On Feb 22, 11:57*pm, DaveS wrote:

Got out of town last Wed and headed 300 m over the mountains to SW
Washington. The river is the Touchet, a few miles below Dayton, on a
little farmland I own. The river had severely flooded in early
January. We needed to re-cover a neighbor's main irrigation pipeline
and fix breaks in the road on my sugar dike. We cleared the permission
hurdles so we could correct the situation, Thursday AM was spent
marveling at how much work a big Cat can do in a few hours. Need to
plant some wheat bunch-grass there before Spring.

Bad news/good news. So where did the water over-top my dikes? Right
next to my camper. It chewed into the dike side but luckily only came
up 2 of the 3 RR ties I put the camper on. Come summer the camper goes
up on the sugar dike.

Thursday evening I fished the nearest pool, with a Coal car, and then
some big wetside jointed barbell things in pink and in black. Nothing.
Tried orange. Nope. Then said screw it, At least I can get a trout,
and went to a #14 green beadhead (from fly exchange). The head of that
pool had changed a lot from the high water. Too much tree debris piled
up to work it like I did last fall, so I needed to roll cast it lots.
The take was after I had run the nymph all the way thru the pool and
out to the tailout where I let it hang for a bit. The take was soft,
and the fish was easy to fight and release in the shallows of the tail
of the pool. The fish was a 18-20+ inch wild steelhead, good looking,
but tired I think. Retired for the day to cook some food, warm up and
get some sleep.

Friday I mostly explored up and down the river with the farm kid,
seeing which holes survived, looking for new holes, and good water,
and trying to puzzle out how the river would settle out. No fish. Went
out again Friday evening, fished 3-4 places. . . nothing, but did see
some possible cougar tracks in the mud left by the flood. Managed to
get really cold and really appreciative of my sleeping bags. Same
story Saturday until evening.

Saturday evening I could do nothing wrong. I tied on a #8, mottled
green brass conehead bugger, with a muddler-type head behind the
conehead. I climbed up onto a couple of logs and a large root wad
where i could short-cast the bugger into the fume at the head of this
very deep pool. No luck, so after a while i started risking longer
casts (lots of long branches and roots to avoid) across the fume, into
an eddy that started a swing downstream and across then in the end of
the swing letting it bounce along the bottom in a circling eddy where
the bottom is deep
but the edge is an abrupt root wad that I had climbed up into. I
covered the water pretty good. Then, when the bugger was in the eddy
there was a take, not a blast, but good and firm. I set the hook and
then started a pulling match, with this fish alternately running out
into the middle of the rushing current, and then trying to knock me
off against various stuff. After a while I started to wonder if I
really wanted this fish to stay on. He didn't come fully out of the
water but his main strong move was to come out of the depths fast,
flap his tail real strong at or near the surface and then powerfully
sound. Over and over. I looked at my watch and 25 minutes later got
the fish close enough to unhook with the tip of my rod. Neither his
ventral or adipose fins were clipped so It was a native 24-28" wild
steelhead. Actually I think it was bigger but fact is I did not
measure so I really do not know. This is the largest steelhead I have
ever caught, but honestly I have caught damn few.

After calling my wife and sputtering gibberish for a while I went back
to the pool and hooked another steelhead same conehead bugger pattern.
This time I was not so lucky and I broke off on one of the brush
tangles. I continued to fish using the same bugger pattern Finally, I
hooked one very fat Brown (about 18") which put on quite an aeriel
show (yeah, I know Browns are not supposed to jump) which I also
released. This fish looked like he had the bulk of a 4x6 beam, but was
not that long. Browns are legendary on this river, not having been
stocked for maybe 10 years, but very rare. I think this might be the
same one I hooked and lost on a mouse or crayfish fly last year. Who
knows.

Kicked back Sunday. Walked the river. Made some plans. Signed on for
half a pig. The Palouse wheat is greening up. Noticed lots of
equipment being worked on. People starting to talk to me like I am a
neighbor. Would I talk to so and so (a wetside Island legislator)
about a farm issue? etc. I like these people. Set out for home
thinking of when I can come back.

Anyway thats my report. For a guy who does't catch many large fish and
damn few steelhead, It just doesn't get any better. I don't think I
could easily kill one of these wonderful wild fish.


Dave