Here comes the rain

Wet weather has returned to the North-Coast with the first big system making landfall today. Looks to be a decent storm with enough juice to give all of our local rivers a much needed push. The coast is in play. All rivers subject to low flow closures will have enough of a rise to open. Time to retire the Scandi's and file away your box of skaters and hair-wings. It's time to break out the T-14 and twist up some scary bugs. 

Happy hunting. 

Creature. 

Here she comes.......(Image: Google Earth)

Heavy weather on tap for the state of Jefferson. (Image: Intellicast)

King Flies. They're coming.....

Trinity roll call

I cut my teeth fishing on the Trinity River when I first moved to Humboldt County. It's where I learned how to read steelhead water, cast a spey rod, and swing a fly. Now, when I fish on the Trinity it feels like meeting with an old friend. It, along with the Klamath River, is one of the last strongholds for summer run steelhead in Northern California. While there are numerous methods and techniques used to target Trinity River steelhead, it is hard to imagine one more pleasurable than a well swung traditional gliding across a picture perfect run. 

Brad swings the shadow water on the Trinity. 

A glimpse of the river from above

An assortment of feather wings and soft hackles for Trinity River Steelhead. 

Soft Hackle in the vice. 

The Peacock Hilton. Variant of the immortal classic. 

A simple hair wing pattern for charming up those summer runs at first and last light. 

The Copper Coachman. A variation of the timeless Royal Coachman 

Flash wing soft hackle. The perfect follow up fly for the discerning steelhead

The Timberjack Spey. So named for the roadside motel where it was tied. 

Brett's Klamath Skater. A perfect surface fly for the Trinity River. 

Welcome to the lake

It's hard to say what time it is, but easy to say it is late. You can forget about getting a good nights sleep. Knees curled up in the back seat of the jeep, the stale odor of dog vomit and forgotten fast food perforate the air inside the cab. Not even the whisky can save you. Outside the wind builds to a gail. It howls out of the northwest, belligerent and cold. It shakes the cab with violent gusts; whips the dirt into a frenzy out over the distant playa, and seems to feed off of the enormous ancient lake below. Pyramid Lake spreads out like a dark serpent writhing in the midnight wind; it's strangeness only upstaged by the creatures that call it home. 

The line up at day break.

Robert with a Summit fish. 

Aaron Silverman with a chrome Lahontan.

Yours truly with a colored up buck. 

A bit of fear and loathing on Pyramid Lake.

Camp is home. 

Robert with his hands full

After the storm. Aaron Silverman on Pyramid Lake

Dylan Hartsell at last light

A shiny buck comes to the net at Pyramid Lake 

The Searchers (Continued)

Texas, 1868. We see a woman dressed in faded linens heading towards a doorway through a darkened room. She opens the door and goes through. We go with her as she steps out into the open expanse of the American West. Before her is a great unknowable wilderness. A figure mounted on horseback approaches. 

December 26, 2015. Dusk. Somewhere on the Smith River. It grows darker by the minute at the end of a hard day of fishing. It is your maiden day back on the water after the river has made its first significant rise of the winter season and is dropping into perfect shape. You blow a cast. The head wraps around the tip of the rod and fixes itself stubbornly in a tangled mess. Defeated you wade back unto the shore, set the rod down carefully and go about unwrapping the jumbled nest of line and leader. A procession of cars go by on the road across the river and you feel embarrassed to be fucking around with your tackle instead of fishing. 

Mongrain looking for love on the North Coast. 

You consider buttoning up the rod and calling it, but reconsider, and resolve to step back into the tail-out determined to make one more decent cast before heading up to camp. The ritual commences. The pull of the river at your knees. The deafening thrum of the rapid below. You pay line out. Focus on your hands. Hold two 5 count loops. Snap T. Wait for it. Pull with your bottom hand. It feels right, and you manage to make one last good cast as the day hurries to its end. The line swings into the soft inside edge. Cars pass on the highway, their lights strobing through the guard rail. You watch as two small eddies circle each other in the slack water hemmed in by the ribbon of line fluttering down stream from where you stand. They cartwheel around each other, draw closer, accelerate, merge into one and disappear. Some strange electricity stirs. The universe condenses, wobbles, and yawns.

