Steelhead are a cool fish. But they're really really hard to catch. I fished hard for about 5 hours, which is tough enough to do b/c it's hard to pay attention when the fishing is tough, and if you're not paying attention at the exact right moment, game over. You lose. Anyway, I finally stuck one, and I got a decent look at it. If it wasn't over 10 pounds, then I've never caught a fish before. It was a super bright chrome steelhead. Generally, the brighter chrome they are, the harder they fight, so this guy had plenty of steam. I only had him on the line for about 10 seconds b/c he ran downstream about 40 yards, and broke me off. It sucks that I didn't land it, and that I didn't get a picture to prove how big it was. But suffice it to say that I don't remember the last time a fish left me weak in the knees. I had to sit down for a minute to collect myself b/c wading with jelly legs is a bad idea.
So then I fished the rest of the day and didn't catch crap.
But, I did manage to land something earlier in the day, so I wasn't totally blanked.
I go fishing for steelhead, and I catch a little smallmouth. Don't ask me how that makes sense.
Anyway, here's a couple of other shots that turned out OK.
We spotted this guy from the bank, and fished to him for about 10 minutes with no response. Then my buddy walked up to him, which was weird b/c they usually don't let you get that close. Before the fish swam away, my buddy got got close enough to see that the fish was missing its right eye. Every cast he put past the fish went on its right side. I was having a hard time figuring out how the fish didn't even respond a bit to his fly. It was like the fish couldn't see it or something...
Anyway, it was a fun day, but the steelhead game is a little different than western trout fishing, where you can have 20+ fish days. That ain't going to happen with steelies. At least not for me.
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