Saturday, June 12, 2010

West Coast Steelhead

From all I've heard and read, the west coast steelhead experience is one of quality and not necessarily quantity. The water runs clear and the fish strong though the days on the water are often uninterrupted by fish. With one day to fish on one of Oregon's steelhead rivers, I anticipated spending time with my brother T and his friend Nate, holding a two handed rod on a river big enough to actually warrant it's use and taking in the scenery from a land I last visited when I was 8 years old. To be truthful, I didn't expect to catch a fish.
My family and I arrived at PDX at 11:10 PM and pulled into my brother's driveway at midnight. After a few drinks and some catching up, the clock said 2:30 AM and we had a 4:00 AM start time scheduled with Nate. 1 hour of sleep later, we gulped some coffee and jumped into Nate's truck (drift boat in tow) to the river. We launched and made a short run in the boat downstream. Being the kind of guys that T and Nate are, they offered me the first shot at the first run. Nate handed me a tube fly and they explained the rigging process while I followed their directions. After sliding the tube fly up the leader and tying a loop in the leader to loop-to-loop to the #4 owner hook, I bailed over the side of the boat and did my best to direct the fly to a nearby seam. After about 15 minutes of casting and stepping down the run, my line came tight to a series of hard head shakes. My connection lasted only a second or two before the line slackened and I reeled my fly in to find the hook bent open.
Ecstatic that I had actually come in contact with a fish, I continued to fish the next hour and a half with the thought that I might actually catch something. And, as it turns out, I did. I was following my brother down a nice run when the smooth swing of my fly was intercepted by a 26-27" steelhead. This one made it to the net.
Finding that it was a hatchery steelhead (no adipose) the fish was thumped and continued the day in Nate's boat. My brother then added a 12 pound Chinook salmon (a Springer, as it's known locally for it's choice of season to enter the river). This fish joined the steelhead in Nate's boat. Lunch was graciously provided by Nate as was all of the rowing. Before the day ended I had another grab just as I was lifting to re-cast. I got the thrill of a couple of good head shakes before the fish came unpinned.

The day was beyond compare. All of the hard work, planning and gear were provided by my bro and Nate. The weather was perfect, the river beautiful. I knew when we left the takeout that I had been exceedingly fortunate to have experienced as much as I did with only 1 day on the water. My heartfelt thanks to T and Nate for making it happen and to the fish gods for smiling down. As T explained it, 1 for 3 ain't bad when fishing steelhead on the swung fly in Oregon.

Epilogue:
After fishing, T and I joined the rest of our families at a rented house on Netart's Bay. The salmon and steelhead were grilled for dinner that night (last night). This morning we all took a trip down to the beach and dug a pile of clams before returning to the house for a Salmon Egg Bake breakfast. As I am writing this the others ate Salmon Fish sandwiches and I think there is still some fish left over.
Nice.

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