The Summer's Hope: Little Wang step by step

Summer's Hope

(An edited version of this step by step appears in the current edition of Swing the Fly)
https://www.joomag.com/magazine/swing-the-fly-issue-31-summer-2015/0822729001433264450?short

I started tying the first versions of my current skater in the fall of 2012 and I've been honored and humbled that there are folks out there that have liked my pattern enough to have asked for step by step tying instructions for it.  It took a while, but I finally got a step by step posted on my blog this past fall.  I'm such a steelhead fanatic that every spare moment of my time is spent taking advantage of those windows of opportunity to fish so it was only under the forced down time of late fall that I got around to putting an SBS together.

My skater was born out of the necessities of pure function, so efforts to create a pattern that stays on top and has good visibility were the key goals in it's conceptualization.  Over time, the pattern continues to evolve and I continue to tinker with colors, visibility posts, flash, etc.  This pattern is one that lends itself to many color combos, but I'll just use the "Summer's Hope" version, tied in size 4, in this SBS.

This particular version of my skater got it's name after realizing that it's color scheme utilized all the colors (plus a couple more) of Bill McMillan's famous Winter's Hope.  I checked in with Bill to see if he'd be offended if I named my fly the Summer's Hope and Bill was gracious enough to reply that he felt my fly would be a fine compliment to his famous Winter's Hope - Bill is a kind man indeed!


Materials list:

hook:  Mustad R73 (9671 equivalent), 2xl streamer hook.  The Tiemco 5262 or other similar hook can be substituted.  I most frequently use size 6's and 4's although I have tied versions of this pattern ranging from size 2 to size 10.  If one prefers, up eye light wire steelhead hooks such as the the Tiemco 7989 can be used as well.  Heavy wet/nymph hooks such as  the Tiemco 3761 & 3769 (Mustad 3906/s80 & 3906b/s82 equivalents) are also used.  I just prefer the down eye hooks for ease in rigging the fly due to the foam lip being compressed against the eye of the hook.

tail:  Moose body

thread (rear half):  veevus white gelspun 150 denier for size 6 & bigger, 100 denier for size 8 & smaller.

Flash:  purple holographic flashabou, over tail and cross wrapped up front

butt:  florescent green globrite floss, use a single strand

tinsel:  oval silver

body:  purple globrite floss

Foam shellback/lip:  pink 2mm foam, cut into a tapered piece approx 1" x 3/8" x 3/16"

Flash ball/thorax:  Large Minnow Blue cactus chenielle (distributed by Hareline)

Thread (front half):  140 denier black gelspun, for strength in tying down the elk hair wing

Wing:  Black Cow Elk, select a patch with as straight hairs as you can find.  Too much curvature in the hair makes tying down evenly difficult.

Rear facing visibility post:  yellow 2mm foam, cut into a rectangular piece about 3/8" x 3/4".  Cut a V into one side.

Front facing visibility post:  orange 2mm foam, cut to approximately 3/16" x 1/8" x 7/8"


This is not a difficult fly to tie, but it is labor intensive, so be patient in learning to tie it.  Even when I'm on a roll, I can take 20-30 minutes to tie each one.

So here we go - hope you have fun with this one and even get to experience seeing it disappear in a surface steelhead attack sometime!

I put a slight dropping bend in the shank with needle nose plies, not mandatory, this just appeals to my sense of aesthetics.  Start the white thread mid shank, wind down to a point just past the barb.  This marks the body proportions I use for this fly.

Cut a small bunch of moose body hair, clean and stack to even tips.  Measure the tail to be about equal with the overall length of the body.  Tie in at the mid body point and wrap to the end of the body.  Take a couple soft wraps around just the moose hair to help keep the fibers gathered.

Add four stands of purple holographic flashabou on each side of the tail, cut even with the tips of the tail.

For the butt, tie in a single strand of fluorescent green floss, wind to the tail and back onto itself.  Be sure to cover the white thread.  The white thread provides a bright underbody for the floss.

Tie in the tinsel rib

Tie in the purple globrite floss.  Wind up and down the body a couple times being sure to cover the white thread.

Tie off the purple floss and start the black gelspun thread in front of the body.

Take five turns of tinsel and tie off.

