Christopheraaron
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2012
- Messages
- 995
November was an exciting month, when you're forced off the rivers because your waders are freezing solid and you can't take it anymore you know it's going to be a good winter, and it started off that way. However, by the end of December it was starting to get old, freezing rain, horrible driving conditions and already having to drill through a foot of ice, it wasn't shaping up to be as great a winter as we'd hoped.
Now we're still ice fishing and running vehicles on the ice in late March, I was just about ready to buy a one way plane ticket to Mexico, but then it finally happened, temperatures climbed above zero and the ice is now on it's way out. Open water means only one thing in March, STEELHEAD! So this morning at 6am I loaded the car and headed east.
I fished a few pools down, in the process foul hooking one fish before it got off and seeing several others, this was getting me very excited for the day. At the next pool I spotted a small ice flow along the shore and found this fish resting under it, she actually let me touch her tail and didn't move, which was strange because it didn't appear to be spawned out and looked fairly silver.
This pool was perfect in every way, it had 2 currents meeting, it was long, deep and had a good number of large boulders in it, but I could not see or hook one fish in it, so I packed up and started following the trail downstream. Before I had passed the tailout of the pool I noticed that just before the pool turned to a small rapids it got very deep and had a large boulder right at the end which was just begging a fish to rest in front of it. I figured it was worth a shot and proceeded to make about 10 drifts to this area before hooking this brute, my first open water fish of 2014.
Downstream a ways I did get a savage hit from another fish but missed the hookset, next time! Here are a few random photos.
This guy was a VERY welcome sight.
And a couple rod shots.
I hope to add to this report this weekend or next week
Now we're still ice fishing and running vehicles on the ice in late March, I was just about ready to buy a one way plane ticket to Mexico, but then it finally happened, temperatures climbed above zero and the ice is now on it's way out. Open water means only one thing in March, STEELHEAD! So this morning at 6am I loaded the car and headed east.
I fished a few pools down, in the process foul hooking one fish before it got off and seeing several others, this was getting me very excited for the day. At the next pool I spotted a small ice flow along the shore and found this fish resting under it, she actually let me touch her tail and didn't move, which was strange because it didn't appear to be spawned out and looked fairly silver.
This pool was perfect in every way, it had 2 currents meeting, it was long, deep and had a good number of large boulders in it, but I could not see or hook one fish in it, so I packed up and started following the trail downstream. Before I had passed the tailout of the pool I noticed that just before the pool turned to a small rapids it got very deep and had a large boulder right at the end which was just begging a fish to rest in front of it. I figured it was worth a shot and proceeded to make about 10 drifts to this area before hooking this brute, my first open water fish of 2014.
Downstream a ways I did get a savage hit from another fish but missed the hookset, next time! Here are a few random photos.
This guy was a VERY welcome sight.
And a couple rod shots.
I hope to add to this report this weekend or next week
