Gunnison Basin Day 1 - East River Salmon With Greg 05Sep17

My fall trip to the Gunny was strengthened with a visit from Greg - he actually preceded me to the spot and fished a number of rivers there. While the fishing might be better in Haine's basement, when I arrived to set up camp at Rosy Lane I did so quickly and Greg met me so we could hit the Kokanee salmon run up the Gunnison and East Rivers. We hit the East and hiked down from the Roaring Judy Hatchery (I never had to park as far upstream but no matter). We caught small browns and rainbows and then I found a big pod of salmon stalled on their upstream run, resting for their next push. We tied on double and triple rigs of red bugs like copper johns, etc. and began hooking and landing salmon en mass. The hard fighting fish are a blast and they got off 1/3 of the time but no matter 'cause the next one was just a cast away - it was a blast. All afternoon GL and I were 20 feet apart on either side of the river taking salmon for four hours. We had a number of doubles and poor Greg's finger became blistered from stripping in and my arm tired of fighting and landing one handed - I get the reason for a fighting butt on heavier fly rods for sure. Here are some of the nicer ones; biggest was 20" and 3# but most were ~18" - more pinkish than last year's catch. One even tried to eat Greg.