GREATEST DAY OF FISHING

My greatest day of fishing huh?

Whew, that's a tough one, for being such a young age I've been blessed with the opportunity to fish a lot.  Some think too much, mostly my girlfriend and close friends that see my half time because of my over whelming obsession with the outdoors.  But, ever since I was able to hold a snoopy pole or grab one off of the rocks at Lake Wisconsin, I've been fishing.  Never saying no to the opportunity to chase fish in the rivers and lakes where I grew up to the open ocean as this story will explain.  So finding my greatest day of fishing is a difficult task, but I'll try to do my best while keeping entertained whoever decides to read this post.

Well to make this story make sense on why it's my greatest day of fishing I need to explain how I got where I was, who I was with, where I came from and what we were doing.  No easy task for a short article I know, but i'll give it the good ole college try.

I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin a pretty large city of about 250,000 or so, with fishing opportunities abound.  There were always chances to catch some fish somewhere only a few blocks away and I usually brought a rod to school on my bike or in the locker to fish when I could, hitting up small retention ponds on my way home for some catch and release fishing on bullhead, bluegill, crappie that sort of thing.  Eventually my grandfather recognized this inert drive for fishing and decided to push me to fish as much as possible.  My grandfather is a very patient man, sitting on rocks at his favorite fishing hole casting constantly drawing his own map of the benthos in his head as he pulls the number 5 split shot with a fathead across the rocky bottom of lake Wisconsin's Okee inlet and fisherman's Warf.  I accredit all my patience and ability to get on fish to him, constantly encouraging me to fish in my own way while giving me advice when I would listen.

At any rate, I did this type of shore lake fishing with him weekly as he'd pick me up after school for the hour long commute to the family fishing ground, then back again the same day usually with a couple of fish that would push my mother's buttons, fish scales would end up coating the sink and surrounding area later that night.  Eventually high school hit,  I was now making the commute bi-weekly in my own car chasing walleye through different areas of lake Wisconsin, finding rides on boats when I could.  High school came and went and undgraduate schooling took it's place.  I ended up staying in Wisconsin, going to a system school that was about an hour and a half away from Madison, in a region that is called the driftless area.  The driftless is a small region of Wisconsin that was unglaciated meaning the topography was untouched by ice bergs, to geologists and some savvy fishermen/women this means the simple fact that there are NO LAKES.  So I proceeded to spend the next 4 years of my life learning how to fly fish coldwater streams of the oak savannahs, understanding how to match the hatch and put the fly in just the right place with the right presentation to get a strike.

So undergrad went as fast as it came, and I needed to pack up and go, I put out all sorts of applications to universities across the US and landed here in the northwest by Spokane, Washington a drastic difference from the Midwestern hydrology I was used to.  I started fishing the lakes and small streams around Spokane, small used here relatively because all the "small" streams of the west, is big water where I grew up.

I came to school for my master's in biology (biology mostly because of my love of fish) I am an aquatic ecologist really so I use it as an excuse to feed my addiction to fishing.  The first year I arrived in Spokane, I met some interesting people that were doing projects all across the state and one of my close friends started a project concerning salmon lice.  Lucky for me the best and most effective way of catching salmon and having them return safely to the water is hook and line sampling.  So we geared up for a trip fishing salmon in the strait of Juan de Fuca the furthest northwest portion of Washington state in the summer of 2009.

The pink salmon run was on, for anyone that knows anything about pink salmon they know they run in bi-yearly patterns with peaks about every 10-15 years.  Lucky us, we sampled at a peak year.  None of us really knew how to fish salmon in the ocean, we had 5 people on a 22 food open bow Lund taking 5 foot rollers at 15 knots, just getting beaten up.  We fished the first day with no idea what we were doing, didn't catch a single fish, things were looking grim.  Not just for the project but for the moral of the boat, endless trolling with 3oz weights, dodgers and cut plug herring.  Over and over, roller after roller.  We came into port, moored the boat and just sat around the fire feeling dejected and just flat beat up.  The second day, we headed straight out to 600 feet of water on a straight line just flying over rollers, clearing the prop every now and again hearing the sound of the 115 peak at the crest of each roller and feeling the jolt threw the length of our back when the boat came back down.

We cut the herring cleared the cuts, retied the salmon leaders dropped all lines in the water, within ten seconds we had our first fish on, a wild Coho we stumbled around the boat trying to figure out how to sample the fish get a weight get a length get the lice off the whole while keeping the fish in the water by state rules at the time.  The first couple of fish were a challenge but eventually we got into a rhythm.  For the next 6 hours we proceeded to catch a seeming endless string of fish, collecting about 38 parasite load counts in one day not to mention filling the fish hold.

The reason I think this is my greatest day of fishing is because the entire time we were fishing and hooking up sometimes 4 fish at once, my greatest joy was marking strikes on the GPS and finding the line and getting fish to bite, steering us back on track with the kicker right over the line that I knew would work, and then hooking up.  I found more accomplishment in putting the boat on fish then I did reeling any in, every time we had a four rod hookup I found myself almost frustrated at the fact I was going to have to stop steering to land the fish.

We've now made the trip three more times, this time learning as we go about fishing for big Chinook and trying to find larger fish for the data set, we've had no mortalities (other than the keepers) and the data looks promising.  I've met some great fisherman and learned so much about ocean fishing, I've got to fish for sea bass and do bottom bouncing.  I've hooked decent lingcod and fried them up Midwestern style for the boys at camp, I've caught sanddab and cabazon.  Just being out in the open ocean fishing for things that I haven't seen, hooking fish that have broke off 50lb braid in two seconds just blows my mind.  Coming from exclusive freshwater fisheries excited about 6lb walleye, I had no idea what ocean fishing was like, how I would do, or what gear to get.

Learning new tactics and understanding new environments is why I love to fish, the scenery I have been around the people I have met, makes the days on the water that much more special.  The ability to bake some salmon steaks when I get home isn't a bad perk as well ;) .

Tight lines and heavy nets WFN I'll see you on the water.

Elliott