Written by Robert McWilliams
3/14/09
When Jesse invited me to scout with him the River, I asked him what time I should show up. He said between 4:30 and 5 AM. Even though I had to drive through cross-town Portland traffic and cross over the Willamette, there aren’t a lot of cars on the road between 3 and 4 AM and arrived up 3:55. Even so, Jesse was waiting by his vehicle, loaded and ready to go.
The only vehicles on the road were loaded logging trucks, zooming at or just above the speed limit, and never, ever, slowing down. I’ve always said that if you can keep up with an Oregon logging truck, you are driving too fast. I told Jesse they must load the trucks the day before so they can take off so early. Jesse said most logging truck drivers are done by 3PM.
There was snow on the pass through the Oregon Coast Range, a mere 1200 feet above sea level and still traces of snow when we pulled into Jesse’s favorite parking place, a giant mud hole on the side of narrow logging road. I was especially eager to fish this coastal river with Jesse because he knows the river intimately and guides scores fishermen there every year. Lots of people don’t realize how many times a guide scouts the same river before he brings in clients. What often appears to be preternatural knowledge of fish location is really the result of exhaustive preparation.
Steelhead, although they are in fact trout, don’t distribute themselves in the river the way trout do. Trout live in the river all year. They have plenty of time to find the best hiding and feeding places. Trout fishermen concentrate their efforts on these feeding locations. Steelhead are like 5 AM logging trucks. They are just passing through. They don’t eat; all they want to do is get to the spawning grounds. I’ve been told they can travel 20 miles in a day but like logging truckers, they have pull off at rest stops. The trick is to find these rest stops and be there when the fish are. My limited experience tells me there are two basic rest stops. One is in deepest part of the river channel and the other is behind or in front of big boulders where they can rest out of the current. Migrating steelhead are not very affable. The girls, until they are ready to lay their eggs, don’t want to be pestered and the boys don’t want competition. Both have teeth and use them to chase away others that get too close.
The weather was right, the water level was right and the water is a bright blue green, not too cloudy, not too clear. At the first stop we could see a pair of 20-inch fish waiting to spawn. Mamma was digging her redd (nest) and papa was impatiently milling around waiting for her to godammit get done. Ten feet behind were a pair of jacks (sexually mature, small fish) hoping to sneak in and fertilize mamma’s eggs when papa wasn’t paying attention. Papa may have been impatient but fully alert and eager to chase off the jacks if they got within 10 feet.
Even though the fish seemed crabby enough we couldn’t get them to strike. Jesse climbed up on the high bank told me where to cast and tried to guide my lure to the fish, but to no purpose. I was using a spinning rod and reel so that I could cast a heavily weighted lure that would sink into the deep fissures where I presumed the fish were. Jesse’s fly rig only allowed him to fish the shallower hideouts behind big boulders.
After lunch Jesse decided to fish a small relatively shallow lie upstream with his fly rod. I heard Jesse thrashing and I thought he had hooked a rock. His rod was bent into a fishhook shape and he was stumbling amidst hassock-sized boulder. The fish took off upstream, no small feat, considering the water was too fast to wade. Then the fish wrapped the line around a submerged tree limb. Somehow Jesse waded out into waist deep water, stuck his arm shoulder-deep in the water and freed the line. Then the fish took off again upstream through the boulders in the rapids. Jesse kept his rod tip, trying to keep the fish from wrapping the line around a rock. For 15 minutes Jesse stumbled but never fell as he thrashed after the fish. All I could do is pant along behind, hoping, but never finding a place where I could stand and help land the fish. Jesse didn’t need me and he brought the fish into a one by two-foot miniature sand bar between the boulders.
I came in handy after all. I had in my vest a disposable camera that I had carried in my vest for one month less than three years. I had half dozen pictures on the camera but hadn’t used it for at least two years, and didn’t dare develop because there was still a half roll of unexposed film. The battery was dead but I determinedly took pictures as fast as I could. The next day I had the pictures printed and Jesse digitized them.
There is a new steelhead calculation out to figure weight by length and girth ( L” x G” (squared) / 690 = weight. Jesse estimated the fish’s dimensions, using his hands as a point of reference and concluded the fish was about 34″ long by 17″ or 18″ around. Which would make it 15-16lbs. A truly gigantic steelhead is over 20 pounds. But I have never seen or heard of anyone landing such a ferocious, fish of this size is such a hazardous small creek as the one Jesse landed that day. Jesse has caught hundreds of steelhead and he said with nonchalance not typical of fishermen, that this was the largest he ever caught on a fly rod.
A week or so later I was embarrassed to realize I had at that time, in my vest, a small and flimsy tape measure, that I got for free at the hardware store, and I could have determined exactly how big the fish was. So far, I haven’t told Jesse.
I tried to get Jesse to go fishing with me to the Creek yesterday, but he was guiding a couple of fishermen on the Sandy and couldn’t come. Even fishing guides have to work. So I went by myself, to the same places where I caught my 32-inch steelhead several weeks ago and of which I have sent pictures to every mortal who might know who I am.
I fished every hole with no results. On the way back I decided to re-fish one hole with a spinner which I designed and made myself. It’s easy to make spinners if you have the parts, and I have hundreds. (How I came to have so many spinner parts is another story.)
I design my steelhead spinners to be unobtrusive. I consider most spinners to be so gaudy that they frighten the fish in clear water. My spinner is silver on the convex side, blue with a spot of white on the concave side and with a two inch white plastic tube-bait (don’t ask) on the hook. My logic is to provide a dark outline so the fish can see it against the sky if the fish is looking up and some color and flash so the fish can see it looking downward against the black rocks on the bottom. I had severe doubts about the shiny silver convex side, but the black tape I used to conceal most of the silver peeled off and I had nothing to replace it.
Whatever the reason, I hooked what I thought was a log, but turned out to be, praise the Lord, a steelhead. This time I remembered my flimsy tape measure. It lasted long enough for me to determine it was 35 inches long with a 17inch girth. According to Jesse’s formula that is a 14.65942-pound fish. I don’t believe in estimations. I brought with me a new disposable camera and the flash worked and I took four pictures. Which are safely stored in my fishing vest and which I will have printed when the roll is exhausted. (I only had Jesse’s pictures developed prematurely as thanks for inviting me to fish with him.)
When I got home I discovered the tape measure wouldn’t rewind and broke while trying to fix it. Reluctantly, I went to Fred Meyers to get a replacement. I found a small one in the hardware department but they only went to 36 inches. Remembering my last fish was 35 inches, I went to the sewing section and bought a seamstress tape that goes 72 inches. When I go steelhead fishing I like to be prepared.
