Trout Season Opener: Turned into a weekend adventure

[MJL]

For Part I of my adventure, see here

http://www.ofncommunity.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18591

 

Part II Synopsis

 

The following text does not contain a chrome orgy or X-rated fish porn. It is however rated K for kick-@ss. Grab a coffee, a water and a bag of pop-corn or chips. It’s an epic tale of 2 OFC fishing bums with nothing better to do on a Sunday. Victor tries to ascend to manhood by catching his first ever steelhead. Mike (MJL) tries his best to show him the way of the steelhead force. Overwhelming crowds, spooky fish and a lack of experience threaten Victor’s quest to catch steelhead. Can he do it?

 

The journey begins

 

After coming back from opening day Saturday, Victor messaged me on MSN asking if I wanted to do some fishing for steelhead on Sunday…My reply…”Hell Yeah!”

 

Victor has only gone for steelhead a few times before. He had yet to actually catch one. The times I went with him, we were fishing in -20 degree weather and spent more time picking ice from the guides than really fishing.

 

I got my rods and reels ready and other gear packed. Victor didn’t have waders so I loaned him my old neoprenes that I no longer used along with boots and gravel guards.

 

I took a brief nap in the car on the way to the river - having fished 13hrs the day before and slept 2hrs during the night I was dead tired. Victor had the GPS lady to keep him company while I slept. We got to the river at about 4am – There were still people camping there from Friday night. It took Victor a while to get into the neoprenes but that chewed up some time till the morning bite got good – It was quite hilarious as someone who wears breathables to watch; the act of putting on the waders was a journey in itself. In the darkness I tried to be his fishing guide. I helped him rig up his float set-up and showed him the best I could how to maintain a drag free drift with a spinning reel – It’s been a really long time since I used a spinning reel to float fish and even I had trouble remembering what I used to do. He picked up the technique fast.

 

Dawn breaks and I’m into a fish. Like the previous day, I loose it – I always lose the first fish.

 

5 minutes later I hook into another one and it comes to hand after a few minutes – a hen of around 3-4lbs.

 

The second fish I landed was a beautiful resident brown about 10-11 inches. It had red and black spots surrounded by the classic white halos Like the day before, the camera went mental on us…This time it was Victor’s camera.

 

The roe bite died down pretty fast – I hooked 4 fish and landed 2 (1 steelhead, 1 brownie). I switched up to the little live trout worms and got into 2 more bows. One fish plowed across the surface of the river and nailed victor’s float while he was retrieving it. After that, out came the spinners. I got 3 more steelhead (3-6lbs) on a couple types of mepps and Vibrax.

 

One fish with the spinner

 

I’ve noticed over the years, a few fish seem to only have half a gill plate. Not exactly sure why?

 

Victor not to be skunked got into his first ever steelhead on a big black mepps spinner…Big congrats to him. He fished hard all morning and fought it like a pro – I guess the carp prepared him well for the battle. I tailed it for him. It turned out to be a drop back hen of about 6-7lbs with a beautiful iridescent pink stripe along its side. I handed the fish to him for a pic but as luck would have it, she kicked out from his grip and swam for freedom while I was turning the camera on. In any case, that fish made his day – Heck it made my day. He however was looking for more...

 

We walked further up river to see if we could tempt some more fish to bite. I toted my 7’ spinning rod along and victor carried his 12’ float and 6’6” spinning rods with him. We walked for a while but the majority of pools, and deeper runs were a little too crowded with people for our taste. We finally found a spot with no people and a few steelhead cruising about the pool. I tied on a small black mepps spinner and had 1 brief take and a couple follows but none would commit to hitting it. Victor tried out a small minnow bait you’d normally use for bass – I guess it was around 4 inches long. One fish followed it right to our feet but turned away the last second…Often people forget that these fish are predators in the big lake when all they see are the long rods, light lines and roe bags. In the end, we saw good numbers of fish throughout the river but couldn’t get another one. For most of the day we were fishing away from the crowds and pretty much had pools to ourselves. At the end of our trek, Victor also learned why man created gore-tex and other breathable materials…He was totally drenched with sweat from the hike.

 

Victor and I met a couple lurkers of OFC at the river who recognized me. Great guys who I’m sure OFC would no doubt benefit from their expertise in steelheading. It was rude of me not to get your names. If you must know, Victor made me post this report.

