Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[westcoastercoho]

Today I took my lunch hour at the local river today, and after many many trips and hours spent fishing, it finally paid off.  The weather was perfect, overcast with sunny breaks and the water wasn't bad either, good levels and great clarity.  The presentation of the outing was a 3.5" pink nightmare worm, rigged inverted and weighted.  I had previously fished this particular run very often and have done well on the cuttys, so had a good idea where the best holding water was and how to fish it.  After a few cast to work the kinks out, I had the float running down the sweet spot, and sure enough it gave the tell tale plunk of a take.  I set the hook in my normal fashion, fully expecting another scrappy 12" cutty to roll to the surface, but to my utmost surprise there was some weight to what was down there, two big thump thump's later and the silver bullet was off up river, across river, down river, rolling jumping and generally freaking out.  This was the first larger fish on my centerpin and boy what a joy that was!  I played it for some time and every time I thought it was ready it would come close, take a good look at me and f off back up river.  Eventually after some close encounters with rapids and overhanging limbs, my heart beating though my chest it came to the surface on its side, and planned into me.  I switched rod hands, holding the rod and leader with my right hand, preparing to tail with my left, so I could take a quick in the water photo befor the release.  When I reached down for the tail, pop went the leader and the fish, momentarily suspended in shock in the water, darted off as soon as I touched it.  I had to sit down and calm down for a bit before I could tie on another worm and continue to fish, bringing one small cutty to the surface.   

While there is not a picture to accommodate the memory of this first steelhead, thats fine by me, the motion picture of the event is burned in solidly. 

For the others like me who are putting in the hours but just not getting results, hang in there, I'm sure glad I did!

Good luck this weekend for those going out!

Edit: the fish was about 22" and 6-7 pounds…

Cheers, WCC

[riptide]

Wicked story  , your detail will bring back a lot of memories of everyone's first steelie .Certainly brought me back to mine , they don't call it the "fish of a thousand casts" for nothing .Congrats

[firstlight]

Thanks for that.
Congrats.

[Ian Forbes]

At least you got the best part of the fight. Unfortunately, no memory pictures. I can clearly remember 4 very large steelhead that I hooked and lost. Each would have been close to the magical 30 pound bracket and it would have been nice to get a picture. However, with one exception they all happened very long ago when we used to kill our steelhead, so maybe it was for the best that I lost them.

[NexusGoo]

That's a great story WestCoaster, hope you get a few more this year.