Salmon River Chinook — It Doesn’t Take Many. Il ne Suffit Que de Quelques-Uns.

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[EN] Two years ago, I came across this excellent text from Dana Sturn on the blog of the Deneki BC West lodge. Reading that a species of fish could affect the mind of a fisherman to a point where it would transform his aproach to fishing looked exagerated to me. Although skeptical, I became intrigued and excited about fly fishing for Chinook salmon. I eventually started to think about trying some day. This became one item in my fly fishing To do list. But it was far from the top of my list, I have to admit.

And then came my first fishing trip for Chinook... 

This 2011 mid-October day spent fishing for Chinook with my Dad has been fantastic! We are still regularly remembering this particular day during our conversations. It was the peak of the run on the SR and my father and I were fortunate enough to fight many of these fish on that day. They are as tough as you can imagine. They do everything to brake you off....they make a bunch of jumps, they take you around rocks....CRAZY!

But my Dad and I eventually also landed some great Chinooks that day. This trip has been JUST PERFECT...the fact that I shared it with my Dad made it the trip of a lifetime!

But you know what? I was still feeling that text on the Deneki blog was exagerated.

This has remained the case until this fall...

My friend François and I made the trip to the SR mid-October this year. And this is during that trip that I started to understand. The fishing was very difficult. We fished some productive mid-river waters with a variety of streamers. We fished wooly bugger patterns in many different colors....we tried dead-drifting these flies, animating them with different stripping motions....no bite.

After a few hours of trials, I sighted a couple steelheads. I decided to change the #8 salmon setup for my #7 switch rod. I went for a long-leader nymphing setup using 8lb. test tippet material to dead-drift an egg pattern.

And I started to get connected to......CHINOOKS!! Who said they don't eat eggs?!?

Among several hook-ups, I went through that epic fight with a big Chinook. 40 minutes... 300 yards of downstream ride through riffles....crossed the river twice to unlock my line that was taken around rocks......to eventually arrive to a deeper pool where I could tail that superb fish after several additional strong rushes. I took a long period of time to savour the moment.

When finally my heart-rate decelerated and my level of adrenaline eventually dropped a little, I remembered that sentence in Dana Sturn's text :

“It doesn’t take many.”

I could not agree more.

Tight lines! - Bruno.

 Reviewing lake run trout and salmon gear
 Thank you François for capturing this moment
 Superb specimen!
 François after landing a beautiful salmon
 Releasing a king...