I recently moved from the NWT, and had never thought much about steelhead before; mainly becasue I have never lived anywhere there were opportunities to fish them. However, now living in the big city, it is hard not to hear or read about steelhead when talking about fishing in the lower mainland. After hearing so much about these elusive fish over the past few months, and now that it is reading week, I finally had some time to try it out for myself. My buddy and I hit the river at about 9 a.m. and fished plenty of nice pools and runs we were sure would be holding fish. After 4 hours of fishing with nothing being produced we were getting a little discouraged. How could this perfect looking water not be producing any fish? That was our steelhead ignorance talking as neither of us had done it before. These fish are truly much harder to catch than I thought they would be.
Then around 2 p.m. I approached another pool that I thought looked great. This time I was determined to stay for a while and chuck my entire arsenel in this run. Before we left for the river we were told to try a few casts of several items at each spot and then move on, if the steelhead are there, they would hammer it. At this spot however I was in for the long haul. About a dozen casts each of gooey-bobs, bubblegum worms, blades and spawn sacs still produced nothing. I decided to tie on something a little different (had not tried it yet that day) because after trying everything else I thought it could not hurt. First cast with the new set up and BAM, float goes under and fish on. One of the most exciting fishing moments of my life. I will let the pics do the talking.
I truly consider myself lucky as this was much harder than I expected and much more patience was needed than I anticipated. For those reasons I have the upmost respect for steelhead fisherman. After trying it once, I realize I am in desperate need of much more steelhead fishing practice, if I ever want to catch one again. I don't plan on catching one again anytime soon, but I can't wait to be back on the river.
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Topic: First Ever Steelhead - Vedder River (Read 8464 times)