Went fishing with Nate Treat for two days to the O.P., destination, the Humptulips river for fall salmon. The big rain had arrived over the weekend and I watched the gauges go from a trickle of 100 cfs to a torrent of 9,000, and back down in a matter of a few days. When we arrived on Monday the river was running 3,100, which turned out to be too high to fish other than at the hatchery hole. We did this for a couple hours and Nate managed one 5 pound brat on a corkie. Me, nada. So Nate took me up to the Salmon river for some backwater exploration, of which he so good at. I’ll post that as a separate report.

Back to the Humps, day two saw the water dropping into much better shape, with a flow of 1,700 cfs. It was “game on”.

We launched above the hatchery and planned to take out at Reynvaads, which, as it turns out, is 9.6 miles on my gps. A full day’s drift on a great river and I was pumped! After a brief episode of pulling plugs we anchored along with 4-5 other boats and began fishing eggs under floats, about 4-5 ft deep. Fish were rolling all around us, and we immediately started seeing other boats catching fish. Nice fish. In no time at all Nate was into his first fish, which unfortunately came undone. And another… undone. Oh, oh, Nate’s reel his giving out and he is having a hard time with the drag which is slipping, and causing a major backlash issue. Bad timing for sure. Me, I’m waiting, waiting, and it’s “float down, fish on!”.

At first I thought, “man, this feels like a snag”. Well, the snag came to life in short order and I was into a reel brute. Run and after run, bulldogging into the current. I’m totally out matched with a 10.9 ft light steelhead rod, and size 1 hook. 12 lb leader and 20 lb braid. What was I thinking? Maybe it’s been so long I’d forgotten what a river king was like. In any case, the minutes ticked away as I played the fish, allowing it to run when it wanted, and getting line back when I could. I didn’t realize how big the fish was until later. 5 minutes, 10 minutes – at 15 minutes my fingers and thumb of my right hand start to tingle and turn numb. “That’s interesting “ I think, another sign of getting older. At 20 minutes the fish is finally tiring, which is good because I am too! At 25 minutes I guide the fish to Nate and he does a nice job netting it, as the fish is about as big as my pontoon net! The fish ended up measuring 36" with a girth of 22 1/4", which I'm going to guess would be 25-30 pounds.

I'm done in and take a break. After awhile I get another float down and release a jack chinook. We decide it's time to leave this honey hole since we have a full day's float ahead of us. There is a very "fun" chute just above the hatchery which made me appreciate having a class 4 rated pontoon boat. Low water this could be a serous hazard for drift boats.

We worked our way down river. Each spot we went to had drift boats anchored and fishing. This made it discouraging to fish, and difficult as the boats all had prime spots taken. None-the-less, Nate managed to hook another fish, and again his drag totally failed. We continued working our way down the river, hitting holes and drifts, but had no more fish chances. At the take out (9.6 miles) the refrain was consistent - tough fishing, some here and there. Looked like various guide boats had 2-4 fish per boat. If Nate's gear hadn't failed we would have had 4.

All in all, a pretty amazing day, catching my largest salmon in many years!

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