After reading all of Rex T’s. reports from his outings to the Vedder river I wanted to see for myself and invited Tom E. to join me in the outing. We left Bellevue at 5:45 am under dark and cool skies for the 127 mile journey north. The border crossing was smooth with one other vehicle in the lane as we crossed the Sumas border towards the town of Yarrow.
Upon our arrival, we found one other car parked at the parking area and proceeded to suit up for the hike towards the river. We were met by Jorge A. who has been mentioned in Rex’s reports as well. He was fishing the area which looked to be fishy, but didn’t appear to have any fish as there was no presence of slashing or movement in that location other than a bunch of spawning Chum on their redds.
Tom and I ventured to a dug out gravel pond and thought it might be a nice place for holding fish as Coho like slow slack water to rest before venturing up. The high tide was 7:04 at Pt. Atkinson and Rex estimates that it takes a few hours for those fish to reach the area in which we were fishing, so we waited and continued to make our casts. I did hook into a fish which at first thought was a Coho since it appeared very bright in the pool, but it turned out to be a spawned out Chum. The white of its belly fooled me, but it was nice to have some activity.
Once 11:18 rolled around I heard Jorge yelling out as he picked up a nice 5 lb Coho hen which was just dime bright as could be with a float under a Colorado spinner blade. Just then, Wes T. who accompanied Rex had a fish on, and then Rex had a fish on. I would venture back to that spot and made a few casts and within a few minutes had a fish on, but later found that it fouled just behind the gill plate near the pectoral fin. It was a beautiful buck Coho of 7-8 lbs but just golden and chromed.
Tom E. ended up hooking a few Chum but we never really got into the Coho bite. Tom and I finally left at 1:30 as we had to be back earlier, but Wes and Rex stayed on fishing until dusk. After connecting with Rex, I would find that they didn’t get into any biting fish. Perhaps it was the weather or the new moon, not sure, but seems like there are still some fish showing up as I did see about 6-8 fish that entered the spot around 11:30.
I’ll probably not make it back there for a while, but at least I got to satisfy my curiousity about this place and hopefully make it up in the future.
