Shad are rad, so are steelhead

It's been a while since I posted an update, so I combined a few outings into 1. I had made several attempts at catching some steelhead in the last few weeks with no luck. The water levels had been steadily dropping and I had only gotten a couple of grabs.

We went out last week for an evening drift. I let Simon out of the boat and he proceeded to hook 3 fish in 25 minutes. The first fish managed to wrap him around a rock, the second jumped and spit the hook, and the third managed to find its way onto the BBQ. It was a pretty cool event to watch and not something you often see on a valley river.


Of course, I went out the next morning before work and got skunked. I have been facing a little string on bad luck lately, which finally ended on Monday night. I managed to get a hot little buck to take the purple egg sucker.

In between the steelhead trips I had a chance to go to the Umpqua with a friend who knows the river pretty well. We fished single hand 6 wts with sinking lines and managed to find some Shad. There were no takers on strictly the swing, but once you put a few strips into, the bite was on. I managed a few good ones close in the 3-4lb range, but nothing huge. These fish fight really well and ended up being a good break from the steelhead thing.

High Water in the Valley, Head East

Well, it turns out you can't outrun the flows sometimes. I did a Friday/Saturday trip last weekend and the Deschutes came up. We're not talking the 14,000 CFS out of Dexter Dam, but still up. Thursday was pretty slow except for late in the day where we found some feeding fish and a treeline.

On Friday, we had better weather and did pretty well all things considered. Caught a few bruisers and saw my backing 3 times. Using 2x and setting the drag heavy made ripping that much line out a pretty strong effort.

CP laying out some line. He only uses click reels so you know when he's hooked up.