Sacramento River Kings, First Try

[jrodda]

Slightly late report, but for all my effort, I thought I'd write something up.

I've been doing a LOT of research on fishing for salmon. I've always seen salmon as an ideal kind of fish, the kind you can chase with 10-20# tackle from a bank, an acrobatic fighter, and those cancer-fighting omega-3s! Holy heaven I want one.

So I picked up on the drifting, the floating, the plunking, the curing, the snelling, the back-trolling, the boondoggling, the corkies, the spin-n-glos, the 'dine-wrapped kwikfish, eddies, riffles, runs, regulations.....

I was on a wonky sleep schedule being once again unemployed, so I ended up driving overnight from SoCal to the Sac, arriving at 5am at my first of many spots scouted via Google Earth. Turned out, this spot was inside of a gated community, so on to Plan B....

I arrived before first light to my spot. Tried napping for 30 minutes...nope. The night sky begins to withdraw at 6:45am, and I begin a jog through the river park to find my water. Found it. Big river. Can't miss it. Found a spot that appeared to have 5-10ft of water. With a riffle about a quarter mile down river, I hoped to be throwing into the salmons' rest stop.

Almost immediately, this 10 pound carcass floats by to tell me I'm on the right river...



Threw the kwikfish plug to start. Didn't think I was hitting the bottom enough (where them chinooks ought to be) so I went off script early and threw a 5" glow big hammer, dragging the bottom. Nothing. As the sun rises, a 30 pound, dark, hook-jawed male breaches in casting distances. Okay, I'm getting it in front of them. I switch over to a spoon for another 30 minutes. Then by 9am, drifting roe. I'd purchased cured coho eggs in pre-made sacks on Ebay, and started drifting those. I'd read something about wanting the bait to occasionally tap the bottom as it drifts, so to remove weight if you were dragging more than bouncing. Dropped from 7/8oz to 1/4oz on my homemade slinky weight before I felt like I was doing okay.

But alas, nothing through 9:30am, as I see big splashes every 5 minutes or so. If these fish aren't biting, I gotta move to another spot. I don't know what triggers a bite, so I gotta increase my sample size.

30 minute drive through the back country...



Got to my 2nd spot. Two fly fishermen packing it in as I'm heading out. One says he got a couple trout. Gross!

I get down to the water and it's a shallower part of the river. Very clear water. I'm seeing a small trout hitting the surface but no kings hitting like at the first spot. Begin casting, begin losing sinkers.

Right about 11:30, driving all night and fishing through the morning started catching up to me. Decided to just relax for a bit...



Campsite didn't allow check-in until 2pm, which felt forever away. Without much energy left, I decided to try the plunking technique. Basically a 3-way rig, sinker holds bottom, lure works in the current. Put on a spin-n-glo with the coho eggs on the back hook, and sat back. No biters.

1pm rolls around, leave the spot and grab Subway. Then crawl into the campground at 2:01pm for a little nap.


5pm rolls up, and I decide to head to a local tackle shop and gather info. I arrive at the tackle shop and it's half a tackle shop, half a feed store, and the fishing experts left at 4pm. Local kid gave me another spot to try in the morning, and I picked up some cured chinook roe. Much different from the coho eggs. Chinook roe is very fine, and is all stuck to a single membrane, compared to the coho eggs being separate from one another and the size of a pea.

(Honestly I found there to be so many things involved in salmon fishing that were new to me that I should have taken a picture of everything from the roe to the rigs for the sake of the report.)


Next morning rolls up, I get out of the campground at first light, and grab starbucks on the way to the first spot.



It's a half mile walk from the road, so I didn't bring my waders, but I probably should have. There are some other fishermen fishing a long gravel bank. Sun hasn't hit the water yet, and I'm trying to decide if it's worth the walk to go back and grab the waders. I decide, no. I'll just chuck a 1oz kroc and I'll be working the same zone as the guys wading with bait.

An hour goes by and another reminder that I'm never too far away from my target.



An hour of this and no fish. I don't see any chinook jumping, nor is anyone hooking up. I don't know much, but I decide I have a little more confidence trying where I started yesterday.

So back I go.

Right in this line of sight, I saw countless big, dark salmon breach. I think there was a ledge there, and I worked the hell out of it with a kroc, then to the roe.



I never knew why people used snell knots until my roe was falling off the hook as soon as I cast. So I googled how to keep roe on the hook, viola, snell knot. You feed the leader through the eye toward the knot on the hook shaft, and you use the line to make a loop and hang the roe in the loop. I always thought it was just a fancy knot used to coax people into buying tidy looking pre-made leaders, but I stand corrected!

Almost immediately with the roe, I got a skunk buster. A nice little native.



I stayed until about 2pm, hoping that hitting my head against the wall I'd finally get something in return. No dice. End Day 2.


Day 3 started with packing up camp at first light, and heading back to the long gravel bank I started the day before, this time with the waders. I figured I'd fish 7-10am and then begin the 10 hour journey back home.

I parked at the top of the dirt road, and as I was pulling out the rods, 2 dudes my age stopped next to me with a drift boat in tow and asked what the dirt road was. I said it's a launch spot with the right clearance, told them I'm not a local though, just here for one #%@$ salmon. I tell them the launch spot is just downstream from the famous Barge Hole fishing spot, which is where I'd imagine they wanna fish. They're not locals themselves, so they thank me and drive down the road.