Cut a tapered piece of pink foam to approximately 1" x 3/16" x 3/8".  Tie in by the narrow tip as shown.

Tie in the Minnow Blue Cactus Chenielle by it's core right in front of the foam.

Take three wraps of chenielle and tie off.

Take 8 strands of purple holographic flashabou and cross wrap in front of the chenielle.

Pull straight up on the flashabou strands and cut even.  Guesstimate the length to be a bit longer than the wings that will be tied in front of it.

Cut a bunch of Black Cow Elk about yey big.  It takes some practice to gauge how much to cut as you want to have enough hair to cover the perimeter of the hook and allow for some being trimmed on the bottom while having full wings remaining.

Remove the fuzz and short hairs from your clump of elk and place in a hair stacker to even the tips.  Carefully gather the black cow elk from the hair stacker.  Holding the clump in the right hand, evenly distribute the hair around the perimeter of the hook, making sure there is roughly an equal amount of hair on top and bottom.  Measure the hair so the tips are even with the bend of the hook as seen above.

Carefully transfer holding of the hair by the tips to the left hand, being sure to also gather the flash as well.

Take the thread and make a couple soft wraps around the hair and slowly tighten down with firm pressure.  The object is to flare the hair in place, not to spin the hair around the shank.  Make another wrap or two at most to secure the hair down.  DO NOT LET GO OF THE TIPS OF THE HAIR WITH THE LEFT HAND AT THIS POINT.  KEEPING A HOLD OF THE TIPS SERVES AS A GUARD WHEN THE BUTTS ARE TRIMMED IN THE NEXT STEP BELOW.

While still holding on to the tips of the elk with the left hand, grab your scissors and roughly trim the butts of the elk down. 

At this point, snug down on the gelspun a bit more, push back on the trimmed butts, work the tread to the front of the butts and make a few wraps behind the eye of the hook.

Trim the hair flat on the bottom to allow the blue chenielle to show through.

Turning to the top of the fly, evenly part the elk hair with the closed tip of your scissors to allow the foam lip to be brought over in the next step.

I make an upward facing pinch in the pink foam in preparing to tie it down.

Make a couple soft wraps and slowly tighten down.  Be careful not to apply too much pressure or the thread will cut through the foam.

Cut a piece of yellow 2mm foam 3/8" x 3/4" for the rear facing visibility post.  Cut a V into half of this foam piece.

Upward pinch on the yellow foam before tie down.

Tie down with 2-3 wraps, tighten slowly, again careful not to apply too much pressure.

Cut a piece of orange 2mm foam for the front facing visibility post.  I cut this one to approximately 1/8" x 3/16" x 7/8"

Tie the orange foam down with the wider side on the bottom, 2-3 wraps as seen above.

Work your thread under the fly and around just the eye of the hook, make a couple wraps.

This part may be a bit tricky for some - At this point, hold the foam back while making a whip finish, then follow up with making a second whip finish around the first one to secure everything.  Since head cement would not hold very well to gelspun, I have resorted to this double whip finish routine.  I previously did the whip finishes manually without a tool, but I have been recently using a whip finish tool as seen above as it prevents the fine strands of the gelspun from getting tangled in the dry skin of my fingers.

Cut off the gelspun close to the eye.  The foam lip will need to be trimmed down and the photo above depicts the proportions for the the foam lip that I like.

Side view of finished fly.   BC here I come!!  Oh darn, that's not until this fall....

I have been finding that the orange/yellow color combination for the visibility posts are probably the most easily seen under varied conditions.  The color combos for this pattern seems endless and I have tied this skater in color schemes including those of the yellow stimulator (The "Stimuwaker"), October caddis, McKenzie green caddis, green butt skunk, all pink, and various other combinations of baby blue, black, purple, and pink.

I hope folks have fun tying this skater and find lots of surface friendly steelhead this summer!!

Solitude

When I evaluate my time spent astream, I realize that I spend A LOT of time fishing alone. In fact I spend the great majority of my time on the water fishing alone and actually don't mind it. Either I'm a very difficult person to deal with or just happens my fishing buddies' schedules just don't mesh with mine very often - I hope that is the case anyway.

