I've been Reading about all the hype about fishing the vedder river in chilliwack and how great it is and isn't (Crowds) I have never fished the vedder and have always wanted too...A friend from work took me out yesterday and today. So I'll start out with yesterday we got to the river at 1100hrs and fished with red wool in some deep channels with a float managed to accidently hook a pink in it's back, I retrieved and released it... it was still in ok shape. huge hump though.
We later moved up stream to slower moving water was getting kind of scary with the rain and all. I hook in to my first Chum (Dog) salmon it was very excitng...Untill i landed it and realized that i had to take the hook out it's mouth. I know now why they call them dog salmon.. those are huge teeth... they should call them vampire salmon. Back to the report. fish was released. My buddy got a chum and kept it...was still in pretty good condition.
Today on the river it was not crowded and the weather was nice, no rain, you could see the river had risen and the flow was a little faster but didn.t stop us from fishing. As we started to wade in a gentleman had beside him a 40 plus RED spring...made us wanna get in the water quicker. first hour nothing but a fellow beside us had caught and landed a nice shiny hatchery COHO. Soon after that i saw my float go under, set the hook and s#$! snag, WRONG! FISH ON! its a spring apparently as my buddy tells me so i get him in close right away and think well that was easy Wrong again he takes off down the river. after about five mins my arm is burning... start to walk to shore as i'm told to do while my line is still peeling off. Ended up not landing the fish, but he didn't break me off either The bastard Straightened my hook. It was still one of my best fishing experiences ever. I sturgeon fish a lot and have landed 6 footers and have always wondered about the hype of a big spring if it fights harder pound for pound and now i finally know the answer first hand. later in the day landed a chum and release it. A fellow told me i could be fined if i shore a fish and decide not to keep it. I didn't realize that. It's pretty difficult to do it in the the water. Well Now i know won't happen again. Rules are Rules. There was alot of action for other anglers one guy had 3 springs on in a matter of 1 hour and landed one. saw alot of guys lose their springs. DIdn't see very much Coho action. All in all it was a great day of fishing. I will be back there at least one more time this year.