Battling The Elements

I headed to the lake early this morning with David to try our luck at some more salmon. We were expecting a very wet day and were pleasantly surprised t to begin in the clouds instead. After fixing a minor problem with a broken steering bracket connecting the two engines we were ready for battle. The water temps had warmed up a little since I was here on Monday and I wasn’t sure they would still be in the area. It was mostly around 50 degrees with a warm air temp around 60 degrees. Winds were almost non existent being light & variable as well. Fortunately, it didn’t take too long to get a confirmation when a high line began to scream and David was tight to the first salmon. Unfortunately, it fell a quarter inch short of the legal size and was immediately released. Not long after that one, the other reel screamed & we were on once more. This one did make the cut at over 16 inches and would be on the menu at David’s house this evening. Several more hits, misses and a few others landed and before we knew it, there were three nice salmon up to 17 inches swimming in the livewell. We even managed to do battle with a couple of feisty smallies that somehow managed to find their way into salmon country too. It wasn’t fast & furious, but we were picking at them pretty good until the weather took a turn for the worse. It began to rain and real heavy at times shutting the fish completely down. Throw in some thunder just for good measure and we had the next three hours, living hell. With all the heavy rain falling, there was a lot of mud dirtying up the water from the raging streams draining into the lake and visibility was almost nil in the areas we were getting hit earlier. I tried everything including fishing over 100 plus feet of water, but even that didn’t change the outcome. Just when we were about to call it a day, one of the reels fired and David was once again battling another salmon to the net. As with most of the fish today, this one was also short and back it went too. A couple more passes just for good measure proved to be useless and we were on or way back to the ramp, calling it a day. I hope the water settles and cleans up in the next couple of days as I will be back for revenge! Overall a tough day with 8 salmon landed a couple of smallies and a few more drive byes. Not the day I was looking for, but still fun nonetheless!!