The first spring rainbow is always something to celebrate. The suns warmth and light has once again returned to the great white north. The ever shrinking snow starts to give way to browns, grays, and eventually the greens of summer. The once frozen rivers return to life, slowly at first, and then become raging torrents once again. Rods and reels get dusted off, waders get patched and put back into circulation, and smiles return to the faces of those that have been dreaming of spring's first rainbow since the fall freeze.

Sneaked me a day off of work to poke around the local river and look for a hungry trout. It was a glorious day to be outside. Found a handful of rainbows and a few dollies and in the process officially kicked of another fishing season. Bout time.


What? You don't take a snow machine when you go fishing?






How does this thing work again? Oh yeah, wave the end around and then point it where you want the line to go..or something like that. Toes go numb pretty quick this time of year.

Toes go numb? I bet those hands go numb pretty quick releasing nice fish like that, too!

Fish on...

Todd

Very nice! What's that water temperature?

Sg

A balmy 38-39 degrees. The trout are kinda sluggish this time of year, but fairly well fed for having been on a diet for the last 6 months.

Nice Coley. My father and his friends fished this past Monday over in Eastern Washington. In contrast, the weather was 88 degrees, and any snow was long gone. It's cooled down since then.

The papa caught a 28" brown. I told him no pics, it didn't happen. He said, if "I said it happened, it happened". Who's to argue with their papa?

Nice work as always Coley.

Lookin' forward to more of same from ya, CG.

Ah, Spring....

Bomb-azz as always.

Great pics!

Wow! I'd take that over a crowded steelhead river anytime! stellar images as always Coley!

What a sweet day! It may be cold up there, but it still looks pretty OK to me.

This evenings installment. First reasonably decent dude of the year. Till now, hens only. The boys showed up to rumble today. Hoovering smolts on the surface = fun.

Pretty buck.

Coley how far upstream from the salt are you fishing & you ever get into any intercoastal's ?





c/22

75 miles or so from the salt. To my knowledge, these fish have been known (tagged fish studies) to travel between tributaries in the same big river drainage (Susitna) but not into the salt and up other larger drainages in the upper Cook Inlet area.

I am guessing that is due largely to the nature of the rivers around here. The big ones are all glacial fed and silty for most of the summer. The rainbows move out of the tribs and into the big rivers for the winter as the big rivers drop and clear. In the spring they migrate back up the tribs to spawn and eat salmon parts for the summer. In this case, the big rivers function much like estuaries in places like the Bristol Bay region where the fish move between rivers using the saltwater as the go between.

In each case, I think this trait has evolved, as in other areas, for genetic diversity reasons as well as access to food/survival. Salmon runs vary significantly from year to year even between neighboring tributary streams. Trout fishing in this neck of the woods is all about the salmon. The trout tend to follow the food train even if it is not headed to the same place as last year.

One of the larger dollies I caught last night had a mouthful of flesh and old salmon eggs. Considering there hasn't been a live salmon in the water since October and that the rivers and creek have mainly been ice for the last 5 months, I find it pretty amazing that these fish still have access to protein while hunkered down in the few deep dark holes in the river that managed to remain throughout the winter. The majority of the fish we catch in the spring are in really good condition, well the rainbows anyhow, a lot of the smaller dollies are ribby looking snakes.

nice CoG
brad, to my knowledge most of those inner coastal bows are over the next mnt. range to the north

very nice pics! Glad you guys are finally able to fish again.

Beautiful as always...I would expect nothing less from you Coley!

Good thing you can't see the Dick Nite tied to the end of the line, the Salmo's would have me burned at the stake!

Great stuff as always brothah! I'm ready for some troutpops myself..........

Coley, I've heard from other guys as well that Dick Nites cast well on Spey rods. Lotta' Skagit coho taken that way. Lot safer for the rod than RVRFSHRs, double stacked or not.

Smolt patterns and sculpins were the order of that day. I have been known to cast a DN on the fly rod from time to time though, and yes, they do work well.

Damn!
Just think how many you could have caught with PowerBait!

The white mr twister tail is quite often the hot fly, uh, I mean lure for spring rainbows. Swing them close to the surface and they look a lot like the smolt the trout (and birds) going nuts on right now. You have to be careful to look up now and then to make sure an artic tern hasn't achieved radar lock though.

Twitch,

I'd expect you to know that powerbait won't stay on the hook during the cast. Didn't ya' ever try to fly cast with salmon eggs on a hook when you were a kid? BTDT; finally learned to tie flies and had much better results.

Sg

The tail on this one looked a little different?

Dats no troot!

Bass?

Fish on...

Todd

Some perch variety I think. Sure was delicious.

Mmmm....perch.

Yummy.

Fish on...

Todd

Extremely quality pics. Way to go.