The grab is sudden and violent. It wrenches the rod downward and bucks with such force that it becomes immediately clear that this is an especially large fish. You let out a savage, incoherent yell for your friend who has been fishing above you. You try desperately to hold the fish in the tail out, but it is futile. He points his head downstream into the maul of the rapid and leaves the pool.  A truck stops along the road and a man jumps from his pickup to watch the ensuing struggle. Your friend is beside you now as you look hopelessly down river. Death water below, line peeling out from the reel, nearly dark. You don't think it's possible to follow him, but just as all hope fades your buddy rallies and says quietly.....

........We can do this. 

Detonation 

What ensues is nothing short of death defying. Clasping to willows with one hand, rod bent on the fish of a life time in the other. Clamoring up boulders. Yelling and cussing. Surely the rod will break, surely the fish will get off. Finally a clearing and a platform to stand on to regain control, assess the situation, but it is too late. The fish makes one more run, the drag whines for mercy, and just like that the fish is off. You reel in. The fly remains tied to the leader and for that small victory you are thankful. There is nothing left of the day. 

You face your friend, who soldiered on with you, putting himself into water that no sane person would go near. All in the vain hope to see this creature. To hold it for a moment. To know it. Silence and disbelief give way to laughter and cheers. What sport. What insanity. What a fish. You both feel your way back through the dark wood-lined hill into the open meadow where you have made camp. It is time for whiskey, supper and revelry. You chop firewood with a new ax. Its blade sharp as a razors edge. The adrenaline still courses through your blood as you both relive the battle. It is night. December 26, 2015. 

Camp fire

Image credit: SXS, the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) project (http://www.black-holes.org).

1.4 billion light years from Earth two black holes consume each other. The event generates enough energy to send ripples through time and space. The waves stretch on for an eternity. Oceans become mountains. Kingdoms rise and fall. On December 26th 2015 the singularity finally reaches Earth. 

Above the river

February 27th, 2017. Somewhere on the Redwood Coast. Midday. It is an act of faith to continue further ahead from this point. The remnants of an old logging road disappear into the thicket of redwood, fir, and hemlock that populate the steep hillside descending before you. You wager that something will materialize in the dense woods to show you the way, and soon enough you hear the familiar sound of trickling water.  A small rivulet gives way to a creek. It cascades in steps down the hill; a beautiful oasis of fern and downed timber carved into the lush rainforest. Little by little you see hints of a translucent glow through the stands of timber. You are getting closer. You reach the bottom. Pushing branches of willow aside, you emerge from the dark woods and step out onto the open expanse of gravel bar. The moss that grows on the stones seems ancient. No one comes here.

The Searchers

You fish the run thoroughly without a touch. It has been this way. So much good water, and no fish to show for it. Sometimes it seems like steelheading becomes an exercise in the abstract. That you are purely casting and not fishing. At other times you feel as if you are some sort of 21st century buffalo hunter. Searching for the last remnants of a once abundant species. 

You rest the water. Smoking a cigarette under a canopy of dripping alders you notice the deep crescent scar you wear on your left hand. You think of the night it was put there. The moment your hand wavered ever so slightly to bring that ax blade across the gap of your thumb and forefinger. You think of the fish you had fought merely minutes beforehand. You think of the man who got out of his truck up on the highway to watch you. Did he see it down there? Did he see it flash a streak of silver from the road as it bucked on the line? He must have.

Colton Schwenning swings the breach. 

Reno Nevada, March 6th. Evening. Aaron's making fried chicken with mushroom risotto while his daughter Marlow and I play a game where we sculpt objects out of clay and have to guess what they are. It's been a crazy weekend. So much snow has fallen in the Sierras that they've closed the I-80. I'm marooned, and all I can think about is getting back to the coast for the last winter steelheading of the season. My phone lights up from a text and Marlow sees the face of an old cowboy wearing an eyepatch come onto the screen. 

Who's that?

Who?

That old man on your phone.

You don't know who this man is?

I hold the phone up so she can get a better look but she shakes her head no defiantly. Her father steps over to see and laughs as he looks at the glowing screen.

That's John Wayne baby. 

All silver and chrome

On tap.

Another round of heavy precipitation has dampened all fishing prospects here on California's Northcoast once again. Every river from Sonoma to Del Norte is set for a series of roller coaster dips and rises. The Klamath looks to be primed for the most dramatic surge, flirting with 300,000 CFS. 

Eel River

Klamath River

Mad River

Nothing for it except to break out the vice and whip up the next round of flies in anticipation of green water in the days and weeks ahead. I've been revisiting John Shewey's Classic Steelhead Flies between fits of rain to re immerse myself in the old patterns and history of the sport. 

