By the time I made it to the stream, it was almost noon. The water had been dropping from the earlier floods and the fish had been biting pretty well. Loads of big chinook were filling the holes in tidewater and folks had been catching quite a few. But the water was getting lower, and it was tougher to get a bite. I could see from the tracks on the muddy bank that folks had been working the water in the morning, but now I had the whole place to myself.

I picked a nice deep hole, one of the deepest in the river. Floodwaters had dug into the far bank, leaving a 20- foot high cliff framing the hole. Small, deep rapids dropped into a 60-foot long hole—a great place for a few dozen big fish to hide.

When the fish were fresh in the pool, you could hook fish all over. They’d bite in the slow parts of the hole and in the rapids, but with the water getting lower, I knew my best bet was to cast my bobber and salmon eggs into the rapids above the hole. The fish liked the protection offered by the swift waters and were energized by the well-aerated run. Sure enough, when I threw out my first cast, I saw a nice fish roll right where my bobber hit.

My first few drifts didn’t do much, but on my fifth cast the bobber popped under the rapids. A quick lift of my big Loomis float rod set the hook and I was in business. A fat chinook tore off line and drove into the big hole. This was what I was hoping for! I’d had rotten luck most of the week and now was into a nice fish.

Good Start
After its initial run, I started to retrieve my line, and my reel started to grind something awful. Any time I tried to reel with a little pressure from the fish, the gears felt like I was grinding coffee! Great, now I really had to baby the fish. I pulled line like a fly fisherman, only winding the slack on my spool after I’d taken out the tension. The big fish took a bunch of runs and it was slow going, but I was elated when I slid it to the beach. It was a fat hen, a little over 20 pounds, and would give me good red meat and a few choice pounds of eggs to use for bait!

Just as I was putting it on my stringer, another fisherman joined me. “Wow, you had some pretty good luck,” he remarked. “Three of us fished a couple of hours this morning and didn’t get a bite.” That was what I wanted to hear, maybe this was my day!

I put the fish under the brush to keep it moist, changed my leader, and put on another clump of cured eggs. Moving a little ways down to allow my colleague some fishing room, I got ready to cast. The sun was high in the sky, and the rapids produced a blinding glare. I flew my bobber and eggs out into the rapids, but lost view of them in mid cast as they hit the golden stream.

Second Strike
While the bobber worked downstream, I fooled around with the reel, trying to tighten the screws and get the insides to mesh a little better. After a few seconds of trying to get it to reel freely, I looked up, expecting to see my bobber floating down in the big hole. It was gone!! In a panic I reeled madly and slammed the rod backward, an even bigger chinook flew skyward and took off, torturing my trashed reel as it screamed in pain!

The fisherman above me couldn’t help but laugh. “As soon as your bobber hit the water it went under,” he chuckled. “I couldn’t figure out why you weren’t setting the hook!” 

“I just went brain-dead,” I explained. “I lost the bobber in the sun and was messing around with my gear. I just got lucky the fish waited for me!”

The bright lunker was not going to be easy to land. She chased all around the pool, jumping several times and taking lots of line. The reel was worthless so I was handling and spooling as fast as I could, but wasn’t getting much pressure on the silver monster. Fortunately, the pool was pretty snag free, but there was a place over next to the cliff where it looked like something brown was submerged. Sure enough the fish headed for it.

Stumped
I was using heavy line. The “fire line” on my spool was 40-pound test, but my leader was only tested at ten pounds. As the fish headed for the brown object under the water, I tried to stop it, but didn’t dare put on too much pressure. The fish drove to the side of the cliff and went around the submerged shape. I could feel the awful vibration of line rubbing against wood. The fish had wrapped my line around a submerged stump!

Now I was screwed, the snag was so deep underwater it would be impossible to figure out how the line was tangled. I loosened the drag and hoped the fish might fight near the downstream edge of the hole where I might get someone to net it. The fish did take some line, but stayed out of sight in the deep water.

I discussed strategy with the guy next to me, but he didn’t have any ideas. The fish was far enough downstream so that I didn’t interfere much with his fishing so I didn’t need to be in a hurry. My first move was to go down around the pool to the bottom of the hole. Maybe I could work the line free from there—no luck. Then I went upstream, above the other fisherman, and tried to get the line loose—nothing. Finally, I crossed the stream, went to the top of the cliff above the stump, and tried to free the line by pulling straight up. I could feel the fish pulling, but still the vibration of a branch or stump rubbed my line.

My options ran out when a couple of other fishermen came to try our section of the river. I’d had the fish on for better than an hour, making no progress, so courtesy dictated that I clear the water. I pulled as hard as I could and felt the fish being dragged right to the stump. Once I got the leader against the wood; I knew his bulk would break the line. Finally my swivel, linking line and leader, bumped the stump; I raised my rod and put on all the pressure I could to break off the fish. Surprise!!! The fish and my line came free. She rolled on the surface and resumed the fight.

The two new anglers looked up in surprise. They assumed that I had been snagged. They didn’t have any idea that the fish was still attached, and nowhere near tired. It took another 10 minutes of line pulling and running up and down the shore before the fish flopped on the gravel beneath me. Bigger than the first fish, this one was nearly 25 pounds!

I gathered up the fish on my rope handle, and dragged them upstream to the truck, making sure that everybody had a chance to see my catch! Finally I was the hottest fisherman on the stream, but it didn’t come easy!

Bob Ellsberg’s column, Fishin’, appears monthly in RV Life and rvlife.com.