My Buddy FisherMax, Breaking the Ice!

Story by Matthew Clark
Photos by Max's mother Celest


Sometimes in fishing for salmon and steelhead it helps to have someone show you the ropes around town. Max was no stranger to fishing and that was obvious from the first time I met him. He has running bass and trout competitions going with the neighbor man, yes a man. Max gets around and has had a good run for the money in his quest to beat out the neighbor guy out on non river fish. This all seems good but he realy wants to learn the salmon and steelhead game and show this guy what he is made of. I can tell you from my first day fishing with Max that what he is made of is the same fishing life blood we are all made of. He understands the journey ahead of him and he is simply excited by it.



It had been a year since I first met Max and his mother Celest at Eagle Fern park on a small tributary of the Clackamas River. He had been trying his luck for the coho that so commonly swim around at the bridge hole near the upper end of the park. I gave them our community address and invited them to join so that maybe Max could get some pointers he would need to accomplish his goals. A year or so later they contacted me on the forum on a name I had approved not long after the day I met them almost a year earlyer. They had been there the whole time. They said he was still trying to catch that first salmon and could use a little guidance. Knowing the coho run was going to be good this year I was pretty sure this would possible as long as Max could play the game with skill.



I decided to have Max use my fly rod because he had recently been given an 8 weight fly rod for his birthday. I was sure he would much rather learn to use that rod than the spinning rod he had been using all year. I knew he had been practicing at home and I figured we should try that first since the water was so low. It took him all of about 20 minutes to be fishing with the confidence and skill shown in the first photo above. Not long after that he hooked a monster buck coho and the battle was on!

Until I crackered the landing! Ohh NO! He landed it, just a fast natural release after I touched the tail. Kind of shot off and busted up the line..... You have had this happen. He was not mad because he told me he could see there was more salmon out there with the polarized glasses I had given to him. As you could imagine this was just the begining and I was amazed to see how fast he had this down and was back up to bat and ready for another coho. He was certainly not intimidated by these fish any.







There you have it! He can do this on his own, he can see them and he can cast on them....I played fish releaser as my friend Ed from Alaska calls it when it gets like this. You catch em, I'll land em and release em for ya!





The water was low but we got lucky that day. A pretty good group of coho pushed up in low water out of the blue and sometimes I honestly have to wonder what heavanly force of nature caused that to happen because it was simply the only push of fish we saw all that afternoon but we sure as heck needed it! About 60 fish Max had all to himself to play with and he did very well and left a lasting impression on me. Made me think more about what I do with the SSSF network. I had not imagined anything like this in the begining but this was for me certainly one of it's best rewards so far.

Max decided to keep one hatchery coho buck to take home and show of to the neighbor man, maybe now he will think twice about who he is messin with! I know I would like to fish with Max again when the next good push arrives sometime this winter. I think he is more than ready for the mighty steelhead on the fly rod now and I bet he is going to score his first this season

Max, It was a pleasure to fish with you sir!


Big thanks to Mike Braun for his role in this coho whackin good time! Talk about paying it forward, and in the very same place we met......

A pleasure to meet you Celest & Mark, stay in touch please.



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