Some fresh ones 

One of my old intruders from last season. This fly was responsible for charming an especially large steelhead that put up one of the most epic fights after the grab. It got off eventually, but not before dragging me and accomplice Neil Mongrain through some death water. Sometimes a fly earns a place apart from the rest, because it proved itself and answered that ultimate question. Yes, they do eat a swung fly. Like hell they do. 

Finally, I always find myself returning to Davie McPhail for fly tying inspiration. With his soft spoken lilting Scottish accent, the man is the Bob Ross of fly tying.  Enjoy. 

Reposted from: http://www.fullingmill.co.uk/

The Searchers

From the dark highway you can make them out far off on the lip of the horizon. Strange orbs of light oscillating on a seemingly endless expanse of empty space. They cast a phosphorus glow beneath them and upon the water that engulfs them, like some vision of small cities scattered over a dark prairie.    

From atop a high rock, a searcher, sword in hand.

They are crab boats, and it is winter, and on a lightless highway you drive the familiar route in the early morning hours you have driven so many countless times before. The boats out at sea have become a reassuring and welcome sight, their appearance a harbinger for a time you have waited patiently for and now that time has come again. Over the years you have come to find a solidarity with the nameless folks who stand aboard those distant ships, for they brave the bitter cold and violent seas of winter in search of something that lies unseen, and you, on your way north, are in search of the same. You manage one last look out to where a line of them appear and disappear in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, and wonder if any of the men on those sparkling islands of light look back towards the land and see you. A dull blip of light snaking along the winding road that hugs the sea as you make the pilgrimage north to fish for steelhead. 

Fog in the valley. Photo Neil Montgrain

Ghost light. Photo: Neil Montgrain

As winter steelhead anglers most of us come to understand certain truths that transcend our individual means and methods of targeting these fish. Namely that catching one is really fucking hard. Especially for those of us that at some point choose to live the more monastic life of a fly fisherman, and further so for that band of individuals who decide for one reason or another that they will solely swing flies when targeting this one unique species. I never grew up with these fish or these rivers, so for me they will always hold some exoticness; a singular otherness that I feel deserves extraordinary means when seeking them out. That is how I came to cast my allegiance to swing flies for these fish without exception, but I have always found it odd and intriguing how many of the people I've met through this pursuit come to a similar decision. Even more perplexing is how that other bastion of steelhead anglers, who hold the same fish in their hands when they are lucky enough to meet one, can think only that it will make for a triumphant photograph to display their prowess as a hunter and nothing more. Perhaps this goes to the heart of that unbridgeable gap between fellow fishermen who meet on the banks of anadromous waters? For what is to some a creature of mythical reverence is to others just a fish, like any other, and while they are the hunters of those fish, often by any means necessary, we have become something else in our pursuit, something apart. 

Anticipating the grab. Arm bent, heart ready. Photo: Kenton Bansemer

Andrew Hoodenpyles king intruder soaking up the first of the days light. 

A fish boiling on the surface towards the end of a good fight. 

A properly tailed steelhead. Notice how deep Neil is waded out to meet the fish.

Winter steelheading can bring revelries that are hard to explain or imagine to outsiders. We must seem like a bunch of half possessed nut jobs when we gush and exclaim the intimacies of a grab, or the way a fish peeled line, often devolving into some strange protolanguage of dramatized whines when we describe the sound our reel made. A series of:

PHZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Or, Whub Whub Whub REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

And I was like: WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

...........Or something like that. But isn't it that way, after all? At times there's that strange electricity right before it happens, and the sureness of the moment when it does. The flush of fear when a big fish takes and turns and you know you've really done it this time, that perhaps you hadn't bargained for all of what is to follow? The way the butt of your rod seems to hum in your hand as that heavy tackle cuts deep and you know that big leggy fly on the other end of your line is down there in dark water glowing like a lantern. You silently chant to yourself; Right now. Right now. Right there. Eat it. Eat it. Eat the fly.  A strange voodoo that always seems afoot on the one in a thousand days when you luck upon not just a single fish but many, and suddenly catching a winter steelhead on a swung fly becomes like any other fishing for the briefest of moments in time. You hook one and bring it to hand clean and fair on a fly you tied the night prior while thinking of the very water you now find yourself on knowing that what you had imagined was made possible through sheer attrition and dedication alone. The quiet pride and self assuredness you find in the waining minutes and hours that follow a good fight and release. The light and air of the place. The stillness. The clarity that overcomes your doubting self when after all of those hours spent searching and swinging and going for broke you are ultimately rewarded in that infinitesimal moment when the line wrenches tight as a fish comes from some unseen place and utterly destroys your fly. It is enough of a thing to change a person, to convert them in their beliefs. And if you could live for a thousand years you would never let those far away memories of when that fish finally grabbed be diminished, because it was as if you had discovered the last bit of magic left in a world deplete of wonder. 

