Making Days off Count

I was able to sneak out of the office on Thursday to go chase some chrome. Casey and Mike the Michagander were originally schedule to both appear, but Domino the dog got in the way. He decided to eat some salmon from the banks of the Clackamas which made him very sick. With Mike at the Vet, Casey and I headed out with the old 4:30am departure.

The river was a little low, but still in good enough shape for fishing. We put the boat in and hit up the first run. Usually this run produces, so hopes were high. Casey briefly hooked up, but it didn't stick and the fish came free. I swung through without a grab. Up above the pool, there was a nice redd where about 5-6 steelhead were doing their thing. Always cool to see wild fish making more wild fish.

We moved down to the next run. I took the top, Casey took the bottom. In a 30 yard stretch, I had 4 grabs. The last one took my loop and about 2 feet of line before there was slack. Of course, Casey stepped in above and stuck a fish. The wild hen put up a great fight.

The fishing kind of slowed after that. Some of the runs that don't fish high, fish great at the lower level. Things remained quiet until around 3 in the afternoon. I was fishing a flat soft strech lined with boulder when my line kind of just stopped. I remained calm and told myself its either a fish or a rock. My loop went out and the reel started screaming. The fish took about 20yards of line and boiled on the surface where I was able to get a look at his chrome sides. After the boil, he ripped on another 20 yards of line and stopped in his tracks. The hook came free and I was left with steelhead blue balls.

No other action for the rest of the day except for the local named Jim that motioned us over to fish the run with him. He was drift fishing clown eggs and was really interested in our spey rods. He shared a couple local secrets with us and threatened to "take a nut from each of ya" if he found out we were telling others!

Pocket picked again................