I know that I fish "opportunistically", ie., I often get to fish on a moment's notice as the family schedule unexpectedly clears or my better half kindly encourages me to get out as she notices that my mind seems to be on other things like how fall is the best time of year to get steelhead on the surface.

Don't get me wrong, I love fishing with my fishing friends when I have the opportunity, but if no one can go when I can, it doesn't stop me. When I fish alone, I can fish at my own pace, whether I feel like rushing through water, taking it slow, stopping on the bank to take breaks, take pics, pray, or just take in God's creation as I feel led. Sometimes I just look around and can't help but feel incredibly grateful to be able to experience all the blessings that come through fly fishing for steelhead.

As I look at my fishing pics, thankfully, there are not many pics of ME holding fish! My collection of fishing pics mostly depict my solitary fishing experiences occasionally peppered with pics of my friends holding steelhead.

Of course, one has to take reasonable safety precautions when fishing alone like being alert and mindful of your surroundings, using prudent judgement about where you are fishing, and being prepared for any mishaps that could happen out on the water.

Despite the potential pitfalls, I continue to fish solo the great majority of the time and find my solitary ventures to be a necessary part of maintaining my mental balance in the midst of working a very stressful job and as my way of connecting with nature.

Solo float in my toon

Sugar Pines near a special run

Fall steelhead that succumbed to my foam skater

My Happy Place

My 74' Bronco along the North Umqpua

Small coastal stream after a winter storm

Another Win for Puget Sound Steelhead

Jack Stanford

jack.stanford@flbs.umt.edu

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(email and link from Bill McMillan)

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WDFW announced today the NMFS decision to go back to a full EIS evaluation of Puget Sound hatchery plans.  Announcement pasted below.  The Chambers smolts that were to be planted will again go to lakes.  NMFS received over 2,000 comments!!  Way to go to all.  It is assured that this will now take considerable time for WDFW and NMFS to develop plans that will live up to the many comments already received for Draft EIS development and subsequently more time thereafter to develop the EIS in a way that addresses all the comments – and further limited to how well the EIS actually addresses whatever hatchery plans come out of it regarding a potential court case.  Essentially we are talking several years most likely.

 

Bill

 

http://wdfw.wa.gov/news/may2815a/

 

May 28, 2015
Contact: Jim Scott, 360-902-2736

WDFW to release hatchery steelhead
into inland lakes again this year

OLYMPIA - Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) fish managers will release "early winter" hatchery steelhead into inland lakes again this year, now that federal fisheries officials have decided to conduct a full-scale environmental impact analysis of all Puget Sound hatchery steelhead programs.

WDFW leaders announced the action after learning that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has decided to develop an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate the effects of early winter steelhead hatchery programs on the survival and recovery of wild Puget Sound steelhead and chinook salmon, which are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. The decision was based, in part, on more than 2,000 public comments to NMFS that expressed a wide range of questions and concerns about the environmental impact of hatchery steelhead programs.

In March, NMFS (also known as NOAA Fisheries) published a draft environmental assessment of hatchery steelhead programs in three river basins. WDFW officials had hoped NMFS' completion of the assessment would lead to approval of WDFW steelhead hatchery operations and clear the way for the release of steelhead into several Puget Sound rivers under terms of a federal court settlement last year. However, the additional time needed to complete a more detailed EIS means that a decision on approval of these hatchery programs will come after the release window for 2015.

"We support the conservation and recovery of wild salmon and steelhead, but we are disappointed that NMFS has been unable to complete the review of these programs," said WDFW Director Jim Unsworth. "The decision by NMFS to conduct a full and potentially lengthy EIS process will delay approval of these hatchery programs and have serious impacts on recreational fishing on several Puget Sound rivers."

However, Unsworth said WDFW understands the controversial nature of the subject, as well as the federal government's desire to analyze hatchery programs within a full-scale EIS that stands up to potential legal challenges and clears the way for hatcheries to stay in operation for the long-term.

Last year the Wild Fish Conservancy of Duvall sued WDFW, alleging that the department's Puget Sound hatchery steelhead programs violated the Endangered Species Act by impairing the recovery of wild steelhead, salmon, and bull trout. In settling that case, the department agreed to refrain from planting early winter (Chambers Creek) steelhead into most rivers in the Puget Sound region until NMFS completed its environmental review.

