More Fishing Stories . . .

Up at 2:30 and on the road at 3:30 in Phil's brand new Ford pick-em-up truck, Bill Furgason and I joined Phil Reed to the upper bay of the Tillamook River yesterday morning to try our luck for springer salmon. In the water at 6:00 am, pulling spinners and 7 minutes later we had a "Double". Unfortunately mine was a smolt but after a good fight of about 10 minutes Phil landed a nice 22 lb. hen salmon. She was beautiful. We fished the outgoing tide until about 10:30 but didn't have any more strikes. In fact we saw only one other fish caught from a fleet of about 40 boats. We later heard of 2 additional fish caught for a total of 4. Phil showed us his skill but unfortunately there just weren't many fish coming in yesterday. It promises to get better so you might want to give it a try. Phil will be retiring at the end of this month and will have many more available fishing dates. It's great fun. Frank

I told Frank we would be fishing til about 1-2:00, turned out to be 1:30. Fisherman never lie! We left the Florence HQ about 6:30 and put in at the east County launch on Mercer Lake, just east of 101 on the north end of Florence. We'd picked up a few lessons trolling about 2 weeks ago, plus a some guidance from the Guide (Phil) so we were in the water immediately. We had two rods with medium silver willow leaves and one with a larger Ford Fender style double blade half and half silver/gold - all with worms about 3 ft. back.

Picking up a fish within the first 10 minutes, we moved around a point into the North Arm where we had found some fish previously. A couple passes through the area and a couple more Rainbows jump on our bait and were added to the stringer. Moving west along the north shore, we picked up the largest of the day, and lost a few who only wanted the very tip of the worms - must have been gormets! As we cruised the west end of Mercer we boated three more and, as with the most of the others, they put on a real aerial show before sliding into the net. Moving back to the point at the mouth of the North Arm, we put on fresh bait and move along the east shore and filled out our limits with more fat Rainbows. All in all, we were constantly busy, so lunch was hard to squeeze in. A few clouds, rain, and sunshine rounded the day out in what turn out to be exceptional in every respect.

Brian

PS: yes, I do have a two-rod license.

Limits of Chrome- Friday, March 19, another day light start with two clients, low fog laying on the river, but the fish were there and waiting, we started the first drift pulling plugs and had just got all three rods in the rod holers when the first fish hit, can you can fish on in 30 seconds? we went five for five- four Brats and one Nat, but just as fast as they came, the action died by mid morning, the rest of day was spent catching and releasing a number of big cutthoart trouts. We evidently fournd a section of the river holding fish and with only two other boats on that section of the river, we really didnt have to share the action with any one else. It was one of those days, sunny, warm, limits of hard fighting steelhead, and great clients who really enjoyed the day. We should have about 3-4 more weeks of steelhead season, so don't give up and keep trying to catch of those chrome heads.
Thanks,
Phil Reed