Now that the lower river salmon are winding down, some friends wanted to see if the rains brought in any steelhead up higher in the system. It is about a month early for winters but maybe we could find some summer runs to play with us. We hit the river just as it was getting light enough to see. The river had spiked the last couple days and according to the graphs last nigh was dropping nicely, boy it dropped like a rock over night. As it got lighter we could see why, the snow level dropped also, you could see the mountain tops were all white. It was cold and raining (with a little sleet mixed in) in the morning which coupled with the non-existent bite made it that much colder. I started covering river more just to keep warm than anything. Fished my way downstream a ways, then turned around and started fishing my way back. The nice thing is with everyone going for salmon, the whole river was mine, saw nobody the whole way downstream. On the way back there were a couple guys fishing one hole. One guy hooked into a bruiser on a spoon, fought it for awhile before the fish charged him, jumped and spit the hook. By this time the sun was out (sort of) and the wind died down so it was warming up a bit. I stopped at a good looking section to through a few casts before moving on. about 10 casts later I decided to change up my jig color/pattern. That was the ticket.. 1st cast - bobber down, fish on! Little summer run about 24-26". Release him, change my leader, cast BAM bobber down and fish on again! This one was a little bigger (about 30"), release, change leader (rocks), cast BOBBER DOWN AGAIN!... Dang.. snag, lost my jig. Tie up the same color, cast BOBBER DOWN & Fish on!! it was unreal! 3 fish in 4 casts!.. This one was a copy of the 1st. All three were hatchery brats and all three were skinny and blushing, but man that was a fun 15 minutes and made the whole morning worthwhile! That was it for me, a few more casts and I went on up to find my buddies. Thankfully there was a guy within sight to verify my catches cause they would've thought I was BS'ing em. Out of the three of us there where 5 fish caught and a few more missed strikes. It was good to get out, and back on my "home river". Sorry, no photos as I don't normally like to take the time to photo the fish I release.

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