We had the day off today, after 12:00, so me, Markus, Sam, and John returned to the Salmon River. The other day we had found pieces of lures that were catching everyone else fish. We decided to buy the parts to fix them up and use those, instead of the salmon eggs. These lures come in two parts - a $4 plastic plug and a $2 hook rigging. It's set up so that if the line breaks, the plug part will be free to float down the river. This is what happened to people, and we found a bunch of them. The day was good, we got a decent number of bites, and I actually brought one of the huge mf's in.
I caught a fish early in the day (we got there around 3:00). It was nice. It was a rod-shatterer (my fishing pole really isn't big enough for this, and besides that the tip is broken off), I thought my reel was going to come off the rod. It didn't, and I fought the fish for 20 minutes. There was some horrible old lady accross the river that saw my fish up close, and kept informing me that it was a "foul hook" and I was going to have to throw it back. She was right, but there was nothing she could do about it. It just made me catching the fish a little less fun. When Markus yelled to her that it wasn't a foul hook, she said, "when you get it in, you'll see". She also said that it was half-dead. It was kind of beat up, but jeeze, lady, can't I just enjoy catching this huge fish? Well, it ran all up and down the stream, and I chased it around and my waders filled up with water. I brought it up close, and Markus went up to it, and grabbed it by the tail. He saw that it was a foul hook, and let it go. It was a little too bad that I couldn't keep the thing, but mostly I was very happy to have brought one in, finally. I think it may be a long time before I catch a keeper, but I can't wait. It's a lot of fun. I had one other bite, and the fish just bit it, jumped out of the water, and I lost it. Half a second. Oh, well. I also snagged 2 dead fish. Dead fish were all over the place - next to shore, floating past, and at the bottom of the river. They die after laying their eggs. I assume that's what's going on. But maybe it's something else. The reason my catch was a "foul hook" was because I caught a wad of fishing line that was hanging out of the fish's mouth. It must be caught in the lip to keep. That's nasty, though, that all the fishermen are leaving their lines in fish's mouths. Me included.
Sam was using a huge Rapalla for a while, then a lure floated by me and I gave it to Sam. On his first cast with the thing, a fish latched onto it. Sam had the fish on the line for a good 5 minutes. The fish was LARGE. It jumped out of the water, and threw the hook. That was too bad, but it was awesome that Sam had some fun for a while He also caught one that was almost dead, but not quite. I didn't see it, but apparently it was rotting - they do that naturally after they lay their eggs. It was still alive, but Sam just wanted it off of his line, and he lost it.
Towards the end of the day, John started doing some fishing, and got one on. It was jumping all around, and the line snapped. That sucked.
All in all, we had a lot of fun today. I'm glad the feelings from the other day's trip were dispelled.