A rare warm day in the depths of winter. Neil Montgrain sends one fine & far. 

The SageX 8120 getting bent for the first time. This fish, a small buck, made a heroic run up river. 

Colton Schwenning lets one go on the coast 

Home tie session with the boys. Colton Schwenning left. Nell Montgrain right. Yours truly rear. 

The hand off. Neil stepping aside to give Kenton his first good look at a beautiful dime bright hen on the coast. This fish ate an unweighted fly on the hang down. 

Standing atop a high rock of ancient stone a lone figure is seen peering into green water made brilliant by the dampening winter sky. He is quiet and still for a long time as he stands there motionless with a rod in hand that is cartoonish in length. Adorning the straps of his waders are strange fluorescent things that flutter in the breeze and seem to come alive only to become inert and still again. He does not notice you, or if so does nothing to acknowledge your presence. He is focused solely on the water that thrums before him, searching for something unknowable. You watch him from your vantage point on the opposite side of the river, all the while wondering how it is he came to be there in that spot. Becoming envious for it is the better place to fish, you suddenly realize that the figure has vanished from his lookout and is gone. 

Setting up for a perry poke on the Eel River

You fish until all of the light has gone from the run and the canyon below now lies mostly in shadow. Although the day has been unseasonably warm you are sure that another bitterly cold night awaits you back at camp. You step out of the run, but not before climbing onto a high slab of boulder and turning to look over the water one last time. It is water you have fished many times before, countless times, but today is different. Today it has offered two fish. One brought to hand, another lost at your feet. How uncanny and mysterious these winter fish are. Materializing like apparitions from their shadowed keeps, the water glowing as if lit from within. The sheer jubilation of it still radiates fresh through your memory. You silently tell yourself to remember this feeling, to hold onto it and guard it, for they do not come easy or often and there is no substitute for it. You think of the fish you brought to hand. A hen. Not a single mark on her body. Amazing for a fish that has swam through the water between this place and the sea. A gauntlet of class 5 rapids and bolder strewn runs. Yet she is perfect. Still chrome bright, her pectoral fins translucent. Her sides shimmering like mercury. Perhaps she has spent two or three years out at sea, and you wonder, as you have always wondered when you get the opportunity to bring one of these creatures to hand, about the gulf of time and space that laid between you both until this day. The enormity of it. The strange nuances and disparate events occurring simultaneously, and how none of them could have transpired in any other way for either of you to have met. It sounds like I'm talking about falling in love. Perhaps it is so. 

Kenton Bansemer comes tight to a good winter fish. 

The grey ghost. 

A winter steelhead hen. Still freshly minted from her time in the salt. This fish fought especially hard for her size, living up to her mystique. 

You make it back to camp just as the last light of day seeps out of the sky. A fire is started and food is made and you relive the revelries of the day with friends as the frost from your breath becomes thick as smoke. And you do smoke, and share some whisky. The stars come out and you wonder if you can find Andromeda out there amidst the glistening firmament. You fall asleep thinking of the fish that grabbed and bucked off the line. What was it? Was it another hen or a buck maybe? How many more were in the run...Tomorrow you will rise and go searching for the next one. 

Camp fire 

Steelhead cometh

Sometimes it can feel like the entire year revolves around this moment. When the nights overcome the days in length, and the heavy rains come, and with them the first big runs of winter steelhead enter their natal rivers and streams. The wait is over at long last. 

Totem 

The Sage X 8120 getting a workout on the Eel River.

An early run buck found my fly to his liking. I was fishing behind my buddy when it grabbed in water that he had already swung through. You just never can tell with these creatures. 

First encounter of the season. This fish entered his river during a period of abnormally high swells. You could hear them cracking as they broke off shore.  Both of his sides were covered in abrasions from the tumult, and yet despite this he ate a swung fly with reckless abandon not a quarter mile away from the ocean. 

