Tumbleweed steelhead

A West Coast Spring Break Adventure

By Dan Small

Out West, things aren't always as they seem. So I should not have been surprised when I stepped off a cutbank on my way to the river and didn't hit solid ground. Instead, I pinballed down through a pile of brush, struggling to keep my fly rod over my head. What I had mistaken for a brush-covered slope was in fact a vertical bank, against which the winds of winter had stacked a 20-foot cushion of tumbleweed.

When my waders finally touched down, I pulled myself free and joined my companions just in time to photograph our first steelhead of the day, a red-cheeked wild male that Dale Dietzman had caught while showing Pat Henry and my son Jon how to drift an egg fly through a deep run on this high-desert river.

The steelhead that swim up the Columbia and Snake rivers can't appreciate the abrupt landscape changes that occur between the Pacific Ocean and their natal tributaries. They simply follow instinct and the faint smell of home upstream to get here. Our overland route takes us from coastal rain forest, up over the snow-covered Cascades and into the arid high desert of eastern Washington.

Here, some 300 river miles from the Pacific, steelhead seem out of place among rimrock and tumbleweed, where the only trees are the willow and cottonwood on the banks of the little rivers that race through the foothills on their way down to the Snake.

Last year's pilgrimage to the rivers of Lewis & Clark yielded great adventure, but no fish. This year, Pat had enlisted Dale to point us in the right direction. In advance of our arrival, Dale, a retired physician and avid steelheader, had spent a week sampling the run on several streams. With many more miles of river available to them than our Great Lakes steelhead have, these West Coast fish often move quickly through the sections open to fishing on their way to the spawning headwaters, most of which are closed. A stretch of river may be full of fish one day, but empty the next.

Weather plays a role, too. Streams that flow through farm country silt up when it rains, and snowmelt runoff can make mountain rivers run high and cold. A day and a half of rain in the lowlands around Walla Walla narrowed our choice to one river that rises high in the Blue Mountains, where the precip had fallen as snow.

Pat and Jon fished on downstream, as Dale and I worked a deep run banked by a rock cliff.  We were all using 8-weight rods with floating line and Dale's hand-tied egg imitation I christened "Doctor Third Eye." Dale swore me to secrecy on its design, but the name is a clue.

The cliff run produced nothing, so we moved on to another run that didn't look like much. Dale insisted I try it.

"I caught four fish here the other day," he said, pointing his rod at two cottonwoods on the far bank. "There's a deep slot at the top of the run between those two trees."

I lobbed my weighted rig into the current, mended twice and felt the split shot tick gravel. When the fly stopped, I lifted my rod and felt the throb of a good fish.

The steelhead came to the surface, rolled twice and was gone. From its silver sides and white belly, we guessed it was a female. Barbless hooks are required here, so a fish that gets its head up or twists as this one did often shakes free.

The next drift through the same spot produced another strike, but this fish stayed deep, his stripe flashing crimson in the clear water. He fought well for a fish that had come so far, but eventually tired and slid into Dale's grasp. I had finally caught my first West Coast steelhead, a 26-inch male, with cheeks that glowed brick red!

Dale pointed out the clipped adipose fin, which indicated the fish had been raised in a hatchery. All wild, unmarked fish must be immediately released here, but those with a clipped adipose may be kept. We decided to kill this fish for the ranch caretaker who had given us permission to fish. Washington has strict trespassing laws that require permission to hunt or fish on private land. Many landowners will let you fish, but they appreciate a fresh steelhead now and then.

Showers alternated with clearing skies all morning, as we fished the mile or so down to my rental car, which we had dropped off earlier at the next bridge crossing. Dale caught and released a whitefish, but we did not see another steelhead. We drove back to our starting point and fished upstream through a series of promising runs and two nice holes below small waterfalls.

At the second waterfall, Pat caught a hatchery-raised male steelie that took a Doctor Third Eye practically at his feet. This one was destined for Pat's table. Many West Coast steelheaders take all the hatchery fish the law allows to remove them from the gene pool. Some do breed with native fish, however, so it's hard to measure the value of this practice for preserving the wild strains.

The next morning, we fished another stretch of the same river for two solid hours without a take, then Jon hooked a good fish in a hole just below a big island. This one was a wild hen, about a six-pounder, and the best fish of the trip.

An hour later, Pat caught a wild hen on a gaudy fly aptly named a Streetwalker. That fish hit on Pat's first cast after Dale had drifted an egg through the same run.

Storm-felled cottonwoods made the river unfishable for hundreds of yards at a stretch, so we shuttled back upstream to yesterday's first spot for the last hour. Jon caught a hatchery male on a Streetwalker in the cliff hole, then I tied into a wild male on an orange Krystal Egg just below the bridge as daylight was fading.

The next morning, Jon and I  fished that same stretch before heading back to Seattle. He hooked and lost two fish in a tight lie against a fallen tree. Fifty yards downstream, he hooked a male with an intact adipose that stayed on long enough for a fight photo.

Three days of wading fast water wore me out, but the trip was a welcome respite from another Midwest winter and a great prelude to the spring steelheading about to begin on our Great Lakes streams!
On this trip, I brought two 5-piece, 9-foot Cabela's pack rods, an FT model and a Stowaway; and a 4-piece, 9' 6" St. Croix Legend Ultra. All were more than adequate for these fish, although the Ultra's extra six inches gave it the edge for lobbing weighted flies and mending line in the deep runs on this fast, narrow river. Jon liked the Stowaway so well, I left it with him, along with the assignment to scout up some fish for my next trip West this summer!

For more on this adventure, along with links to tackle shops and other facilities, log onto the On the Road page of my weblog.