Fishing with the Fishin' Magician

As the title states, yesterday Brian Anantatmula and I went up to Pateros and met up with Dave Graybill, the Fishin' Magician!  Sorry to break it to Rick and Rob, but you guys are not the Fishin' Magician!  One of his friends, Rollie Schmitten was with us.

Rollie is of fame in our area as he worked for the national fisheries and was part of the group that decided to reopen the upper Columbia and its tributaries to steelhead fishing.  YEA!  That pretty much made him my favorite guy!  He then also admitted that he was also the reason they closed it years ago.  BOO!  I suppose that since he is now semi-retired he needed to get some friends back and have a local place to fish again.  I'm pretty sure this is the science that led to the UC reopening again!

It was about 34 degrees and cloudy and stayed that way all day.  Luckily, there was no wind, so it wasn't too uncomfortable.  We launched in Pateros and fished the main Columbia for steelhead at three different spots.  Right at the mouth of the Methow (where there was no flow) and at two rock pile spots below Pateros.

Dave has a 5 year run of never getting skunked while steelhead fishing.  Pretty impressive!  Brian and I did our best to break his streak, but we did end up catching steelhead.  All three of them were wild hens and looked great!  My phone was out of batteries, so I didn't get any pictures.  We were fishing with jigs tipped with shrimp tail and slip bobbers set at about 10 feet.

While bobber fishing isn't quite my preferred fishing style, man, it covers water well when drifting from a boat!

If you get a chance, Dave is a great guy to fish with.  Very nice, great boat and now a 5 year and one day streak of not getting skunked for steelhead!