My Hospital Hole Story:
Like I said before, I have been to the Hospital Hole exactly once, in a late October. The slough was literally stuffed with fish. Big dark Chinook everywhere. The bank was lined with anglers. Like every 3 feet. I'm not kidding.
It was a bobber and eggs show. There were probably 100 bobbers in a little stretch of water at any given time.
Normally during combat fishing situations, once someone gets a fish on, everyone reels in and lets him land his fish. Not at the Hospital Hole.
One guy gets a big Chinook on, and yells "Fish On!" Instead of reeling in, the people around him start casting, over and over again, a few feet from where the fish was being fought.
Predictably, lines are getting crossed and bobbers tangled. Anyhow, while this guy is fighting his fish, another guy foul hooks the same fish in the tail. So now we have 2 guys, 40 feet apart, fighting the same big Chinook.
The salmon manages to spit the hook, so now he is only foul hooked in the tail. This goes on for another 5 minutes or so (still people casting all around the snagged fish), when inexplicably the fish bites another wad of eggs. So now we're back to 2 guys fighting the fish.
The fish then shakes the tail hook and is back to 1 hook, this one in his mouth again. Only problem: the guy who has hooked him has no clue what he's doing, and is trying to yoke him in by reeling as hard as he can. Of course the fish won't budge, so we're at a standoff. 3 minutes...5 minutes...10 minutes go by, and this guy has made zero progress on landing this fish. People are getting annoyed. Some start yelling to hurry up. Finally a complete stranger to the guy walks up, says "you don't know what you're doing. Gimme that rod" and takes the rod out of the poor guy's hands and proceeds to correctly land the fish for him, and walks away.
At that point I was out of there. I headed up North to the Nehalem and fished the afternoon in solitude. I didn't catch a thing, but at least I didn't have to deal with Joe Banker and his 100 friends.
