Kid’s First Salmon Captured on Video

It doesn’t seem long ago that she was my little tag-along on fishing trips and I worried more about keeping her back from the bank then catching fish when we would hit the river.  We’ve taken lots of trout trips but I admit it, I’ve been greedy with my salmon and steelhead fishing.  The rivers are only perfect every so often, the conditions in fall and winter aren’t normally kid friendly, I need some time to relax, blah, blah.  In my defense, there are three kids and that is more than one guy can handle on the river at once so there aren’t a ton of chances (not that I’ve fully taken advantage, I readily admit.)

But lately the dinner table talk invariably turns to . . . BOYS.  Ugh.  I say the only thing I can think of in these situations,  “Gross.”  I don’t want to give her a complex or anything but I can’t help myself.  It doesn’t seem right.  The words  just have a nauseating ring to them coming from her.  Panic has started to set in. 

The days of slammed doors and sleeping in beyond all reasonable hours are coming, the days when she’d rather die than spend her spare time with her mother and me.  With that realization came the resolve to get out more together before it’s too late.  Low water.  Most steelhead kegged up in the very lowest reches of our coastal rivers.  Whatever.  I decided we were getting out more no matter what.  Best case scenario, we hook into a bright steelhead.  There remains the possibility of a late bright salmon (it has happened plenty of times before), and worse case I figured we’d tussle with a couple darker salmon. 

The morning of the trip we layered up and hit the road.  I was worried her silenced meant boredom as we navigated the backwoods logging roads to our first destination.  But when I asked, Iwas told “No. I’m just checking things out.  It’s really pretty out here.”   Good kid, I thought to myself and felt really lucky. 

We reached the first hole and began fishing it, but nothing was doing.  The morning was really cold with freezing fog and ice in the uppper elevations.  The fish were feeling sluggish.  I explained that I knew a really good spot downriver and we better hit it before someone else does.  I had a good feeling as the sun burned off the fog and started to warm us.  I pointed out where I wanted her to cast and how to retreive her lure but after watching Shea fish for a few minutes, she wasn’t working the hole right by my estimation.  “Let me show you what I want you to do,”  I said and flipped my lure out into the pool retrieving it slowly near the bottom.  First cast, fish on and the smallest little tomato of a coho came to hand.  After another 15 or so minutes I decided I’d cast a few more times before we moved on.  The thumpity-thumpity of my lure was stopped by a familiar chompity-chompity surge.  I set the hook and handed off to Shea.  “Lay the wood to him.” 

“Huh?”

“Reel, reel!”  The rod tip went limp.  “Is he still there?  Give me that.  Yeah, he’s still there. Here.”  I handed the rod back but as quickly as that the fish was gone.  “That was a better fish,”  I said.  “No matter, it’s early and there’ll be plenty more.  Like lots of rivers, there is too much private property down low for good access so we worked upstream hitting all the fishy spots I know of.  We ended up back at our first hole and I watched her fish the run.  After about 10 minutes I started to work it too and hooked into another fish that was hanging really close to the bank.  I consoled myself by thinking, she would have never been able to work that spot with her spinner.  I handed the rod off to Shea and coached her through the process.  “Don’t let him run into those rocks . . . keep him in the hole . . . Good.”  I tailed the fish, a bigger coho than the first and we revived it and watched it swim away.

The best spot on the river had been rested long enough and we headed back to make our last stand.  As I was picking out a backlash, I noticed Shea reefing on her rod trying to break off.  But it wasn’t the bottom and I could see a coho and she saw it too when it broke the surface.  I set my rod down and went and zoomed in the video camera (that turned out to be a mistake).  We banked the fish and I tailed it and showed it to her.  The nicest coho of the day was solidly hooked so I said, “I’m going to put it back in the water to grab the still camera.”  As I placed it in the river, Shea slipped.  The fish went that way, the rod this and with a quick snap it was all over. 

As we packed up the last of everything into the truck I said, “Well, we lost a few lures today.”

“How many?”

“About sixty dollars worth.”

“Do you think it was worth it?  Sixty dollars?”  I smiled to myself.  It was worth a lot more than that.

–KM