We've certainly seen better years and although there have been fish around it seems they went off the bite pretty quick. I'm guessing the warm water and lack of rain had something to do with it but that is just a guess. I generally fish two hours at a time during the week so I can still get a full day of work in and Saturdays I'll try to fish from daylight until around 2. I've had a couple skunks and a few really good days but most days have produced between 1 and 3 fish. Yesterday was what I would call great.
After getting my daughter on the bus I took off for River Forks Park. I wasn't sure what to expect because it rained hard the day before. I knew the river was rising but it hadn't come up too much on the graph so I decided to go take a look. I was the first boat to launch with another boat, and the only other boat that showed up, right behind me. I motored up to the confluence and was hoping the other boat was going somewhere else because I wanted to side drift and most people come up and anchor right in the drift. (regardless if I'm side drifting it already, but that's a rant for another day)
The other boat went downstream so I proceeded to do my thing. I made two drifts and both times I got bit in the exact same spot but they didn't stick long enough for me to get a hook set. I fish with the rod under my leg while I'm rowing so it's a challenge to get the rod into my hands quick enough. This is especially the case when the water is low because the boat isn't moving fast. In higher water conditions, everything is moving faster so the pressure of the boat pulling the line downstream helps hook the fish while it's still under my leg. So after the second drift, I decided to anchor on the slot that produced those two bites and see what I could find. Turns out that was a good idea. A few casts in and I hooked something that felt pretty good. I fought it for just a few seconds and it was gone. After that I got a couple more solid bites before it was fish on. So pulled my anchor and free drifted to land the fish. Pulling a 35lb anchor (yes, way too heavy for this area) is a challenge one handed and keeping the fish on with the other hand. I got the fish near the boat after a great fight and noticed it was of hatchery origin so I netted the fish and bonked it. It was still a little dark out and I didn't want someone to sneak into my hole so I motored back up and anchored in my spot while I bled and tagged the fish. Then it was back to fishing.
It went something like...bite, bite, bite, fish on fish off, then I hooked another one that stuck and got it to the boat and released it with pliers without netting or touching it. Obviously no pics on that one. Then a couple more bites but things seemed to slow a little. I side drifted the run a couple more times to see if I could find more fish but I couldn't and I needed to get home so I left around 9.
All in all, lots of excitement and a couple fish to the boat. I was really happy that my egg cure seems to be working well because I probably have 20 pounds of eggs in the freezer ready for Elk/Sixes, winter steelhead, and Umpqua and Mckenzie springer action. I made a change to my egg cure that seemed to help a lot on the Mckenzie this year so I kept doing it the same for the Umpqua and so far it seems to produce bites here as well.
The fish in the boat is the keeper from yesterday and the others are a couple keepers from this week.