I've Come To The Conclusion

I've come to the conclusion that there isn't going to be any Mark/Steelhead bonding this year. There isn't going to be any Steelhead pals. No warm & fuzzy. No Nada. 

You see this picture below? Right in the middle is a Steelhead not 4 feet from where I was standing.

Steelhead

Keeping in mind that I've thrown everything in the fly box today. OK, here's a list. Caddis flies (multiple), egg imitations (multiple colors), all kinds of streamers, nymphs of every color and variation, and here sits a Steelhead not 4 feet from me as I stick a San Juan Worm with a single orange egg dropper in it's nose, but will it take it? Oh hell no. It was so close I could have skewered it with my wading staff and trust me, I thought about it. On up the river it went.

After a short sandwich break and back on the river I look upstream and who has a fish on? Yeh that's right, "Glenn, I've caught Steelhead and you haven't". I show the guy the "secret" Steelhead spot and he catches not one or two, but three Steelhead today and I go home skunked.

It's s darn good thing he and I are good friends because if we weren't I'd have keyed his pretty new truck just because. I'm not a vengeful person, but I can only take so much.   

Steelhead #3

It's there somewhere

Keep working it

A little further down stream

Standing on the point still working it

Back upstream and then back down stream

Finally

A second look

And that folks, is an American River Steelhead caught on, of all things a black Wooly Bugger. Go figure.  

So I've decided that I'm going back out to the down country lakes where I have at least a chance of catching something. That should keep me busy until the Shad start up the river toward the end of May. Now them, I know how to catch.   

Mark