Fall Salmon 2014 - Part 2

My next salmon adventure of fall 2014 was a very exciting and spontaneous trip. It started out after a long day at work and two hours of sleep. I packed up my car and started driving up to my planned destination around 2am and was on the water at 4:30. Things started off very slow with a few fish visually moving up through the system but none of which I could get to take any interest in my flies.

I started swinging flies with my new single hand 8wt Loop rod and after no takers in the first hour switched to nymphing egg flies. This as well did not work out so around 6am I switched back over to swinging flies again. Little did I know it was the calm before the storm....

At 6:30 I was witness to the start of a large push of both coho and king salmon and almost out of nowhere lots of aggressive fish started their journey to the spawning grounds. What followed was a very exciting morning and afternoon in which I had the river pretty much to myself. I hooked more fish then I can begin to count and landed at least a dozen kings along with my first coho salmon brought to hand and landed.

The weather was overcast and grey, and the flies that seemed to work the best that day was anything big and flashy. I started throwing big flashy prom dress flies that I had originally tied up for steelhead and was surprised to see the aggression and interest from the salmon. Several times throughout the day I would watch a large fish chase my fly down on the swing and try to murder it...what a blast!