Snuck out to the Stilli this morning while my wife was busy preparing Thanksgiving dinner. River was fairly high, but visibility was pretty decent for fishing big patterns (~3') in the softer water on the edges of the main current.
Was having a grand old time, with 5 fair hooked salmon (3 Coho, 2 Chum and one snagged pink -I swear it was a pink and the scary thing was it looked better than the chums...) One coho was chrome bright with sea lice, the other fish all about what you would expect in late November, well up river. With my promised 12:00 pm departure time having come and gone, I hooked my sixth salmon, a Coho buck about 6 or 7 pounds. In typical Coho fashion it went in to the death spiral toward the end of the fight and ended up with the line wrapped two or three times around its kyped upper jaw. I was standing about waist deep and brought the fish to me where I stood and while the fish was still in the water grabbed the leader and the tail, and then pushed the fly out of the fishes jaw, only to have the fish thrash at just the right time to drive the tiemco hook into and through the tip of my finger. Did I mention that the 15 lb tippet was still wrapped two or three times around the upper jaw of the Coho? I had to let go of its tail to free up my other hand to try and remove the fly from my finger (while cradling my brand new, 9 weight Loomis Nautikos under my arm.) I finally managed to pull the fly out of my finger and after a brief encounter with the thumb on my other hand the fly finally fell free enough for the fish to twist out of the line and to swim free. I expect the final punch line will occur later this week when the deep puncture through my finger gets infected, as I then persisted to fish a while longer, trying to land a steelhead to complete the outing. (I guess if my Karma was really in the negative I would have managed to break the rod tip or to drop the rod into the heavy flow while all of the cursing was going on...) Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Andy
