Winter Steelhead Camp 2018!

I am all about traditions. I tend to do the same trips every year. The exact locations and dates tend to vary, but the spirit remains....

I am all about traditions. I tend to do the same trips every year. The exact locations and dates tend to vary, but the spirit remains. The first trip of the year is usually Winter Steelhead Camp. Sometime between January and March, I take a few days off work and explore some Pacific Northwest coastal rivers looking for fresh chrome. Everyone is welcome, and there are usually several friends that come out for a day or two. I'm going on year 15 of this trip, minus those three years that I was living in Idaho and couldn't make physically it out of the valley dues to winter in the Rockies...

There were several years of misery. Camping on the Olympic Peninsula through torrential rain storms. There was the time that I woke up in the morning at Oxbow on the Hoh River, unzipped the tent and a wave of mud engulfed the inside of my tent. It had rained so much that my camp site had turned to a mud pit; my tent and I had sank about 6 inches into a soup of brown mud.

Enjoying a rainy lunch on a coastal river.

There were two trips were there was no fishing. Steelhead love to move in when the water is high, and it rains a lot on the coast, and re-scheduling days off is not easy if everything blows out. I sat in a hostel and played cards one year and took the ferry to Victoria, BC another time to play tourist during a "Pineapple Express" One year, I drove all the way to Orofino, Idaho to beat up on old summer run steelhead because the 1/2 mile of water below the dam was the only thing in the Northwest that wasn't completely blown out.

A few years back, I decided that Airbnb was much more reasonable than a tent, in the winter, on the Pacific coast. There are certain things about getting older that aren't too shabby. Going from tents to rental condos in the winter is one of those things.

Our arrival at the coast this year was marked by rivers peaking at various stages of high water, some nearing flood stage. Several days of heavy rain had forced us to change plans and move our operation south from the flooding rivers that we had been talking about fishing for a month or more. This decision allowed us to access to a couple of great rivers, but they were still much higher than ideal for fly fishing. You take what you can get.

Scotch and a jigsaw puzzle... perfect

My first day of "steelhead camp" found me rolling solo from the road. It was very difficult to even locate a spot to get into the water safely. The few spots that I knew about led me to water that was far too high and fast to fish. I managed to poorly swing a couple of "C+" spots before finding a taco truck, my Airbnb, and a glass of scotch after too many hours in my pickup.

I met up with a good friend from my Idaho guide days who fishes out there quite a bit. While I thought the water was too high for a float, Chris was convinced that we were golden. Upon sliding my raft down to the river, we saw a couple of guys bouncing eggs from a drift boat hook up on a nice steelhead right in front of us. Chris and I recalled that out in Idaho, we'd call that a "Hollywood" move, but neither of us were sure if they did that on the coast.

Everything looked fishy that day. Stuff that wasn't fishy looked the part, and we swung everything. It didn't matter how hard we fished. We couldn't get anything to move.

Gray and wet, it must be winter steelheading on the coast

Ben met up with us about halfway down the float. The timing could not have been better. He called us and we found out that he was exactly one turn down the river, having just pulled over to look at the river and use the "restroom". So we picked him up and continued our journey.

The second half of the float was no more productive than the first, but the river had turned from a nice canyon mountain stream to a lowland, pasture-laden silty river within a couple of miles. Crazy how that happens!

Day three was destined to be more productive. Ben and I decided to float on a different river from the previous choice. While we both know that getting up at 4:30 may improve your shot at catching a nice one, we both have learned that the "Country Club Start" fits our style much better. I don't find it to be worth it to be dead tired all day in order to maybe be the first one in a spot. It's another thing about getting older that ain't so bad; letting the younger crowd get the early start. So we got up at a reasonable hour and rolled to the river when we were darn good and ready. Country Club Start...

Well it finally happened. Near the end of the day. One of those fish that is just there. No need for a big hook set, no head shakes. Just a hard grab, then it's on. She didn't run much, but she pulled hard. Unfortunately, our camera was not immediately ready. It was raining hard, so we hadn't set it up. We had pretty much filmed everything before that spot. I saw that we would have to keep her on the line longer than was necessary if we were going to get a good picture, so I released the fish quickly and safely without beaching or netting her. A nice steelhead, and my first winter fish of the season.

There should be one right THERE!

We truly had high hopes for the next day. The water was absolutely perfect, and Nikolai had come out to join us. We floated the same section because it had produced the day before and was in great shape. Given our country club start on a Friday, we knew that we would likely not get first water anywhere, even on this fairly obscure section of river. It is not a very popular or well known river. But we still saw four boats in front of us... But they were all parked in the first 3 spots below the ramp, so we jumped out in front of them and didn't see another boat all day.

That didn't help much. We fished HARD on every piece of possible water. Three rods this time. Nikolai brought his "A game" and we worked that river over twice. Since we jumped in front of everyone and skipped the first three runs, we opted to take out early and then go do the upper half of the float again and hit all the stuff we saw the other anglers in earlier. That didn't matter. It just wasn't going to happen.

We fished the next day as well. Conditions were getting really clear, but there wasn't much traffic on the river. We put another three rods on great water and came up with nothing, again. Dejected... I really wanted Ben to catch a nice winter steelhead. He is trying so hard. He got first crack at every run and we just couldn't do it. Fishing was poor. We couldn't find anyone else that had landed a steelhead that day, and had heard of few others that were caught during that week.

So winter steelhead camp 2018 was not terribly productive, but it was fun nonetheless. We got to cast some awesome rods, fished some great water and had a great time. That is pretty much on par for s winter steelhead camp. If I wanted to actually catch fish, we could go trout fishing...