Even with all the bad reports, I decided that fishing the Stilly was better than sitting at home so I loaded up and headed out to Silvana. I checked the park under the bridge and the water was high but a lot clearer than I thought it would be (visibility was about 2 feet) but after watching for 15-20 minutes and seeing no signs of life I decided to check out the crowd at Haller Park.

I pulled into Haller Park and to my surprise there is only one rig in the lot and as I head doen the boatramp he comes walikng up muttering about not wanting to wait in the rain, loads up and I'm the only one around. I watched to water and started to see a few roll here and there so I decided "What the hell, I'll try a few casts from the boatramp. I grabbed my pole and a Dick Nite 50/50 #2 and started casting. A few casts into it I decided I wasn't getting the right drift so added a little more weight and that set things right. On my fifth or sixth cast after that about half way through my retrieve, WHAM, fish on. I checked my drag and started carefully bringing her in. As she got closer I started getting concerned, this was a decent fish, how am I going to land this on the boatramp without a net? After a few minutes of getting down on my knees, reaching with one hand for a slippery, uncooperative fish I decided that wasn't going to work so I backed up on got her to some rocks just beside the ramp, jumped down and got my hand in her mouth. Finally, my first Coho.

I don't have a scale, but I'm guessing 12lbs. My boots in the picture is 12" long for reference.

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