Until recently, WDFW officials believed the federal agency's timetable would allow the release of juvenile steelhead into several rivers this spring, but those plans have now been canceled. One exception is the release of 180,000 early winter steelhead into the Skykomish River, which is permitted under the federal court order approving the settlement.

Jim Scott, head of the WDFW Fish Program, said rivers that will not receive steelhead in 2015 include the Nooksack, Stillaguamish and Dungeness, which would have received 150,000, 130,000, and 10,000 steelhead, respectively. Earlier this year, NMFS announced it would conduct a full EIS for hatcheries that release steelhead into the Snoqualmie and Green rivers, which were slated to receive 74,000 and 70,000 fish, Scott said.

Instead of releasing juvenile steelhead into those five rivers, WDFW will plant them into inland waters that have no connection with Puget Sound, he said. WDFW will announce its fish planting schedule as soon as possible on the department's website:http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/reports_plants.html.

Trout Skating Binge

With the unusual winter we have had and with the numbers of steelhead coming over Willamette Falls being so small, I have been on an extended bender of trout fishing this spring.  Typically, soon after winter steelhead season ends, there is sufficient numbers of steelhead coming over the falls to stir my little brain with thoughts like "it's possible, it could happen!"  I have caught a summer run as early as mid April a few years ago, but chances for success are small in the beginning of the summer season.

This year has been especially grim, with only 978 steelhead over Willamette Falls at the time of this writing and that number gets divided between four rivers - the North Santiam, South Santiam, McKenzie, and upper Willamette/MF Willamette here in Eugene/Springfield.

With such poor chances at an early steelhead, I've resorted to trout fishing, but I've still been seeking to do it "my way".  That is, by fishing miniature versions of my foam skaters on a twitched swing, just like I'd fish for steelhead, but on a smaller scale.

McKenzie Green Caddis Skater, #10

I wrote of my early experiments with skating for trout last month and I experienced some early success, which was encouraging.  I've continued my exploration with trout skating by tying smaller skaters dedicated for trout fishing and I devised a version of my foam skater in a McKenzie Green Caddis color scheme.  I tie this fly on a little #10 Mustad 9671 (2xl) hook.  I happened to have a small stock of these hooks that i purchased when I was visiting Montana over 10 years ago.  We had stopped at a Walmart (I think in Bozeman) and they had packages of 25 hooks on sale for a quarter each, which means I probably have a 100 or so of these hooks on hand (again, pack rat syndrome).

I've been fishing the McKenzie and MF Willamette with my miniature skaters and have been having a great time bringing trout to the surface.  Some of our local cutthroat, planter rainbows, and hatchery steelhead smolts have been eagerly attacking my newest foam creation.

On my recent trips to the McKenzie, I have been hoping to get into some of the river's redside rainbows, the McKenzie's famed native trout.  When I was out last sunday evening, I was in the midst of raising and hooking planter rainbows when a quick, snappy rise was followed by a surface explosion and a broadsided rainbow stripe as a reside attacked my little skater.  My line quickly tightened on the rise, then my rod bounced back as the fly came out of the fish's mouth.  After a quick rush of adrenaline, I started to wonder if I should be setting up on these trout with their quicker rises rather than waiting for the fish to turn like I do with steelhead.

On a float down the McKenzie this past thursday, along with planters and smolts, I managed to raise several redsides to my skater, one which looked to be of good size in pool near the takeout, but solid hookups were elusive.

While floating the McKenzie with my friend Craig Coover this past saturday, the usual rainbow planters made their appearances to my skaters and as usual, I questioned to myself why in the world ODFW thinks a blue ribbon river like the McKenzie needs to be planted with hatchery trout.  I do my part and harvest as many of these mutants as I can.

In a pool that we came to where my other friend David Bayles saw one of the 978 steelhead roll on thursday, I anchored the boat and Craig and I decided to give this pool a good going over.  I took the head of the run and Craig took the lower section.  As I got into the upper third of the run, I encountered more planters, then a larger rise came and the distinct rainbow stripe told me that a nice redside came up for my little green skater.  This fish managed to get hooked solidly and I succeeded in getting this chunky little fighter to the beach for a quick photo and to celebrate my first redside landed on my foam creation.

