The Essence of Small Stream Salmon Fishing, Pic Heavy
For me the term small stream salmon fishing has always coaxed visions and dreams of salmon filled drifts in small rivers and little streams that you can really sink your teeth into. Most of us who fish the Northwest have a variety of places we visit each season and a good majority of them are larger river or open water fisheries. I think for some of us though our hearts always want to go back to the small places with big fish we loved so much. We are entrigued by this very concept, spending time learning about small stream fishing.
I have always enjoyed bank fishing and the ability to explore often walking miles of small streams in search of that fish filled drift I would so desire. Walking trout streams with my father, dipping split shotted green label balls-o-fire are some of my first small stream memories. The small stream salmon door opend for me one day while fishing a trout stream in Santa Cruz along the central coast of California when my ultralight single egg trout rig was stopped by a 6lb steelhead. This opened my eyes to a much larger quarry I just had to learn more about. Some twenty five years later I dont even know how many miles I have put in walking small Northwest rivers and streams looking for the magic days. I know some whom have walked even further.
The thrill of monster salmon splashing and bucking and throwing water everywhere, then a swift turn and a down river blast sending the reel into a screeming spray of water! That is the essence of small stream salmon fishing. A place that many fisherman come from.
Teddy Wise, a dear friend and fellow small stream salmon fishing nut has joined me on a few such walks this past year. Some fruitless and some bountiful. I think he understands what this means and how special it really is to still have places like those small streams we all grew up near. He grew up not very far from little river and has always had the vision and dreams of fish filled drifts and of hitting it just right. He is always telling me about how this creek or that creek gets a secret little steelhead run in the winter, I look down at some tiny creek in scappoose as we drive by. I say would you fish for them? He would say no, but its cool to know their in there. Yea, totaly. In our youth we would have fished for them and it may have even been legal back then but we may have outgrown that need by now, our sights set on another place we knew of that offered more water and bigger fish.
This was one of those "nailed it" days and for Teddy another first having caught his first chinook on a fly rod. Guess all those fly fishing classes paid off... I even managed a few for myself in between taking photos of Ted having the time of his life, having hit it right.
Well this was it, the end of the season for little river. Ted and I hit the mark just right one last time for the season. Several other long time family friends had also joined us and brought their sons and daughters along. No one in our party left without catching at least one salmon that day. Some caught far more than their share! It was such a great thing to feel inside that the thrill and the essence of small stream salmon fishing is still alive and not just in our visions and dreams.
A pleasure to spend the day with you Teddy, thanks for helping me to keep the flame alive...
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Originally Posted by Osmosis
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