Very nice story to read: Our winter of 13 was a cold snowy one and we actually had show on the ground at the lodge a few times with one occassion being to a depth of about 4 inches.The weather was normal spring weather but the beginning of summer saw cold and often wet weather.
I had never experienced this happening in January in the 30 plus years of fishing the watershed-even duing el nino and la nina years. Flowers did not bloom and the caddis, midges, dragons etc. were scarce until about the end of the first week in Feb. From then on for the next 5 weeks we had no rain at all. So the dry fly fishing in January was negatively affected and the Chinook salmon run was negatively affected because the river got very low and salmon were getting eaten by the sea lions in the bay at the mouth of the river. As a result of this crazy weather the numbers/day were down in both the lake and the river but the quality of the fish was excellent. We noted that there were more very nice Browns brought to net in both the lake and the river this season. Head guide, Mark Fuller and I hooked into the largest brown that I have ever seen on the end of a line one day. The gigantic male was either hooked in the kipe or had the fly between his teeth so he did not even acknowledge that he was hooked. We conservatively put him between 40-45 inches — needless to say neither Mark nor I slept that night. What a true monster- I wanted to cry when the hook came out. Todd Hughes caught a real trophy Rainbow in the lake as did annual client and spey casting fanatic, Huw Llewellyn — both the largest Rainbows that they have ever caught. Several browns were taken in the 8-12 lb range. Everyone had a real blast site fishing to cruising trout in the lake when the lake got low when we had all of those weeks of no rain. We brought to net several salmon though not as many as last season. Patricio Soto Ocampo and I both caught IGFA world record length Chinook salmon — the nod goes to Patricio – congradulations! Now PUMA FISHING holds both the Chinook and Coho length world records. We did have the hook break on a gigantic Chinook after a 45 minute fight that would have made the new world record Chinooks look small-what a shame.
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