Thursday, March 25, 2010

Good Week of Steelheading in One Morning

I went up to the mighty Met this morning to try and get a last steelheading trip in before the river closes. It ended up being an EPIC day!

The day began with a 5 am #7 from the East Wenatchee McDonalds. (Remember, Rick... Orange Juice!!) Drove up the Methow valley a ways and began to get ready to fish. As the waders were going on, I got an urge.

After visiting the local gas station to drop off a package, I returned to find two guys in the hole I wanted to access. They were on oppposite sides of the river from each other, so I dropped way down in the hole and fished the tail out. As I was walking in, the spey guy just finished landing a steelie and as I settled into the run, the gear guy above me landed another. It was looking good!

I proceeded to hook four fish in the tail out and land two of them. Casting was a pain with trees behind me, so when the spey guy left, I got out, crossed the bridge and took his spot opposite the gear guy. There was a nice flat rock about knee deep that I stood on. From that rock I hooked 10 more steelies in the next 3 hours. Landed seven of them. The landing was much better on the far side of the river as was the casting.

The fish further upriver were much larger than the lower river fish (at least from my randomized sampling). Four of the fish were over 30" with the largest going about 32". All natives, no hatcheries, so I couldn't convince Elisabeth that this was just a long trip to the store for fish.

All in all, went 9 for 14 on a half day. Finished fishing at about noon and called it a day!

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