This fall salmon season hasn’t quite shaped up like I was hoping, especially because last year was as close to perfect as possible. This time last year we hit the coastal rivers near Forks in search of early steelhead and had an amazing day. So we thought we’d take a small gamble and the same river and we were quite disappointed. We joked about how “they say” winter runs aren’t really here until the first frost of the year and it wasn’t nearly cold enough for frost but simplya laughed it off. Hiking an hour just to get a nice secluded spot, we found the perfect fishing hole and fished non-stop in the pouring rain. Finally, as Jeff is really in he says “oh, hey! I gotta fish!”. He was drifting and the fish came out and picked it up as he was reeling up. It was only 8AM and I was fortunate for another great day of winter steelhead in early November. He lost that fish and we didn’t have a single bite for hours. We saw a lot of old kings rolling and decided to hike back out and find a different river.

We went to the Satsop on the way home looking for some silvers even though we only had a bunch of winter steelhead gear and a little bit of eggs. What we found was nothing but spawned out chum. After about 2 hours of fishing the Satsop we decided to go home and call it a weekend. Knowing that there is nothing but rain forecasted in the next week, we’re hoping it will bring in some steelhead but not blow out the rivers for next weekend. Call it wishful thinking J

~Bry