other fish caught as well. I used a green corky with green yarn while the other guys had pink corkies with pink yarn.

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