Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Okay, I am sore puppy. Hiking nearly 7 miles in 2 days to catch one steelhead was a bummer in some ways but really cool in others.

Now that I have a bit more time I may as well post. The month of December has seen little rain in Western Washington. After 4 years of complaining about too much rain here, this year there isn't enough.

With the low water, i had to go to a major river system to see if I couldn't get my steelhead fix in for the day. I fished a large glacial river in Western Washington and managed a 6 pound hatchery steelhead. It was nice in several ways. First it was my first fish out of this particular river. and second, it was the first steelhead I caught on a drift rig. That's basically a corky and weight cast into the main river and bounced along the bottom from shore. Third, it was my first ever steelhead I caught on sandshrimp with the added bonus that it was sandshrimp I dug myself.

I wish someone would sell them around here. The closes place I know of is in the town of Montesano which is 45 minutes in the wrong direction. Knowing that steelhead (and salmon too) love them, I built my own sandshrimp gun, and here is picture of what they look like. The single sand shrimp I think is a female. the males have one monster claw on them. Pretty cool stuff.

Spent close to an hour getting 3 dozen of them today but the tides weren't right. You can by them for something like 3 dollars a dozen so I am not sure its worth the effort. But if you can't buy them, ya gotta dig them! I know for the locals, this is nothing new. but for us Alaskans, it's definitely different. I should take a few dozen or so back to Alaska during the salmon season and see if they wouldn't work. hmmmm....


3 comments:

OperaMama said...

Are those shrimpy shrimps edible?

Unknown said...

They are according to the local Native Americans, but there isn't much to them. Yo boil them and you end up with shells. The Salmon and Steelhead sure love them though!

Kris said...

EWWWWW, I detest sand shrimp. They are just plain gicky. But the gulls love them-