On the weekend I went out fishing, as I just had got a brand new downrigger! Meaning I had two downriggers, and so could run two lines deep.

In the winter the only type of salmon around are Chinook, as all the others have scattered out far and wide, only coming back in the summer when it is time to spawn. Luckily Chinook are the biggest and (arguably) the tastiest! These winter springs (spring being another name for chinook) are deep, 100-200 feet, unlike the ones in the summer which are bulking up to make the spawning runs and so are often quite shallow.

Anyway, I’d hooked up and installed the new downrigger a few days ago and was free Saturday afternoon. Grabbing Emma, we set out to catch some BIG SPRINGS.

And it was really good! We missed a big hit on Emma’s rod due to some confusion about who was doing what, but then I caught a salmon on my rod! First of the year! But it was a small guy, around 35cm, so back he went to swim another day and get bigger.

Then Emma’s rod started bouncing, and she hopped onto it and did a textbook strike, winding down until she felt the fish and then striking hard. After an exciting fight where the fish made a couple of big runs, Emma managed to tire it out and I netted it! A beautiful 8lb chinook.

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First keeper of the year!

I caught one more salmon, but it was extremely borderline if it was a keeper or not, so he also went back to get bigger!

In just over an hour and a half of fishing, we had 4 hits, 3 fish and 1 keeper. What a great start to the year!

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