Catch of the Day

I took Alan and friend Jeff

( X novice ) to Irondequoit Creek and saw 12 salmon, hooked and landed one. I also saw three browns.

I placed Alan in a spot I had success in two days earlier. He saw a few move up. Alan then spent the morning moving downstream.

Jeff was the big winner. I helped him for a few minutes with getting the right drift. He hooked up twice with a salmon, in the tail.

After adjusting our split shot we moved upstream. A male chinook moved within casting reach. Jeff hooked him good, The king ripped up the stream and broke some 6# test. So I tied on some #12 on my 7 wt with a new martin reel and gave it to Jeff. I left him to go find another fish. I was upstream of Jeff for only a few minutes when the water in front of him exploded.

I was shouting instructions to Jeff as I was walking back to him. "Let her take line. Don't hold her back. Palm your reel." as the line screamed off the reel. Soon she was into the backing. I pleaded with Jeff to try to regain some of the line back onto the reel. "Walk forward. Walk backward. Pull back and reel up."

He must have been getting sick of me interfering with his intimate moment with this queen of the stream. I told Jeff that he could not let her rest. I could see he was just holding her steady in the current and He needed to reel her in. I could see his fingers were getting sore and loosing grip. So I helped him by putting pressure on the rod. Jeff said he was afraid the rod would break. I assured him "This rod has caught more large salmon than I could remember." And it would not break.

By walking backward we finally landed a nice fresh 37 inch female King.

Not ten minutes afterward, I looked over to see Jeff landing a 10.5 inch brown trout. We left at 3:00 after fishing to shadows. What a day.