Salmon in the home water

Since the weather was tops today for fishing the brand of salmon that come into the rivers near here, I went. It doesn't take long to reach the home water. And with a bit of hiking I get to look at this:

Here's the upstream boundary for all fish that move up this river. Right after I took the pic a dark king took a very nice attempt at the falls. Figures.

But this also suprised me. The local fish polititians, with bulldoggish prompting by the local sportsman groups cut funding altogether for the pacific salmon stocking in the area. The pool you're looking at hosted state record kings and thousands of fish year after year. It seems that the more native species like brook trout, steelhead and lake trout are getting into the money around here. This suits me just fine.

I took the seven weight out and landed some of the pinks that will be there this time of year and turned one king. I spotted a few old rusty-tails cruising around but after awhile found myself thinking how much cooler this river would be if the steelhead ran it like the salmon do now.

Or even better, did then.