4 O' Clock Steelhead

Sometimes the best time to go fishing is when you can........

I had a small window of time to fish today between running errands with Wendi after church and watching my granddaughter Harmony while her parents head up youth night.

Left the house a little after 3 and headed for a favorite stretch of river close to home.  By the time I started fishing, it was about 3:30pm with mostly sunny conditions and a bit of a hazy overcast going.  Not the best timing to fish for steelhead on the surface, but I had to try anyway.  I first fished the nearshore side of a nice looking channel and as I looked over, wondered how it would fish from the mid river bar I could see.  I waded back up, started at the top and fished from the mid river bar, casting towards shore.  This is nice choppy, riffly stuff and as I got down where the mid river bar starts to deepen, I'm watching my GB skater, aka "little wang" come across and gulp, fish on.  Not a rip snortin', reel screamer, but this little buck gave a decent tussle.  Fortunately my skater was lodged firmly on the upper jaw and I was eventually able to lead him to a little gravel bar and beached him.

I was fishing one of my old glass single handers today:  the Fenwick FF857 - 8.5' 7wt, 7wt Ambush line, and my old SA system 8 (Hardy Marquis 8/9).  It was fun casting that Ambush on the glass single hander.  The seam is narrow enough that the single hander was entirely adequate with a "9 strip" cast.

I need to buy a couple of those cheap stringers so I can keep a hatchery steelhead alive and fresh until I'm done fishing.  With no stringer or cooler with ice close by, I had to head for home right after getting the fish.  No complaints, got to bonk one and then spend time with my cute little granddaughter.

I'm truly blessed to have surface steelheading 10 minutes from my house - life is good!