RE: Coho`s?????????He's right vic, coho run in the Vedder now...it's still a joke though...when people start bragging about their fishing on a stock bullboard you know there's nothing goin' on with the company...
But let me tell ya MY favourite fishing story...it was March of 1987...in immense contrast to the hoards of clowns clogging up the Vedder in the fall, I was alone, and I mean there was nobody else for miles around...most anglers on the Charlottes start fishing for halibut or springs that late in the steelhead season, but I was really hooked on steelhead then and the run on the Yakoun is steady from November through April. That year it was frigid cold in February, and when it finally did warm up there was hardly any rain in March...so the river was dead low. I headed away downstream. At that time you could drive a rough old logging spur (Branch 40) to a spot about 15 miles upstream from salt water. There was another road coming up from Port Clements but where it ended then left a 5 mile gap with no easy access except by helicopter - log jams prevent drift boating. Hardly anybody fished that part of the river. In winter it's usually too high to cross, and it's too far between decent runs, especially in high water. But the days are longer in late March and I decided to do some serious prospecting for silver, and man did I hit it big. Every decent patch of water I came to on my way downstream held steelhead, all for me. I kept careful count. By noon I'd plier released a dozen fresh run beauties, all in the 9 to 12 lb class, surprisingly no kelts or dark fish, and did the "involuntary" release on six more. At that point I was done drifting a broad tailout upstream from a logjam. The logs partially dammed the river on the right bank, and it split around an island leaving a chute of fast water along the left. I scrambled up on the left bank and headed down around the corner through a big patch of old growth spruce...that's part of the pleasure of fishing the Yakoun, there are still a few cathedral stands of ancient spruce towering along the riverbank, with deep-moss-covered parkland between the great trunks...another time I was fishing the "40 canyon" on a January afternoon in a snow squall when 3 trumpeter swans came flying up the river, seemingly filling all the space between me and the trees on the other side...at the bottom end of that island, where the two channels rejoined, the river turned to the left beneath a 200 foot high cutbank on the right, and underneath a big old alder on the other side was a patch of the most perfect holding water I've ever seen...a smooth running pool tailing into a long rapid section beneath that high bank, and the depth, colour and speed of that flowing water whispered fisssshhhh are here...I caught and released 8 fresh run powerful steelhead in 8 casts...that's right, 8 in a row, then 9 out of 10, then 3 more...after that, the fishing was a wee bit slower but I was arm-weary by then...I tried several more runs further downstream and caught several more steelhead, altogether that day I plier released 28 steelhead, and lost another 10...