10-24 REELLIFE digital - Flipbook - Page 10
fishing
Standing at the river's edge
and surveying the waters,
a loud splash disrupted the
silence of the day. Coho or
silver salmon are known
to roll and jump often,
and this gives away their
location. This fish was in
heavy cover where downed
logs had created a log jam
and there was no way to
get to it without risking
gear being lost to the
sunken trees. But it
meant that fish were in
the river and that was
good enough to load the
tackle into the drift boat
and launch for a day of
searching for more coho.
Rowing down the river,
which was calm and
quiet, we came to a
large back slough. The
water here was stacked up
from the previous winter's
floods that cut the side
channel deep but now the
water was shallow at the
outfall creating a lake of
sorts.
This is known as “frog
water” and coho prefer to
sit here and rest until they
regain energy to continue
upriver. With a lot of fish
holding in the stagnant
waters, one would think
these fish are easy to catch
but anglers often forget
that these are resting fish
and that means they are
lazy and often lockjaw.
The term “lockjaw”
means salmon unwilling
to bite. Unfortunately,
when anglers come
upon a dozen or more
fish that are lockjaw
the temptation to snag
becomes overwhelming.
Not only is this illegal but
also it hurts the runs of
coho because these are
resting fish and when
snagged they exert energy
they are trying to use to
head upriver and spawn.
When a fish becomes too
tired to move it simply dies
because water needs to
flow through the gills and if
the fish cannot move and
it is released into slow
or stagnant water it will
suffocate and die.
So, how do you get fish
to bite when they are all
lockjawed? The answer
is simple and that is
to find fish that are
not lockjawed. Seems
silly to say that but it
is true, you will not get
a lockjawed silver to
bite. This does not mean
giving up fishing for the
day but instead knowing
that there are biting fish,
or a bite might turn on
throughout the day. Back to
the stagnant waters of the
slough.
