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.