I know January for the best of all winter steelhead months… the steelhead , with the brightness of the sea still on him, is the livest of all the river’s life. When you have made your cast for him, you are no longer a careless observer. As you mend the cast and work your fly well down to him through the cold water, your whole mind is with it, picturing its drift, guiding its swing, holding it where you know he will be. And when the shock of his take jars through your forearm and you lift the rod to its bend, you know that in a moment the strength of his leaping body will shatter the water to brilliance, however dark the day. -Roderick Haig-Brown, A River Never Sleeps
I envy Haig-Brown’s January experiences in the PNW during the early part of the 20th century. These days, December/January are the months when the hatchery steelhead return to PNW rivers, in ever decreasing numbers despite huge numbers of planted smolts. The wild fish begin coming in in January but the later months of winter are best for the native fish. I have read that the early returning winter steelhead runs have been largely exterminated by the hatchery cycle – early returning strains are selected so that they remain segregated from the later returning natives. However, this means that any early returning fish face gill-nets, increased kill-fishery pressure and competition with hatchery fish. So it’s rare to hear about someone catching a native steelhead in the early season these days.
The returns for Puget Sound rivers have become so depressed that they will close the first week in February to protect the native fish. There is a lot of debate on the subject and it’s an incredibly complex issue but I feel that the impact of the incidental mortality of a catch & release fishery is pretty low on the list of causes for depressed steelhead runs. Given, the environmental issues, Native American treaty rights, politics, etc. it’s a true “Wicked Problem“. makes me depressed to think about it…
…and after a nasty morning of fishing getting skunked on my soon-to-close homewater, I was feeling pretty down. We’ve had a lot of snow the last week and the plows had piled up a big snow wall in front of all the pullouts. I ended up parking on the side of the road about a half mile from the normal pullout and hiked to the trail as cars loaded with skis & snowboards streamed past. I’m sure they were wondering what in the hell the dude with the big fishing pole was doing walking along the highway in the rain.
Yes, rain. And a bit later, driving wind to go along with slush turning the already snot-slick boulders on the riverbank into some sort of antigravity device designed to send anglers ass-over-head into the 34deg river. All that to fish a river with no steelhead in it…
Yet, when I got home and read the Roderick Haig-Brown section on January steelhead fishing, something happened. It was like a pat on the back from across the decades. Reflecting on his passage above, I found myself silently nodding “Yes, that’s it exactly” and all this craziness somehow makes sense…
A new toy! A 3 1/2″ 1912 Salmon Perfect built by reelsmith Chris Henshaw in England. An original Hardy 1912 Perfect is outside my financial resources and even if I did buy one, no way I would take a that sort of collectable reel to the river (see the note about slick boulders above). Chris’ modern interpretations of the vintage Hardy designs are functional works of art. I can’t wait to hear this thing sing when a steelhead makes that first big run…
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