How Much Salmon Fishing Gear Can I Find In Two Hours?

Two hours of snorkeling in the Vedder River results in a nice haul of salmon fishing gear. I see coho, chinook, and pink salmon along the way.

Hello there my fishy friends my name is Peter and today I’m going to go on a little Cleanup in the veret river normally I try and get you guys lots of footage of fish well this time the mission’s different I’m strictly after gear got a stock up for the COO season

Coming up and it’s what is it Thanksgiving long weekend I don’t not sure exactly what date it is I lost track so thanks for coming along and yeah I’m going to show you some fish too why not it is lot of secret there are lots of coo in the river at the moment

Lots of Chinooks too lots of TKS as well but the low clear water is making them a little bit finicky so sometimes you get into a school and they’re biting but sometimes you can spend an entire day and not even get a bite so be patient with them don’t floss don’t snag

Keep the river clean and thanks for watching welcome underwater everyone let’s start with some fish the peak of our Koran is just starting so this is the beginning of the big wave of coo that’s going to push up into the river and you can see they’re already quite a few in

There they’re being picky like I said earlier it’s hard to get them to bite here they are mixed in with a school of Pinks so if you’re new to the river little fish ID lesson the pink sammon have a white belly and a heavily spotted tail the goo have few if any

Spots on their tail and they tend to be kind of silvery or gray and pink they also have white gums if you look at their where the gums meet the teeth seeing them side by side like this I think the U the difference is quite obvious but if you’re new to salmon

Fishing all of them can kind of look alike they are similar size coo really like being in between logs and sticks they just love the structure they know it’s hard to fish for them there it’s a natural place to hide from predators here’s another example bunch of sticks

And logs and you can see the cohor are tucked right under there structure is like a COO magnet they know very well we can’t get to them there here is a shinuk salmon and um I always advocate for better fish handling on my channel here’s a classic example

Of why that matters somebody dragged this fish up on the beach and I don’t know if that was a a couple of days ago or a week ago the fish definitely isn’t ready to spawn yet then look at the side it’s all been bruised and scratched up

From where somebody dragged him on the rocks and uh that just shouldn’t happen with a fish that’s to be released this one wasn’t even so lucky this one’s out right dead and that again is a fish that hasn’t spawned nice and clean fresh to the river and it met with an untimely

End at the end of a fishing line so I recommend commend you get a landing net and um that way the fish don’t get banged up on the Rocks we like to think of them as uh you know tough and strong but they are creatures of

Zero gravity they live in a world that’s soft with no sharp edges it’s not like a dog or a squirrel where they can fall on the rocks and get up and run away fish really don’t handle being bruised very well that was me swimming a fast stretch

Of water here’s a much slower stretch of water where I can actually slow down enough to pick up gear a lot of people think that the river is just littered with stuff that I find years worth of fishing gear but that is not so much the case

These gravels every time the water comes up a little bit the gravel shifts and all these heavy metal lures just disappear they kind of get washed down and they disappear on the surface of the gravel so most of the stuff that I find has only been in there for a couple of

Weeks and on a run like this where there are people fishing I can’t really stop and muck around for 20 minutes and really clean it up and really find everything so I’m kind of limited to swimming through once and grabbing what I see along the way I’m not into getting

Into confrontations with people and I’m a fisherman myself so I get it people get a little bit antsy when I’m swimming through right where they are fishing but if you think about it all this footage I get for you guys of salmon it’s a wide angle lens I get

Pretty darn close to these fish they have this minimum distance they like being kind of 4 to 5 ft away from me as long as I keep that distance and don’t chase them around they’re not too terribly bothered in fact a lot of people catch fish while I’m swimming

Through the run or right after because what happens is the fish move around I kind of um you know make a move from their comfort zone and when they’re moving around and they’re not settled they are more likely to snap at something so that’s what happens and it’s pretty common I see it

Over and over right after I’ve swam through somebody hooks a fish here’s a log Jam and an interaction with an angler this is what it normally goes like how’s it going is it any c what’s that is it any c any coo oh 100% the river is full of them right

Now oh we watch your video I recogniz oh thanks watching so this gentleman is new to the river and uh he I don’t believed me when I told him yeah there are a lot of fish in your spot what you have to remember is that these fish are pretty hard to catch my

First year on the veter I did not catch a single Co I caught some shinook and some Chum some pink salmon but I never did get a COO it’s very tricky to make them bite and it can take a few years to really figure it out think anybody that

Tells you that it’s easy to catch coo is trying to sell you something it’s like oh yeah if you buy our jigs you’re going to catch lots of Goo if you buy our beads you’re going to catch lots of goho well you might but it also takes a lot

Of time on the river and a lot of experience so be patient and take your time it doesn’t come overnight eventually you’ll start catching lots of fish water’s quite fast here a little bit of gear for me these piles of sticks and logs are like a little gold mine

It’s like picking up candy at an Easter egg hunt like another $5 another $5 it’s kind of fun it combines treasure hunting and underwater and yeah it’s all my favorite things and I quite enjoy it cleaning up well that’s just an added bonus all right let’s have a look at

Everything I found when I when I get things home it’s kind of a messy pile of line and stuff and I take my scissors to it and I spend about an hour cutting everything apart and this is what I come up with so we had about 50 spoons and

Spinners and lures of various sorts bunch of hooks swivels floats lead Jigs and Beads you add it all up it’s maybe $400 worth of gear retail value of course I can’t sell it all um these are spoons that Rodney’s been pushing for a couple years you can definitely tell

That’s working it’s a pretty high proportion of those yellow spoons in the river