First (fishing) trip to the Den of 2015..

Dad, Joe, Bill, Melissa and I headed to the camp last Thursday evening to give the black salmon a go for a couple days. The weather was cold, rainy, snowy and just plain miserable. We were all just happy to be getting up to the camp to do a little fishing, regardless of how poor the conditions were. This trip was to be Melissa's (my daughter) first time to the Den and her first time fly fishing - I was quite surprised and very pleased that she agreed to come fishing with me. I knew we were going to have a great time regardless of whether we hooked any fish or not :)

Pre-trip gear inspection:
(even the fellow on TV looks a bit tentative)

If it wasn't raining it was snowing - daytime highs Thursday, Friday & Saturday were between 4 & 5 degrees Celsius.. for whatever reason, I refer to air temps in Celsius and water temps in Fahrenheit.. the couple times I checked the latter, it was 38f.... Brrrrrr!

The water was dropping and clearing up by the hour so we eventually put the boat in. There were very few boats on the water the whole weekend, a pretty good sign that fishing was slow in our little part of the river. Anyone we spoke with said they were having some luck further up river, but all in all, the fishing was very slow.

We eventually got out for a fish and Melissa had a chance to give fly fishing a try. I rigged her up with a 13' 8wt spey rod, skagit line, sink tip and a large spring fly. About 10 minutes of instruction, a bit of encouragement and she was spey casting! A double spey to be exact!

Awesome job, Melissa! You're a natural!

A few casts later and she looks like an old salmon dog standing in the river waiting for that pull..

A little fire to try to warm up - it did a tiny bit of good.. 

We had a great weekend, in spite of the slow fishing. It was one of those times when we should have stayed an extra day. On Sunday AM as we were getting ready to leave I hooked a nice salmon right in front of the camp within a few minutes. Oh well, we'll get 'em next time! Thanks for coming up, Melissa - you really made the trip and I can't wait to go fishing with you again :)