On the eve of Tillamook’s annual spring chinook tournament, the Bounty on the Bay, I arrived at a strategic viewpoint overlooking the upper estuary. It was 7:02pm and the sun was blazing. A hot wind howled down from the Northwest, pushing up frothy waves and making the bay look wildly inhospitable. My tournament partner, Chris Santella, was due to arrive any minute. We had planned to get in an hour or two of fishing before dark, but as I looked out at the angry, flooded bay, I knew we were busted. The adjacent public boat ramp was nearly empty, apart from a lone diesel pickup. I took a deep breath to quell my disappointment, then stepped out of my rig to look around. As I neared the pickup, a middle-aged man came rushing around the bumper, gripping a lively chinook. He quickly slipped the springer into a big cooler in the bed of his truck. The setting sun illuminated a prominent adipose fin as the fish flopped into the hold. The man’s eyes met mine, surprised and wary. He wasn’t sure what I had seen, and was visibly weighing the situation.
“Where is everybody?” I asked cheerfully, blowing off his crime. I was already a flat-lander from Slick-city. The last thing I needed was to turn in one of the locals for poaching wild salmon.
“Been nobody here for hours,” he chuckled nervously. “Hell, it’s been dead all season.”
“Guess it just came to life!” I quipped with a phony smile, walking past him to get a view of the water. I paused for a few seconds, long enough to see several chinook porpoising excitedly around a distinct current seam. “Holy shit,” I said, “They’re rolling like piranhas down there!”
“Yeah, now they are,” he said. “I’ve been fishing all day and they just started jumping a few minutes ago.”
I barely heard the end of his sentence as I moved to prep the drifter for launch. Chris arrived with a six pack of cold Sierra Nevada Pale Ale right after the boat hit the water. We exchanged greetings, jumped in the boat, and popped a couple of bottles. “To our success tomorrow!” we toasted.
It was a short row to the tide rip where salmon were still frolicking. I set the anchors, chose a rod, and tore line off the reel into a pile. My first cast was stopped by a tangle of running line. No surprise there. I sorted out the mess and made another cast, perpendicular to the current. The line sunk slowly, even while under the tension of a sweet, slow swing, and my gut told me the fly was coming through at about three or four feet in eight or nine feet of water. It felt good, and the fish kept up their show. Chris hammered casts in the same zone, using the same line, but a different fly. The wind was still intense, but it was at our back, so casting was easy.
On the third or fourth swing, my line jerked hard. I stripped fast and set the hook twice before cranking up the loose running line on the deck. The fish made a good run, helping me close the gap, and soon it was on the reel and tearing off line against a tight drag. Chris took the oars and rowed me to the beach. The tide was low enough for us to step out on the sand, so I pulled off my shoes and socks and flew overboard. The chinook had run to the opposite side of the pool and was holding steady, right on the surface. Every time I tried to ease his head my way, he’d buck and pull another yard or two of line. In a couple of minutes he relented, and as his head slid up on the sandy beach, Chris and I marveled at the beauty before us–a perfect fish, about 15 pounds, showing off his brightest chain-mail in the setting sun. We clinked our beer bottles, praised the fish gods and got back in the game.
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