Silvers on the Humptulips

It's fall. Fall means salmon river fishing in the Pacific Northwest. Tim invited me to fish the Humptulips River on Saturday. It's a break I needed. Work has been very busy, a little bit frustrating and challenging. We decided to meet at their beach house Friday evening to get an early start on Saturday.

Pressure on the river has been minimal because of the regulations. No King retention, hatchery silvers only, and no bait. The river will open up for bait sometime next week and this might generate some interest and motivation from the crowds.

It was cold on Saturday morning. Clint, being the teenager that he is, of course didn't wear enough clothing to keep his skinny frame warm. Mr. Heater provided some heat. Tim's new River Wolf aluminum drift boat is bigger and nicer than the old glass boat.

We had decide to fish the middle section of the river. We left my car at the take out at Copalis Crossing and we launched the boat at the Reynvann gravel bar. Water had a nice green tint and flowing at about 500 CFS. The first mile of the drift was uneventful. At the middle part of our drift we come across a nice section of the river that provided cover for the fish and the kind of travel lanes that silvers like to use.

Sure enough Clint gets the first take down on his gold plug. We quickly land his fish and we drag the boat back to the spot and parked it. We got out and worked the water hard. I hooked and landed a nice 12 lb hatchery silver using a small green plug. As the sun traversed west, the shadow that was concealing th fish was being pushed closer to the bank which concentrate the fish in a small area.

I hook 2 more fish. I lost one quickly, casted back in the spot and hooked another only to pass the fish to Tim. He actually hooked the same fish and my hook fell off. I've never seen this kind of hand-off before. He lost the fish after a few minutes.

We kept moving and I got lucky again as we casted to a pod of fish swimming tight to cover. I made a blind cast and my yarn gets hammered by a nice 16 lb silver. We land the fish and kept moving. We saw quite a bit of fish and I foul-hooked another silver as we casted to another moving pod.

Good day on the river.