Finally, some float-caught steelhead!
March 24th, 2009
A steelhead report by h3llcat aka Chris Heller…….
...this fish was a killer fight on my 9′ light spinning rod….
It feels great to get my first two float fish of the year! That means the water has warmed up enough (just barely) for these fish to come up for goodies under a bobber or float. Love it! Nothing better than not hanging your lead up all day long……while catching steelhead! Here’s the whole story…..
As I sat in my house last night tying up leaders, making slinkies and pencil lead punches, I wondered when the last time I made my famous (only in my mind) multi-colored mini yarn balls….and actually arrived at the river with them all ready to go. Because that’s the only way that get fished. Little history here: These yarn balls were shown to us by a southeast Alaskan local back in 1995. Sal and I used to fish these things a lot…..but for some reason (laziness) haven’t made them in a long time. So, I dug through my bulk sack of at least seven colors of yarn or more, and began to cut and line out my teeny little pieces of yarn…cut the same size. I also had to make sure to tighten the neck of that line down on the middle of where all the yarns meet and then use some sharp scissors to ’round’ it out…By the end of the night, I had tied 20 leaders, made a bucket of slinkies and even had time to and prepared 2 pre-tied multi-colored yarn balls for my first 2 rigs of the day.
H2O nicely works a slot…..
I prepared 2 rods; 1 spinning and 1 casting….for both drifting and floating. Funny, I was so excited to fish these beautiful little yarnies that I only got about 2 hours of sleep. Plenty. We arrived expecting a lot of cars but found only 2. We went to our first choice of locales to assault….But there were those 2 guys already fishing there. Although we then committed to a long hike down river, we never made it past the main funnel, run drift and tail out. H2O and I each hooked 2 fish, successfully each landing 1. The fights were fierce and fast and are really fun to watch (as seen in the video) because those fish used the slightly higher water today to accomplish their respective escapes.
H2O pulls a circus act to land this fish!
Each of my fish were taken on those new lucky yarn balls I tied last night. That is the coolest feeling coming up with a winner once in a while. Pretty bizarre color combinations as well. We also did quite a bit of RUNNING today. Yes, running. Running down the river chasing fish. I felt like a dog chasing a ball every time H2O hooked up. Video camera in hand and not paying near enough attention to the rocks I’m running over. Gotta love every second of it.
We each lost a very large bright fish to the; power of the river in H2O’s case….and in my case….after my chase…this big beautiful chrome slugger of a steelhad swims between a fallen river measure stick laying at an angle against an electric car sized boulder. The chances of that fish threading that needle before effectively sawing my leader in two again……well, you get it. It could only saw me back and forth by our feet while H and I watched the chartreuse-tipped float dart to and fro. This PIG of a fish worked me like Duane “Rock” Johnson beating up a whole football team. Darn.
Here is the 6 minute movie we made about our day today, and please enjoy your visit to allaroundangler.com!
H3llcat
