Fulton’s Blog - Words from the water

the rains over the last week have raised the flow and colored up the water. this seems to be quite good for fishing. a big push of salmon came through this week and provided a good time for our little weekend family float. a half day of fishing produced eight salmon and a nice hatchery steelhead. the salmon were all pretty dark and not what i would call great table fare but the steelhead fit on the BBQ just fine. a few casts from the bank this morning before breakfast yielded a dime bright native steelie as well, so i am hopeful that the fishing will be better than it has been. this is getting pretty late in the season to be seeing good runs of salmon but given how slow the fishing has been up to now, a late run is a possibility. thanksgiving is when the hatchery steelhead run typically comes through. put the two together and this could be a good week to get on the river.

the last few trips have been a bit of a let down as far as the fish catching is concerned. we have managed to put at least one fish in the boat on every trip except for one skunked day. that is hardly what i would call good fishing, and certainly not the type of fishing i thought we were going to see this year. it started out good and then just kind of bottomed out. there are still a few more weeks to a month of good fishing time left so it could still pick up. as far as the wildlife sightings are concerned, this season has been great. we have seen bears up close on each of the last three trips and on the last one we saw a mom and two cubs swim across the river right in front of us and around the bend a big cinnamon bear cruising the shore less than 50 yards from our boat. we have been seeing eagles regularly as well. this year has provided the rare treat of a pair of mature golden eagles calling our section of river home. quite an impressive sight. another curious observation is the large number of salmon spawning here in the lower river. they usually spawn higher up, but this year they seem to be all over the place. in another week or two the bald eagles will be here to feed on them as they finish spawning and wash up on the banks. this could also account for the many up close bear sightings as they seem to be cruising the riverbanks looking for fish so intently that they don’t even notice us watching them.

last week we had a good bit of rain which raised and muddied the river. the freshet spurred a bunch of salmon to move up out of the klamath. i had a little fun family fishing time this afternoon and we managed to catch a nice chinook for dinner.

i had two good days of fishing here on the trinity. on sunday we hooked 6 steelhead and 1 salmon, landing only one of the steelies. on monday we hooked 9 steelies and landed 5 of them. one was a particularly mean native that did its best to tie a knot around the boat with our fishing line. ken did his best to hang on but in the end i would have to say the fish was more in control than we were. with a little luck the fish came to hand but it was a pretty wild battle.
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after our last day of good fishing out of crescent city i decided to go back for a mission to find a BIG ling. we got one!

after a couple of attempts, forrest got to see his first steelhead. he seemed impressed. he’s still a little small to handle the rod by himself but he certainly is capable of cheering on his parents as they hooked and battled this beautiful native steelie. the run is just getting started but the fish are here and the catching will only get better over the next few weeks. i think this is going to be a good season. we’ll keep you posted.

i have not been doing much ocean fishing this summer, but our crew of buddies got out for a little fun here at the end of the season. this was a nice grand slam of salmon, halibut and ling cod.

it’s spring here in western trinity county and the flowers are a bloomin’, the fields are bright green and babies are popping out all over the place. the birds have em’ the deer have em’ and we even found one out in our cabbage patch…. meet little forrest fulton. the next generation to terrorize trout all over the state of Jefferson and beyond.

spring steelhead fishing here on the lower trinity has been very slow this season with half pounders making up most of the catch. they are a real kick on a light trout rod but after years of wide open march madness to look forward to i must say the catching is a bit of a letdown. sorry to sound like a broken record but this has been the case across the board for the entire season. the department of fish and game missed the mark in a most severe way in regards to their run predictions and from the looks of things they are predicting another “banner” run for this next fall in the klamath basin. every year is different and i have not found their run predictions to be an indicator of anything in the past so we will just have to wait and see what comes up the river next fall. as for the ocean fishery, we will likely have no salmon season again, and due to the great expense of maintaining a top notch commercial ocean charter boat with very little interest in long range  bottom fishing trips i will no longer be offering saltwater guide trips.

the fishing in the lower/middle trinity has been very slow for the last week or so. there are some native steelhead around but the odds of running into an aggressive fish that hasn’t already been spooked by someone else is not very good. if we don’t get alot of rain soon we will be looking at pretty serious drought conditions for next spring and summer. most of the driftboat trips for the last few weeks have been a struggle to get a fish or two with a few skunked days as well. i was beginning to feel that i was in a fish catching funk that needed to end. a solo day on a remote river is a good way to shake the skunk. lets hope it carries over to the driftboat.