 

We left the river at about 1pm and took a drive to Rice Lake to see what the panfish were like. Victor put on a tube jig and a float and tried to get a crappie…I just chilled out for a bit on the dock and ate lunch. Victor didn’t hook into anything…The guy next to us caught a couple bullheads on worms…Didn’t look like there were many fish near by. Neither of us were ready to go home yet so…

 

We left Rice at about 2:30pm and headed to another trib to do some sucker fishing. We fished a section of the river that was open year round – we were the only anglers there for the whole stretch. There were a few dozen suckers in the pool but to our surprise there were also a few steelhead lurking too. We grabbed our rods from the car and made a mad dash to try to catch fish – suckers and steel were fair game.

 

Victor started out with roe, I started with spinners. I got into the first fish, a small rainbow about 6 inches long. 2nd fish was an OOS smallmouth about 1 lb.

 

3rd fish I “hooked onto” was a real surprise. For a while, a rainbow of around 8lbs had been randomly doing cartwheels in the pool we were fishing…We thought it was the steelhead gods trying to tease us…In reality, the fish had been snagged on the side with another angler’s hook & line…I found this out when my spinner snagged the 15ft of trailing line the fish had on it. The line lassoed around the treble hook of my spinner…Not knowing what to do with so much line out, I tried swinging the fish to shore so Victor could either tail it or net it…He opted to net it. We removed the snagged fly and released it.

 

There were still a few more steelhead in the pool. I casted a size 1 spinner upstream into the pool and this beauty hen nailed it on the retrieve.

 

Victor proposed that we have a sucker catching competition (seeing as how I already walloped him with steelhead ). I was up to the challenge. We both used worms and bottom bounced them. The end result…I dominated...The score was 14 to 6 in my favour. He did manage to beat me in the official categories of the biggest and most tree branches landed and the most times snagged up in rocks. The last branch was a biggun which he fought valiantly before it came to shore – It had to be a good 36-40 inches long…We released it of course. In total we fished from 4am to about 5:30pm – At the end of the day we were both too tired to care about anything else except sleep, dinner and our next fishing trip.

 

Another big congrats to Victor for his first steelhead. You are on the path of a silvery enlightenment.

 

Hope you enjoyed

Edited April 29, 2008 by MJL

[tbayboy]

Now thats a great day by any measure. Congrats to Victor on hist first steelhead and thanks to you for putting together such a great report.

[The Urban Fisherman]

awesome report MJL - Thanks for the great read!

 

And congrats to Victor for his first steelhead.

 

Cheers,

UF

[douG]

Fabulous, Mike, and congratulations to Victor, too. A great recounting of the trials and tribulations of tributary fishing.

 

That was beautiful, even if I say so myself.

[Golfisher]

Awesome stuff. A 40 inch branch is always a fighter!

[fatherof3]

awesome report and congrats on the day

[Gerritt]

Good thing you did not bring marshmellows!!!

 

 

Awesome report.. thanks for sharing

 

G

[Musky or Specks]

Nice fish wish you had a photno of the brown they are very pretty.

FYI- Opercular Malformation is a pretty good sign that youve caught a hatchery raised fish its a pretty common thing caused bythe stress of the hatchery runs. Next time you catch a fish with part of its gill missing check for fin clips to confirm that it is a stocked steelhead.

[canadian_copper]

nice report bro

[lazybum]

And I missed all that action because I had to watch Nascar at home . But I was really too tired from the day before to go again. There is alway next year or another weekend to do it all over again .

[ccmtcanada]

Awesome write up! Jeez, when you decide to start fishing again your hook is like a magnet. Great pics and fish...great write up as well.

 

Oh yeah...and no pic for Victor = me not believing he caught one.... LOL

 

Congrats Victor on your first (so MJL says) steelie!!!

[solopaddler]

You had one smash your float on the retrieve eh? Those droppies can be ravenous, they'd probably

hit anything....maybe even a marshmallow .

 

Great report bud (1st part included). Glad to see you got out and caught a few.

[b2kptbo]

Another good one, good work boys...

[MJL]

Thanks everyone for their comments. We really appreciate it. I'm hoping to do a few more trips for steelhead before switching over to carp.

 

Oh yeah...and no pic for Victor = me not believing he caught one.... LOL

 

That makes sense...Victor, another road trip next weekend to catch your first steelhead

 

You had one smash your float on the retrieve eh? Those droppies can be ravenous, they'd probably

hit anything....maybe even a marshmallow .

 

Everyone knows you can't catch steelhead just fishing marshmallows bottom...You need to fish them dry/waking style on a spey rod using a long greased line j/k