McKenzie Redside with Skater in mouth

As I continued down, another nice reside came up with a quick rise, but escaped the point of my hook.  A few more planters appeared before the end of the day and I ended up harvesting a couple of them for dinner and to get them out of the system.  These stocked trout are planted only as low as the Hendrick's bridge but manage to get washed miles down river so they are often encountered in the lower sections of our floats.

My prolonged foray with trout fishing this year as also prompted further experiments with my trout tackle.  I really love the Wulff Ambush lines for single hand spey casting, but I have not been able to afford the $80 a piece price tag to match my 9' 4wt and 9' 5wt rods so I've been making do with what I have on hand.

I've tried uplining my trout rods 2 line weights with good results.  I've fished my 4wt with a WF6F Cortland 333 line and I've set up my 5wt with a SA Mastery Bass bug taper in 7wt.  This uplining by two has made it much easier and pleasurable to spey cast my trout rods with my little foam skaters.

I also feel that these outfits will serve well enough as "crossover" setups in the unlikely event an early steelhead appears and wants a small skater.  I've landed steelhead with ease on the 9' 4wt before and I tend to fight steelhead aggressively with the lighter  outfits and have had no problems landing them this way.  I was inspired by Frank Amato's articles in Salmont Trout Steelheader magazine on using 4wts on the Deschutes back in the late 80's.  Since my local steelhead are primarily of hatchery origin anyway, I can use my light tackle with a clear conscience.

I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to try skating for trout during the Salmonfly hatch on the Deschutes a couple weeks ago.  I had planned my first return trip to the D in several years and my plans happily coincided with a trip that Mia and Marty Sheppard were planning as well so we got together for a weekend of fishing and camping on this wonderful high desert treasure.

I am thankful to Marty Sheppard and Mia Flora Sheppard for a great time on the water. It was so awesome to see them again and to be able to hang out with both of them, their daughter Tegan and thier dog Cedar. I was also able to meet thier friend Curtis Cisznek, a pro snowboarder and talented young fly fisher from Bend.

My "skating for redsides during the salmonfly hatch" experiment was largely unsuccessful aside from a few rises and one hard grab. It took dead drifting an old school yellow stimulator to finally bring a legitimate redside to hand, but I was so blessed to experience such a beautiful place with the Sheppards. My heart was filled with gratitude for the Sheppards's kindness - they made my long awaited return trip to the D a memorable one!

Their 7 year old daughter Tegan says to me: "My daddy's beard is whiter than yours......" Considering that I have 10 years on Marty, that makes Tegan my new best friend! She also played a tough game of "war" (the card game).

Tegan feeling the evening chill

Marty and I talked a lot about fishing, his and Mia's guiding lives, and how we are both profoundly influenced by Bill McMillan.  An interesting thing I took away from chatting with Marty is his affinity for very small flies for early return steel on the D.  He likes 8's and even #10s, dry or wet!  When I showed my little #10 trout skater to Marty, he said "I'd fish that for steelhead".

I've been pondering what Marty was talking about with preferring small skaters... so of course, I'll be busy tying more 8's and 10's!  I'll be sure to put some in the mail for Marty, before his skater season starts!

Marty at the Helm

High Desert Paradise

Cedar taking in the view

Morning in Trout Camp

A Woman's Best Friend

What's Old is New Again aka "The Pack Rat Syndrome"

Continuing in the spirit of my "cheap skate" story, I was thinking along the lines of how I tend to be a chronic "pack rat" with equipment as well.  Once I buy a piece of equipment, I tend to hold on to it for a long time, sometimes a very long time.  I still own items from my earliest entry into fly fishing, including a Fenwick 7' 5wt glass rod from 1977 that I ordered from the Cabelas catalog when I was a middle school kid on Kauai.  I also still own old Sage RPLs, a Pflueger Medalist, SA System reels,  Thompson A vise, Thompson fly tying scissors, and even an original SA Mastery Steelhead Taper fly line (circa 1991) among many other vintage items from the late 80s/early 90s.

Even after I have bought some newer stuff that has come on the market with the latest technology, I've kept my old stuff "just in case I might need it someday".  In recent years I've even gone in the direction of deliberately seeking out stuff that is vintage and outdated to begin with - remember those old glass rods and antique clickers I've talked about??

