Told you I’d be back on December first, slaying huge fishes with my RV.
About to make good on that promise.
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJZJs8kzrrA
-TJ
Told you I’d be back on December first, slaying huge fishes with my RV.
About to make good on that promise.
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJZJs8kzrrA
-TJ
Man, that was.....Nice! Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope to do the same one day soon!
It would be cool if you could share some details about the trip....
Truck model, trailer model
Miles traveled
Routes taken
Places camped and fished
Etc.
Oh snap!
A TJ sighting.
Truck is my new 2020 F-250 XL crew cab FX4 4x4 equipped with BFG KO2 34” tires.
Trailer is a heavily heavily modified 2020 East to West Della Terra with a $1000 toilet and a $5000 solar system.
There is tons and tons of other mods on the trailer like rod holders and peg boards for the drones, inverters for the synthesizers etc etc etc. $100,000 rig, no joke. Just spent 8 months building it.
Location was Northern Oregon coastal runoff rivers. There’s a ton of them with salmon and steelhead like that. A huge bible of regulations to go along wit it.
The fish were shooting spermies on me. First time for everything.
Released them all to fight again.
That was my first legit salmons. I’m pretty sure one or two of them were steelhead as well. Hard to tell..
still learning the fish in Oregon.
I’m now looking for a piece of land to call my own.
I’ll stash my off grid trailer there, build a trailer cover, a shed, a fence.. get some farm animals and make a garden.
Screw this crazy societal type stuff. I’m a fisherman who likes to be off grid in the forest.
Right now I’m in Lake Havasu on the BLM lands with all the other trailers, rent and electricity are free and my only bills are water and dump. About to be heading around Arizona and Cali in the RV in a few days, once I get some chores done. It’s definitely epic getting to fish the coastal waters of Florida, and then packing up and driving to Oregon to fish out some monster native mutant trouts lol
Specially during this crazy pandemic nonsense.
These may be once in a lifetime trips I’m doing now. Fully soaking that up and enjoying every second of it.
How often do you get to go build synthesizers in the forest and then use them to create music for the amazing fishing videos you just took of the fish you caught and drone videos of your trailer all in the same day?
I might add, those fish are CRAZY hard fighters. One of them took five minutes to land and I broke several more off. I’m only using eight lb line and I’m pretty sure I lost a fish about fifteen pounds. It’s on video.
When you see a fish that big in the water, it’s water bigger when you pull it out. That was a BIG BIG salmon lol. He jacked me for my lure.
Only reason I stopped catching fish was because I kept losing my lures.
I lost about ten of those #4 gold vibrax.
I’m not even using the right rods for these fish. I’m using a 6’ crankbait stick because it won’t let them go after they are hooked. I need to be using an 11’ Steelhead rod but I don’t have one. It’s hilarious how hard the fish work me on a 6’ crankbait stick but holy **** the fight is unreal. I’m running up and down the creeks when I hook one of these, trying to land them. They roll and break you off on rocks and sticks and logs. They’re very smart. Not stupid. You can see the one I broke off start rolling and thrashing real hard. These fish are no joke.
I haven’t hooked one on my 8wt fly rod yet but I’m trying. This is big water with heavy cover. Hard with a fly rod.
This trip I hooked 7-8 fish. I only landed like 4 of them. I got broken off by big huge salmon that I was not equipped to land. I literally showed this happen in the video lol
You can see the huge fish with red sides come to the surface and splash his trail at me. Then he dove dove dove and my drag screamed screamed screamed and then Snap! He was goneee
Putting the little shimano curado 70HG to work!!
Probably better I lost the fish. Fighting 15lb fish on 8lb line will tire out and kill the fish if you play it out that long.
If you’re going to be releasing the fish you need to try and land them fast.
Last edited by caseyjholmes; 12-07-2020 at 05:57 AM.
All the salmon and steelhead guys use braid.
I find fluorocarbon to have a much better effect at getting down deeper to the fish in the fast water quicker.
Braid hangs around on the surface and goes upstream with backwater tides.
You want line that sinks and goes downstream well. All you have to do after that is attach the magic lure and wiggle it here and crank it there.
Lots of salmon and steelhead guys out there not catching anything. They need the special lure and some good line and a rod with backbone but a soft tip.
Make sure if you you go to Oregon, you study the rules well.
Tons and tons of overlapping rules. It’s taken me a few months to determine weather or not I’m allowed to catch those fish there. I am. But I’m still not sure weather or not I can take a salmon. I can take a Steelhead, but the salmon isn’t clear.
So I release everything. Better this way, there is more to catch when I return.
A misplaced poacher could do some real damage back there. I’d encourage ya’ll to do the same ;)
I should add that it’s clear I can take hatchery steelhead, but obviously all the fish in my video are wild/native. Another reason I am not keen to take any.
