After fishing a couple of seasons with Jose Silva I’ve learned quite a few things. Aside from new angles on holding water, fish behavior, tidal influence, and an ancient recipe used by the Peruvians to prepare a fine carp for the dinner table, the one thing that’s been drilled home time and time again, through experience, is this: Out-fishing the guy is simply impossible.

…continue reading Steelhead in the Surf

It is a long and sometimes painful search, and sometimes it goes on in vain until there is no chance in finding a fish in the river. It is a succession of long and fruitless hours spent in the rhythmic motions of cast and retrieve…

The reward for all this effort sometimes never comes, because steelhead fishing with a fly is difficult indeed. But when and if it comes, it is dramatic and sudden…continue reading Steelhead, November 2007

After too long of a break the opportunity finally presented itself to take my smallest spey rod out to search for some early return summer/fall run steelhead on my ‘Tamanawis’. I had one day and 2 halves to revisit some runs from the past, search out a few new ones, and with some luck, hopefully find a steelhead. Much to my suprise, I found two! …continue reading Steelhead, October 2007

Dave made a long weekend out of the 4th of July holiday and took a sight seeing trip up to my home state to see some country he’d never been to. Though fishing was not the purpose of the trip, he did manage to get in a day and a half with a guide to swing a fly through some beautiful water, and guess what? He nailed one!

…continue reading Steelhead, July 2007

It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting here at the airport gazing out the window as I wait to board my return flight home. A temporary break through the low, grey ceiling is revealing a brief glimpse of the eastern slope of a magnificent mountain range lit up in the late morning’s sun. My previous 3 days were spent on the opposite slope of those impressive peaks picking through limited fishable water in search of the North West’s finest… Native Winter Steelhead. …continue reading Steelhead, March 2007

The Pacific North West had it’s fair share of wet weather recently causing record flooding in the North West. When I got the email from Brandon a few days before our trip stating that the river we’d hoped to hit on the way was 10 feet above flood stage it was clear …continue reading Steelhead, November 2006

Dave returns from his annual Atlantic Salmon trip to the Gaspe Penninsula with reason to smile!
…continue reading Atlantic Salmon, July 2006

Rampaging, crashing, silent, sparkling Impatient, benevolent, by turns. Treacherous or teasing Inviting, gentle, giving - then a crashing torrent of vengeance. Never apologizing. Never explaining. Jeff Bright’s Found in a River

…continue reading Steelhead, March 2006

Trey Combs, in his book Steelhead Fly Fishing, mentions a game John Farrar introduced him to. “The rules are simple. If you had money and time in equal abundance, and could pick one different river each month, anywhere in the world, to provide the very best fishing for Salmo and Oncorhynchus in its most glamorous sea-run forms, Atlantic salmon, sea trout, steelhead, and sea-run cutthroat, what would be your twelve choices?

The rivers of Norway, Scotland, Canada, and the United States get the imagination rolling. Including Argentina, with its opposite seasons, puts a nice spin on the game. Given these deceptively simple parameters, I hold that only one river stands singly and unassailably for a given month. This is the river, the month is November, and the fish, of course, is the steelhead. Ragging debates attend nearly every other choice”.

…continue reading Steelhead, November 2005