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This is the End my friends.

2K views 13 replies 9 participants last post by  Nailknot 
#1 ·
Just a few rivers and one day left.

Funny we come to an end and our good friends on the wrong coast just begin. Hope they have a great season.
 
#6 ·
The walk in was gorgeous this morning. The sun just behind the mountains waiting to bathe the world with gold. I was surprised as I arrived to find the run empty. One last day and she was mine to do with what I like. I had to stand there for a few moments and just feel her. I let my line free of the reel and threw the first of the last casts. The river will haunt my dreams until once again I can ply her depths in search of steel.
 
#7 ·
Another Season

I said my annual good-byes to the Skagit on Wednesday. I hiked up to the Mixer, lugging my heavy neoprenes and other gear in a backpack. This time I took along a six-section pack rod and DT6F line to work the frog water at the bottom for dollies in search of outmigrating fry. Rigged with a dark beadhead bugger and small Muddler, the nine foot rod felt like a toy. Surprisingly, I got no action. Perhaps I should have used a sink-tip. Then it was back to working part of the long drift with the big Alltmor. No action, once again. Could that water be a little too fast for optimum steelhead holding?
Another 25-minute slog back to the car, then ten miles upstream. A delicious dinner at my favorite upstream eatery. Sorry that Tootsie wasn't there; chatting with her has become part of my ritual.
Then across the highway to where I'd parked; back into waders and along that obscure path through the woods to the upper end of my favorite steelhead drift, bar none. This time I rigged the 16-footer with a floating line. When the water is fairly low, like now, a heavier hook will cover that gently sloping bottom just right. And then downstream, step by step for an hour or more, while the evening sunlight encrimsons the higher peaks upstream. The snowpack is thinning fast and the trees are fully fledged, a far cry from the beginning of the catch-and-release season. Why must the season end now, when the river is looking so vibrant? OK, I understand, it's "for the children"...
Easy 90-foot casts, like a metranome, so that I can concentrate on the setting. A pair of ducks whistles upstream through the darkening air. Why does the bottom here have to be such tricky wading? Soapy-slick rocks, in inconveniently random spacing, and too many of them unachored. Well, this is what ideal holding water feels like underfoot. It gets to be murder on my back, though.
The line comes alive, out there in the dusk. Two measured yanks, to set the hook. Is it a steelhead, at last?....Is it a steelhead that's not much of a fighter? I'm willing to settle... So, it's just another dollie. No, I refuse to disparage this beautiful eight-pound fish for being itself, not another species.
I get the barbless point of the black-and-purple maribou out with minimum tooth-damage to my thumb. She revives quickly, and is away to midstream. I fish on a little longer, and reach the path back to the parking area just as it gets too dark to see my fly land on the water. After so many years, I know how to time my evening devotions.
I walk stiffly through the dark woods, my eyes sucking in the last ambient light, but my back muscles protesting. Sitting on the tailgate of my station wagon, painfully kicking out of the bootfeet and sipping the last of the thermos coffee. Two hours of glaring headlights between here and home. One more season done. How many more?
 
#8 · (Edited)
Yep she's over for another year. Spent the last day floating the upper section of a favorite river with two good friends. Temps in the 80s and lots of sweat. One pull between us for the day but still it was a great day. From the cigars and sun warmed cognac on the beach to the comical recital of old drinking songs by one of the party. I got to try out a new line and fish some new runs (new since lasy falls flood). Sure a fish would have been nice but after all, isn't that just icing on the proverbial cake. Goodbye my dear, see you next spring.

Nailknot, was that by chance you in the yellow pontoon?
 
#9 ·
Almost

Sinktip- wasn't me in the pontoon. I was in the drift boat that followed. Was going to say hello but you were intently selecting a fly :) Plus didn't want to break the silence of the morning (John's surburan came in pretty hot on the ramp :) Expected to see you later in the day, not sure if you guys passed us in one of the braids? One dolly, two steelies between the three of us (one early in the run below where we floated by, one around 1:00PM), a couple more good pulls . Even with 30+ sunscreen applied all day still got a burn- too hot! Expected more company on that section- great day to end the season. See you there same time, same place, next year?
 
#11 ·
I traded in my annual spring steelhead visit to mecca this year for a rare fling on a coral atoll in robin's egg blue waters, flirting with grey ghosts on chalk-white flats... but I pained over the decision. I almost opted for the pristine river valleys of the Cascades and OP even though I've done this for almost half my life this time of year. But in the end I decided I wanted to broaden my horizon and went to stalk the amazing flats of Exuma where I landed some nice bonefish and had my ass handed to me by a 10-12 pounder.

It was a great time but as I read these posts and dream about steelhead country, I miss it more than ever. I won't be swapping my spring native trip next spring. It's going to be a long year cause I already feel like I lost a year of my steelheading life.

See you guys at the Bunny Farm next April.
 
#12 ·
Nailknot,
You should have stopped in for a visit. The coffee was still hot and sinktips cigars still unlit.

You did well and fishing with John must have been fun. I found it hard to fish too seriously on a day that felt more like August 23rd than the last day of April. But like always good friends on a NW river is most of the trip anyway.

Here is to summer, early morning ventures and for some of us the beauty of fine cane rods.

Oh, I almost forgot here is to all the beautiful unknown women of summer who I'm sure know nothing of steelhead but do know how to dress to please us all.

Summer is wonderful hope we all enjoy it!

OC
 
#13 ·
Yo OC...

Oh, I almost forgot here is to all the beautiful unknown women of summer who I'm sure know nothing of steelhead but do know how to dress to please us all.
I'll drink to that. OC I'm holding up my can of Pepsi.:eyecrazy:
 
#14 ·
Thanks OC. Next time I'll join you fellas. John had slipped me in with a "real" client so I wasn't about to offer any timeline suggestions :) We had a fine day if a little warm. The Aussie client picked up the biggest fish of his life which is always a thrill to be around. Couldn't ask for a better day!
 
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