Salmon Eggs: An Oily, Smelly, Visceral Approach to Trout

I checked on my local river Monday and found it had come down, clarified pretty well. Called Mark Licht and began making plans for this afternoon. We found the river up his way running high and very fast, the clarity acceptable but not as clear as it usually is. 

Mark and I each had trout on our first casts. Naturally, we had instantly become suckers for hope, but had we enjoyed fast action at that first spot for the full four hours we had at our disposal, the day never would have developed through overcoming some obstacles.

Mark did catch three or four where we began many hundreds of yards from the stocking point. I missed a couple of hits. We mostly fished along a seam about 75 feet long. All of Mark's trout came from that edge, as well as the one I had on and  lost after it took several runs. I used two-pound test. An 11-incher in that current... 

One of my hits came when I drifted an egg through the fast water. Soon, I weighted the line with a BB split shot after Mark offered me one. I declined and opened my own pack. I had been managing the seam OK with a snap and a snap-swivel for weight. 

We walked upstream a good way. I fished another seam, and after Mark caught another trout and came upstream to where I stood, I tried to cast my salmon egg to the column of slow water near the opposite bank that he pointed out to me. He went back downstream and caught two more. It seemed to become obvious that his centerpin outfit was advantageous given the high water. He can work his float along an entire seam and let the current take it behind rocks, and so on.  I wasn't cooked, though. I still had plenty of interest in the limits of my microlight tackle against the heavy flow.

We drove to a bridge and no trout seemed to be there. We both felt the sneaking suspicion that it hadn't been stocked.

We moved on to our last spot, which is where it all came together for me. I weighted the line with an additional split shot and cast into the fast water, figuring that trout hugging bottom underneath where flow is slower might appreciate an egg moving slower, too. I did have to retie a few times, and had left my leader wallet at home, though I had a pack of the size 14 baitholder hooks I use. I started hooking up, and by the time we had to leave, which seemed to come pretty quickly, I understood that the fast water surely held a lot more trout than just the four I caught, the one I fought and lost, and the several hits I missed. I didn't quite catch up to Mark, but I closed the gap considerably. 

I enjoy fishing salmon eggs. It's an oily, smelly, visceral approach to trout amounting to a "fishy" quality, in fact. I did bring along my two-weight fly rod, but once I hooked up on that first cast, there was no turning back. I'll probably always be dual in that way. A bait fisherman who likes to fly fish when that makes sense. But stockers are a paradox. They're artificially raised, and yet using smelly, oily bait for them is more down-to-earth than the fly fishing I do for wild trout.

It's always interesting to watch Mark center-pinning. His big eggs sacks were interesting to see used on little stockers, too. I'm not interested in investing, but I avidly appreciate how it works for him. 

Five Years Ago