Snagging giant salmon off a cliff - you gotta see this!

http://youtu.be/qOFL_uRw9kE

This is a new magical spot we found up humpy creek. There's a little cabin there, and the chum salmon are up there doing their spawning ritual. They leave salt water and come into the fresh water to spawn. Along the way, they encounter fishermen snagging (fishermen who sometimes snag themselves - I heard a guy yelling the other day, and went to investigate, and he had a treble hook THROUGH his nose), bears eating, eagles swooping - all kinds of peril.  In some places, the water is so shallow and the fish are so thick that you can wade out and kill them with rocks. When they come in, they are silvery/green - but as they spawn, they turn colors, deteriorate, and eventually die. Before they die, they start eating their own smolt, and the smolt of other salmon - so they are better off just being dead after they have spawned. Make sense?  Also, it's good to try and get some fish that haven't changed colors too much yet. The fresher the better. Will try and smoke these as well.  Anyway, back to the magical place.  There's a little old cabin farther up the bear trail - beyond where most of the people hike to. The door is unlocked, and the cabin is owned by an old couple; I don't know where they live. Inside, there's a log book - where maybe a few visitors sign in every year. Some are hikers; some are bear hunters; some are fishing salmon or trout.  With permission, you can stay overnight, otherwise, you can just hang out and enjoy the place. It's basic - with a wood stove, a propane stove for cooking, some canned food, a bottle of hooch, some miscellaneous tools and fishing gear, maps, books, old magazines, etc.  There's two beds in there, and though old and musty, it's pretty cozy. The cabin lies in a gorge where there's a deep pool where good numbers of salmon collect. Beyond that, it looks like hardly anyone goes farther upstream, except me.  Up there, there's bear crap everywhere, and trails and matted down grass. The creek forks, and it's shallow and rocky - so catching the fish is easy. I'm going to go up there tonight and take up a stand along a good bear trail and just wait it out.  Anyway, back to the cabin, there's a few benches, a small fire pit, and then a steep vertical wall that sits above the pool. Last time I was here, I noticed a ball of twine there, so this time I figured "no need to pack a fishing pole all the way up there - I'll just bring some treble hooks, tie onto the ball of twine, we'll throw it out, snag them, and drag them up". Well, it worked awesome as you will see on the video. You can literally snag a 8-15 pound salmon every throw. On the video - it's pandemonium as Maria snags one that's 15 pounds or more. I'm holding the camera phone in one hand, and trying to help her haul the big fish up with the other. We got the fish up and were hoping to get some good photos of the beast, but then it flipped off the hook, raked it's sharp teeth and hooked jaw across my palm, and then flopped and tumbled off the side of the cliff and back into the creek. Oh well. We did catch a dozen or so fish, cleaned them up, and packed out the heavy load of fillets for smoking.