High Sierra Trout
Steelhead Journey
Sunday morning Matt, Rich and I left Reno at 2 a.m. on an epic journey to the Trinity River in Northern California in a rented Suburban in the middle of the biggest snow storm in years. Dangerous? Maybe. Stupid? Probably. We ignored the worries of friends and family and the warnings of TV newscasters and took off to slowly make our way across N. CA on snowy two-lane highways through the middle of the night. The Suburban performed beautifully on the semi-plowed roads as we forged through the falling snow. The snow stopped about 30 miles east of Redding, and the roads were clear from there to the river. We got to our chosen spot at around 7:30 and rigged up in the cold, misty forest next to the river. Fresh snow coated everything and the scene was quite beautiful. We hiked upriver about a mile before we started fishing, and the exercise provided some much needed warmth. The fishing was slow for the first few hours, none of us hooked anything and we were beginning to wonder if we had made a big mistake coming all the way out here. The river was running a little high and off color from the previous days’ rains, and we thought that maybe it had slowed the bite. Shortly before 11 a.m. a fish broke water in the pool below the run we were fishing, so I waded down there and got into position to cast to him. He showed himself again as I stripped line from the reel with shaking hands. I had never caught a steelhead before and I was very excited at the prospect of landing my first one. I made the 30 ft cast to the seam where the fish had shown himself and held my breath as my nymph rig drifted through the zone. Nothing. I cast again, this time the fish hammered my yellow rubber-legged Jumbo John, leapt out of the water and took off downstream. After a nice fight I beached my first steelhead (pictured below).
My first steelhead
It was a pretty small one, but it put up a great fight and I was very happy with my catch. Not long after that Rich and Matt both caught their first fish of the day, also on Jumbo Johns. By the end of the day we had landed 8 fish between us, a very respectable outing.
We spent the night in a ratty motel room on highway 299 that had a weak heater and lots of drafts; a bad combination. We slept in a little bit, and didn’t get to the river until around 10. It was much warmer and sunnier and we were expecting great fishing. We hiked upstream and started fishing at the same place as Sunday, and just like Sunday we had no action until we reached the pool where two channels converged. I was the first to hook up, with a nice wild fish that fought long and hard (pictured below).
Spunky wild fish
After releasing that fish I cast out to the same drift and hooked another one that got off after a brief fight. Two casts later I was into another fish, three hookups in four casts! This one I landed after a nice leaping battle (pictured below).
Nice one
Soon after Matt hooked into a strong fish in the run upstream (pictured below).
Nice fish Matt
The day ended with a beautiful bald eagle cruising overhead as we walked back to the car. We ended up with 16 fish landed between us in two days and a few more hooked and lost. None of them were very big, but they all put up great fights. I hooked one large fish in the thirty inch range that quickly broke me off. I will post some more pictures when I get them from Matt, as well as two videos of double hookups as soon as I can figure that out.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
