The End of the Drift Aint Always the End of the Drift

How many times have you heard...

"MAN! That thing bit right next to the bank!!"

or

"Those fish are closer than you think..."

or

"I was reeling up and I got SLAMMED!"

or in the 'fly-guys' world... "It often pays to let your fly sit for a second or two after it completes its swing as fish will often grab it on the hang-down..."

We are a culture, a society, a people of ACTION, of DOING, of TRYING of EXERTION to exhaustion. Much is good, more is more BETTER. The harder you work, the luckier you get...

This inevitably translates to our world of fishing. I am 101% guilty of the hardcore approach to fishing. To me the hunt is anything but leisurely or passive. I don't fish to relax, reminisce, remedy my ills or recreate my auric essence (though I'm sure those benefits are often a byproduct...) I fish to CATCH FISH! and I'll hike 10 miles, drive 1,000 and trade an empty wallet, dehydration, exhaustion, hunger, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, and mental fatigue for a good time on a river somewhere.

Further, as a semi-hopeless product of my environment... I do at least somewhat buy in to the fact that the more water I cover, the farther I cast and the faster I reel up to make the next drift... the greater my odds are of getting my rod bent.

I went out to the river not far from my home one day in March. I had just come off a trip to the Russian River where my friend Vic, a long-time steelheader extraordinaire, had opened my mind up to a few things about the likes of winter steelhead.

He had generously sent me on my way with some of his "the redder, the bedder" steelhead candy.

The day was one of those freeze-frame days with billowing clouds and soft light that makes your surroundings seem like some place out of an old oil painting. Perfect weather and even more perfect lighting.

I took some panoramic shots before setting up to fish.




I'd gotten a late start and only had a couple of hours to try and make something happen.

The water was up a bit and I figured I'd be able to locate some smaller spring fish if not some winter downers.

I used spoons, goofy worms, real worms and couldn't get a bite to save me. The only thing I hadn't tried was one of several smatterings of red roe I'd laid out on paper towels in a small, Tupperware container buried in the lower-right pocket of my worn-out fishing vest.

I re-rigged and found a suitable corkie to keep my eggs out of the clay, mud and gravel.

Many casts later, I was convinced that there wasn't a steelhead nor even a smolt within miles of me. I casted farther and reeled and dropped to give the bait and the bob more action. I worked the far shore, the seams, the rapids and runs, the flats above and the tailouts below but always came up with an unchanged wad of bait... same size, same shape, same color.

I started to feel a bit burned out, almost nauseous. Still, I cast and I drifted down to where surely any self-respecting steelhead would be absolutely honored to hold...

The sun was just sinking towards the horizon. My back was killing me and time was running short. I wasn't dreading the thought of a fish-less trip at all but I WAS dreading that I had only been here for an hour and a half and that soon I would have to leave.

I reached in to my wader pouch for a smoke. Thoughts of, "AGGHHH, I should have stayed home instead of driving and walking all this way for 2 short hours of fishing! I grabbed my lighter and put flame to the Marlboro clenched in the corner of my mouth and as I struck the flint wheel and depressed the butane button, I felt my Loomis shaking between my legs.

WTF?

It shook again and this time, the vibrations registered in my knuckle-head. NO W@Y! I got a F-I-S-H!

Shit, Howdy! Expect it when you least expect it. My line had finished its swing through the sweet spot about the time I fetched the smoke. Somewhere between my questioning whether I should even have come out fishing and lighting up a smoke... a fish had sniffed up my dangling roe in 2 feet of water about 18 inches off the bank.

The lil steelie put up a spirited fight for a small, recovering down-runner and got the skunk off my back.




By Fish-Sniffer and other 'internet-wizards-of-the-waterways'... it was A CHROMER!

Hah hah hah, I'm glad they don't know any better~;)

Turned out to be a productive day... and not because of the one small fish I caught and released but because I was re-educated on a simple, already-known fact... that when water comes up, fish get out of its way. It was a day that plunkers might do better dropping than casting and drift boaters would benefit from less boondogling and more side-drifting. In my case, it paid to light a smoke, prolong the end of my drift and let my knees answer the wake-up call in the soft 'holding' water below me.

M