Early-Spring Steelhead – On The Water

I had been fishing from dawn to sundown for 3 days straight. My legs have been numb, and if the water weren’t so clear that I may look down and see them on the gravel backside of the river, I’d have informed you I didn’t have any ft. There was ice within the guides of my fly rod and icicles hanging from my nostril. The temperature had dropped and it was snowing. I used to be shivering and my fingers have been chilly, even in my wool gloves. The handwarmers had cooled off and have been now simply small, onerous beanbags taking on area in my pockets. I’d have been fairly depressing if I hadn’t had an enormous early-spring steelhead on the top of my line.

I had moved up and down the river the previous few hours, jockeying round different fishermen and attempting to get to a great place. Lastly, I acquired my probability within the deep, sluggish pool simply upstream of the bridge within the decrease fly-fishing part of New York’s Salmon River. My good friend Shreve was simply throughout the river in a spot the place we had seen fish caught the day earlier than, although in those self same three days of onerous fishing, we had not had a single hit. I had cycled by way of completely different ways and flies and now, on the finish of the journey, reverted again to the previous standby, a black Wooly Bugger, thrown into the present and adopted by way of the drift on a semi-tight line. A number of casts later, partway by way of the drift, my line simply stopped. On the danger of sounding cliché, it felt like I used to be caught on the underside. Nonetheless, when the tail of a steelhead the scale of a small broom waved by way of the slick water on the floor of the pool, I knew that wasn’t the case.