Springer Fishing

Hi all;

It has been a while since I put anything on here, so I thought I would put up something that I did recently with Kevin and a couple of friends from work. I was invited by one of my friends from work to go fishing for "Springers" (Spring Chinook) with him down on the Columbia River. We drove down on Thursday afternoon and spent the night in Clatskanie, OR. Early the next morning, we drove down to Vancouver, WA, launched the boat and proceeded to go fishing.

Here are the other three getting the bait ready for the day of fishing, and getting the poles ready. On the left is the boat owner, Doug. Gotta tell ya, he is a master fisherman, he knows what he is doing. Next is another driver, Dave. And then, on the right, is Kevin.

These are the two fish that were pulled into the boat. I got the one on the left and Kevin got the one on the right. When we were ready to start, Doug told us to drop our lines to the bottom. Before he had a chance to get his line in the water, my pole started bouncing real hard. Not really knowing what the bottom of the river was like, I asked Doug is that was the bottom causing the bouncing. He yelled that I had a fish on. Sure enough, I had a fish. About 1 minute after dropping the line, I had a fish. Guesstamite was around 11 to 12 pounds. At this rate, I figured we would only be on the water for a hour or two. Wrong!!!! It took about 2 hour or so for the other fish to be hooked and then pulled in by Kevin.

Here are the two of us holding our respective fish.

When we got home late Friday evening, we did the cleaning of our fish, bagged all the entrails and heads and stored them in the freezer to keep them from smelling. On Saturday, we proceeded to process the fish. They were cut up into steaks and then vacuum-sealed in bags and frozen.

We did have some of the steaks the following weekend, and I gotta tell ya, I don't think I have ever tasted better tasting fish. They were laid on foil with slices of lemon and onion on top, with a dash of lemon pepper sprinkled on top. Then the foil was sealed around them and baked in the oven till done. It was DELICOUS!!!!!!

Lake Conner

Well, yesterday was such a beautiful day around here, that our good friends, Mike and Becky, decided to make a run up to Lake Conner (just east of Lake Stevens) to check on their motor home. While there, Mike wanted to do some fishing in the lake. They invited us to come up there too. So, we packaged up some food and met them up there.

Here is Becky and Jennie visiting while Mike and I set up for fishing.

Here I am, all set up and waiting for the pole to start vibrating, indicating I've got a fish on.

Here is Mike, all set up, fishing line is wet, and he is waiting for the pole to start vibrating.

There is my bobber, floating in the water. I am keeping an eagle eye on it, waiting for it to dip in the water, indicating that I have a fish on the hook, dangling down in the water.

While we were waiting for the fish to discover our bait and decide that it was good enough to eat, a Bald Eagle flew over us and around the lake to perch on a tree on the other side. (I know, not a very close picture, but it was kinda hard to keep it in the view finder as it was flying around.)

Well, I gotta say that the fish didn't seem to be too interested in what we were dangling down in front of them. We didn't catch anything, but then, is that the entire purpose of fishing? Sometimes, it is just being in a beautiful place with good friends and just visiting and chatting with each other. So.............in that sense, it was a perfect evening and a close to a very good day.