The Fishin' Magician: Colville Tribal Hatchery

My wife Eileen and I took our last trip in my Jetcraft Discovery 1925 last week. A good friend of mine has decided to buy it, and we wanted one more day to enjoy this great boat. Its steelhead season and she loves to fish at Bridgeport, so off we went.

We started off casting bobbers and jigs at the hole near the outflow of the Colville Tribal Hatchery. The first fish I got was a small king, but after a few more casts I got a nice hatchery steelhead for the cooler. We fished the shoreline below here and then ran up to the bridge. This hole can be difficult as there is often quite a bit of current and there are some very large boulders under the surface that are real jig grabbers.

I was about to give up on it, but had noticed some fish rolling in a seam at the very bottom end. I thought that they might be kings, but there was at least one steelhead there. It grabbed my jig and gave me a great battle. It was a big wild fish that I released. We got a couple more kings and a triploid, and it was a great goodbye trip.

My new Kingfisher is on its way from the factory in Vernon, B.C. I'll tell you all about it when it gets here.