Hit the water at 1pm and promptly picked up 7 nice silvers on a small
#10,1"clauser in 35 minutes. Then nothing until after the turn at 4pm.
Some large and small schools showed and began cruising the shorelines.
There were two schools in the cove north of Doc's and two south of Doc's on
the front side of the tide. I believe there were one or two schools
circulating in front of Doc's also in the slack water. After the first
seven fish hit the clauser in the morning, the balance of my fish were on
the euphasid/amphipod. I know because I gave it the test. I cast the
candefish into a feeding school and it passed through twice without being
touched. I changed to a #16 Nothing Fly while fish were slurping all around
me. In the interest of research, I suppressed my usual case of buck fever
and made the clinch knot and subsequent cast without any foulups. A couple
strips and the answer was given.
I spent the next hour or two walking up and down the beach casting to the
circling schools. I always positioned myself uptide of the moving fish and
cast well ahead, letting the moving water bring my fly down on a wet fly
swing to the feeding pod of fish. No strip, just gentle twitches to
maintain contact with the fly.
It would appear that the silvers would hit small candlefish patterns
because there weren't sufficient numbers of euphasids in the water. Like
trout, they hit the buggers. Then, as more and more euphasids and amphipods
were gathered by the tide and carried into the seams and backeddies, the
silvers, again like trout, ignored the buggers and selected only the
emerging midges.
Salmon, like trout leave distinctive riseforms, that tell us what to throw
at 'em.
Leland.
