World Class Salmon Fishing

For the past several years, early July has seen me readying for a very special fishing trip - filling reels with 80# braided line, tying leaders, making sure I have enough jet planers, 5/0, 6/0, and 7/0 bait hooks, roe, extra 40# leader material, heavy barrel swivels, Spin-n-Glos, extra rods, back bouncing lead and anything else I even THINK I might need to catch a salmon that could be 70 pounds or more... a lot more.  Yeah, this is big boy salmon fishing.

The Skeena River in northwest BC is a massive fast-flowing piece of water.  It’s the second largest river in the province, trumped only by the Frazer, and is one of the longest undammed rivers in the world.  The swift, cold waters mean big, healthy fish, and the Skeena is full of them.  The Skeena holds the world record for a caught and released salmon at 99.4 pounds. I've seen the replica of this giant on the wall at The Back Eddy Restaurant in Terrace, and there are unsubstantiated claims of a 102.5 pounder caught a few years ago.  Now, I'm not sure how accurate the weights of either of these fish are, and I honestly don't care.  The fact that fish of those dimensions are even discussed as possible is good enough for me.

Back in 2009, some friends and I made the trek for the first time.  I hauled my jet boat the 3,200 miles up and back just for the chance to fish for the giant salmon of the Skeena.  We've done it every year since and will be heading back in a matter of days.

So far we've landed three fish over fifty pounds, the largest weighing in at 58, and have released every one of them after weighing and photographing.  The fish I think about the most though is one we had on but never saw in 2010.  Steve Shamp hooked the fish back bouncing a gob of eggs the size of a racquetball.  After several minutes of deep water tug-o-war the salmon had had enough.  It made a medium-paced run toward an anchored boat, never wavering and completely unstoppable.  We had the drag on the reel absolutely lock-down tight, and Steve, thumbing the spool, literally lost the fingerprint on both thumbs trying to stop the fish.  It was over as soon as the leader hit the anchor line.  It’s easy to speculate on how big that salmon could have been.  That fish haunts me though and surely will keep us coming back. 

There are two slide shows of previous trips.  One is from 2009 and the other from 2010.  I think you’ll get the idea of how awesome this fishery is.  Each pic is a link to a You Tube video.  You will have to return to my sight to get to the other one.