After that heavy thunderstorm Thursday evening / Friday morning, I stayed away from the river on Friday because the water level and discharge rate was nuts! Discharge got up to 6200 cu ft per second! That could sweep someone away very easily!

So Saturday morning rolls around and I get up later than usual because I want to give the river as much time as possible to settle down. Hit the river at 10am on Saturday and the discharge was still at 4000. Not fun to fight that current even at 4000. Stayed pretty close the bank on River Rd and as the morning went on, the water level steadily dropped and the discharge slowed. By the time we left at 4pm it had slowed to 2800 which is pretty much what I'm used to on a calm day.

The more it slowed, the faster the action got. Ended up with 2 hen silvers, each 6 lbs...and kept the 2 nicest pinks of the day. See first pic for the twins as I call them. LOL

This morning (Sunday), I took my son to the upper river off 410 and got him into his first salmon ever! I had to cast for him, but then immediately handed the pole to him and he did everything else on his own (for the most part, I had to give his arms a little extra boost a couple times as he was reeling it in...that fish was wearing him out). He let it drift, felt the hit, set the hook and reeled it in on his own (with a couple nudges along the way to keep his arms moving). He said his arms hurt after that and he was happy with the one fish...which ended up being a 5 lb pink buck (see second pic). Not bad for his first salmon! I then proceeded to bring in 4 pinks pretty quickly so we could get out of there. There were tons of jackwagons at the spot we were at (which is common at the spots with bank fishing). People constantly casting over me even after I called out a fish, or called out that I was coming down the line. So like I said, I pulled in 4 pinks with the quickness and we called it good. Proud of my boy. Hope he'll give it another chance...he was complaining about his arms hurting after fighting that buck pinky. But I will say, those pinks can be feisty...so I can only imagine what that feels like to a stick skinny 75 lb 11 year old.

Can't wait to get back on the lower river...

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