Winter Steelhead Riches

A couple of things here.

1. It looks like I may have figured out how to load video’s onto the blog. That will probably end badly.
2. How the hell did that many steelhead make it past Ryan?

Wow! A really great run of hatchery fish and so far good numbers of wild ones too.

In the last few years I have spent most of December January chasing wild fish because the hatchery returns have been so poor. But this year it was nice to just hang out and have solid days landing good numbers of hatchery fish.

If you didn’t get out, don’t feel bad. No one did. It seems like most folks have given up on this run, and it was pretty quiet.

After Novembers big flood the rivers have been getting dirty with rain a lot more quickly than they used to. And they are staying dirty longer.

It will probably be springer season before we see clear water for weeks in a row.

That plus the weekly monsoons, has kept me from guiding very much recently, but that means I am getting out and fishing more on my own, which has been fun.

There have been many days this year when I headed out to get in a few hours fishing on a blow out day, only to land an exceptional fish in marginal water.

Cold, rainy, muddy,windy,slippery,the kind of weather only mother nature could love.

And me, a little bit, sometimes it gets so nasty its kind of funny.

Hopefully we can get back to guiding a bit more regularly as January wears on, but if not, I’ll get a chance to catch some more fish.

When I go a while guiding, but not really fishing, I lose a bit of the feel essential to being consistently successful at catching steelhead.

This season I made several short trips on my own just to fish near the hatchery. I picked a few of the less desirable spots so that I could have some time and room to really figure out exactly how those spots fished best.

After a few trips I had learned the snags, and the tiny current seams to the inch, and could get the fly to exactly(I mean exactly, depth, angle,speed, 3/4 of an inch to the left of that rock) where I wanted it on the first cast.

At that point steelhead fishing becomes pretty easy. Because if the fly is moving exactly how they want it, in the exact right spot, they eat it.

Its just getting to that point that presents a challenge. And I guess what I am driving at is that I get a little out of practice. Its nice to brush up from time to time.

It is beautiful out this morning, but its not likely even the uppermost sections of the smallest creeks will be fishing until tomorrow afternoon.

I will be there an hour before they drop in.

Jim Kerr

Rain Coast Guides

Forks wa