Spent most of the day fishing between the willows above the pipe and the willows below it.
I watched the fly-liners come and go and cringed as they sight-fished and lined steelhead.
I lived and died by the bait, fishing roe under a float for nearly the entire day. The fish just didn't want to eat.
The fact that fly-guys hooked many fish and the roe hooked none, was a clear confirmation of my suspicions that it was the 9 ft. of dangling leader and two hooks (flies/beads) below an indicator... that led to their success (if you wish to call it that) and not the fishes' preference for plastic over real eggs...
Old man Bruno came down and fished for a couple of hours and a couple of hookups that failed to bring fish to feet...
As more people showed up for the afternoon 'bite'... I decided to abandon the crowd and find some solitude below the last of the hovering anglers.
I probably wouldn't hook a steelhead but at least I wouldn't see anything that would make me want to kill someone...
I got back to basics, ditching the float for a simple bottom-bouncing rig (split shot, a tiny piece of lead, a #8 hook and a chunk of worm).
The crawler got railed on my second drift.
Ted came down to give me the poacher report and firm up our plan to remove the wing dam built by wing nuts over at the 'crack-pipe'.
As he approached, I was tugging on a cute, pudgy little resident rainbow.
She had eggs and would have made a fine meal but I would have shamed Ted and myself carrying the little thing out dead so I let her go and tried for a bigger model.
It wasn't to be and with a little light left in the sky, I packed it up and headed out.
We had fun destroying the break water and a couple of feisty adult steelhead swam up the falls to say thanks.
The whole time I was imagining a game warden coming down and citing US for tampering with the streambed and molesting the fish. Ironic shit like that happens to all the wrong guys sometimes.
We left unscathed and fish-less to pay Starbucks an unreasonable amount of money for a cup of coffee while Ted tried talking me into a trip to 'The Albatross' (Thunder Valley Casino).
Times are tough...
No water in the river and very few fish worth talking about. There's two new spawning gravel restoration areas on the river and no wardens to police them and keep snaggers out of and off 'em.
No money in the casinos and very few machines worth talking about. There's a new multi-million dollar hotel on the property and no money in the bank to hire and pay the union labor wages enough to complete it.
Fishing on the AR for steelhead is a lot like gambling at 'Blunder Valley'.
I need a new day job.
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