well, I have not posted many reports lately but have been fishing like a goshdarn freak. Yesterday saw probably the last outing for sometime as I am going to be out of the country for a while. Off to the Balkans and I'm not sure if they have steelhead over there in Bosnia hehehe.... they will have something to catch i'm sure.
yesterdays outing saw me and the dog as the lone occupants of an upper river run that i sneak into once in a while and the trek was worth it. My last hatchery for this season came on the 3rd cast, smacking my prawn tail just feet into the drift. Not a huge fish but was a respectable 10 to 12 pound rosey cheeked doe. Not wanting to be done for the day she was released back to the swirling boulder garden I plucked her from. I fished for a while then started casting and blasting my way downstream. I came to a nice tailout and started swingin the good ol 50/50 frenchie through the clear shallowing flow, noticing the shadows of what appeared to be a couple steelhead moving out of the path of my flashing blade as it made it's way through the 2 to 3 foot depth of current. I redrifted time and time again, getting closer and closer to the extreme shallows closer to the end of the tail out. One drift in particular I let it go past the tailout and into the boulders.... float down... ahh crap i thought as I was sure i had hooked a good ol river rockfish hehehe. Then, there was a splash, and a beauty chrome steelhead breaks the water in an incredible display of arial acrobatics. This was a sweet fish!!!
It got pretty dicey as I fought the steelhead through the shallow water, trying to steer it clear of the boulders. Some 10 to 15 minutes later, the steelhead tired and I eased it gently to the shallows of a small gravel bar. A bar chrome bullet, wild buck that had to be pushing 14 or 15 lbs.
I stopped fishing at this point while me and the dog had a beer and some snacks, reminiscing about this exemplary steelhead season...... today made 29 wild and 8 hatchery steelhead to the beach since mid december and several others that I never landed. This season has by far been the highlight of my steelheading carreer and yesterday was a fine day to cap it all off.
till next year.... tite lines boys and girls
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Topic: steelhead season in review (Read 4394 times)