Steelhead Fishing: A Drug With Side Effects

When someone has an illness, more than likely a drug is prescribed to cure it. As steelhead fishermen we crave steel and chrome. The only way to feed that craving is to stand in flowing water or cast from a pier in search of the drug. Catching one will help a little, but often we need multiple doses. This uncontrolled craving leads to all kinds of side effects. Let’s look at some of the more severe ones so everyone can recognize them and work on controlling them.

SIDE EFFECTS:

1. Insomnia from worrying if the trip planned will be aborted due to a blown out river.
2. Confusion will lead to poor decisions such as wading into a pool and cutting off someone’s drift.
3. Irritability caused by that guy that waded into the pool.
4. Lightheadedness caused by landing an 8lb. steelhead.
5. Tunnel vision as almost nothing matters but finding the drug from October to April.
6. Runny nose from standing in 35° water, rain, and snow for hours.
7. Drowsiness from fishing for hours and not even getting a bump.
8. Increased blood pressure due to the fisherman downstream hooking up every other drift.

It’s probably a good bet that we have all experienced these side effects. When you are on the water and any of these side effects occur you can lessen the impact by remembering……you could be at work.

I can’t end this post without writing about a recent outing. There’s a stretch of the Grand River that has about a 1/2 mile of good water. Steelhead have been caught in every riffle, run, and pool so there’s no one good spot. Including myself, there were six fishermen on the water, and for whatever reason five of them were working a 50 yard stretch. That left me with the rest of the water. After managing to catch a couple of chromers downstream I watched them fish for about twenty minutes. They weren’t moving, and they weren’t catching anything. It didn’t appear they all knew each other so there was no buddy system that would keep them together. I guess they were suffering from tunnel vision.

These fishermen couldn't get enough of this spot. That left me with the rest of the water.

This chromer gave away its lcoation by rolling on the surface next to a log.

Threw a small woolly bugger and it inhaled it on the fist cast.

Go out and fool a fish!