Winter Steelhead: Sight vs. Smell

November 27, 2013

An interesting question came up on my Facebook page the other day that’s often talked about amongst us steelhead fanatics. What’s the most important factor in getting a winter steelhead to strike…sight or smell? I would say without a doubt that sight, and more importantly presentation, is the biggest factor in getting a winter steelhead […]

Four Techniques for Schwacking Chum Salmon

November 2, 2011

I was talking to guide Phil Stephens of Mystical Legends Guide Service last week about how the fishing had been recently on the Humptulips River and he exclaimed, "There's plenty of kings and silvers in there but you can't get past the infestation of chums to get to them!" Eeek…tough duty Phil! I'm still chuckling […]

Go-To Techniques For Taking Stocker Rainbow Trout

April 28, 2011

The biggest fishing event of the year will occur this weekend as a quarter million plus anglers hit the lakes of Washington in search of easy limits of stocker trout and perhaps a few of the jumbo-sized trout that are planted along with them. There are a lot of opening days in Washington, but this […]

Pull Out the Hardware for Early Season Silvers

September 6, 2010

It's September 6th here in Seattle, Washington and guess what…it's raining! For those of us nut-cakes that grew up in the soggy Northwest this early rain means one thing, that salmon will be hitting the rivers pronto. It actually means more than that, but for the purpose of this blog and to keep my A.D.D. […]

Tiger Muskies, Tobeck, Tarps and Trees

May 18, 2009

   My first experience with the pike family was in a backwater of Alaska’s Lake Illiamna. I was a UW fisheries student assisting with an ongoing sockeye salmon research project. On a free afternoon, some compadres and I absconded with a research boat and went exploring. What we found was a seemingly endless maze of […]