Salmon Foil Fishing in the SF Bay

loscocco · Since 20 Aug 2008 82 Posts

Salmon Foil Fishing
This weekends accidental kite foil fishing catch of a 19.5 lb 36" long salmon at Sherman Island in the Sacramento river certainly has to be one of the craziest things that has ever happened to me in 10 years of kiting.
I was about a 3/4 of a mile upwind from the Sherman Island launch kiting on my 6m Ocean Rodeo kite and Spotz hydrofoil when I hit something with the foil and went flying off the board. I am used to occasionally hitting fish, logs, seaweed etc on the foil so i didn't think much of it but knew it wasn't a sandbar since i was in the middle of the channel. Got back up on my foil and about 20 feet back near where I had just crashed I saw a large fish that was stunned and flopping around. similar to like when i have run into striped bass in the bay. I went to try to pick it up and then i realized that it was a giant salmon. It was hit pretty hard and was def dying.
It was so slippery that the only way to hold it was to put my hand thru the gills while grabbing onto my kite bar. The teeth were tearing into my skin and i was starting to bleed also.
Foiling downwind while holding onto a swinging slimy 20lb weight resulted in several more good wipeouts but i managed to make it most of the way back. In the process of trying to foil in with it near the shore i crashed my kite in the reeds and had to relaunch it out of the reeds while still holding onto the fish.
Finally made it back to the beach and with everyone helping to carry it back to the parking lot got it put on ice in a tub. BTW... whosever keg bucket i ended up with i need to get it back to you... with some fresh salmon Thanks!!

Quite an experience!!