Winter light

This is only the beginning. Currently every river up and down the coast is set to approach flood stage. Once they drop in it should be game on. 

Kings of fall

It had been a listless day. The kind that begins with great ambitions and is slowly whittled down to an afternoon malaise. A dusty old record of American folk music on the player. A kitchen sink full of dirty dishes. Chickens strutting aimlessly through the yard. The cold concrete floor of the garage where the fly tied up last night sits idle and lonely in the vice, patiently waiting for its day.

You check the graphs one more time to see what the rivers are doing. All are on the rise. You stare at radar images of the Pacific Ocean. The massive glob of green with yellows and reds at its center churning relentlessly to the south, bound north, lashing the coast with torrential rains and high wind and surf as it makes its way towards you. Another big storm is coming, and it brings a quiet smile as you sit in the afternoons silence of your living room. 

But the day is not spent, not yet. Grab the coat, a plastic bag, a knife, and out the door. The heavy rains of fall have done more than open up all the rivers to an unprecedented fishing season on the coast. The woods are alive with fungi. You go to a familiar place. A hill just outside of town, mostly comprised of second and third growth conifers. Above are hemlocks, sitkas and the occasional young redwood mixed in with the ubiquitous grove of alder. Below there are sword ferns, polypody ferns, huckleberry and salmonberry. Making your way up the hill you start to see mushrooms. Slippery Jacks mostly, false chanterelles, russulas. You go deeper into the forest, heading for a ridge you know to be good. The sky becomes a deep navy grey, and the woods grow dark. You pass downed trees come alive with colonies of mycelium. Witches hat, corals, and the incendiary glow of witches butter. The trees click and moan as the front approaches, but you pay less attention now to the outside world as you near the good ground. Your eyes focus on the hillside before you, and at first all is colored dun and rust, the somber palette of the forest floor. Then you start to see them. Bright like gold in the ever darkening woods. Chanterelles. Lots and lots of chanterelles. 

Witches Butter and moss

Chanterelles 

A good haul of chanterelles and oyster mushrooms. 

It started way back in October. An early fall storm had amassed off the coast and was projected to bring a deluge from the Olympic Peninsula to San Francisco. Enough to bring all rivers into play. To bring in the first throngs of fall run King Salmon. The scourge of the seemingly never ending drought which has plagued the entire west coast, always becoming the most acute in the fall, would be vanquished and out of mind for at least a week. A small window it seemed to do something that had before only existed as a hypothetical. To swing flies for kings. For fresh, dime bright, coastal leviathans. It was time to get busy behind the vice. Time to scrutinize old nail knots. Time to retie arbor and Albrights'. Time to reorganize sink tips and rig up the heavy stuff. These rituals had come early, but carried with them an added gravity. It was time to go fishing for kings. 

The Covich Squid. 

A box of minty king flies bound for the Smith River. 

The storm came and lashed the coast and made good on its promise to shit rain and turn all of the coastal rivers into brown torrents of water. It would be a long time before many would become fishable, but the Smith, as is true in winter, would be the first to come into play. The first day I saw it the river was still huge. I hardly recognized her. What is usually a beautiful bejeweled turquoise stain was a dirty grey slate. Neil met me around noon and we explored Mill Creek and he showed me where one of the largest known Coastal Redwoods live. We camped beside the river, next to the ashes of a dead woman who had loved the view from our camp site. Her family had come earlier in the day, and her widower shyly asked if it would be okay to scatter the ashes. We obliged, feeling awkward. How could you say no? We made a fire and got drunk on whiskey and laughed about our good fortune with the rains and talked about religion and women and the history of the world while we both stared into the diminishing fire. 

Morning came. We both arose before the dawn and suited up in the grey half light. The first boats had already started to appear up river as we stepped into the run. The water had dropped a foot or more since last evening. It felt fishy as all hell. Soon a boat had a take down and were hot to a fish. And then another was on a fish. They're in. We fished out the early morning without any action. Neil left to grab something from the camp and I took off my MOW tip and dark fly and replaced them with a straight chunk of T-14 and a bright fly. There was an older man who had come down from the park and was watching the boats and I as we fished. I made a shit cast, stripped in, made an adjustment and sent one. The reel burped as the running line came taught and the head and tip and fly turned over past the seam and I pulled up hard and abrupt on the rod to let the whole lot of it sink, dig into the Smith, and swing. The grab came right where you'd expect. In the transition water. On the inside.  A series of heavy thumps, the rod tip bucking violently with each tug. A Smith River king had just eaten my swung fly. My heart jumped. I looked at the man on the bank who was edging closer to me and making his camera ready. 

