J
JeannaJigs
I escaped work early today, and quickly changed out of scrubs into jeans and headed over to the Siuslaw. It was an awesome day weather wise, a nice change from the weekend. The hen I caught yesterday was loaded with eggs that I cured up, and was anxious to use...it's been a while since I've fished my own cure. It paid off. After almost losing my rod tip in a battle with brush, I got down the steep embankment to the water, and was rewarded with the sight of humongorious fish completely clearing the water. Some still chrome bright, some black as tar. I was floating eggs through the deep slots, but the fish seemed to be in closer to the bank, so I mended it in a bit, and my bobber went down when I wasn't looking, I saw it pop back up and was about to kick myself, when it went down again..and stayed down! I set the hook and it was FISH ON! Now mind you, I'm using heavy braid, and a 30# leader, so I'm not concerned about break off...but that my rod is going to snap in half. It's a wimpy steelhead rod, that has no place on a fall chinook river lol, but hey, light gear is fun. (Should see what I use for Coho!) It took me 20 minutes to get this thing close enough to even get a look at it. In her previous life, she was a big fat chrome beauty...fast forward to today, she was on the fast track to being a carcass...I have never in my life seen a fish so dark still alive! I immediately felt horrible for stressing the fish, so I did my best to not stress her further, she was hooked deep so I had to bank her to get the hook out, and took a quick measurement, 39.75 inches, didn't get a girth measurement, but pound for pound, fattest fish I ever saw. Tried to get a picture on my crappy cell phone, but it kept popping up with my favorite error message "unable to capture image" when it does this all I can do is turn it off and turn it back on and try again...takes about 2 minutes..didn't have the time, so there's no pictures this time.
Awesome day on the river.
EXCEPT...it brought me to the forefront of an issue that gets me mad as ever...There was a guy downstream that came up and was tellin' me to give her the wood shampoo for the eggs.
This, in my mind, is worse than poaching. Sure it's legal...if I wanted to tag that fish, there's nothing that says I can't...but to kill a fish for eggs, and waste the carcass...whether it's tagged or not, NOT RIGHT! It should be illegal in my book. Sure, everyone wants their own home cured eggs, but ya know...it's not worth it. Eggs aren't THAT expensive, and contrary to popular belief, you CAN get good quality eggs from shops. Half the time, people don't know what they're doing curing their own anyways, so they ruin' them and would be better off running store bought.
So if the fish is dark, you know it's going to be nothing but nasty mush...let it spawn and help improve future runs...You're just depleting an already depleted resource, while killing a fish you're throwing away, so that you can use it's eggs to catch more fish...for eggs....see the cycle....
So stop it.
Awesome day on the river.
EXCEPT...it brought me to the forefront of an issue that gets me mad as ever...There was a guy downstream that came up and was tellin' me to give her the wood shampoo for the eggs.
This, in my mind, is worse than poaching. Sure it's legal...if I wanted to tag that fish, there's nothing that says I can't...but to kill a fish for eggs, and waste the carcass...whether it's tagged or not, NOT RIGHT! It should be illegal in my book. Sure, everyone wants their own home cured eggs, but ya know...it's not worth it. Eggs aren't THAT expensive, and contrary to popular belief, you CAN get good quality eggs from shops. Half the time, people don't know what they're doing curing their own anyways, so they ruin' them and would be better off running store bought.
So if the fish is dark, you know it's going to be nothing but nasty mush...let it spawn and help improve future runs...You're just depleting an already depleted resource, while killing a fish you're throwing away, so that you can use it's eggs to catch more fish...for eggs....see the cycle....
So stop it.