Only caught one today but it’s a big one!!

Wasn’t feeling it today. My son pissed me off by not doing what I asked so I wasn’t going to take him. My friends and his friend were going so I asked my wife what do you think. She said take him. I don’t think she wanted to hear him bitch and moan.
Fishing for a while and caching nothing. Getting a bit discouraged I moved to another area. Then all the sudden a few were jumping and thought ok here we go. Cast again and a huge salmon turned sideways and jumped. I saw him take my lure into his mouth. It was fairly awesome. It was a strong fish and fighting it for awhile I didn’t think I’d land it honestly. My buddy was about 100-150 feet away so I screamed to him I got a big one grab the net. He came over with the net and I said it’s probably 3 ft. He gave me the look like really tell me another one. I said it’s at least 2.5-3 feet. I fought it for a while and got it to shore. He tried his landing net and it was too small and I was worried about him ripping the hook out. I said to my son grab my net. He used that and we landed the fish. A guy there had a scale it weighed in a 21.5 lbs on the button and I measured it when I got home 39.5” in length. Biggest I’ve caught. Turned out to be a good night.

I was carrying it out and the mouth was just over my waist line and the tail was dragging on the ground.
I got 10 big fillets out of it. Probably 20 3/4 pound servings.

masterswimmer said:

That's a sweet catch right there. Congrats. Did you grill any of those filets yet? How were they?

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Cooking them all up today. Well I might freeze a few portions because I don’t think I can get them all eaten today. I’ve got a pile of them. I’m smoking them on my traeger.
Here are some pictures of the largest fillet. My hand is at the edge of the fillet for reference. I don’t have the largest hands but that fillet will feed three people. There’s 4 like that and the remaining 6 will feed two people. That’s an 11x17 baking sheet and fillets are stacked two on top of eachother then the 5 th bag wouldn’t even fit so it had to be placed on top the others.
Also this is the beginning of the salmon run and it was at the start of this guy’s journey so he’s not a zombie fish that was rotten. He should be fresh and clean!!

Mosinitis said:

That's about $200 worth of lox!

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A bit more than that. $31/lbs here. I’d say it’s about 14 lbs of fish.

I had some last night and it was good for sure. Next time I’d bast the fillet in olive oil as the outside crust was a bit dry. Only like a 1/16” into the fillet though. Rest was great.