Did some prospecting on a new California coastal Steelhead river and timed it perfectly. Talk about HOT Winter Steelhead! Check it out…

After days of battling crappy conditions and bad weather with Dave & Brandon, Jeff showed-up just in time to cash-in on the paid dues. It was his first winter steelhead trip – and he couldn’t have timed it better…

Dropped Dave off at SeaTac and headed back out to the Olympic Peninsula with Brandon. More crappy weather and more bright steelhead. And it only gets better…

Dave & I hit the road for the Olympic Peninsula and its BIG winter steelhead. It was his first time going up there with me and it’s a trip I don’t think he’ll be forgetting soon. Did we catch fish? Find out….

Man I love this time of year in Northern California. With Stripers in the Delta and Fall-run Steelhead in the rivers, it could make for a tough decision – for some. But when the conditions are right, I’ll make the longer steelhead drive every time. So Jeff & I packed up the pontoon boats and headed North…

After a family reunion in Medford, Brandon & I headed across the border for a quick trip to check-in on my favorite Northern California Fall Steelhead river. Check out the short video of a hot halfpounder putting the heat on Brandon’s Bougle…

Rain, snow, hail, rain, sleet, ice pellets, more rain, and more snow… …rinse and repeat every 30 minutes. Toss in a 20 minute break every other hour or so and that was pretty much the weather pattern. The river held though, and with a warm jacket, dry socks, gloves, and steelhead-green-water – the fishing was [...]

Jeff’s broken spey rod had been repaired and returned and he was ready for Steelhead Trip number two… We followed the same casual departure plan as last month, except this time we took a slightly different route, taking I5 & following the Trinity down for a change of scenery. The I5 stretch went quickly as [...]

All I could think of the last few weeks was Bear Run and the big bright steelhead that must be working their way through it. When an opportunity came, and the urge could no longer be held back, I hit the road. I’d timed my departure from the Bay Area perfectly, putting me in the [...]

We didn’t kill ourselves getting out of the Bay Area by any means and rolled into Eureka sometime around noon. We made a leisurely stop at the fly shop where Jeff cleaned out a few fly bins, then we hit the drive-thru for some healthy “road food”, topped the gas tank off, picked up some [...]

For the last 7 years the river has been out of shape through December and into January. The fish are there, but fishing for them is typically impossible with high flows and muddy water. I’d been keeping an eye on the conditions since October and was well aware that there was a really good possibility [...]

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 [...]

After too long of a break the opportunity finally presented itself to take my smallest spey rod out to search for some early return California 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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 that the planned [...]

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 book, Found in a River

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 [...]