For the next 2 days I’m going to be fly fishing for steelhead in the Pacific Northwest. I’m going to be camping on the river, hiking in some treacherous terrain, and fishing hard for a migratory fish that has spent its last several months running up these rivers. This adventure tested my mental toughness more than just about any adventure I’ve ever been on, because these fish are no joke. Imagine spending months swimming hundreds of miles up the rivers, dodging predators, climbing dams, all to just find a slower pocket of water and…. well, that’s where I’m standing. Welcome back to another adventure.
So let me set the stage for this story real quick. I’m going to be fishing with two people on this adventure. One is Brian, who I hadn’t met before this trip. But he’s a part of adamsbuilt and he owns Gotfishing, which is a booking agency for fishing adventures around the world, and, most importantly for this trip, he’s obsessed with steelhead. He had spent over 40 days on the river this year chasing these fish, so his knowledge was invaluable. Then we have grant, who you guys should know by now if you watched my bull trout videos last year. He’s an amazing guy and fisherman who also has a YouTube channel called firefly fishing and if you haven’t watched it then you’re missing out. I had been in contact with him since the previous year about chasing these steelhead, but when the date approached for the trip they had a big rainstorm which forced us to delay the trip by a week. So needless to say I was ready to fish when we finally hit the river on day one. Well I say day one, but since most of the day was spent on travel we didn’t get there until the afternoon.
Sp we fished that first afternoon and to be honest I don’t have much to show you. I also saw a steelhead similar to how Grant saw his, but that was it.
That one stung. Just because I knew that I wasn’t going to get that many chances at one of these fish and I had a limited amount of time to try to catch one. Plus we had fished a few hours the day prior and a few hours that morning without even a single bite. It was rough, but I had no idea what I was in for over the next 6 hours.
That one I took full responsibility for. That indicator, or bobber, was always bumping under because we’re ticking bottom. So theres a very fine line between a fish hitting and the weight bouncing over a rock. And I just missed that fine line.
Right here I’m showing you the literal burn marks on my fingers from where that fish kicked my butt. I mean I almost certainly lost that fish because of the other angler, but lets be honest that fish was on it’s way out anyways. At this point we had been fishing all day and to be honest we hadn’t even brought a snack with us. So Grant and I were on a 20 hour fast and were quickly losing energy. But I just couldn’t stop casting.
After around 4 hours of fishing without a single bite grant finally sat down on the bank me and was watching me fish. Brian had also left to go get some things from the store that we needed for the following day. Which left grant and I watching the indicator float down the river over, and over, and over again.
So let’s slow this down real quick and… yep, it was a steelhead. Which means I was in the right spot. But At this point it was almost 5 pm and the day was rapidly coming to a close. Not only that but Grant and I were borderline delirious.
What an end to the day. To finally be victorious after losing so many fish felt amazing. Grant also caught one steelhead that day, which you can check out by watching his video on his channel. We still had 2 days to fish though, but rather than go through the grueling task of showing what happened over the course of the next two days I’ll just tell you. Nothing happened. Well nothing from a steelhead perspective. The next day it rained all day and the water rose even more, almost to the point of it being unfishable. Then it dropped off a little bit the following day, so we went way up river to see what we could find. Which is where we found redds with steelhead on them spawning. Which was cool to see, but pretty much confirmed to us that it was time for the trip to be over. The fish are just so much earlier this year due to the lack of a winter the west has had, which made the timing of the run weird.
Grant and I did Catch a bunch of trout that afternoon, but if you want to see that video you’ll have to watch it on the second channel, HFA’s uncut fishing. But that’s the end of my steelhead adventures for this year. I’ve already got plans for next year so stay turned and be sure to check out grant’s YouTube channel firefly fishing, and check out Brian’s business got fishing if you’re interested in a destination trip. And as always, thanks for watching.
