North 40 Fly Shop eMagazine April 2016 | Page 34

DAY 3 Siracha and pancakes start the morning. I walked up to take a shower at Chuck’s to find out he has a satellite Wi-Fi signal and gave me the password in exchange for computer help later in the day. I don't know a ton about computers, but I'd have to guess probably more than Chuck and happy to share what little I do know. We planned to fish a different river today and wanted to see how far we could get up the river in the jet boat. Turns out... a very long ways. After two hours of heading up river, we just decided to call it good because it was getting close to lunch and we wanted to fish. We passed an elk crossing the river, a helicopter tour, and still aren't sure just how far you can get up the river, but it's a long ways and days of floating. The first run we stopped at was unbelievable. We literally got to this spot where each of us would hook up a bull trout land it down on a section of the beach, Craig would take our photo, let the fish go, and then the next angler would rotate in and repeat... over and over. Dad landed the fish of the day in that spot, and I would guess 25 bull trout were landed in a 10 foot section of river right there. We left just to see some other parts of the river and they were just as good. We caught a few cutthroat and rainbows throughout the day as well. At one point, an eagle landed on a pile of logs next to us, and I had a 20 inch bull trout on. The eagle flew down and took the bull trout out off the water and broke my streamer off 15 feet in front of me. It stole my Smoke N' Mirrors from Dan Soltau's a Dirty Water Fly Co. Later on, down the river, I had caught so many bull trout I decided to see if they would eat a skated mouse. They do. Craig and Dad watched me skate a mouse at last light, while the mouse pattern got blown up by bull trout. We got back to camp to find out that our crab and prawn traps had worked extremely well and bottomless fresh crab and giant Vancouver Island prawns were on the menu for this evening. I bet we ate over 100 prawns and 5-6 crabs late in to the night until Dad was falling asleep sitting straight up in a seafood coma. Epic day in BC.