Day 7....

Even the Creator Himself was smart enough to declare a day of REST on the Seventh Day.

But as a sage surgical nurse often reminds me, "There'll be no rest for the wicked, Doc!"

And so we set forth upon the water one last time. But this would be a leisurely gentlemen's launch... late morning under full daylight. First had to break down camp, re-pack a weeks worth of supplies and leftover food, re-arrange the past three days bounty of fish, and make a stop for bait and coffee. CCW returned to join Team eyeFISH for its final foray.

We launched the sled about 10-ish and made the upper "Chicken Coop" crossing to the WA side. I guess our luck was due to finally run out in our accustomed "comfort zone". We probably stayed WAY too long waiting for a bite to materialize, even venturing much further upriver with a guide buddy who was able to find some fish. Can't recall if we even got any bites on the WA side that day.... all I know is there is ZERO digital documentation of "fish on" or blood-in-the-boat that day from 3 separate cameras. PIcs or it never happened?

We returned to the OR side where I got reports of a half-hearted outgoing bite. I faintly recall f4b promptly getting a couple of coho on two successive passes, releasing one wild.... but no pic proof in any of the cameras. The only pics stamped with that date are a couple of CCW and I tag-teaming a victory over what would be the last chunky URB of the season for the box.







After landing that king, the afternoon wind REALLY kicked up so we we decided to slow-troll homeward. No way we could have motored back any faster with the big E-tec, at least not without a grinding pound-N-plow thru monstrous waves. While quartering toward the south bank across the depths of no-man's-land, CCW's rod gets rattled then quits. Hmmm... draggin' bottom from wave action or turbo-nibble? A few seconds later the turbo-nibble is back. I tell him he's probably been smolted. He reels in only to discover he's got a shad on his hangback trailer. I'm jumping for joy knowing that only good things happen when you plug cut a shad.

So who wants it?

Keith volunteers his rod and f4b hooks him up. Keith drops in and almost immediately gets hammered. The fish buries his rod for just a few seconds, and suddenly... FISH OFF. He reels in the freshly raked shad that had split out from the top hook.

Hey let's plug that thing back just a bit and put it out again. DONE!

The now twice-cut shad isn't in the water another 5 minutes when Keith's rod buries again, and this time it sticks! He's playing the fish with powerful yet graceful finesse for a good 3-4 minutes when the big king inexplicably comes unbuttoned (Hey Coley, notice I did NOT say "spit" the hook!). Sorry to have lost the fish, but gotta love the confidence of the shad bite!

As we dropped our lines for the last time, we put a final deadline on the trip.... tip of Tongue Point or bust!

Bust it was... and on that bittersweet note we closed another chapter on what has become an annual highlight for Team eyeFISH. Makes me wonder why I ever go to Alaska to fish kings when some of the best the PNW has to offer is only an hour and a half from my back yard! And while it may not be an Alaska wilderness experience, the CR estuary has an undeniable beauty all its own.



Can't wait to do it all over again!