Last Sunday (1/15/2012) I took a fishing trip with a bunch of buddies out to the Nisqually river to hit some winter run Chum. We fished on the indian reservation just south of Du Pont. My friend, Alex, and his dad have fished the river many times and knew the details of each and every hole we floated by in the drift boat. Alex was very confident about the potential for the day. After a cloudy and rainy winter, it was 8a.m., sunny, and we were drifting down the river!

Gear:

Each of us in the boat had two rods. The first rod equipped some drift fishing gear, and the second rod was equipped with a large shallow diving plug. One of those all-purpose ones that doesn’t really look like much of anything. Fifteen pound test or so on both rods.

Fishing:

After 45 minutes of no bites our guide Alex is still calm and confident the fish are around. He tells us his favorite hole is still downriver–where he wants us to spend hours anchored up letting the plugs flow in the current…well we got to the apparently infamous hole and two boats were already in the hole and into fish as well.

We decided to try some other places further down the river. That’s what we get for drinking the night before and getting the late start! Drift fishing lost us nearly all our hooks and swivels on trees and snags, so we stopped and fished a spawning bay for a while. We caught two nice fish among the four of us, and about fifteen more dinosaurs that were on their last leg and clearly post-spawn. I caught the big fish of the trip (me below with the fish), but the fish was not looking so sharp. This particular fish I caught on the fin. We weren’t trying to snag with our drift gear but caught a few in odd places anyways. I also caught a dead fifteen pound fish off of the bottom–the friends had some laughs over that. We had some good fun, and getting out on the water in the winter to catch up to 10-20 pound fish is awfully refreshing for a guy who usually just sticks to bass.

My old dinosaur Chum, the biggest of the day

What was the most irritating today was the Indian netting boats going by every ten minutes. We were angered as we watched these nets bring in anywhere from five to thirty bright, silver, fresh Chum salmon from the river time and time again as we meagerly played with the nearly dead fish that already spawned. Needless to say, once the Indians were on the water fishing dies down. I hear the natives can only net this river Sunday-Wednesday so the best day to take a trip is Saturday where the new fish have had the most time to get up river without being netted. Six people died on this river last year so be careful, the current was pretty quick in some spots.

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