The pattern here is not good, the last time we splashed the boat was 7/28. The stability of my overall sanity requires that I fish from a floating contrivance at least once a week. That said this summer, for that matter this year has been a stressful one. All the reasons aside we decided to just go for it Sunday morning and try our luck with some of the Snohomish River coho.

We must be out of practice; by the time we got the gang up, had lunch made, and got everyone and everything loaded in the truck is was 9:00-9:30 before we even left the driveway. Our arrival and launch at Langus was uneventful and we were underway by 10:30. The run from Langus to Snohomish was entertaining, I run a prop and with the huge bio-load of moldy humpies still swimming upright we had to rename the boat “Chopper”. Just above Snohomish we set up and started trolling Wiggle Warts.

We were running three rods (my kokanee rods) spooled with 40# Power-Pro and a 8# Seaguar fluorocarbon top shot. At the business end of things were 3 Wiggle Warts, a fire tiger red, purple with a chartreuse lip and the third being a magenta Wiggle Wart with a chartreuse lip. Although we went thru various scents krill gel was our go to scent for the day. All our fish were caught on the uphill troll, trolling just faster than the downstream current with 30-40’ of line out while trying to stay in 15-18’ of water. Between the humpzillas that kept eating our plugs (I don’t know, maybe we were flossing them…) and lost fish (a quest to get a punch on the 4 year old’s card) we had something going on the entire time we were on the river. All three rods saw action but the magenta Wiggle Wart was the top producer for the day. Didn’t count humpies but we went one for six on the coho, the fish for the box was a 14 ho. Many of the lost fish were just drive-bys and I’ll bet you didn’t know that a sweatshirt sleeve could get hopelessly wound up in a reel (lost fish)… Our trip was productive and it really felt good to get out on the water.

As a side note; it was really crowded up there. Generally things seemed to go smoothly with no crossed lines or bumper boat action. That said; twice we saw big sleds go blasting around a corner or weaving through boats where the boats fishing had to take evasive action. On one of the occasions we actually got a blast from their pump as they had to make a last minute course adjustment to avoid the next boat in line. I understand the whole dynamics of running a pump downstream but when the river is crowded maybe they should just shut down and use the trolling motor to work through the traffic.

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