I got a kitchen/diaper pass yesterday to go fishing for the majority of the day. It's been a while since I was able to wander too far from home to fish. Didn't get a real early start since I had to drop the little guy off at the baby sitters. Drove down to Fortson about 7:30 and put my waders on. Walked into the hole and there was already 4 or 5 guys fishing. The water was low and clear and you could see the salmon milling around. Since the water dropped over a week ago I hadn't hooked any steelhead so I decided to drive over to the Skagit. The Skagit was low and clear as a martini. I parked on the highway and walked down Swift Creek and out onto the gravel bar. There was a drift boat at the head of the hole so I started fish a little below since it didn't look like they were going to work their way downstream. There were some chums jumping but not tons of them. I worked the stretch with a white smolt pattern for long time with no action. The boaters were long gone so I walked back up to the head of the hole and fished it with a black rabbit strip. I noticed the water had risen a little so they must have released some from the dam. A little while later I felt a light take and upon setting the hook the water exploded and a good sized chum broke the surface and raced out into the current. After playing tug of war with him I finally got him out of the current and was able to land him fairly quickly. It was about a 12 lbs. buck in really good shape. It looked like he inhaled the fly and was hooked well inside the mouth. There was some discussion about handling and releasing fish on the list this weekend. Most salmon and steelhead I can gain control of and release without beaching or really handling the fish at all. Chums are another story. I pulled this fish into the shallows so he couldn't really swim anymore but was still in the water on his side. At one point I thought I had him, I set my rod down to grab my pliers and he took off dragging my rod. A ended up hooking another chum in the back while retrieving my fly and had another one on that smoked my reel and was about halfway to Rockport before it broke me off. By then my feet were cold and it had been raining most of the morning so I decided to go up to the car and warm my feet and have lunch. I ate my lunch as I drove back to the Sauk. I drove over the Gov't bridge and checked out a couple of spots that I like to steelhead fish. The water was pretty low but had some color in it. Maybe 5 ft. of visibility. There was nobody around. I fished a smolt pattern through a couple of spots looking for some dollies but I didn't find anything but solitude. The high light of the day was probably a conversation I had with an older gentleman while out on the Swift Creek bar. We talked fishing and world politics. He said he was 75 years old and was a U.S. Marine during WWII.
Sincerely, Keith
