Dressed for warmth and comfort, I set out to hike and wade 6 miles of river. I was traveling light... packing only a Shimano CU300DSV reel spooled with 10# Maxima UG and strapped to a 9'6" GL3 casting rod.
My only terminal gear was a box of spoons and swivels.
I find that spoon fishing is most effective when covering LOTS of water.
I got to the first hole. At 900 CFS, holes are few and far between... This was a soft water pocket formed by a bend in the river 75 yards directly across from where I stood in a long slot of mild rapids with a depth of 4-12 ft. The opposite shore adjacent to the triangular patch of soft, holding water was flanked by willows and alder trees.
I most likely had thrown 'the first string' in this stretch of river. I never like to forgo options and throw long before I throw short... I knew I was saving the best water for last when I pitched my gold BCS 2/5 oz. spoon straight out mid-river. The drift was a bit on the fast side even with mending and feeding line. I switched to a Riverfisher spoon which in faster or deeper water often gives a better feel because of its thicker edges and fatter bottom than the Pen-Tac models... Still no dice. I tried throwing upriver and high sticking. I switched to a 1/2 oz. Stee-Lee spoon in orange and brass and put a little more heat to my retrieves. There was either nobody home or I just wasn't showing the fish what they needed to see.
Time to try the ace in the hole. I put the gold 2/5 oz back on and threw slightly upriver and in to the middle of the soft water pocket all the way across the river. The spoon hit the water. I counted to 3 and as I engaged the gears of the reel and started to raise my rod tip to throw a mend, a chrome-plated beast of a hen surged out of the water. I wound as fast as I could and it was enough to feel my rod start to load. My line was directly out in front of me when the fish, now very pissed off... shot out of the water beneath the overhanging willows and towards current... She threw 2 violent head shakes at me and left my spoon slack lined.
I'm not a fan of spectra line though I'm pretty sure the "Power-Pro advantage" would have resulted in a landed instead of lost fish...
I still go back and forth between casting gear and spinning gear, light line and heavy line. On this mission I opted for casting gear and 10# Ultragreen. I'm not a rod tip nor line watcher. My eyes aren't that sharp and I'm a tactile kind of guy so I almost always prefer to FEEL what my spoon is doing in the water.
In most cases, this works just fine. But in this case I had three real disadvantages to the 'feel approach'. I threw upriver in to relatively-slow water. I had 75 yards of line out. I got picked up on the drop. Even though I've hooked, lost and landed some quality steelhead since that one... I still play the tapes over in my head about what I could or should have done differently on THAT fish: use braid; fish it from the other side; move upstream 20 yards and cast/swing down with a heavier spoon through the same water; wade out to mid river with the same spoon and do everything the same but be READY...
I worked the hole and all the water around it for the next 1/2 hour and never got tocuhed nor saw any signs of steelhead life.
Three guys in a drift boat showed up and asked me if I'd done any good... then proceeded to drop their anchor 20 yards up from where I'd hooked/not hooked that magnificent hen.
"You gotta' be fucking kidding RIGHT?" "You're gunna' drop in on top of the run I'm fishing?" was my question to which I already knew the answer...
"Aw man, we can't pass THIS up." he uttered as he grinned.
I guess I could have just hucked a rock at 'em but instead I took the higher road and said, "You could if you had any common courtesy and decency about ya' but do what you gotta' do." and I continued to fish as if they weren't there. They left. I left.
I continued up river and met a fly guy who'd claimed he'd not not fished since October. He was respectful and fairly friendly so I told him about my close encounter with an upriver bright and pointed the way to the spot. He said something about working at Kiene's.
I spent the next several hours wading, scouting, scouring and fishing every seam, pocket, hole, run, and tailout I could find. I saw one dark salmon and had a bump or two on this spoon or that but my rod never got bent.
The trip was a good one for me though. I learned a lot as I always do when I fish new water. I found a few runs and deep holes which I know will hold quality fish when we finally get some numbers...
I'll have to make the same trek with roe, plastic worms and jigs to see if the fish were absent or just sluggish and shy.
This has been a strange steelhead year on the AR. The river flows and temperatures have been consistently lower than I've ever witnessed.
I think the majority of the hatchery run has yet to come up but that there are more fish in the system than people believe. It's time to wake those fish up and give them a reason to move and eat.
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