My wife and I plus a good friend and his wife spent 7 hours on the Skagit yesterday fishing for Silvers. We tried 50/50 Dick Nites, 50/50 Miracle Lures, and all other combos of colors without a lot of success.
My first lure color choice was a Cop Car color. It was on a Luhr Jensen Needlefish lure. I bounced it back behind the boat and no more set the rod down when I got a hit. Somehow I missed hooking the first fish of the day.
So, I brought the lure in and checked the hook for sharpness. It was sticky sharp, so that was not the problem.
So I bounced the lure back about 10 bounces behind the boat and immediately set the hooks on a BIG Fish! The fight was on! From the feel of the fish and the way it was fighting I knew it was not a Silver.
In about 10 to 20 minutes I had a Massive King almost to the boat.
I had him right behind the boat and up to the surface when he turned broad side and decided to flip his head and go back down stream. When that happened my 15 pound test popped like it was 2 pound test and that King took off with all my rigging.
The fish was as long as my boat is wide, so I estimated him in the 45 to 60 pound weight class.
(I have hooked and landed 65 pound Kings before, so normally my weight estimations are pretty darned close) It would have been nice to get that fish up beside the boat so that I could have had my wife take a photo or two for me, but that just wasn't in the cards.
The only lure that was getting any attention from fish yesterday was the Cop Car color. After I couldn't find another cop car colored lure in all of my tackle boxes I resorted to other colors. We fished without success for 3 more hours. That is when I remembered I might have one more cop car lure in a stash in my truck. A quick run to the launch and a short search of my tuck netted me one more cop car lure.
My wife claimed the cop car lure. She no more bounced back behind the boat when she had a strike, but no hook up.
Another bounce back and another strike with still no hook up!
Still another bounce back and another miss!
Then all the action Completely Quit!
After an hour of No action we got discouraged and we decided to go home.
In my mind I know the season is real early and that the silvers are not really in the river yet, but looking at the fish finder there sure was a LOT of Fish (and BIG Ones) going below the boat. So, in the next few weeks we should be seeing a Fantastic Run of Silvers in the river!
Dick
