After a fairly long summer of just salmon to chase I start to get the itch for the fish that make me tick, being a confirmed Steelhead Psycho is not always that easy while living where I do....so, it's a road trip, my tenth year of making the northern migration is what kept me out of the looney bin again...
Started off with a 5 day float trip...found a place to drop the boat in at kilometer #58 after a day of dead ends and wrong turns on unused logging roads, they hid this river pretty well, nobody goes up here. Camp gear, fish gear, some food, a shotgun and my buddy Coley and not a clue of what was around the next turn....
finally here, I liked it!
Coley taking his warm up swings...
Me taking some warm up swings...
Geared up and ready to ride.
Was a bit of a slap in the face making the first turn, this river was wild, big wooly drops with an overloaded raft made for an exciting roller coaster ride....no flats, just rapids and worse rapids and not so bad rapids for the first 5 miles of river, too wet to take any photos but...trust me, the bow of the boat was under water as much as it was above it... I liked it.
Had been some years since I'd done any real camping..... self contained like this. I like it.
alot.
the river calmed down and as soon as it did we found fish.... first morning on the first pool Coley gave them a wakeup call.
There were fish pretty much anywhere you expected to find fish, we had to keep moving so we never pounded any water, just a quick pass through everything and we each hooked 6 or 8 fish a day, no giants here but the fish were super hot, bright fish.
The days went by fast with a good campfire and an early bed time each night.
The fishing improved each day as we slid lower into the drainage.... I even took the time to make the spey rod do its thing, 1st fly caught fish..... yeah, even I swung one up. A super nice fish that made me just as happy as any I'd gotten to bite a gob O'eggs over the years..
We finally ran out of river and had to pull the pin on phase one of the trip...damn, it went by way fast.
the takeout... remote style.
Phase II of the trip was not as remote, but...... the fish offset that fact.
Simply an amazing year of incredible fish.
bucks.. bucks.... and more bucks....
...big bucks.
...then some bigger bucks.
anyway....it kept me out of the bars and the looney bin for a few weeks, hope the winter season here does the same.
stam
