First Trip Winter Steelheading

I have done alot of fishing in my years, in alot of different places chasing alot of different fish....But there are two things that i had not done before that i did this weekend...And the funny thing is that i only had to drive about 2.5hrs to do it......

#1 Believe it or not I have never casted a fly line west of the cascades. Its crazy, beautiful water such as the santiams,the mckenzie,the coastal rivers etc....never done it.

#2 I have never winter steelheaded before....Steelheading is a relatively new pursuit for me. And i must admit that its quickly becoming an addiction. Its a long wait till the eastside summer steelhead start arriving so i accepted an invitation from a few friends to fish some coastal streams for these mythical creatures.....

I will start by saying that i am not going to say where i was fishing...names will not be mentioned less extreme violence be brought upon me by my hosts....What i will say is that we fished two bodies of water, one a well known popular coastal steelhead river. The other a lessor known smaller stream.....

Tactics for the weekend was nymphing....specifically nymphing egg patterns. Lets all be honest here. This is not the most exciting way to catch a steelhead. However it is extremely effective and when you are new to the game you roll with what works. Especially when the guys your fishing with catch more winters a year then should be legal.

Frankly it was a tough weekend of catching fish. Flows and clarity are a big part of winter steelheading. And although not perfect both were in our favor this weekend. The fishing enviroment is different also....The rivers/streams are loaded with great steelhead water. They are also loaded with lots of big rocks,log jams, branches and all kinds of fly gobbling structure to get hung up....And this doesn't count the ever present overhanging trees....Needless to say i caught alot of rocks, and tons of branches and no steelhead.....

The weekend was not a total skunking though as 3 steelhead were landed for the weekend, not exactly a hot weekend but not a total bust either....I will say that i had a great weekend of fishing and a great weekend of visiting friends and will be back to the valley at least once before the season wanes and central oregon stillwater fishing starts in earnest in march....