On 17 Oct 2006 13:12:45 -0700, "rb608" wrote:

daytripper wrote:
(maybe Joe'll tell you about his guide vs snagger conversation ;-)

Okay, here's how I saw it. Despite having wonderful success at our
morning spot, we let Dave & Paul talk us into trying out the stretch
below the Trestle Pool, and we agree to meet up back at the Altmar
Hotel & head on down together. Cell service being what it is (isn't)
there, those connections went to hell; and Son and I head on over to
where we think they'll be. Parking at Trestle Pool North, we hike
through the woods the several hundred yards down to the bend. Nobody
there but a few spin fishermen at the head of the run. Son hooks &
loses a feisty coho, but that was all we'd see there; and after a
while we hike back up the shoreline to see who we see.

Not a hundred yards away were tripper & Paul casting to the far bank
along a down tree, and a fish is taking tripper downstream. Paul makes
a casual suggestion that I might be good luck in that tripper didn't
get his first hookup until I showed up, just before that notion is
quickly dispelled.

"So", I shout to Paul from the bank, "how is it up here?" A
nearby stranger answers back, "Pretty good if you're snagging."
Before I can digest the humor/seriousness/intent of that comment,
another guy up the shoreline shoots back, "You got a problem with
that?" Okay, clearly I'm not coming in at the beginning of this
scene; and all I can do is watch it play out. "I wasn't taking to
you, I was talking to him." (meaning me) "You were looking right
at me, what's your problem?" "Yeah, I got a problem. It's
illegal." I'm wading out into the river as the shouting match
continues about who was looking at who or talking to who and who was
doing what when. The downstream guy is walking up closer to the
snagger, and I'm expecting split shot at ten paces any second now.
Non-snagger gets verbal and moral support from a chorus of other
fishermen in the river, and snagger retreats into the woods. I'm
thinking, ****, all I did was ask how's the fishing; and WW3 erupts.
Thank goodness J-plugs are illegal, or it could have been bloody.

I still find their denials amazing. Here they are, equipped with short, stout
spinning gear, a slinky full of shot, and a huge, nearly bare hook, carefully
maneuvering their terminal gear under the nose of a finning salmon, then
abruptly lifting the rig skyward. Not snagging? WTF else would it be called?

I had a short and sweet conversation with one such nitwit, who spent over two
hours very slowly working his way closer and closer to me until he finally was
positioned on the bank directly in front of me, not 40 feet from me, to work
the little piece of water to which I was casting. I told him it was a big
damned river, and it was bad enough he was an effing snagger but he sure as
hell wasn't going to do it right in front of me, so go find some other place
to be. With a thoroughly unconvincing "I wasn't snagging" muttered protest he
skulked back up stream.

Snaggers and the less than unenlightened drift boat pilots aside, while the
chuck-and-duck routine doesn't score high on my sensibility index, it sure is
fun to fair hook a good steelhead and hold on for the ride. The last time I
had fished in the presence of steelies was back in the early 70's when I lived
on the Hoods Canal. This brief trip refreshed my memories of how much fun
those steelhead runs were.

Here's Paul's shot of the dazzlingly bright hen I landed Saturday. He needs to
work on his framing, but otherwise it's a pretty good shot. Even on a GLX
10'/9w, this fish dragged me down a good hundred yards of boisterous freestone
river before a friendly guide netted it on his third try.

http://home.comcast.net/~day_trippr/...teelie_hen.jpg

Paul caught one that was half a foot longer (but not as pretty ;-)

/daytripper (back to work....)