Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Kokanee

are in Big Elk Creek. Like bright bolts of electric magenta speeding up and down the creek and holding behind the rocks. They would run right over your feet, between your legs and down the river when spooked, and you had to work pretty hard to spook them.

This photo was borrowed from off the intertube thingy.
I need to fish with my camera more often, though one of the guys I fished with may have a shot or two from this evening
and this photo may soon be replaced.


My son (2 & 1/2 years old), a couple of buddies and one of the buddie's wife came along. My little boy was all for fishing for about the first 20 minutes. Then he was more interested in playing. This included examining sticks, chasing a small snake, and throwing rocks. Thankfully the kokanee are fairly hard to spook, meaning you almost have to poke them to get them to move, almost. A well placed fist sized rock propelled by a two year old can get them to vacate their lie.

Daddy's Fishing Buddy


He (my son) did mention that he likes to eat fish and the adjectives that he used to describe the kokanee were "good" as in tasting and "yummy." He is really starting to understand the way of things. As I kept one medium sized koke, he questioned me about when I was going to "cut" (clean) the fish. Of course this was all in Portuguese which he is fairly fluent in. He also does a good job switching between English and Portuguese depending upon what he notes going on in the conversation around him.

He is learning to cast and waves my rod while chanting "foward" and "backwards." Sometimes he actually gets it to cast, and in July he hooked a whitefish on the SF from a pod of risers that were hitting mayflies. I think my 9' 5wt may be a little big and plan on getting him a 6' 2 or 3wt next spring.

My best fishing (when not entertaining) was on an adult salmon fly pattern weighted down heavily and high sticked to the fish holding behind rocks. For some reason they liked the salmon fly better than the white rabbit zonker that I tried before putting on the big rubber legged dry fly.

Beautiful area. I may have to go back. Now my debate for Labor Day is what creek to fish.....? One of two nice area creeks for cutthroats on hoppers or dead sticking large weighted flies to fairly decent sized kokanee. Maybe I will do both; kokanee in the morning and hoppers in the afternoon. I will try to get more/different photos up as soon as I have them.

1 comment:

Ben said...

Kokes on the fly is on my "to do" list. I think I need to head out of state though since Utah closes the tribs during the spawn. Great read and photos, keep em coming