Looks like I'll finally get to see a fish.

Holy shit.

And that effigy was about all I could muster. The fish never moved. It sat in place in heavy water where it had eaten the fly and bucked and bucked and finally it was gone. I reeled in. There was the fly. It had just been in a salmons mouth and now I held it in my hand in disbelief. I looked at the hook incredulously and thought about a Thomas McGuane story about him burning a fly with a match. Neil came back and I told him my fish story. We fished there for the rest of the day. Kings would roll sporadically through out the day but neither of us touched one save for a Jack I caught soon after the first fish. The sawtoothed outline of the giant trees across the river from us veiled the sun and it seemed to be dark before we realized what time it was. 

Neil Mongrain sends out another cast to the far seam at Jed Smith. Early rains = fall kings on the Smith River

King rig: Beulah 8124 paired with a OPST commando head (475 grain) and a serious chunk of T material. Chartreuse puts em in the sluice. 

The focal point would continue to be the Smith for the next few weeks. What was at first an anomalous early fall rain event turned into a series of storms that constantly replenished the rivers. Since that first heavy rain during the middle of October no river subject to low flow closures has closed. Halloween came and went. The Cubs broke their curse at long last, and we fished for kings. Eventually there was a lull in the heavy weather. The Smith dropped down to 8ft and we turned our eyes to the smaller, more intimate setting of the short coastal rivers and streams that everyone whispers about but will never name.  

We fished several of these rivers. Between California and Oregon there are so many that some endure in complete obscurity save for the few salty locals who have fished them their entire lives. There was a day Neil and I fished a small creek and it seemed as if we had the entirety of that water to ourselves. We waded from run to run, always hoping to startle a big king from its shadowed keep. Hoping to see one dart up a tail-out throwing spray off its back. It was Neil who caught not one or two but four big adults fishing these small systems. It became common to hear him yell out from above or below me, and I would look over once again to see his 7wt Dually doubled over to the cork. His click pawl reel pleading for mercy. The light tackle never faltered. Not a single one of the four fish that were hooked got off. 

This hen ate the fly in the most uncanny of places. A high step in the head of a run with broken water both below and beneath, giving credence to the old adage "They are where you find them."

We fished on a day when a bad storm was making ready to sack the coast. You could see it sitting out there over the sea on the drive down to where we would fish this day. The horizon dark like a bruise. The parts of the sea being lit by sun appearing almost tropical in color by contrast. By the afternoon it was really starting to turn foul. The wind had begun to blow violently and the rain fell in white sheets. We suited up beside my pickup for one more go of it. There is a feeling amongst most fisherman that fishing through a storm can yield unbelievable results. I have experienced it several times. The ocean wasn't far from us and you could hear the surf crashing and I think we both thought silently to ourselves that if there ever was a time or a place to hook into a hot fish that this was it. Salmon were rolling in tide water. We were standing there in the abysmal weather making spey casts while waves moving up from the mouth surged past us and brought the downstream flow to an ebb.

