Have rod, will travel.. trek.. rappel.. swim.. anything to get where the fish are!

another day without much luck. wanted to see if i could access the prison hole from the Tualco side and arrived around 2 to a meandering green humpy soup. there were even two professional looking photographers documenting this season's die-off with telephoto lenses. i fished what i thought were some good seams but saw nothing surface that wasn't already belly-up or in full spawning mode. tried twitching with various colors, even tried drifting/retrieving a kastmaster. has anyone seen fish in this part of the Skykomish recently? as it started to mist on the grey slicks of fish membrane and the cow methane wafted riverward, i decided to try my luck on the upper snohomish.

got to the 522 bridge and made my way through the thicket, navigated the froggy shallows and stationed on a rock outcropping abutting some deep water and what turned out to be numerous hidden, immovable objects primed to snatch lures. there weren't many people around, a couple of smaller boats and none of the activity i was hoping to see. i did observe a sea lion (this is almost at the confluence of the sky and snoqualmie!) doing somersaults and whapping its tail against the water. i think i also saw an old king or maybe a chum skim a few feet; whatever it was, it was the color of burnt toast.

I started twitching a 1/2 oz black and chartreuse marabou which i ended up losing to a good solid unidentifiable underwater mass. switched to a dick nite with an inline weight which i also lost on my 15th or so cast, and ended this sequence of ill-fated offerings with a silver and chartreuse spinner, also producing no results. a few patchy/camouflagey looking humpies milled about and kept me company. at one point an inflated swim bladder attached to some kind of large submerged organ floated past from the direction of a boat a few hundred yards upriver, so someone might have had some kind of success, but none that i could verify.

packed it in around 5, gathered ample lure-packets and cigarette boxes littering the shoreline, and tunneled back to the road snagging my net and rods on all kinds of bushes and vines on the way, the sound of a single firearm discharging somewhere in the background. under the bridge, surrounded by garbage, i saw another giant form surface briefly in a deep, still pool. it might have been the sea lion, but lacked the mannerisms. judging by its sluggish movement and mottled color-scheme it probably wasn't in danger of being anyone or anything's dinner this season.

thus concludes another coho-less adventure. these fish have been nothing but elusive for me. i still haven't caught one, any year. the numbers are always one spot ahead of where i am, or behind. from the highway i saw a young guy walking down the bank around the bridge holding a giant chromed-out hulk, but that must have been the only one offered by the river today. i have to say i'm pretty stumped. i think i've seen evidence of the existence of these fish, but i'm starting to question my memory. is thomas eddy worth the masses? i live 6 minutes away but always avoid the place because of the crush of humanity. rotary park and above has been a bust for me since the coho have started coming in, and the two times i paddled up past the railroad trestle in snohomish towards the private launch i haven't seen a single fish surface.

i read reports here and it's obvious ya'll are onto something - any advice, hints, admonitions? i already know that Three Rivers RV Park isn't a great place to hang around looking for handouts or rendezvous', heh heh.. maybe something fish-related?

let there be so much luck out there that some of it trickles down and finds me where i am!

jonb

10/9/2015 9:16:00 PM

Rain... its coming.. keep at it.

Goldrigger1

10/9/2015 11:02:00 PM

Sorry guy. I've had many a bad day trying to find where the salmon are. I know a guy who sometimes works as a guide and he lives on the Sky somewhere. He knows it so well he can produce. I don't.

Right now it is obvious the silvers are in the Doug Bar, Thomas Eddy areas and are holed up until there is more rain. Then they move and new ones from the salt move in. A guy told me he caught his largest salt coho this year just recently so they are still in the salt too. I expect we will see good fishing coming up soon. With the rising off-colored water, the spinners and lures will come back into play. So I'm told. Let's hope for a good time and a few fillets for the winter.

Gordo McNaughton

10/9/2015 11:44:00 PM

Thanks Goldrigger, that kind of empathy is just what I needed. Gunning for the first of anything is a dicey proposition fraught with angst, but I think it might be the right time to quash my abstinence-only approach to Thomas Eddy. I'm taking some friends out tomorrow and I hope I can lead them to a part of the river where, at the very least, someone's sheer luck can put something into the pot, even if it's not mine! Here's hoping for a Dick Nite revival and assertive, angry silvers.

jonb

10/10/2015 12:12:00 AM

Im about to take up an abstinence approach to thomas eddy, I can only imagine what kind of crap shoot that place must be since so many people feel the need to shout its name from the rooftops every time they catch a fish there.. im stuck in bc right now, im terrified by what ill find when I return.. I think ill risk getting my first skunk for the year and fish elsewhere.

Gordo McNaughton

10/10/2015 11:07:00 AM

I drive past every time I launch from Cady Park and the line of trucks spilling out of the parking area gets longer every morning. Might as well hit up fred meyer for a couple of fillets, tag the card, and call it a short day! ah well.. as long as they don't place number limits on anglers per spot you can't really blame people for flocking to where the reports issue from. I still guard jealously a few stretches upriver that no one really cares to hike to, and the fish have to push up eventually, right? in other news, seattle times just posted an article: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/whats-killing-coho-study-points-to-urban-road-runoff/

turns out the runoff rain causes kills coho in particular in a matter of hours. maybe something about the monster trucks hauling giant jet sleds with 300 hp auxiliary engines burning out at the boat launch? count your blessings, jonb, you've done better longer than most you see out on the river (and earned it), even if the fall salmon season is turning into a funhouse barrel-shoot. interesting times..

jonb

10/10/2015 2:22:00 PM

Indeed, I appreciate your point of view, and agree with your thoughts. I have more tricks up my sleeve for this season, it aint over until the fat lady sings..

im just concerned about the zombie like horde of flossers/snaggers and their kin coming from dozens or even 100 miles away to fish 1 hole. Luckily there is rain in our forecast that will change everything im sure.

it really does bother me the way alot of people have utter disregard for the river and everyone on the river with their jetboats blasting by at 50 mph on the river. Less is more. A drift boat will get you further for cheaper and not ruin the environment or disrupt others. And you dont need a gas guzzling 5mpg ozone destroying lifted pig to get to the river.

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