Some of my friends are good with maintaining a better balance in life.  For instance my good bud Keith loves buying new gear each season, but he is good with selling stuff whenever he buys new stuff so he does not continually accumulate more gear.  I do sell gear every once in a great while, but only when I feel pretty sure I'll never want or need it again.  Even then, I can agonize over the fear of regretting letting go of something I might miss someday - irrational, I know.

Of course, there are downsides to being a pack rat: stuff keeps accumulating and finding places to put all that stuff becomes problematic - I tend to be a slob anyway and the more stuff I have, the more cluttered things get to be in my house and garage.  This has been a point of ongoing tensions between Wendi and me since Wendi still doesn't understand my fine tuned sense of purpose in the midst of what appears to be a chaotic mess.  If left to my own devices, our house would be one big tangle of fly fishing gear and fly tying stuff laid out everywhere.  If Wendi had it her way, our counters, floors, and living areas would always be clean and clear of ALL clutter.  Luckily, we find a balance somewhere in the middle (actually off middle, more towards Wendi's side if you ask me) and I feel a healthy sense of discomfort if I leave my junk laying around too long, especially if we are expecting company, so I actually do clean up every now and then.

Symptoms of a Pack Rat

Things getting out of control on the kitchen counter, look out

 One of the "advantages" of being a pack rat is that what is old can be new again.  For instance, I started off chasing steelhead in the late 80's/early 90's so I got myself set up with a SA System II 7/8 reel, Sage 9'6" 8wt RPL (built from a blank for affordability) and SA Mastery Steelhead Taper floating fly line in 1991.  I had been inspired by Lani Waller's 3M steelhead videos so I sought to emulate what seemed appropriate steelhead gear a the time.  Even though I possessed what was touted as a good all around steelhead setup, I struggled casting and fishing with this combo.  I practiced my double hauls, but still felt like I was working harder than I should have been.

Sage 896 with Mastery Steelhead taper, circa 1991

Just recently, a guy who goes by "Speyspaz" on Speypages started a thread on revisiting the use of double taper and longer lines and it got me thinking about how the longer lines force one to focus more closely on timing and technique in casting.  I started off with a double taper and Delta/Windcutter lines in my earliest days of speycasting and remembered the joys of those long casts when executed properly.  While I love the short, heavy Ambush lines that I currently use most often, I have to admit, they are somewhat "dummy proof" as they allow for much leeway in errors in timing and anchor placement and where "brute force and ignorance" can get the line out if one's casting skills are limited.

Luckily, starting off with the longer lines had taught me something about timing, technique, and anchor placement.  I've been a self-taught spey caster since I began spey casting in 1995 while I lived in Hawaii.  I spent hours rewinding and replaying Derek Brown's and Dec Hogan's spey casting videos and practiced my casting at boat harbors on Kauai as amused bystanders (both locals and tourists) often gave me funny looks.  Seems I hadn't picked up too many bad habits and my muscle memory survived the past several years of fishing short lines.

Being inspired by Speyspaz's post, I took out my old Sage 9'6" 8wt and Mastery Steelhead Taper (essentially a single hand long belly line) a couple weeks ago.  The old rod and line felt like a brand new outfit as I single hand spey cast the longer line almost effortlessly as I skated for late winter steelhead on a coastal Oregon river.  Why did this old outfit feel new and more "user friendly" now??  It must be that over the years, I've managed to develop stronger casting skills, especially with single hand spey casting, and my skill set and muscle memory finally came closer to matching up with the capability of my outdated tackle.  I had also seen go pro clips of North Umpqua guide Tony Wratney utilizing "pokes" to help with maneuvering the longer line on a single had rod in tight spots and it was so satisfying to be able to problem solve with this outfit as I never had before.

When I took up the two handed rod in 1995, I largely left single hand rods for steelhead behind at that point.  From that time forward, I was totally immersed in the spey culture and never looked back.  Then sometime around 2009/2010, I started seeing posts on a fly fishing message board by a guy named Randy Clark.  This guy was using old glass rods and having a blast using them for bass, trout, and even steelhead. 

