While I don't normally fish for salmon in the afternoon, I do like to take opportunity when it arrives. The original plan was to take my youngest (8) but he balked at the "chance" that it might rain so I headed up solo. On the way, I called a buddy who said he'd join me from 6-8 so the plan was for a few solo hours then back to the dock to pickup my partner then back out for a few hours.
The solo portion put me fishing in an area with Travis and AJ. How do you know you are fishing in a good spot? Guides show up and fish in the same area. I was 32 feet down on the downrigger and put out 6 colors of lead and caught 3 fish and had 3 others come unbuttoned quickly before running out of time. No action on the wp fly...they seemed to like he metal today.
I pick up my buddy and had to a closer spot to the ramp due to a nasty storm blowing through the north end of the lake and dark clouds forming over the Belnap range. We could see the lightening show and I don't mess with mother nature so I put out the gear with the warning that I'm not going to tolerate that storm moving our way but it seemed to stay well north. We quickly put doubles in the boat with the big one at 20". We circled back through and both DRs released again but only one fish came to the boat. By the time we had the gear back out, I look up and those clouds over the Belnaps were right on us and the rain came HARD (I'm in an open 16 foot side console). I quick radar check and I see trouble is here to stay so we set a record in packing it in and headed for home leaving some hot fishing behind us.
Great trip. If it wasn't cut short by mother nature, we would have cleaned up where we were. Fun being out though. First time out for salmonids since the Derby. Evertyhing on metal b/t 30 and 40 feet. Only one fish on leadcore. Good to see the guides got some mid-week charters.
