Steelhead Fishing By Friend Mark

All of my fishing is done on calm area lakes these days. But during my youth my friend Mark and I waded Ferson's creeks in search of bass hiding under bank bushes, or in the Fox River, then so polluted we knew not to keep the ones that glowed in the dark.

Mark today lives in the Pacific northwest and has moved upscale with his techniques. I thought you would enjoy his report from last week...

I left Sunday morning around 0730. My friend Gary was coming from Seattle, trailer in tow. We converged in Aberdeen, WA, about 2 hours north of here, and spent a few hours there with cameras wandering alleys and streets in a town “untouched by prosperity.” It’s a blue collar working class industrial logging and wood processing place. I’ve driven through it dozens of times but never stopped. It’s a wonderfully awful place. We plan to go back and spend a couple of days devoted to photos. Two hours further north put us on the Hoh River in Minnie Pedersen campground: maybe 15 sites, with amenities consisting of an outhouse, fire pit, and a picnic table. We had plenty of water onboard and a generator for 110 VAC. We brought a bunch of firewood, but evenings were rainy and not conducive to campfire sitting – only 2 fires in 5 nights. To gauge our level of sophistication, here is our DVD selection: 2001-A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now, The Bank Dick, and a Three Stooges Compilation. Eh??

Monday we drove the access road and bank fished. At a favorite spot called Morgan’s Crossing (for unknown reasons) I caught a fish is less than an hour. It was a 14-15 pound hen, native fish (not hatchery), that hammered my fly and nearly took the rod out of my hands when she struck. The Dean River fish was probably 18-20 pounds for comparison. It took 5-10 min to bring her into the shallows. No jumps out of water, she just hunkered down in the current like a Chinook salmon. When I moved her inland, I tail-grabbed her and extracted the barbless hook from her jaw. She’s now back out there somewhere.

Tues we put in pontoon boats on the upper river. We floated about 8 miles to take out on a gravel bar near camp. The river level was low, below average, and parts of the float were treacherous. On the upper section we had to negotiate numerous exposed boulders/rocks that would cause serious damage to a boat and to an oarsman. Near the bottom end, the river split in two channels. The right was minimal water and un-floatable, the left looked better. But as I came around a corner I could see that downed trees were completely blocking the channel. I got out in time to avoid a disaster, warned my friend of trouble, and schlepped my boat around the obstruction.  

Weds we did some more bank fishing in the morning, and spent the afternoon with cameras. Thurs was a camera day.