Last edited by caseyjholmes; 12-07-2020 at 06:10 AM.
A few years ago..
A man named Phil on another fishing forum told me that he wished he got out of California and saw more of the country and tried more things. Right before he died of cancer he always said he wished he left and went to Havasu.
They were trying to sell his fishing gear in the forum to help pay for his services. I found this so touching.
You can go tomorrow. You never know.
I find it interesting that I left California, saw tons of new places and fishes and I’m here in Havasu right now, thinking of Phil.. having taken his advice.
RIP buddy. This one is for you.
Last edited by caseyjholmes; 12-07-2020 at 07:12 AM.
Is that Phil Kane you're talking about?
He was a real cool dude. Had the opportunity to get on his little rig a few times.
*
That's cool that you're experiencing all that Oregon has to offer. See what population density (or lack thereof) does to the environment, and the fishery? I have a buddy who lives out here but has family in Florence and always invites me when he goes up. I look at the state on Google maps and think about exploring all those random blue lines up there. If you like Havasu, you should make the trek to the Oregon desert, and fish the Owyhee River. Big bug sipping browns.
Sucks that you haven't gotten them to go on the fly rod yet. And that's a lot of water going through those rivers/creeks. I take it right about now is the lowest water you'll see throughout the year up there? I can't imagine what those things look like during run off.
And synths? That's a pretty interesting...hobby?
Yessir, Phil Kane Im remembrance. Miss that guy.
Meh. The synths keep me busy. It’s like puzzles when I build them. Calming.
I can make money from them as well, and these ones are like musical Legos. Can sit and solder one the forest and sell synths online when I come out.
I think the water was a bit higher actually. I was fishing here back in March when I caught that behemoth steelhead. Was thinking about that fish all summer long, waiting for the December season to open. The water was pretty low back then. It’s up at least a foot or more right now. I was wondering how all those big fish get in there, last year. Now I know. The water rises up quite a bit.
When it snows in that range, it melts off rather fast within the week. The temps right there hover around 30-40* often parts of the year so it freezes over and melts off many times each year.
You need to use split shots on your fly line to get these fish. Or sinking line. I haven’t figured it out yet. But I don’t know if you’ve ever tried casting split shots in the bushes on an eight weight. Lol..
Also the water is crystal clear right now. The fly rod is using those large egg imitations. The bright orange of the eggs seems to actually scare the fish away in clear water. I found something that works a little better..
Use those steelhead twitching jigs made from Maribu in black and blue colors. They’ll hit that.
I don’t know why yet. I think it’s because there is blue crawdads in that water, IIRC.
I was just in Florence right before the video after picking up another lithium battery for the trailer at AM Solar in Eugene. Took the road to the coast and then worked my way up.
I’ll try and attach a pic from Florence coast.
Yea man, get the book from Walmart and study the rules in advance.
Then take your creek fording skills, dawn the waders, and sleep outside for a week to get used to the temps.
You’ll have to fish with freezing hands in Oregon. You’ll notice the temps in those videos were 34* and 36*. I made it a point to include those time and date and temp stamped shots.
I heard the steelies like a little bit warmer water than the salmon.
It’s really hard to tell the difference between them.
Look close. The salmon have the black outside and inside jaw but a white tooth line.
The steelhead don’t have the black jaw but still look really similar, right now.
I believe the black jaw ones are salmon and the ones without black jaws are steelhead. But I could be wrong.
All those may have been salmon.
I’m sure the big fat pink one is a salmon. It doesn’t look like a giant pissed off trout with shoulders like that huge steelhead I caught earlier in the year with a nice bright pink stripe on the side.
Hell, I don’t even know what I’m catching back there. But they are epic when you hook one. It’s like you did something wrong and now you’re in trouble and have to figure out how to land it and unhook it.
I’ve had those suckers take me 300 yards down stream and wrap me up on branches and had to go IN the deep cold river water in my waders and dig the fish off a branch. All on 8lb line.
It’s pretty ridiculous. You come out cut up and bruised like you got tackled at the football game.
A real treat to get to fight one of those but you better hold on to your damn rod. They make my crankbait stick feel like a wet noodle.
Don’t let the fools up there tell you that you need an 11’ rod back in those sticks like that. It’s not going to do you any good. You do need some backbone and a forgiving tip, so you don’t pull hooks, though.
Good luck up there. Many tributaries holding fishes. Some, more than others. ;)
I think from my previous posts, you may have an idea where to start. Send me a DM and I can add some tips.
It took me a month and hard work and forest camping to find those but now that I have, they seem to bite when I’m around using the right stuffs. Now that I’ve experienced them a few times, I’ll probably keep trying with the fly rod if I ever make it back.