Fascination of What's Difficult

Flys4b8 Mike doesn't shock easily, but I think I surprised him by suggesting that, if the steelhead fishing were slow, I might drive on over to a certain not-too-far trout stream for the day.

"What!? You loser! With that kind of attitude, you're going to be a steelhead virgin forever! Buck up and put your game face on, boy! If it were easy to get one, it wouldn't be the premier game fish!"

And so on. If Mike's mouth were a verbal river, it would be rising and coloring!. Egad! To consider taking one day out of a three-day trip to cast flies to some lowly resident rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) instead of the rare, noble migratory steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) . . . unthinkable! Outrageous!

But actually, Mike is comparatively mellow about it. Some of his steelheading brethren are really just tiresome snobs, dour old drudges who spend far too much time weaving around steelhead fishing an elaborate (though dull) mythology or minor religion, whose first commandment is this: steelheading is better because it is more difficult.

Difficulty! What's it worth, compared with the aesthetics of casting a fly line, and the joy of having a pull on the other end? I have long thought that many fly fishers suffer from the Fascination of What's Difficult. Replace that second stanza, and you've got my response to the steelhead mantra:

My curse on fish
That strike once in 200 drifts,
On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
Floating down the river in a guided drift boat.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I'll find the valve on the Lewiston Dam and pull out the bolt.

Within the past several years there have been a couple of California steelhead seasons when the numbers of fish migrating into the system went off the charts, and the fishing went off the hook. For a while, any dolt could get a steelhead. I went to the river early in one of those seasons and drifted a canyon section with a buddy in our inflatable boats. We hooked a total of four fish -- which is really good for an early season day of steelheading -- and I think you can guess who unbuttoned and then snapped off, respectively, each of his two fish. How else would I still be talking to you now as a "steelhead virgin?"

So no, this year does not seem to be shaping up as one of those great years, and no, nobody landed a steelhead on our wintry three-day weekend trip. Mike H. got a really nice brown, and Mike W. had a good steelie on the line for a while, and I did worst of all, snapping off one big fish on the first and second days each.


I got to see the first steelhead, and it was a giant. I went home thinking, "how the hell am I supposed to land that blimp on 4x tippet?" The next morning I went out with 3x tippet, got a strike on one of my first drifts, and watched the fish rip across the current going 75 mph until he ripped the tippet as well. I think he got me in a snag, but the Mikes seemed to think I put too much pressure on him. Again, I have to say: "how am I supposed to fight the damn fish -- by tickling it with a feather?" I was left muttering and daydreaming about dragging in striped bass on 25# tippet -- private thoughts that would undoubtedly scandalize any true steelheader.

In happier news, I can report that the fish-to-fun ratio was still positive, despite that dismal catching record. I put on my game face in the end, getting up at first light on perhaps the coldest day of the year and heading out to fish for steelhead. We tramped through a frosty landscape covered with snow and rime and stood in a frigid stream until our extremities barely functioned, for a morning's total of several six-inch smolts and one 11-12 inch brown. The brown ended up being the biggest fish I touched in the whole three days. But so what? This cold, this adversity -- this difficulty! -- this is steelhead fishing!!! As long as a high fever and pneumonia do not develop in the next few days, I'm sure it will be a treasured memory.


General enjoyment was greatly enhanced by a nice cabin with a woodstove and a full-featured kitchen from which gourmet-ish food and drink issued fairly continuously: good cheese, fine wine, Belgian beer, smoked pork ribs, fancy frittatas for breakfast, unagi and takuan, Laphroig scotch whisky, and so on. Without a place to dry off and warm up, we all probably would have died of hypothermia with 7wt rods (with ice in the guides) clutched tightly in our frostbitten hands, becoming true top-tier steelheading sufferers in our last moments. Or maybe, in a minor technicality, steelheaders are permitted unlimited enjoyment whenever they are off the river, I'm not sure.


For a moment dropping all species of attitudes, I have to confess that I got a little bit of the steelhead bug this weekend. Maybe I'll have to go out when river is colored and I can use bigger tippet, or maybe I need to wait for another one of those idiot-proof seasons, but I will keep trying off and on. You'll never see me drinking the real steelhead kool aid; I will keep heaping my plate with low-end grub like chum salmon, triggerfish, and plain-old resident onchorynchus mykiss; but the steelies aren't completely free of my little stinger quite yet. Meanwhile, I apologize to the two fish who are up there shaking my rusting hooks out of their mouths.