I was out on an Oregon coastal stream this weekend to chase some sea-run cutts and ended up stumbling upon some salmon. They were ominously out of place in the small stream, and actually startled me when I saw the first one. Then I started to get excited. There were a few of them cruising around in a pocket of slowly moving water. I'm not good at estimating size/weight, but my best guess would be in the 30"+ and 15+ lbs. One of them could easily have been 34" and 20-30lbs. Ginormous by my standards. And probably uncatchable on my 7/8wt with a 4x leader.
And then I saw one of the monsters porpoise, presumably to eat something! I stopped tying on the big ugly streamer I had just grabbed and instead pulled the biggest hopper pattern I had out of my box. No, I didn't expect this to work, but just imagine if it could! With my camera in place I snuck out into the river and gave it a few casts. Here's the video, sorry I'm not in the frame but you should be able to see the casts and you will also see the fish...
I gave up after that and moved upstream to catch some cutts. Later I came back down here and gave a big ugly streamer a bunch of casts. It swam right by one of the smaller salmon's mouths a number of times but no bite. I even accidentally snagged the streamer on the fish's dorsal fin without it noticing, but I didn't want to hook the big fish that way so I gave a couple soft pulls and it came loose.
Maybe next time.
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