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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