I get down the dirt road, and I'm just about to put my foot in my waders, when the two dudes drive in and pull up to the shore. We say a couple things, then one says, "wanna join us?" Totally stunned, I paused, then said, yes. Yes I do want to join you guys.

So I threw my rod and backpack in the boat, and we started up the road. Turns out they've put in time shark fishing in the surf! We traded stories about sevengills and realized we both follow Terra Firma on instagram. Small world.

We launch their 16' tin cup of a drift boat with an 8hp outboard, rig up, and set off down stream. They show me their styles of rigging, soft beads, and what the protocol is for multiple people casting and drifting on a boat. Almost immediately one of them get a trout on the soft bead. I'm fishing roe and not getting bit, but I'm long settled into assuming salmon are just low percentage.

We drift for an hour or so downstream, until finally the Barge Hole is ahead. Still half a mile from the hole, we see, in gin clear water, countless trout and pikeminnow zipping out from under the boat as we continue to drift down.

Finally, we see the traffic. As expected, almost a dozen boats are taking turns making the 200 yard drift along the hole. Almost all of them guides with the classic BERKLEY and SPIDERWIRE wraps on the sides. The must be legit. Almost every boat is a jet boat: 20' aluminum hull, a seat every few feet, a 200+hp (tiller!) outboard and a 9.9hp kicker. Somebody yells to us, "don't let anybody tell you that you can't fish here!" Inspiration.

And so we drifted it. And drifted and drifted it. And drifted and drifted and drifted and drifted it. Between a dozen boats and maybe 50 lines in the water, there was almost always 1 person hooked up. And it was never anyone on our boat.



"Got any water in that cooler?" I asked them with the sun now high. I forgot my water bottle and had gone through my 4 ounces of gatorade early on in the morning.

"We've got about 5 PBRs...and about 4 ounces of water in a canteen." Not really the reply I was looking for, although perfect. I haven't had any alcohol in 5 months so I was gonna have to be hallucinating to break that kind of streak.

Hours passed and one by one, guide boats dipped out. Slow but steady hookups continued through the day. Wind picked up, making it harder to have a clean drift. Big males breached every 30 seconds to remind us of our feeble efforts.

It was 5pm when we finally had taken enough torture. Thoroughly dehydrated, deep fried, and defeated, we dragged the boat up on the gravel bank that I had intended to spend the morning fishing. As we unloaded, someone hooked up to a king.

I drove one of them up to their car and trailer and we went back and cleaned up the boat and they sent off. They were very, very cool dudes. I got their social media and expressed my gratitude for the shot on the boat, and if they ever come down my way, to reach out and I'll try to get them on something. They said the same for me in their area. I think we'll meet again.



10 hour drive was out of the question, so I got a hotel in Sacramento. Entering the lobby, I could immediately tell that between the smell of the roe and my ball sweat, it was a crime for me to be interacting with civilized people for any amount of time.

Ah, a bed and shower.



Woke up the next day feeling like I had fresh legs to go right back up and do it again, but needed to head south. I decided to make one fishing stop on the way back home. I decided to stop at Half Moon Bay jetty and throw swimbaits between the rocks looking for lings or a new-to-me NorCal rockfish.



It must have been the hottest day of the year in Half Moon Bay. Very dry heat, must have been 85-90º.

I snagged lost lines almost every other cast, it was ridiculous. Only life I hooked was a mussel AND what looked like a tiny spider crab.




Took the 101 back, stopped in Pismo right at sunset for some groceries at a favorite market of my parent's, and got home at 10pm.

25 hours of fishing for a dink of the wrong salmonid was quite the experience. There was so much to learn and digest, it being a totally new venue for me. I'm still reflecting and thinking about what could have been done differently, which is kind of why it took me a while to write the report for it. Obviously this was a gigantic report and I'm avoiding a few subjects just because my thoughts are unorganized on them and don't wanna ramble. I'm going up again mid-November with a couple friends in hopes of having better luck with the late fall run. So we will see what happens next.

[sasquatch]

What a mission. Just one salmon would have made the whole trip.

[Latimeria]

Thoroughly dehydrated, deep fried, and defeated, we dragged the boat up on the gravel bank that I had intended to spend the morning fishing.

First of all, what a fantastic read in the morning with my coffee!  I felt like I lived it with you!  With that said, I quoted your line as Sasquatch and I on our first salmon trip had a similar experience when we were out on a drift boat all day and forgot lunch and everything, but the only thing in the cooler was Jack Daniels and bread.  "Thoroughly dehydrated, deep fried, and defeated" is exactly what we felt like when we got down river. 

Great read once again boss!  I'm so ready for a road trip myself, even if it means just getting some experience with some new type of fishing when the fish don't cooperate... or just flop in front of you to rub it in... which is what usually happens.  hahaha

[skrilla]

Good read thanks for taking the time to type it up. Sounds like a solid adventure. Probably fires you up for the next time.

Half Moon Bay spent many days rock hopping there. Hope to launch the kayak there one day.

[vdisney]

You were in my old hood Jeremy, just further north.  We fished the Sac and Feather between Sacramento and Colusa.  Thanks for the trip down memory lane