A Day on the Water

I floated fished jigs under a bobber in the Au Sable river mouth between the parking lot and the pier head.  Casting them out far with spinning tackle and walking them downstream on the cat walk and then down the pier.  I saw occasional fish breaking, maybe spawning Lake Trout, drop back Atlantic Salmon or whitefish.  The lakers were out near the end of the pier where the wind was whipping up 5 foot swells bouncing back and forth between the pier heads.  No need to add any twitches to that constant movement.  I was fishing 11 feet below the bobber.  One hit on a...

Started at Tippy Dam at noon.  Fishing was very slow, fishermen were leaving.  Kings are all dead, few Coho jumping.  A the tail out and another easy spot I like, no bites.  When fishing is bad, I don't experiment much but stick with the few flies I think are best.  Yellow beads, and lately the Nuke Minnow Jig.   At 1:30 I moved upstream to the fast snaggy water.  Its hard to wade and hard to follow fish downstream. I was dialing in the depth to try get close to the bottom without snagging. On the 8th drift the bobber went down.  The hook set was met big violent...

 Friday morning. this Chinook pinched the tips of his hooked jaw down on a Nuke Minnow Jig pattern drifting under a bobber in 9 feet of water.  I gave him to the guy who netted him for me.  If it had been a female I would have released her so her eggs could support the brown trout that grow big an fat eating Salmon Eggs. I also hooked a small brown on that jig in faster water.  What the browns really wanted were mainly 8mm glow yellow beads drifted near the bottom.  I also hooked a 5lb slender silver steelhead...

Looked for Large Mouth Bass in some new channels and weedy pockets back off the main current of the North Channel.  A 13 inch Smallmouth rushed the popper without getting hooked on the edge of a narrow side channel.  A 16 inch Pike ate a new white 3/0 Banger on the edge of the main channel and he quickly cut it off when I applied a little pressure on him.  I headed across to a favorite shoreline with a very used 3/0 Chartreuse Banger as the best backup I had brought.  The Marabou tail and Flashabou was worn sparse and short.  It has...

September 10th, there was no Salmon slime, blood or eggs on the stairs. Below the coffer (a low dam the fish can run over) there were only a few fishermen throwing lures or bottom bouncing.  I only saw 3 good fish rise in about 3 hours.  One looked like a 20 inch Skamania, a hatchery strain derived from slender wild summer run steelhead from Washington State's Washougal River.   It happened to rise inches from my bobber in shallow water.  Reportedly, the smaller 2 year wild Washougal River fish were very game and would rise well to dry flies.   In the big pool...