Shooting Fish in a Barrel, Almost

[FloatnFly]

i was finally able to squeek an outting out about a month ago, fall salmon! I l know, I know, dirty old boots. After trying some usual locations, I decided to venture to a pool that I have known about, but rarely got to fish because of the number of people that do fish it. Got there, and there wasn't a single person within 500 yards of me. I went to the lower end of the system looking a fresh run of fish after the rain.

 

using my trusty fly setup, time to get to work, 8wt G Loomis NRX rod, with an Echo Ion reel, can't say enough about the drag, it got a work out this day. So I figured spawning time, big fish, egg fly, and 10lb leader, well, they were having nothing of that, was watching them swim around my line as it passed through the pool. Back to the drawing board, went down to a 7lb leader and started stripping spey flies through the pool. BINGO! 2nd cast, watched a fish try to kill the fly. set the hook, fish on! after a wild 5 minutes, started getting to my landing zone, and snap! line breaks. #$^%$##! time to retie, wait for the pool to settle, 15minutes later, another deadly strike and fish on! this one covered 60 ft of water, and 7 ft of air, in under 15 seconds before breaking loose. i have never seen a fish move so damn fast before, what a rush!

 

Time to retie again.and then finally after 30 minutes of working the pool, i see the fish swim up, grab my fly, and start the death shakes, set the hook, fish on! loosen the drag off a tad, not going to lose this fish. as the battle goes on, the fish is moving like crazy through the pool, i can feel my line bump into other fish, and then my worst fear, the fish dives, swims under several others, and jumps back towards me. looping my line around 3 or 4 other fish. let my line go slack, then pick it back up again, fish is still on. took 3 attempts to land it on my own, but in the end I had succeeded. a beauty around 10lbs, not my biggest by far, but well worth the wait.

 

 

quick pic, then back in to join its friends on their final journey.

 

 

its many, many friends

 

I ended up breaking off on 2 more that day, but it didn't matter, was a great 3 hours!

[misfish]

Thanks for the morning read FF. Nice to have a hole, all to yourself.

 

Well done.

[buick14]

Ya that hole was teaming with boots . Honey holes like that where you are all alone are few and far between nowadays

[pics]

I'm surprised that the snaggers aren't around.. I gave up fishing for salmon because of those guys..

[FloatnFly]

I'm surprised that the snaggers aren't around.. I gave up fishing for salmon because of those guys..

 

gotta love fishing mondays! no one is around snaggers were all up in the north part of the creek gettin their fix in before it shut down lol

[BillM]

Shooting fish in a barrel is right, lol.

[PUMP KNOWS]

Good stuff!

 

Salmon on the fly rod stripping streamers is on my to do list next year.