Battling the Unknown Fish:

It was about 4:00 PM on day two and the clock was ticking down on my chances to catch a large Coho.  I was tired and sore from hooking, fighting, chasing and landing maybe 36 Kings over the two days.  The “take” was amazingly subtle, almost like the tap of a small trout.  The subsequent head shake after the reflex hook set was incredibly violent.  A side to side shake with mouth fully open and slicing through the surface of the water.  There was nothing unusual about what immediately happened next as the fish did three laps around the pool before hunkering down in the current.  This was a common behavior of the largest fish of the trip.  They gain an apparent advantage burrowing their heads low, closer to the bottom.  The result was that I couldn’t move the fish, it just sat there.  I tried to tire the fish by moving slightly up river and down, side to side putting increasing side pressure on the fish but it wouldn’t move.  I began to Increase the tension more and more but the fish just kept circling the pool and settling once more in the current.  I then waded a little deeper into the current to change the angle of the line as I increased pressure and lifted upward (I found that this technique worked on the other largest fish to lift their heads up off the bottom and receive an assist from the current).

This approach appeared to be working as the fish took another lap around the pool but this time much faster and closer to the surface.  Unfortunately, it hunkered down for about the 6^th time which caused me to get really frustrated.  I then increased the side pressure stressing the 15 pound tippet to the max.  At this point, neither Jay nor I had really seen much of the fish yet – other than the initial head shake that indicated that it was a very large fish – most likely another King we though.

Then, unexpectedly, another large King ran aggressively up river next to mine, spooked the fish and it leaped multiple times out of the water and cartwheeled.  As it summersaulted through the air, Jay and I were maybe 25 Ft. away and we were stunned.  This fish was obviously not a king, it looked completely white!  My instinctive response was to look to Jay and say, “did you see that – what the hell is it?”  I thought it was a Steelhead but then realized it couldn’t be because of its enormous size.  Then I began to process that it could be a Coho, especially because of how it proceeded to leap two more times.

For the complete story of the fight to land this fish, Click Here.

–Update–

Check out the articles on Tom here:

• http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/sports/outdoors/article_9dae12c8-0e3c-11e2-9b9a-0019bb2963f4.html
• http://chronicleoutdoors.com/tag/tom-olivo/
• http://www.usangler.com/world-record-coho-salmon-catch
• https://www.simmsfishing.com/content/catch-of-the-day/671/coho-of-a-lifetime?populate=&page=2