Get The Lead Out Of Your Line

One fall day a number of years ago I was standing waist-deep in the clear water of Oregon's Umpqua River, fishing an evening rise for trout. I had not moved for half an hour, because just 20 feet or so upstream a fish was feeding. I was trying to anticipate the rises, covering the fish with small midges, No. 18s in various colors. Glancing over my shoulder while changing flies, I noticed that a Chinook salmon had moved upstream and was holding behind me, using my legs to break the current, as if I were a rock. It was a tremendous male, thick as a log, ferocious-looking with his hooked lower jaw and protruding teeth.

It was a compelling sight. Chinook are such huge fish that they seem out of place, almost unreal, in any but the deepest runs of the largest rivers.

The record for sport-caught Chinook in the Umpqua was 89 pounds. This fish, his bronze back no more than six inches under water, did not appear much smaller than that. I reached down slowly with my right hand, and touched his smooth, cold back between the head and dorsal fin. He was gone in a swirling surge that was too fast to see, heading out toward the middle of the river, then straight upstream, leaving a broad wake for the first few yards to prove that he had really been there. The two-pound trout I had been trying for, though still rising, seemed totally insignificant now. I had never hooked a Chinook on a fly, but I knew then that I would have to try.

Chinook—also known as king salmon—are by far the largest of the five Pacific salmon species as well as the biggest in the world, averaging nearly 20 pounds, with a known top weight of 126. Atlantic salmon, much more highly touted as game fish, have been known to reach 100 pounds but average only about 12. The reason for the greater prestige of the Atlantic salmon is that anglers have been in quest of it for centuries. In her essay on sport fishing, published in 1496, Dame Juliana Berners praised it as "the moost stately fyssh that only man maye angle to in fresshe water." She also complained that he is "most comborous to take."

For years it was believed to be not just comborous but also impossible to catch Chinook in freshwater—and not only on flies but on any rod-and-reel bait or lure as well. Indeed, the history of sport fishing for Chinook is very brief, dating back to the late 1920s. By now it is well known that they can be readily taken on spinners, spoons, sinking plugs and gobs of roe, but it is still widely believed that they won't strike flies.

When I moved to the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s I was innocent enough to believe what I was told. Because one of the first things I was told was that Chinook salmon won't take flies, I fished for trout and steelhead. Then that huge, hook-jawed male cruised upstream to hold behind me.

I was impressed enough to ask around again, this time with more persistence, and the few vague rumors I heard checked out. In the fall of each year near the coast, on such rivers as California's Smith and Oregon's Chetko, some pioneering souls were landing large Chinook, a few over 50 pounds, on sinking flies. This was not classical fly-fishing, though. The big, bright, weighted flies were cast with powerful rods on lead-core lines to bounce along the bottoms of the deep runs and pools. Leaders of 12-pound-test and up were the rule.

It was only a three-hour drive to the coast from where I was living, and in my first day of fishing I hooked and landed two Chinook, but neither over 20 pounds. Larger fish were taken near me that day, one better than 40 pounds, but I gave it up. I didn't enjoy it. The lead-core line and heavy flies are onerous to cast, and it is impossible to control a cast once it has hit the water. Your fly and line are down there somewhere, and you hold on and hope for the best.

Yet if big Chinook could be taken consistently on large flies and fast-sinking lines, it seemed reasonable to hope that they could be taken at least occasionally on smaller flies and floating lines. I thought some more, asked around some more, but didn't learn much. However, I was stubborn enough to try my way.

It took a lot of hard fishing through the better part of 1971-72, but I think I proved a thing or two. Using a No. 9 weight-forward floating line and a Size 6 red ant fly, I fished for Chinook on the upper reaches of the Rogue River from mid-June into July. This was 150 miles from the ocean, but the fish had just arrived and were bright and active.