The gears in my head started turning and I decided to bust out an old 7'6" 6wt glass rod given to me by my father in law in 1989 while I visited him in Montana.  I put a new inexpensive 6wt WF line on  an old 1494 Medalist and hit the Willamette town run one day in July 2011.  I was fishing a #6 Borden special figuring to split my chances between trout and the unlikely steelhead.  I was on my lunch hour so I hurriedly fished through the top of a riffle.  When I got my cast out to about 30 feet, my line suddenly snapped tight and I felt the surge of a fish that was surely not a trout.  A large silvery flash on the surface told me that I had hooked into a steelhead during brightest part of this clear summer day.  A few blistering runs that nearly spooled the little medalist kept me on my toes during the fight and I was able land this beautiful hen steelhead of about 8-9lbs on the little trout outfit.  I also noted that this steelhead had an adipose fin - one of the few non-finclipped steelhead that come up during the summer season on the Willamette each year.  (They are wild to me, but that's a whole different story).

Old Glass, Pflueger Medalist, and a "Wild" Town Run Steelhead

 After getting that steelhead on that old glass rod, the hunt for more vintage steelhead weight glass rods went on until I accumulated more vintage glass than I could possibly wear out in my lifetime.  Getting these used gems for as little as $40 and seldom more than $90 kept me shopping.  There was even a model I liked so much (a 9' 9wt configuration) that I kept jumping on good deals when I came across them.  I became friends with that fellow Randy Clark who had inspired my interest in old glass through his postings on the fly fishing message board.  I ended up getting another one of those 9' 9wts from Randy Clark for $40 and I got yet another one for $75 off ebay from a guy who lives here in town and who delivered it to my home!

My love affair with old glass continues to this day.  But I have to admit, this was interrupted last year when bamboo rod maker James Reid loaned me a single hand cane prototype for a 9wt line to field test that I just fell in love with.  I never saw myself ever owning a cane rod and thanks to James's kind offer to allow me to field test the rod and seeing how I loved the rod so much, he worked things out so a blue collar guy like me could own such a beautiful piece of steelhead equipment.

I've gone through phases with the equipment that I've used and sometimes, for whatever reason, I take out stuff I haven't used in a while and rediscover the joy and utility of those setups that I was using regularly in seasons past. 

My past few years of steelheading has been dominated by the use of single hand rods and the short, heavy Ambush lines.  However just the other day, I revisted one of my older outfits that I had not used in a while - my Sage 13'6' 8wt and Airflo Delta Spey 8/9 line purchased in 2004.  Using a longer line is a whole different deal compared to fishing short lines, but my muscle memory from my earlier days of speycasting with longer lines came back to me.  The lift, sweep, d-loop/anchor, fire routine and the larger strokes and movements that go with fishing the longer line were a pleasure to execute as I watched the line unfold with my newest pink skater trailing behind for the ride across the river.  I was reminded of the pleasure that comes from fishing big water with longer lines and vowed to air out my longer lines more this season.  I plan to bring out my Sage 9140 brownie (circa 1995) and Windcutter 7/8 soon and I just spooled up my CND 7/8/9 double taper to be put back into use as well.

Sage 8136 IIIe and Airflo Delta Spey 8/9, circa 2004

One thing I've learned is that over the years, when I have gone through various phases of my preferences in steelhead gear, is that I've tended to "overgeneralize" the use of whatever class of gear I've preferred at given times.  For instance when I discovered the two handed rod, I figured they were appropriate for being used everywhere.  I even resorted to squeezing a 14' two handed rod onto a small coastal river.  When I discovered single hand glass rods and the Ambush lines, I also tried to use them everywhere, in rivers both both big and small.  At this point in my journey, I'm learning to match my gear to the water.  Smaller rods for shorter casts on smaller water, maybe switch rods on medium sized water, big rods/longer lines for bigger water and lots of room.  Of course this doesn't mean I can't leave the option open to use whatever setup I'm in the mood for no matter where I happen to be fishing at a given time - that' why it's a good thing that I'm a pack rat so I can cover all those bases!!

 So there you have it, all my rationalizations of why it is worthwhile to be a pack rat.  Your mileage may vary and beware that most spouses won't tolerate this kind of BS, I'm lucky that mine does the best that she can - I am blessed!