• John Bottos, Tom Franklin and I started fishing springs (aka chinook or kings) once the pinks turned. The first night we each had one on briefly, but that was enough to suss out where they were, how deep they were holding and what they'd hit. Turns out we were right on the money with the latter according to Haig Brown. In his book, To Know a River, he writes king salmon will respond to a silver bodied number six wet fly once they've adjusted to freshwater and John's silver bodied creations tied with yak hair wings were just the ticket.
         Hooking them was the one thing we could do

  • well. Landing them was another story altogether. These fish are huge. "Tyee" is the name given to springs over 30 lbs and pretty much everything we hooked was tyee class. Make no mistake, once on these leviathans are in control. You may have the illusion of control, but that's a fleeting notion exemplified in a barrage of bent hooks, broken tippets, split sink tip loops and lost gear.
         On the day before John was to fly home, he hooked four tyee. The first he played for 50 minutes before it exited the pool and ran with the rapids. John declined to follow and I don't blame him. In years past, that rock snot infested stretch of the

  • river has been cruel: dunking him on one occassion and ruining a Sage 9 wt on another.
         The next two either straightened his hook or broke his tippet.
         We quickly upped tippet test to 20 lb from 15 and went with robust TMC 7999 salmon and steelhead hooks exclusively, as my beloved TMC 9394's, even at 3x heavy, weren't up to the task.
         On what would turn out to be the last fish of the trip for John, I cautioned him beforehand about Perfection Loops not being able to stand the strain. Better to Palomar knot the leader directly to the sink tip instead. He laughed that his knots didn't

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