After a hot start to the salmon fishing season, things have cooled off considerably. The fish counts are way down and there are more fish leaving than coming. From here until the end of the season, any salmon or steelhead caught will make it a great day and you can expect a few days when you might not catch anything. That’s salmon fishing.
The past week has been slow fishing at a couple reliable spots. The place we usually fish late in the season had a good day mid-week that was followed by a really slow day. If you aren’t catching any fish but everybody else is, well, you might be doing something wrong. If nobody is catching fish, then you can assume the fishing is slow. One day, at another spot, I did not get a nibble and didn’t see any fish. Even if the fish aren’t biting, you can see them jumping and surfacing. There may not have been any significant number of fish around that particular day. It’s tough fishing; the 20lb. mono wore grooves in the fishing rod guide from making so many casts.
I hooked a few fish that managed to shake the hook and get away. There were a number of half-hearted hits to keep us out there. I finally managed to hook a nice chinook salmon and get it to the kayak, only to see it was a native fish and released it without using the net.
Even if the fishing is a little tough, the weather has been pretty nice. Getting colder in the morning, but nothing major.
Time to close the blog department and get the kayak fishing gear ready for the 4:00 AM wakeup call tomorrow. Looks like a couple good fishing days coming up, gotta get out there.