Flyrod sockeye

[Okanagan]

Magnum fun.  Big, strong, drag ripping, high jumping brutes of fish.

One evening last week I caught my limit of two with baitcasting gear, in an icy rain when most people had caught fish and left.  It was a fair place to fish with medium swift water, free enough from people to fly fish.  Two young guys were catching and releasing fish and doing it well about 50 yards above me, releasing fish in the water.  We were all wading thigh deep.  They were really interested in the fly rod.

I hooked five and got most of the fight out of two of them before a "long release" on each of them.  One ripped out line, with towering silver jumps.  He had burned off 20 yards of backing and was finally slowing when he came off.  The other one took the hook close to me and after a tight power circle he charged straight at me.  I had a lot of loose line stripped in when he hit and was trying to strip more in fast enough to keep up with him as he zoomed past my legs.   Finally got him on the reel (got line on the reel so I could play him from the reel rather than having loose, stripped-in line looping around).  Lost him at the shore shallows preparing to release him.  Perfect.

Icy rain, late in the day, hot coffee sure sounded good.  When that last fish came off  I called to the young man upstream, "I'm heading for Tim Horton's (a coffee & donut place)." He started laughing.  "There's a  half hour of daylight left!" he exclaimed, "and you are hammering fish."

You could see his eyes roll with good humour at what old guys do, getting a kick out of relaying that to his partner.








Truth disclosure:  the fish in the photos were were caught on a baitcasting rig, because I have released in the water or lost all hooked with a fly rod.

[pitw]

Just plain awesome.   Nice to have company sometimes.

[FinsnFur]

Magnum fun. 

Well, you sure made it sound like magnum fun
Flyrod or not, it looked like fun too.

[golfertrout]

nice ones there i bet they where fighters