Wednesday night, celebrating Pepper's retirement with some special Highland Park, the aroma of some top notch Eugene home grown in the air...it's like it was a dream....

Pepper: "dude, I was thinking you might have submitted my salmon fishing retirement paperwork a bit early"

me: "seriously? you almost fell off the yak on Monday, again.  you're old"

Pepper: "sure, but so are you.  Monday was 'First Retirement', it only counts at Siltcoos.  As a fishing wizard, you must have heard of 'Second Retirement'?  Why don't we try Tahkenitch on Friday?  NOAA says no wind, mostly sunny, what else are you going to do? clean the garage? wash the car?"

me: "OK, we are not going to catch a coho but let's do it, one more lake salmon outing this year, remote launch, Mallard arm."

Friday- beautiful again up there but no sign of coho for a couple of hours, floating rafts of weeds everywhere, really difficult to troll or cast, then a big coho rolled just once near the top of the arm, and I cast that area hard for 20minutes, changing spinners twice and eventually, a pink Mepps Flying C got the attention of a monster.  He barely fit in my coho net and once there he splashed Pepper real good right in the face (check out her nose in the lower left)!  and I got it all on video.

at 34", he beats my lake coho PB by a full 2" and was close to 15#.  And a great thing about these lake coho bucks, even in December, they might look nasty but check out those fillets (dark hens- nope, red bucks- hells yeah). He adds almost 8# to the big fall salmon 'brine-smoke-can' batch I'm doing on Monday. 

Thanks for sharing this Roger.  So happy for you both and your story helped wash away a little of the bad taste in my mouth from this season.

Cohozilla! Nice one Roger!

Encouraged by Rogers fish, decided to give the lakes one last go, and glad I did.

Hit Tahk, was a bit windy, but manageable. Never saw any jumps or rolls, and didn't mark anything on the finder. Was about to call it quits, and hooked what I was sure was a stick or huge clump of weeds, not until it was most of the way to my boat did it give a couple head shakes to let me know it was a fish.

That was it for its struggle, netted it easily. My biggest lake coho to date, a bit bummed there was no fight. Decided the meat was probably no good, considering how weak the fish was, so measured it n let it go to hopefully go make salmon babies.

For my own edification, after seeing how Rogers buck cut, everyone agree that SD2OR’s hen today would have cut badly?

The bucks typically cut better than the hens. Females put a ton of energy into egg production, so the meat is drained of the fats that make them taste good. Same deal for coastal fall Chinook: even if a buck has a little color on him, he'll typically cut better than a shiny hen with the "distended butthole" indicator of fully ripe eggs (and no fat in the meat).

Totally agree with SD2OR's release of that fish. She would've made for mediocre table fare. Not worth killing.

Hit Siltcoos today not expecting to catch anything and I didn’t.  I hit it almost ceremoniously this time of year to end my season of chasing salmon in the kayak.  I think about the fish I caught this year and hope I’m around to do it again next year.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the mind game that is fishing.  I always start out believing I will catch a fish.  Two hours later I’m starting to have doubtful thoughts creep into my mind.  After four hours I’m pretty sure I’ll get skunked, and when six hours has passed I’m just heading for my launch.  With that in mind I wrote this little poem to remind myself that you never know:

Roger, do you need my address for where to send my Xmas present?

Quote from: Drifter2007 on December 11, 2024, 03:30:38 PM

Roger, do you need my address for where to send my Xmas present?

 

Pepper: (licking out this years first bowl of smoked salmon dip): "Nope".  lol