Sunday 11/26 ... Minter Creek Chums (non kayak)

I'm going to give the chums another go, unless someone comes up with a better idea.  The plan is to start out at Minter Creek at first light and fish through the big high tide around 10.  Minter Creek is near Purdy.

I'll be offline until Saturday evening, but if you want to join, let me know here or in PM.

-Allen

Fished today with Charles (charliefl66) and Ken.  Today we got our groove on!!!  Between the 3 of us, we had a 70-80 fish day.  Yes, you read that right.  70-80!!!  We kept 5 bright ones.

Met up at Charles' house at a bit before 6AM.  Snow was lightly falling.  We were fishing by 7AM and had 3 bright fish on the bank and released quite a few more darkies within the first 20 minutes.  You just knew it was going to be a good day.  Looked downstream and saw a wall of chums working their way up to us.  The water was literally boiling with them as there was a seal chasing them up the river.  Proceeded to put on a show and was hooked up almost constantly until we left at 11AM.  I had tied up a roll of leaders (12) the night before and we worked our way through those.  Then tied up a bunch more until we lost all our hooks.  A guy gave us a handful and we proceeded to catch more fish until we lost most of those hooks.  After a half dozen fish the leader would just get worn out and break.  That and we lost a few at the end game and a few errant cast into the bushes on the other side of the river.  Color made no difference on the corkie and yarn.  Tipping the hook with a bit of marinated prawn helped quite a bit, especially enticing the mouth biters.  I salted down the prawn chunks to toughen them up and added shirmp/anise smelly jelly for more scent and a bit of of Amerman's cure for a slight pinkish color.

-Allen

Here's Charles with a typical darkie ... released.  Notice the snow coming down.  And also notice it's still dark out.

-Allen

And since I have enough eggs cured up for steelhead bait, Charles' wife Tomiko was quite excited to get some eggs to marinate up.  She even sent me home with a bit.  Ikura!!!

-Allen

Where is Minter creek?

It's a bit to the NW of Gig Harbor.

Here ... http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=minter+creek+hatchery+Purdy,+WA&sll=47.389167,-122.624167&sspn=0.152942,0.227966&ie=UTF8&ei=vtVrRYS4A5qEjQP1mrjJBQ&sig2=3Kb97WeVjAtJ-IAFAqq54A&cid=47372695,-122702945,4473144534516749329&li=lmd&z=14&t=m

This is a map to the Minter Creek Hatchery.  We were fishing right below the hatchery.

-Allen