Pink and Chrome

It was only fitting that on Valentine's Day I got my pocket picked by a pink fly. Casey enticed the hen(of course) despite a rising river and decreasing visibility.

Here's to you Mr. Hamms

When you see a broken logging yarder and sky cart in the middle of town, you know you are in Winter Steelhead country. Also with that town comes a cast of characters. Some are locals, some come from neighboring towns, all converging on the possibility of taking some meat home. Some of these characters are very skilled fisherman. They drift fish, side drift, pull plugs, plunk, you name it, if it catches fish, they do it.

I think I recently met my favorite character. I've seen him 2 weeks in a row now. We talked last week at the boat ramp and this week again. Both times, he finished his day with 2-4 cold Hamms beers and a cheek full of Redman. Not only is that likeable, but so is a little incident I saw while I was at the boat ramp yesterday. I looked upstream and one of his passengers hooked a fish in the tailout above a little rapid and fast water. The other passenger quickly netted the fish and kept it in the water until they were through the quick stuff. As soon as he could, Mr. Hamms dropped anchor, and went to work. He saw that the fish was wild so he bit the leader off, used his pliers to remove the hook, and had the fish ready for revival in about 10 seconds. He took time to keep the fish in the water to let it recover. Mr. Hamms supported the fish with both hands under water and revived the wild steelhead until it was ready to go.

For this, I salute you Mr. Hamms. It was great to watch you have fun, take some fish home, and take care of our wild fish too.


My buddy Bernie with his first winter steelhead!

I love my bucks

We headed out early on Saturday for chance to tie into some winter chrome. After a lengthy drive and some AM/PM doughnuts, Casey and I dumped the boat in got fishing.

The first run looked nice and I walked upstream to hit the top while Casey started in the middle. The water looked fishy but as usual, touched nothing. Casey was around the corner still fishing the run when I started going over the water he had already worked. I felt the smallest tick on my line. Let the shock loop go and the line stopped swinging. Lifted the rod and felt bottom, or so I thought. A couple of headshakes later I knew I actually had a fish!

The fish took a couple of nice blistering runs, a couple of jumps, and was quickly tailed. It was nice wild buck of about 30 inches. We didn't take any pics and just set it back on its course. It's always great to get off the schnide early.

The rest of the day was awesome. We each got grabbed multiple times but couldn't manage any other fish to the beach.

Sorry, no pics, my cropping skills suck.