Steelhead Catch Up Part 1

It's unbelievable how fast this fall is flying by! It seems like just yesterday bird season was opening, and yet here we are in the final week of November. Needless to say I have continued to lag behind in my posts and I have a ton of steelhead stuff that I need to get updated....so much so that I'll break it into several entries. The first one will be the start of steelhead (end of October) and hopefully by this weekend I can have it totally updated and current going forward. Here goes it...........
There is a certain river not far from where I live that is possibly one of the best steelhead rivers in the country, but at the same time is quite intimidating and alot different than many of the smaller tributaries that I spend most of my time fishing. Jeff and I poked around on it last fall a little bit and found a handful of fish but still didn't feel like we "knew" it. We decided to book Kevin Feenstra for a day to truly teach us about the river and to pick his brain on all things swinging; lines, tips, flies, rods, etc. Kevin more or less wrote the book on swinging for midwestern steelhead and we figured there was no better person to make sure we were pointed in the right direction. The day started early.....

We fished through some good looking water swinging sculpin and leech patterns, and had a full decent pulls, but the fish were just not committing. Finally hope was restored as I heard Jeff yell from the front of the boat and I turned around to see his switch rod doubled over.

Right away it was obvious that this was a BIG fish and we floated downriver after it as it put on quite a display. After several minutes the fish was boatside but the first netting attempt didn't go well.

The fish dove under the boat and threatened to get away, but the 15lb flurocarbon was strong enough to pull him back to the surface and this time he slipped into the net with ease.

What a tank! One of the bigger bucks I have seen in my several years of steelhead fishing. An honest estimate was 13-14lbs. The fish clobbered my personal favorite steelhead streamer, Feenstra's aquatic nuisance sculpin.

And a full body shot courtesy of Kevin Feenstra...

We continued to fish great looking water and try all kinds of flashy attention grabbing flies.

Around 2pm we broke for lunch and we had a delicious meal of pork chops and garlic/butter slathered potatoes.

For the first hour or so after lunch we had several hard pulls yet somehow none of the fish got the hook. After that things slowed way down and soon we were at the takeout. It had been a tough day but we learned alot and could not recommend a better guy to spend a day on the river with than Kevin. Visit his webpage at www.feenstraguideservice.com for fishing reports, fly recipe's, or to book a trip of your own. Back at the truck I grabbed this shot of the river below before heading home.