But the pile of fly tying materials… It seems to have a life of its own, I cannot control it no matter how hard I try. I clean it up, put things away and brush the scraps off the edge into a trash can with my hand, but no matter how good my intentions, it returns to the same state of confusion as if it were the concierge at the check in of a fancy restaurant. One moment sir, I’ll return momentarily.
. So I suppose instead of saying I’d be casting to the wrong feeding lane it would be better to say that I probably wouldn’t know where to cast and I’d just be casting to nothing. Which I do a lot of year round, not just in the winter. So maybe it’s not just a winter thing, but since the fish are actively feeding during the spring through fall seasons maybe I’ve just got better odds of casting close enough to get a reaction now and then. The more I analyze this, the closer to the epiphany that I might just not be good at any of this fly fishing stuff I get, so I’ll stop now while I still have at least a shred of dignity left.
There’s only so many flies you can tie, so many books you can read, all the while telling yourself there’s only so many days in the winter. I’ve actually got a couple winter fishing trips planned in the next coming weeks, but they’re not to warmer climates, no. They’re within driving distance because it’s all I can afford and a couple days is all the time I have. That means layers of clothes, frozen fingers and toes, and in my case, most likely a lot of casting and very little catching. I don’t mind the very little catching, but I mind it a whole lot less when it’s not fourteen degrees out and the temperature is going to reach a high of nineteen. But I shouldn’t complain. It could be worse. Not much, worse, but at least the rivers aren’t frozen over like the lakes.
I’ve never gone for steelhead. They’ve always been attached to a stigma for me that was called the Salmon River. And to me the Salmon River has ninety-nine percent of the time meant crowds, anglers at every bend and pool, before it’s ever meant big fish. To me. I’ve fished it in the heat of summer for smallmouth and it was great, but maybe I shouldn’t say that out of a fear of giving away a good secret. But then you have to ask yourself if I’m just lying to distract you from other waters in the summer time. I am a fisherman after all, and all fisherman lie.
I was pretty sure my brother had caught a couple certified pigs from this stretch a couple years ago, or at least this general area. He’d shown me pictures, huge twenty-plus inch fat browns, and assured me he’d released them, but never did come clean as to where he actually was. Just somewhere on the creek, and my suspicions told me somewhere around here, simply because he was living and working close by at the time. Of course, I wouldn’t have put it past him to rent a house and get a job close to a specific part of the creek just to throw everyone off as to where he was fishing. Nope, I wouldn’t put it past him at all. I never pressured him for the spot and he never volunteered it.
When I started tying I began with nothing but a few different colors of marabou and some black hackles. But if you tie your own flies then you already know where this is going so we’ll just skip ahead. Once you start tying you never look at anything the same again. And more importantly, you’re always looking. And your friends know it too. And your wife.
Few words have the impact when spoken that steelhead does. See? You just felt something when you read it. Steelhead. Don’t believe me? Do you remember the scene in Stand by Me, (if you don’t know the movie then stop reading. Just stop. You’re probably too young to have seen it, because everyone else in the world that’s old enough has. Find it, watch it, and then come back to this later) the scene where Ace says to Eyeball and Charlie “You guys are like my grandmother having a conniption fit. I don't see your problem. We brought a whole bunch of fishing gear, and if a cop asks us what we're doing here, we're just here to take a couple steelhead out of the river, and look what we found!” That one line set a tone of extreme maturity and coolness at that moment in the film. Suddenly, a punk, a thug named Ace became a very cool guy for a few seconds. It was a line that would have never worked, never been so powerful had steelhead been replaced by bass, or even trout. Because of the use of steelhead, the line was pure Hollywood gold. I’ve never gone for steelhead, always avoided it because of people, but even I recognize the power in the emotions the name evokes. There’s only one other word in fly fishing that comes close to grabbing the attention of fly anglers by tender regions and making their eyebrows raise, their heads tilt to one side or the other like a dog, listening to the conversation with a feeling of importance. It also happens to be connected to steelhead…Stonefly.
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