2016 Salmon Fishing

Plant.One

Well-known member
this is my 35" king salmon i caught over the weekend on the Betsie River near Benzonia, MI between US 31 and Homestead Dam.

caught on a McFly foam clown egg pattern i tied on a #4 eagle Lazer Sharp Octopus hook using a 7 wt fly rod with about 11' of 12lb fluorocarbon as the leader.

offical weigh in at the campground was 15 lbs, but i'm estimating i had somewhere between 3 and 5 lbs of egg weight loss from the time i caught her until weigh in several hours later.

she was loaded and had already expelled over 1 cup worth on the bank before i even got her on the stringer. I captured a 16oz water bottle full - to save for spawn bags - before putting her back in the water for the rest of my fishing and even on the way out to the truck she was dropping eggs all the way up the trail to the truck like a trail of breadcrumbs back to the river.

should have had my scale with me out on the river but didn't think to grab it so i wont know actual full weight at catch.

4713c22f-6705-4dd6-b916-46ff871467b7_zpsc2mdmdvd.jpg


we only managed 2 fish for the weekend, but had quite a few hookups that we couldn't land, including a couple that skittered out and threw the hooks during attempted netting.

i lost a HUGE king sunday afternoon after a 10+ minute fight to a big oopsie while using my hand on the spool as a drag enhancement. My thumb caught the handle on the reel as it came around when the fish made a downstream run on me and *doink* there it went and i was dodging flying tackle coming at my head. I managed to tie into around 20 fish on sunday alone myself.


i ended up with just shy of 8 lbs of meat, which is currently in brine and will be in the smoker tomorrow when i get home from work. Yum!


hopefully time will afford me a few more days on the river before the run is over this year. Bro and his wife are talking about going back up this weekend and i may go with them if i can swing it.
 
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