The weather was perfect for fishing this Thanksgiving weekend but salmon were few and far between so the odd coho in the Vedder River was a welcome treat. This has been a tough year for the Fraser and Vedder systems and the number of pinks, coho and springs has been slim. Typically the middle two weeks of October are the finest for fishing the Vedder so hopefully more coho like this one will show up, especially if there is some rain to bring water back up and add some color. The test fisheries on the Fraser are showing that lots of chum are in the system but not many have showed up in the Vedder just yet. Perhaps they are waiting for the rain which is forecast to arrive tonight?
Since the Vedder wasn't too hot I also did a check on the Squamish hoping that some of the feisty coho and chum that come like silver bullets right out of salt water were in the system. Unfortunately, the drought has dropped the Squamish to levels that are possibly even lower than is typically seen during freeze up in February. So, I decided to head upriver and see if the low water had opened up access to channels in the river that are not normally accessible to a walk and wader. As I headed upriver I kept my eyes open to see if anything else was also wading the river.
The glaciers had a slight dusting of snow but the water coming into the river kept it at a highly clouded grey-blue tint so I was wondering if there would be enough visibility for some bull trout to see the lure. After carefully working an upper Squamish pool with no results I was about to give up when I saw a fish rise. A couple of casts into the area and the rod bent like a run-away train had latched on to it.
Bull trout are fall spawners and this buck had the beautiful salmon spots and the golden orange belly and white stripes on its fins. This fish pushed close to 24 inches and rocked my rod into a beautiful arc as he made several mad rushes for rough water.
I was hoping where there was one nice bull there would be more and a few casts later an even larger doe bull trout anchored the end of the line and pulled like a race horse for deeper faster water. After a scrappy battle, I was able to coax it in for some nice pictures!
he fishing below the rapids turned out to be even better than above the rapids and the first cast over the boulders felt like it had locked the fly to the river bottom until the bottom started to move and head downstream in a big hurry. The largest fish of the day was a heavy doe bull trout that went north of 24 inches and took some considerable convincing to come to the shore for a photo shoot.......In the end, great sunshine, glacier views and some monster bull trout.......a great way to wear off the Thanksgiving turkey!!!
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