2 Days on the Salmon

A return client of mine Dan Shaffer met me at Whitaker's, around 6:30am on Sunday. The temp gauge in my Jeep read 7 degrees when I opened the door... it was going to be a cold one. After battling frozen guides and a frozen anchor rope for several hours, a hot cup of coffee and a couple hot fish warmed us right up. The water level was up a bit and coming out of the dam at 1800cfs, so fishing was slow. At the end of day one we shook hands and parted ways (both to hot showers I'm sure).

Waking up and seeing the the temps were already in the 30s, day 2 was sure to be more enjoyable. We started the morning off on foot to try to find a couple of fish up river before we headed down in the boat. Unfrozen guides make for easy line control, so getting a good drift was a breeze. It wasn't long before Dan had his first fish on, not long after that we had another one in the net. Time to float.

We put the boat in and headed down; the water had also dropped to 1200cfs a much for manageable level. Dan ended up with 2 more fish in the net and a couple of others on. We stopped and had a nice warm bowl of soup and a hot cup of coffee to end the day.