On Friday, the 25th I fished a couple hours with nary a hit or a sighting.
On both Saturday and Sunday, I found a very interesting and funny salmon
behavior. On the outgoing tide running from 10.4' at 6:30 am to -2.6' at 2
pm, I hit the beach at 9 am south of Doc's. At just about the time of the
tide when you can see the kelp beds, I began tossing my popper out over the
kelp and let it swing into the beach. I didn't retrieve or put any action
on the fly. I lifted the rod and made small downtide mends to increase the
flyline belly and keep a smooth steady v-wake formed as the popper swung -
just like waking a steelhead fly. The salmon hit somewhere between the
middle of the swing and just before the fly straightened at the beach. The
funny thing was in the rise to the popper. The salmon leaped high into the
air and pounced on the fly. They looked just like the old Orvis painting
with the brook trout leaping high into the air with the fisherman's fly in
its mouth. I got five such pouncing hits and hooked one which I long
released. It was on a circle hook which I have been trying with my poppers.
The circle hook sucks on the popper and is now history.
On Sunday, I went back an hour later in the tide at 10am and had three hits
with one stuck, a nice searun. I ran into Wes Neuenschwander, Sean Ransom,
Mike Santangelo, and Wes' nephew, Casey, and we all finished fishing the
tide together. I'll let Sean and Wes do their own reports, but Casey, a
student at OSU, who was up visiting ol' uncle Wes, took home a nice silver.
On Monday, Brian Lencho, Casey and I did it again, this time, with the
addition of some heavy winds. Brian and I did ziltch but Casey caught and
took home another nice silver. Boy, we just can't let these Oregon guys
come to our water, outfish us and then have a barbecue with our fish!
Leland.
