by Dave Graybill, October 29, 2013

Boy, what a busy week. There were fishing trips that took me to Bridgeport, Lake Chelan and the Methow River. The weather was clear and warm and I got fish everywhere I went. It was a great week to be living here in Central Washington State.

It all started last Tuesday, fishing for steelhead. My wife’s sister, Karen Heim, from Anaconda, Montana, was here for a visit and we wanted to get her out on the water. Karen is always game, and we stopped in Pateros, got her a license and dumped the boat in at Bridgeport.

We were the only boat on the water, so I ran down and gave the Blow Hole a try. We got nothing but little nibbles here. Next, was the Pines and we got action, but the wrong kind. We got a few triploids and a king, so we were busy anyway, and Karen was getting the hang of casting a bobber and jig. Our next stop was just below the bridge. We hooked a couple of triploids, and Karen hooked and released a triploid all by herself. She was having a blast. We extended out drift to way below the hole and my bobber went down. I yelled at Karen to take the rod and she didn’t hesitate. She threw down the rod she was using and grabbed mine. The fight was on and she could tell this wasn’t another triploid. She was right. We knew when it jumped that it was a nice steelhead and a hatchery fish. She was able to take home the first steelhead she ever caught. It was perfect. On our last drift, while I was putting things away, my wife hooked something and insisted that I take the rod. Well, I had my hands full. It was a king of about 20 pounds and it jumped three times. This was our last fish of the day, and what a day it was. We all had a spectacular time and I know Karen will remember it for a long time.

On Thursday I had planned on taking fishing buddies Tom Bartlett and Jim Passage steelhead fishing, but since they had been pretty hard to scratch up, I wanted to try something else. I had been hearing of good trout fishing at Lake Chelan, and here was a chance to try it myself. They were all for it so we put the Kingfisher in above the dam and ran up to the bridge. There were three guys fishing off the dock at Campbell’s and we slid in near them. We just used our bobber and jig set ups, baiting our jigs with shrimp or some Power Bait that I had in the boat. We caught rainbow here, but they were all pretty small. The largest one I saw caught by the dock anglers was about 13 inches. I wanted to see if we could find some larger fish, so I ran to Rocky Point.

There was one other boat trolling here at Rocky Point and we saw them get the net out and it appeared they were busy. We let out a couple of rods. One with a Wedding Ring Pro, and the other with one of my kokanee rigs. Both were baited with corn. We caught fish here, but again they were small, so we moved up to Mill Bay. We started trolling here in about 18 feet of water and were into fish right away. If we could keep our gear out of the weeds we had good action, and Jim Passage reeled in a fish that stretched the tape to 19 inches. We had fun looking for them, but we really didn’t find good numbers of the large rainbow that I had been hearing about. I am not giving up, though. I will probably keep looking for them on Lake Chelan.

The next morning Jim Passage and I were on the Methow River. What a day. Sunny and calm, and there were fish in the river. I missed a good hit not five minutes from the take out. I am pretty rusty and was slow on the hook set with my fly rod. Passage and I were fishing with Aaron O’Leary of Anglers’s Obsession Guide Service. We started off fishing with our fly rods, with floating lines, an indicator and two bead hooks below it. The steelhead liked these beads. I got two wild fish, missed a few and Passage had hooked and lost a couple by the time we stopped for lunch.

Passage had told me on the way up about how his fishing partner the week before had really done well fishing with a Pin Reel and Rod set up with a bobber. O’Leary had talked about it as we floated down the river, saying it was a deadly method of taking steelhead. I decided to give it a try and switch to this technique after lunch. Casting with these free-spooling, dragless reels is tricky, but I got a fish on it very soon after we headed down stream. Now Passage just had to try it, too, and he caught on quick. In one hole he hooked six steelhead and landed three of them. Two of the three were over 10 pounds! He was on fire and loving it. I got two more on this rig as we made our way further down the river, and Passage wrestled with a couple of kings. We blew up our reels a time or two, but O’Leary was patient and encouraging and it was a terrific experience; hooking and landing steelhead a whole new way. What a day.

If this past week wasn’t enough fun, I am heading for the Grande Ronde River to float it with my friend Brian Nielson, of BJs Guide Service. My wife and I did this a couple of years ago, and she made a great video of the trip. It will be on the web site soon. This time Eric Granstrom is coming along with all the video gear. It’s going to be a super time!

By Dave Graybill

FishingMagician.com