Photo by Jake England of North 40 Outfitters
Game Face
What were bulls doing in shallow water?
Fred suggested those fish had moved
shallow to eat salmon smolts that were
swimming in those fast, shallow sections.
And the bulls, obviously, followed them in.
Soon, all of us were casting shallow and
hooking up. Considine and Telleen were
hooking fish on every cast and yarding
them out and releasing them as quickly
as possible. We may have landed 25 fish
in that run, including a few that measured
more than 25 inches. The fly of the day was
Telleen’s Bald Eagle, which the fish took
as a smolt. Unfortunately, we’d run out of
them. All of us understood that tying would
be on the agenda that evening. As we
headed back to the mothership we were
in high spirits and even more so when we
pulled the crab traps and knew we’d be
having cracked Dungee for dinner. Where
the mothership rested on anchor the water
was muddy, like Willy Wonka Chocolate
River muddy. And it was pouring out of the
river we’d fished the day prior. We’d made
the right choice, traded the mud for some
visibility and fished shallow rather than
deep, and we nailed the bulls because of
that change to the game plan.
This river is running “steelhead green,”
which is how coastal anglers describe these
conditions. Providing plenty of visibility,
Team North 40 hauled scads of bull trout,
plus a few hefty cutthroats, out of this gem.
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