Intentionally Snagging Salmon

[FishMcFisherson]

This was a trip that I took towards the end of September of 2014. I had intended to post it a while back, but just never got around to it.

It was my first time ever visiting Montana. My buddy lived there most of his life, and I offered to go help him move his mom from Kalispell MT down to San Diego. Like most of you, (I'm sure) I checked around to see what kind of fishing could be had on my trip. We were going to pass many different fishing opportunities, but ly didn't really have much time for fishing.

We had a few hours one day, so decided to hit the nearest lake to where we were staying in Kalispell. I would've loved to hit Flathead, but we had no floating vessel of any type, and were told that she wasn't the greatest from shore. Foys Lake was our destination.

I was told that it was one of the most polluted, disgusting lakes in Montana, due to no water running in or out of the lake. If this is their most polluted lake... I really hope that none of them come to see ol' Utah Lake.

[inline "montana 3.jpg"]

It really was a beautiful mountain lake. The water was very blue, and there was hardly anyone fishing it, even though it was only a couple miles from town. We fished there for an hour or so with spinners and power bait, and managed to land a few planter bows.

[inline "montana 4.jpg"]

With nobody to help us with some local fishing info, I thought this was going to be the best we could do.

Later that night, my buddy who previously lived up there, received a phone call from one of his buddies saying that he had caught well over 100 salmon that same day. He asked us if we would like to join him the next day. I was not going to let that opportunity pass us by, so we talked my buddies mom into letting us escape from the move for a few hours the following morning so we could give the salmon a shot.

The next morning we drove north of Kalispell to Eureka Montana, which is just shy of the Canadian border. We arrived to our destination of the Tobacco River.

[inline "montana 1.jpg"]

It was a beautiful river, out in the middle of nowhere... Gods country.

I was so excited to be reeling in salmon after salmon... and we certainly did.[:p] I was rigging up a spinner when my buddies friend looked over and said "oh, we aren't going to be catching these salmon in the conventional manner." He then opened up his tackle box to a slew of HUGE treble hooks with a large sinker attached to the shank of the hook. He said "we're going to tie on these huge hooks, hook a piece of white t-shirt on there, cast over the visible salmon and yank like hell."

Now I'm from Utah, and I said to the guy "you realize that we could do some serious time for this, right?" He just laughed and started snagging fish after fish. After a few minutes on Google... sure enough. From September 15th through the end of November it is perfectly legal to snag salmon in several Montana waters. I couldn't believe it. But after talking with the guy, I kind of started to realize that they probably SHOULD allow you to snag these fish, since they are just going to die anyways. Any who, here's a few pics of our "catches".

[inline montana.jpg]

[inline "montana 2.jpg"]

After my arms started getting tired snagging salmon after salmon, I decided I might as well throw on a spinner and see if there was anything else to catch. There was some decent looking holes, but only one fish came to hand. I'm guessing it was just snagged, but hey, it was close to the mouth so I'm just going to keep thinking that I actually caught this one.

[inline "montana 6.jpg"]

All of the salmon were Kokanee, going 10-14 inches. It was kind of a bummer, because I had imagined large Kings, or something of the sort.

Needless to say, I was thoroughly disappointed. Probably one of the reasons that I waited so long to post this, but hey, here's a picture of a huge herd of elk that we saw.

[inline "montana 5.jpg"]

Yes, the title was click bait. Thank you for reading.
[signature]

[wiperhunter2]

I grew up in Southern Colorado and it was legal to snag salmon there too. Not sure if it is legal now but I remember snagging 100 in one day. My Dad let me borrow his old 63 Chevy Impala and they had the full size spare tire in those days, well we moved the spare to the back seat and filled up that entire hole, where the spare sits, with salmon. These were 15 to 20" kokanee and you could catch them how ever you wanted, I took a pitchfork one year[crazy], crazy times. We ate a lot of salmon that year. Folks say they are mushy and don't taste good when they spawn but I really don't remember them tasting that bad.
[signature]

[FishMcFisherson]

Yeah, I didn't eat any of them because I had heard they aren't good to eat after they start turning color. The guy we were with thought we were crazy and kept them all.
[signature]

[RonPaulFan]

I'm very into preparedness, so I learn many different styles of fishing and with different equipment. I have some of those huge weighted snagging hooks, but never used them.

I started with deep sea fishing as a child. I miss that, so I bought the equipment for when I'll use it someday.

The first time I saw a super tiny hook that would drop through the eye of one of my deep sea fishing hooks sideways, I asked the store clerk what they were. He said flyfishing. He saw I had puzzled look on my face and I commented that they look like about the right size to catch a fly, but why would anyone want to catch a fly?

Little did I know I would spend years fly fishing and I got way into flytying -- even going to the Idaho fly tying events, getting Nor Vices from Norm Norlander and becoming very good at flytying and getting the best hackles from Dennis Brakke getting them in person from reserved special stock from breeder roosters and even a full dle that is all size 22 for my speciality dry fly ants.

I have surf casting rods, too and hope I meet someone to show me how to surf cast since I'm not doing it right nor getting good distance and I want to practice and be good at it before using vacation time to ocean fish. Anyone with experience with that?

I've been buying arrows for bow fishing, but haven't tried that yet.

With all the different fishing equipment I have, I even have some concepts for catching fish even being caught without equipment and hungry for salmon swimming up river. I'd walk along the river until I saw a grizzly bear catching salmon and when it gets one, I'd simply take it away from the bear.
[signature]