We’ve been having quite a bit of rain, not unusual for this time of year, and it is putting a real damper on what’s left of the salmon fishing season. Many of the rivers are running high and muddy and when the rivers are in that condition, the salmon stop biting. We went out anyway because we are running out of kayak fishing days as the salmon season is winding down. We knew it wouldn’t be ideal salmon fishing conditions, but it turned out to be worse than we thought. The river looked like coffee; zero visibility with plenty of floating debris. The river was running much higher and faster than normal, making the kayak fishing very tough.
We trolled our proven salmon slaying lures for a couple hours without so much as a nibble. It was clear that trolling, which usually is a great way to get the salmon, was not going to work today. We brought salmon eggs in case trolling didn’t work, so we started fishing with eggs, even though it was hard to keep them from washing downstream, even when using a couple ounces of lead. We got hits on the eggs immediately, what was biting was not the salmon we were hoping for, but white sturgeon. The muddy water did not seem to bother the sturgeon at all, every time we dropped salmon eggs in the river, a sturgeon would gobble them up. We wound up catching a lot of sturgeon.
The fishing for salmon was terrible, but the fishing for sturgeon was great so I guess you can’t call the salmon fishing trip a complete failure. The weather was pretty wet and miserable, but we did catch a lot of sturgeon. On any other day, catching all the ten pound fish you want would be pretty good and sturgeon can put up a good fight, so you have to look at the positive side of things.
It’s going to be a few days, at least, for the river water levels to drop and the water to clear up so we can get back on the salmon fishing. It’s been raining all last night and today, so that’s not helping things out. We are keeping out fingers crossed for a little less rain, a tall order in this part of the country this time of year.