This week we had four guests joining us for the second week in a row. Phil Hinton and Philip Walker along with Jon Baskin and Brian Niska decided one week was not enough punishment and each joined us for two weeks this season.
Photo: Cameron Miller
Phil and Philip both fished extremely hard and put up some enormous numbers on multiple species over the two week span. Jon Baskin worked hard during his trip and finally put two kings on the beach after twelve days of fishing – to say he was a happy man is truly an understatement. After that Jon decided to chase sockeye for the rest of the trip, because according to Jon they are much easier to catch and they fight better pound for pound. Brian Niska extended his Spey clinics into this week to make sure all the guys were covered. Anyone with interest in learning to spey cast took Brian up on his clinics.
As for the new arrivals we welcomed back Jeff Kovach and his dad Gerry who visited us a few years ago. Jeff also brought with him a group of novice fishermen for a half week trip of “crash course” fishing. It only took minutes for many of the group to tie into fish and after a couple days they were hooking fish with reckless abandon, reckless enough to break a few of the camp rods they used during the trip. Well done!!
Matt Lipscomb joined us many years ago for silvers and holds the camp record for silvers landed in one day (over 200 between two anglers). This time he brought his buddy Don Batchelor for some more record breaking action on multiple species. Our other father and son team of Bud and Miles Robertson wailed on fish all week and especially loved the resident fish like rainbows and grayling. Miles caught a bunch of grayling in Flag Channel the first day he arrived.
Ryan Krogh of Outside magazine also joined us for a half week trip with intentions of learning the ways of the Spey with Brian Niska. Ryan is writing “Zero to Hero” article about learning spey fishing (while catching fish) in a short period of time. He went away all smiles so we think he succeeded in his mission. We’ll find out for sure when the article comes out this winter.
Our weather this week was quite nice with temps between 50 and 70 degrees and very nice sunny skies. The last night of the week we had some wind and rain just to spice it up a bit (and knock the dust down), but other than that it was stellar weather the whole week. Unfortunately the kings were put down by this kind of weather along with some of the other salmon, but fortunately the guests were very open to multi-species efforts on the river and took advantage of any species that would take the fly.
In general we had great fishing for the week. We did not get the expected Grand Slam or first silver this week, but we know the silvers are starting to make the journey up the river now so it will probably happen next week. We’ll give you another report next week and we’re sure it will include a bit about Grand Slams and silvers.
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