We fished a run above. Small and choked up but deeper than you'd guess. Neil fished a chartreuse squid fly above me. The light was all but gone from the day and the storm seemed to be centered directly above us when Neil yelped and then yelled out. He had hooked a fish. A big fish. His rod had a bend in it that looked dire. His line was stretched taught directly out from him, not moving. You'd think he was snagged. Suddenly the fish made a burst upriver. A salmon jumped on the far bank. It jumped again. We hooted to each other. I squared away my rod on the bank and got ready for I don't know what. It felt like we were both holding our breath to see what would happen next. The big fish charged up to the very head of the run but wouldn't move beyond it. Slowly Neil turned it and we started side stepping our way down river. The water was dark and beginning to muddy up on the bank. The fish took its time, never making any fast or sudden runs. Neil could bring him half way in from the far bank to us but no further before the fish would lurch and turn and go right back to the deeper heavier water. We waded down and down with the fish. I made ready to tail it. Neil had fought him down the run for 60 yards or so. Both of us kept peeling glances over to look down river to where it braided and split around an island of shrubby willows. The end of the line. I kept on trying to get within reach of the fish, but it stayed out and away from the bank. Eventually I found myself waded half way out into the river hoping it would show itself. Looking for color. Meanwhile Neil is on the bank stooped over, knees bent and rod low and parallel to the beach. His rod looks like it could pop. He's clasping his click pawl for dear life. The fish and him are at a stand still and I can see he is getting exhausted. But it comes in more and more and finally I see an enormous bronze orb as it tires and turns on its side for the first time. It turns again. I come within a few feet of it before it dissolves back into the murk. Neil brings it in again. This is it. He brings the fish within reach and I plunge both hands in and grab it around its tail and as I do we both start laughing hysterically for the fish is truly huge. Much larger than either of us thought, and as I hold it in both of my hands and feel the mass of its body resting upon my arms I feel as if I am holding something as large as a child. We can't believe our eyes. It is unreal. We're both soaking wet, being pelted by rain in the crepuscule light of the late afternoon seeing something with our own eyes that is the embodiment of what it is to fish. To dream of fish, to always have hope for something that scarcely ever happens, seems impossible, unreachable. The big fish. The wild fish. The chrome fish. A king. 

A look of awe and amazement when this big chrome bright buck is finally brought to hand. 

Neil holding the prize. 7113 Dually and Orvis Battenkill in tow

We kept ourselves in good fishing. The rains kept coming offering free refills. We ate wild mushrooms and casually swung flies for chrome bright kings fresh in from the salt. I paid some hard dues. Least of them being right there on so many good days of fishing and coming up empty. The hardest pill having a very nice camera stolen from under my nose while fishing. You fish through bad luck, knowing that all it takes is one solid grab to turn everything right side up. I'm still waiting for another. If I learned anything after a solid month of King Salmon fishing it would be this: they're not like steelhead. They are, however, a lot like our coastal cutthroat. If you can decipher good holding water for cutthroat in a small creek and project that knowledge onto some of the smaller coastal systems you might find yourself surprised. I never put a lot of effort into stripping the fly in after a swing when I'm steelhead fishing, at least not after the first initial strips. For kings it seemed entirely different. Similar to fishing for cutthroat I had a lot of short strikes and takes on the strip. I had a king take on a stripped fly (a huge intruder style fly) and then wake away from it on the bank. I think I had a heart arrhythmia shortly thereafter. Short strikes and shallow takes were incredibly common. Normally I'd tell myself it was a cutthroat or a half-pounder or a smolt. Usually that is the case, when you're steelhead fishing. But when Neil kept on getting little taps and then set on one and produced a nice 12-15 pound fish I started thinking about every little hiccup differently. There were a lot of those mysterious dead stops when I would be swinging my fly through the juiciest part of the run. It was always subtle but unmistakable. The dull weight of something on the other end of the line. So many times I would wait for the eat, and then nothing. We were able to isolate certain characteristics of runs where fish would seem to stack up and would focus our attention strictly on very specific features. The kings seemed to prefer the top or head of a run, unlike most winter run steelhead who in my experience prefer tail outs and the guts of a run. We found them in sandy holes, a feature I would pass over 9 times out of 10 if I were looking for steelhead. They always seemed to be tight to structure. They would gravitate towards downed branches and wood in the water. Sometimes it seemed like the damned fish were in the structure rather than next to it. Finally, they ate chartreuse. I don't think I'll ever use a different color when it comes to kings fresh in from the salt. 

Neil with a beautiful specimen. 

So far its been a remarkable season. As I write this rain is falling, rattling on the metal vent of the roof and bringing all the rivers up once again. The runs of salmon are curtailing now, making way for the first vanguard of winter steelhead. Stay tuned...

Storms a comin'

At the end of his fall guide season on the Klamath, Neil Montgrain brings this trophy specimen to hand. This coastal cutthroat fell prey to a swung intruder style sculpin pattern. 

Meanwhile, the first big storm of the season is making ready to sack the Northcoast. These early fall storms are rare, and while most folks might dismay at such inclement weather, for those of us who love swinging flies for sea-runs a big storm like this is just shy of a miracle. 

All of our coastal rivers are primed for their first big rises and drops. Stay tuned...things should get interesting throughout the next few weeks. 

Summer run

Summer runs holding in a cold water refuge waiting for cooler nights and the first fall rains. Look closely for the rarest of rare creatures, an albino summer steelhead.