Captain Jay Field with a 14 Pound Rosario Blackmouth When it shook it's head the rod stroked three to four feet. My 10'6" mooching rod was loaded deep into the cork and the blackmouth precariously hooked to the end of my line had a king salmon-esque feel to it. This wasn't a cookie cutter blackmouth….
BY TONY FLOOR The calendar doesn’t lie. Without remorse, 2010 is history and hello, like it or not, meet 2011. I sense time is moving faster now and I’m barely hanging on as there is so much to do on and off the water. It was only a month ago in this writing, I drew…
Around these parts, the modern benchmark for a great fishing year was 2001. In that year, Columbia river springers hit a 25 year high, Puget sound chinook & coho crowded area streams, pink salmon were "every cast" thick, nearly 300,000 sockeye streamed into Lake Washington and winter steelhead fishing was smokin'. Now, ten years later,…
I'm lucky enough to have a wife that enjoys the outdoors almost as much as I do, so when she asked "When are we going to go to Forks?" I didn't hesitate to hook up the driftboat and get the steelhead gear ready. It was more like a sprint than anything. When your wife demands…
BY JEFF LUND I’m a seven last-casts type of guy. I set certain conditions that hopefully will qualify as excuses to stay riverside, or contrastingly provide reasonable closure. Sometimes the criteria is demanding, last cast unless I hook one or get a bite’. Others, less optimistic, ‘okay, last cast unless I see a fish’. Either…
Forks, Washington Guide Mike Zavadlov with a chrome Bogachiel River winter steelhead I've been watching all the coastal steelhead reports lately like a cat staring at a bird. Reports of hammer-time steelhead action were pouring in with regularity. By last weekend my tail was switching back and forth in anticipation of batting some steelhead…
The summer chinook season in Marine Area 7 closed at the end of October and with it, one of the best kept hot fishing secrets in recent memory. In other words, it was just smokin' for hatchery chinook and the locals kept it quiet! Nevermind that some of us had deer and elk on the brain…
If you say "Thanksgiving", I think "Steelhead" and so does Ryan Bennett of Reel Deal Guide Service! Ryan and I had planned to head down to the Cowlitz one week ago but the snow storm that snarled traffic changed our minds in a hurry. So, we waited a week, got up early on Monday morning…
One of the things that I love most about fishing is chasing those bucket list fish in other parts of the world. One of those bucket list fish that I have heard so much about is bonefish. I have often thought about heading down to the keys on a trip to Florida but the urge…
By JEFF LUND Frightened or appalled by the prospect of walking up an escalator that dared to stop working, the lady stepped aside and allowed the guy with a frayed deltoid ligament on his left ankle and the other guy with a chewed up meniscus to hike up the stuck steps. Ah, the mall. It’s…