Matt,

I guess it can be summed up by saying it's all relative. Yes, the Vedder is crowded. I too, HATE "Gong shows". My experience up there this year however, I consider overall, very pleasant. Not that I like fishing around alot of people, but that the people I WAS fishing around were very friendly and polite. I normally would have trekked off on a long hike to find some solitude, but my wife isn't usually up for that when it's rainy and cold. So, like Deepwater, we ended up fishing that area that has a gong show reputation. The two weekends we spent there, we always had about 15 feet on either side of us clear to fish. Since we were fishing the slot right against the bank, we really didn't need much more room than that. I always look around to see what kind of activities are going on around me, and since the Canadian techniques are a bit different than fishing down here, to see how they are putting the floats to use. What I saw was American drift fishing (bottom bouncing) with a float stuck on the line that seemed to serve no real purpose. EVERYONE had their float set high enough above their lead so that the lead was making contact with the bottom just like bottom bouncing. I never saw anyone's float actually go under with a bite. In fact, I couldn't tell you how they knew if there was a fish or not. They would hold the float back against the current so that it was swinging across almost like fly or spoon fishing. Anyway, I didn't see anywhere near the kind of blatant foul-hooking that I've seen down here. And when fish were foul-hooked, they were released (at least the ones that I saw) ethically, with a minimum of mistreatment. Matt, in my opinion, the situation up there, as intolerable as it might seem to you, seems pretty good to us Washingtonians because of the conditions we face down here. Even though white springs are considered second class fish up there, to us down here, the legitimate chance to hook 50lb. chinook is pretty appealing, even if you're not going to keep it to eat.

p.s. we did great on Sat, not so great on Sun.

[ 10-29-2001: Message edited by: 4Salt ]