I counted it up a few nights back...before today, I think it had been at least a dozen fishing trips that I had made since the beginning of the year where I had not landed anything. Before today, I had yet to catch a fish in 2015.

There was one particular afternoon trip to the Sky a few weekends back where I hooked into something small (maybe a smolt, maybe a Dolly?) only to have it throw the hook before I could even see what it was. There was a morning of Sturgeon fishing on the Willamette, filled with many solid hookups, only to have them all tangle into something on the bottom, or break the leader/throw the hook mid-fight. There was a prior trip to Green Lake where I hooked into my very first fish on the fly rod (a whole new world there) only to have it too throw the hook barely a second after I realized I had a fish on. There was a drive by bait hit at Green Lake earlier this week within minutes of arriving, only to have the fish shy away and not show up for the rest of the evening. There was a trip out to one of my favorite lakes in the area targeting some cutthroat with a friend, where our combined knowledge of fishing for the cutts in that specific lake should have practically guaranteed us success, with only a solitary bobber wiggle throughout the entire morning. And my personal favorite, there was the outing on the Wallace on the last day of January where I watched my bobber and night crawler setup drift along in the dying light at the end of the day, bouncing up and down like a truck on a backcountry road as what had to be schools of smolts pecked at the worm while I was urging something bigger to come out and take a bite.

It was a dark time for me. The fish, they were taunting me, giving me just enough hope to believe that I was still capable of actually catching something, but each time leaving me as empty and fish-less as Seattle is Super Bowl champion-less this year. The pain, it was very real.

I knew that sooner or later, one way or another, I would finally catch something this year, but my efforts had begun to feel like waiting in line at the post office; a seemingly never ending monotony of boredom, and possibly even despair.

But as surely as the vicious onslaughts of the fiercest winter storms will subside to the playful breezes of late spring, and the fangs of the darkest night will be broken by the unyielding power of the newfound dawn, the angler that persists will eventually be rewarded with a fish on the line.

At long last, today was the day I would finally receive my reward. As the weekend approached, I had initially intended to continue my search for Steelhead on one of our local rivers, but the relentless rains and black and blue dots all over the USGS convinced me that sleeping in was a better strategy for today. After a day of running errands and other non-fishing related endeavors, I arrived back home in the mid-afternoon. Seeing as there were still a few hours of daylight left, and the rain had subsided for the moment, I checked with the wife and received clearance for a quick Green Lake trip.

I put my gear in the car and booked it down to the 65th st. dock, arriving to find two other anglers already plying the waters in hope of a willing piscine player. One of them had landed a fish prior to my arrival, and landed another nice triploid rainbow while I was there. I however was having no luck at the dock with my Powerbait and spinner offerings, so I made the tactical decision to relocate in hopes of finding some more willing fish in another location. I moved north along the shoreline a couple hundred yards and picked a likely looking spot to redeploy my (by this point) dual Powerbait rods. After getting the rods situated, I settled into the enjoyable yet often boring routine of bait fishing. I much prefer more active approaches to enticing the fish, but desperate times call for desperate measures. As I stood there in the intermittent rains of this early February day, I finally heard the ringing of the bell on one of my poles, heralding the arrival of a fish that would finally end my drought.

I took the bell off the newly active pole and proceeded to start the waiting game that almost always occurs when Powerbait fishing for 'bows. Tap one....tap two....tap three....tap four...."man," I thought to myself as I crouched by my pole, compelling the fish to take the bait, "this fish is ridiculously finicky, even for a rainbow." Tap five....tap six....there must have been close to half a dozen taps before the pole finally took a decent bend, followed by the solid bend that indicated that the fish had finally accepted what I had to offer. No sooner had the pole taken the last bend when I grabbed it and set the hook, hoping that this fish would finally be the proverbial "one that didn't get away."

Well, as it would turn out on this particular day, a chrome bright 14" Steelhead smolt was the one with the bad luck, not me. As I pulled the fish onto the shore I felt a sense of hard earned accomplishment, knowing that I had finally managed to land a fish in the new year.

Tight Lines, and if you haven't yet caught your first for 2015, I wish you better luck than me!

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