B
Bgunder
Member
Well I had yesterday off so me and a co-worker decided to make a trip down to Florence with his boat and see if we couldn't turn his luck around. Since he had made five or six trips down there with nothing to show for it so far he said his wife was starting to wonder about the whole salmon fishing thing..Lol. But I told him we needed to hit it bright and early so we didn't miss any hot bites since he hadn't put in before nine on any other trips. We arrived at the boat ramp at daybreak and were both excited, especially after reading Rodger's report from the day before. We put in and headed down towards the cg station while every other boat went the opposite way completely. This made us question our tactics and after trolling for a little while and not marking many fish we decided to shoot back up past the 101 bridge and start trolling up there. We headed up past marker 29 and across to keep heading up river, after trolling up stream for a while and not getting any hits or anything we turned and started back down stream towards the 29 marker. Before making it all the way back to the marker one of the rods finally went and my co-worker landed a nice little 19in coho jack which boosted our confidence a little that maybe we weren't doing everything wrong. Well around a half hour to 45minutes later just as I was once again second guessing what we were doing we see a big fish on the sonar and then one of the rods doubled over. I jumped up like somebody stuck me in the butt with a pitch fork and the fight was on. I instantly could tell this was a big fish so knew it had to be a nook. It started screaming line off the reel and made a couple 50-60 ft runs straight away from the boat before it turned and charged us. I reeled in as fast as I could but the line went slack and we thought we had lost it as did the two guys who were watching us. As I reel in the slack line I notice it going under the boat and a second later the tugging began again and my arm was starting to ache a little which is a awesome feeling. A few minutes more and he tired out and we had a beast in the net. Bonked and bled him and got him in the cooler (which he didn't fit in very well) We had one more take down after that which popped off 20 seconds into the fight. After a hour or so longer of trolling the gas tanks were running low since the motors are two stroke gas guzzlers and we didn't know if we were going to make it to the dock, the motor literally died as we slid up to the side of the dock. All in all it was a very memorable day on the water and my co-worker finally had some meat to take home. A nice gentleman in the parking lot weighed the fish for us with some sort of sophisticated looking scale and said it was 40lbs which I believe but I know how people are with fish weights so I'm sure some folks will have a difference of opinion. Either way it was a brute of a Chinook, not to mention my first one and my biggest fish ever.
I know that trick...
