Armed with Spey Rods, if anything we had out kicked our coverage with 3-4 rods each . Eight, nine and 10 weight Sage ONE and Method series rods were the order of the day. Skagit lines and T-14 and T-17 sink tips in 13’ and 15’ lengths gave us a fighting chance in every run visited. Flies? Hell, we have flies, like boxes upon boxes of all sorts of concoctions. Fly color does matter, like have Chartreuse, then grab even more Chartreuse stuff. My personal favorite is the fabled Bjorn Super Prawn pattern in a custom Kelly Green-Chartreuse combination dubbed “The Leprechaun” . Kingy likes Ol’ Leppy, so despite the plethora of flies in all the known killer color schemes, we just kept putting Leppy into the starting lineup and he would not disappoint.
Day one started slow but an afternoon stop at a run I call Joshua Tree brought 4 fish to hand , two a piece but Jen Jen found the big fish and posed for round one of “Camp Champ” photo’s. Day two found us hitting various haunts and Jennifer would make good on “First water” privileges, pretty much in each run . By day three I felt relieved to know that the Ladies first routine, "Hey you go down thru the “Bucket.”" would not follow me to the Brooks Range a month later for a Dall Sheep hunt. Day four would be Jennifer’s day of legend as she tallied 5 hooked, 4 landed with two more to add to her 28-32 pound photo montage, camp champ was crowned with a day to go.
Like steelhead fishing, the spey game for kings is a cast, mend , swing out affair. The persistent shall be rewarded so the theme is keep hucking! At times Jen will have a less than stellar cast of which she will strip in and re-do despite my guide like urgings that amount to the old adage “Fish it, shitty cast catch fish too! “. Once she did hook one on a “Mulligan’s favorite” re-cast, and my “Fish It!” was gone forever.
With each tide change hope springs eternal as big swarms of chromer’s ascend the river . A spot unproductive at 9 am is alive at 3 pm post tide. And when your in ‘em don’t leave as there are residual travelers on the whole of the tide swing and sometimes it truly pays to go thru it again and again, the upper river chase is