You can cast across most of these small intimate coastal rivers. The roaring ocean sometimes in sight; in thought, smell, feel, and sound constantly. The wind stings my face as the cold air blasts my head giving extra grit and redness on my cheeks. I set out to break the ice from my clients guides and the frost off my oars.
My childlike curiosity’s sparked. I wonder if we will bump into a monster today.
Excitement warms my body up as if disconnected from my frozen face, hands, and feet. We are fishing for Chinook salmon in the late Fall. I check the tides to see when the likeliest first push of fish will be coming through. Fishing for salmon is something of patience, perseverance, and lust. We start the day at 5:00 AM, rowing in the dark, knowing my way with a head lamp just in case, but as my oar squeaks, I gauge the sound reverberation as to where I might be along the river. I set up my 909 9 weight Meiser rod with a dark colored clouser.
“I tell the guys to cast straight down and slowly strip their fly back in as if they were an old man patiently reading his morning newspaper.”
Cast after cast with front and back anchored, the drift boat doesn’t move. You see the lights of trucks driving to the put in as the sun starts to rise. We push to the next salmon pool in hopes of getting slammed by a chinook salmon.
We can’t always swing for steelhead. Well, actually, we CAN on some Oregon rivers.
We are lucky here on the West Coast; but we can also try for violent salmon, a species of their own. One that puts everything on the line for their lineage to continue.
As birds start to wake up with fresh zeal for the day, so do our fingers and eagerness to continue drinking coffee. As we get situated on the right line in the pool, we start the dance again. Cast, slow strip, cast, slow strip. I instruct to keep casting. Until one guy’s fly stops moving. A familiar voice of a friend enters my head “keep stripping to find out what it is” I say that to the guy until it comes tight with weight and the slow dance now becomes a wrestling match with a cast iron pan glued to the bottom of the river. After a 15-minute fight we land the salmon and revel in her beauty. High fives all around and the dance continues. We stay in the pool for a while longer to see if there is a small pod schooled up in the deep part of the river. No one is interested.
We ramble on.
Few people have the patience and grit to fish for salmon on coastal streams. I was passed the knowledge and mentored myself by some of the best along with a lot of recon figuring out what seemed to work and what didn’t. I enjoy passing the gift of knowledge to those in my boat as a guide so they can continue their newfound freedom on their own. That is the goal to create new river stewards and to spark excitement within others to continue… to care… to believe.
We eventually pull over for a warm riverside lunch with soup, hot sandwiches, and hot drinks. Laughs are had and with bellies full we continue the hunt. After lunch there seems to be a lull.
“The after-lunch blues set in… you know what I am talking about.”
Scientifically all of the blood flow is going to our stomachs and our digestive tract to get the food moving so there is less blood flow going to the brain. Basic biology baby! This is when the malfunctions happen. The wind normally kicks up at this same time because nature’s best lesson is humility! Once everyone is over the hump there is a groove to be had again. Cast strip cast strip over and over.
You can fish many different ways and every river can be specific. I am not giving away too many secrets so I will stay vague here but also give helpful tips so you can get out and give it a try too.
- Remember, a good way to learn is to hop in a guide’s boat and or come equipped with a couple different lines and flies. We fish with clousers, comets, bosses of many colors- chartreuse, pink, orange, black. Again, anything will work here but depending on the day and the weather some work better than others. You can follow the dark day dark fly and light day light fly rule, but the water flow and clarity really matter most. We typically fish with an intermediate sink or a full sink integrated line *SA line advice from our dear friend Rob Perkin who has been doing this far longer than I.
- You will want a reel with disk drag or anything with serious drag. Keep in mind that people used far less back in the day, during the thick of salmon.
- We then top off the line with 20 lb ultra-green maxima.
- Once you cast your fly you need to pay attention to how deep in the water column you are getting to try different retrieves sometimes and understanding the pool you are in all help you get to the fish and certainly not wanting to be below them. Chinook generally like a slower strip I find though sometimes if they are tuned up, they will go for a faster strip or if you need to do this to stay in the right water depth do that. Always keep stripping back to the boat – they will hit it close; and it’s a wild ride when they do. You repeat this until you feel a blistering grab but more likely weight on the end of your line. Keep stripping to drive the hook into their mouth and the fight is on. You can also of course get out of the boat and wade from the shore and swing flies for chinook. They will eat it many ways especially if there is a pod of fish in the pool.
- As far as rods, if you’re wading, look for an 11 ft 8/9 weight with a skagit line and T material of varies grain weights. You can either strip this fly as you swing or just swing it through nice and slow like you normally would. You do not need to cast far; the rivers are intimate meaning not very large and the same can be said of the pools where they live. You can cover the water sufficiently with a shorter cast and smaller steps in between casts. Still a step and swing method.
