A few years ago he convinced me to invest some time and money in expensive, plated brass and thus my introduction to the BC Steele spoon was born.
I at first was very skeptical about steelhead grabbing a large slab of far too flashy metal.
I ordered the spoons to the tune of nearly $100 for 20 pieces (without hooks or split rings).
My first frustration was getting the damn split rings sprung on to the spoons without spreading 'em... On the water, I was unsure what the perfect drift looked or felt like. I knew it wasn't the right drift when I rolled along the bottom and caught a rock or some snagger's 12-15 ft. dead-line leader and had to break off and lose my spoon to Davy Jone's locker...
That first mission was expensive and fishless.
My second time out, I think I started to understand and feel the klippity-klop, flutter, wobble, whomp... that Ray spoke of.
My third time out I actually hooked and landed a respectable fish and Ray's words of wisdom echoed through my mind... "Just stick with it and you'll start hooking up." "Pretty soon the spoon will be your GO-TO method and you'll be wondering why you didn't start using them years ago..."
I can honestly say that in the past few seasons I've hooked more steelies on spoons than on any other method and that nearly all of my larger, chrome-plated fish have succumbed to the BC Steele silver, gold or copper 2/5 or 1/4 oz spoon.
Thanks Ray and Thanks Sarah and Bobby Killingsworth at Pen-Tac.
This year, I caught spoon fish early on. The months of October, November, and December each produced at least one fat upriver bright steelie by way of the STEELE.
But January was a tough month. Whatever fish had been holding downriver or slowly pushing their way upriver... suddenly seemed non-existent.
In the skinny waters near the hatchery, hardware has been a tough go. The water is low and clear. Most of the fish that far along the system have been flogged by flies, pummeled with plugs, bombarded by liners and snaggers and are in fear for their lives so are reticent not ravenous. The drift up there has changed significantly not only due to the low flows but also because of the restructuring of the riverbed in order to create the spawning riffle further up river.
Add to that... an exponential decrease in the numbers of steelhead and increase in the numbers of those pursuing them and the odds are long for having a multi-fish day on hardware or bottom-bounced roe.
The runs which were so good to me 2 and 3 and 4 months ago are now strewn with dead line and sunk sinkers deposited by the many anglers (if you can call them that...) who just can't get away from the long leader and big chunks of molded lead... To get a drift with even a split shot is a major challenge.
What does one do? Certainly not give up...
For almost as long as Ray had told me to drift spoons, he'd also belabored the merits of float fishing. Two season ago he gave me one of his high-dollar, fancy-schmancy Drennan Loafer floats. I may have rigged it up a time or two as I had done with other, various store-bought versions: Thill, Eagle Claw, etc...
I always had issues either with the casting/tangling or the rigging/weighting or with the drifting/visibility factor.
One day last week, I pulled the silly little transparent pendulum with the bright orange tip out of my bag of tricks. Amazingly... after 2 years of careless storage... I still had it and it still floated. I rigged it up and decided that come hell or high water (actually more like hell and low water...) I WOULD STICK WITH IT!
Again, reflecting on Ray's advice... he was 101% RIGHT!
I hooked my first float fish in 2 feet of water under blue-bird bright day conditions!
I've been committed to the float ever since and in 3 outings, have banked close to a dozen steelhead.
I'm still tweaking and tuning... figuring out the perfect weight balance, split-shot sizing and spacing, leader length, and most optimal travel lanes for the float. I have much to learn but I'm well on my way and above all... I now have confidence in something that before only frustrated me. Thanks again Ray for your opening my eyes to the path of least resistance, the bright, orange tip of a Drennan float and the ultimate rush of BOBBER DOWN!!
In my many days on the river I've seen how terribly these poor fish are treated by many... Dragging fish up on rocks, holding fish in sandy, muddy water with fingers near gills, pulling fish out of water to take photos and then handing them off (after dropping the poor creatures on the rocks) to their friend so he can also have a 'glory-shot' holding the fish. Finally, they carelessly release the fish back to the water backwards and upside-down... In fact, one guy actually KICKED his escaping steelhead up out of the water and on to the bank so he could get a photo of it and then release it!
Alas, I have made it a point to NOT REMOVE any fish from the water unless I intend to kill and eat it. I have had many fish swim away as I got my Nikon geared up but that's okay.
Here's some photos of a few cooperative fish who didn't mind posing before being gently up-righted and sent back to their aqueous environs.
PS: YES, some of the fish were photographed more than once. I think there's 6 unique fish shown. Of particular, ironic interest is the 3-4# hen with some FLY-GUY'S bead-head "Prince Nymph" embedded in her side while THE GEAR-GUY'S (that would be ME) #6 hook with roe skein is just slightly impaling the tip and corner of her upper palate. Proof yet again that conventional (bait and gear guy...) steelheaders are much easier on the fish than MANY fly-slingers...
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