8/12/07 

The fishing has been nothing short of spectacular lately. I dream about opening week, a season full of promise, a fresh perspective not tainted by previous weeks, previous clients, the consistent early mornings,...sockeye season. The first week is pure. The fish are active, relatively untouched, aggressive and huge. This is when we see our hogs. So far none of my guys have stuck the thirty incher. I've been waiting two seasons for it, but none yet. We usually get one or two a year, three if we're lucky but we get lots of fish between twenty five and twenty eight.  So far, I have been seeing plenty of those, but the pig remains elusive.

Finding fish during the first week is not especially challenging, if you can read water, you can get into fish. Work the seams, the edges of gravel bars, the backsides of islands, the obvious lies with big undulating streamers and you'll do just fine. But, being the type of fisherman that I am, that's not enough for me, I have to figure some things out, decipher code. I want to find the fish sitting in the little unassuming buckets that other people don't see. I want to work the gravel depressions that were overlooked by the guy who fished that beat the day before. Does it really matter now, not so much, but it keeps me interested and in a week or two, it will most definitely matter. I also like to work bird piles, just like offshore fishing, find the birds find the food. Schools of salmon smolt are making their way toward the ocean right now and the rainbows are following. I'm putting my guys on big gravel flats and casting clousers to pods of rainbows crashing baitfish like stripers. You can head-hunt them, see a fish crash, cast to him...strip...strip...strip...there he is! And two feet of trout come cartwheeling across the river. It's pretty fantastic. The mousing has not picked up yet, we caught a small one today on a mouse but the water temp is below fifty, so they're not quite willing to chase yet.  Give it a week.