Done at 6:50 AM Sunday

[Okanagan]

Slept in an hour longer than I meant to and still had a limit of two fish before 7:00. Average to smallish but tasty.  The upper one in the pic above still has sea lice on it, the dark spots in the wrist of the tail.  I've heard that these salt water parasites die or drop off within 24 hours of entering fresh water, though I think it might be more like 36 or 48 hours.  Anyway, the fish was caught 50-60 miles upriver from salt water, and still has sea lice. These sockeye have to hustle up the river to swim that far before the sea lice drop off!




An hour or so later...



I had a spot in mind to fish, the downstream end of a gravel bar in swift current up the river 100 yards above where the gong show crowd peters out.  It was good grey daylight when I got to the river with hundreds of people fishing but there was nobody within 60 yards of the spot I wanted.  As I boogied my 4x4 across the first stream, I saw a young man hoofing it in a beeline for my spot and I had a hunch where he was headed even though he was a quarter mile and two deep wading streams from it.  I wanted to drive as close as possible so took a couple of long doglegs to safe stream crossings.

 Part way along my route a pick-up got stuck in deep soft sand ahead of me and I hesitated only a second to decide not to stop and help.  Everybody was safe, he wasn't blocking any road, and if I had been him I would have left it stuck, walked 100 yards to the river and fished rather than mess with it during the prime early time. Meanwhile the young man on foot beat me to my spot by 30 seconds.  I had to wade 75 yards anyway.  

He started tying on a leader, wasn't ready to fish, so I could have taken the best spot but he got there first so I took the second spot in line, 50 feet upstream from him.  I kidded him about seeing him heading for the place.

Doggone!  He hooked three fish before I got one!  He lost his first two, broken leader so something was wrong but you don't mess with another man's gear.  Then I got two and an older gentleman who had moved closer upstream as more people showed up got one.   The two men upstream from him were easy going good people to fish near, and I left before it got crowded.  My last few casts I had to keep track of two other fishermen, not bad as these things go. As I walked back to my rig, where there had been five fishermen there were now 25 in the 150 yards upstream from where I'd fished.   A good time to be leaving.  I did some sight seeing and came back by a half hour later.  The young man who got there first and the old guy still hadn't caught their second fish so I was lucky.

As I drove past the gong show, an inept young man had a fish on that ran straight downstream past at least 40 other fishermen.  They were trying to help him, at least the first 20 or so, but somebody way down the river tangled with him and he lost the fish.  He was clueless.  A guide I fished near in a slow part of the river the other day opined that you need to be able to speak 8 languages to join the gong show crowd.  The Asians tend to be good fishermen but the Eastern Europeans are often clueless and so tangle more.  

[pitw]

Man you are quick .  No wonder the wife sent you fishing . 



As an aside them fish are pretty quick too eh.  Yellow for sure and make me think of Lake trout.