got a late start to the day but at least i got out of the house. decided to try the wallace since i had only tried a couple holes on it before. got to the hatchery about 11am. stopped by the pipe briefly. not much going on. i had not seen the river that low before so knew this was going to be a good day to explore down the river. a few guys between there and the cedar hole. watched 3 guys there for a bit then decided to slip into an open spot. didnt take me long to offer the river my first bribe. 3rd cast in i caught the tree and proceeded to drop my jig to the bottom of the river as i yanked my line off the tree. moved down and across the the may creek hole. saw one guy leaving with a fish and another guy at the hole with one. ryan from reel priorities complimented me on my hat. i said thanks and replied "i hope the fish liked it too!". went just around the corner and tried to drift some yarn and corkie until i offered the river my second bribe. again, another tree. guess i need to work on my accuracy. or at least mend it off the branch better than i did. thats how my year has gone so far so i was tempted to just leave, only an hour into fishing.

i noticed that there was just a solo guy back up across from may creek so i went up to join him there since i hadnt fished it before. tossed half of a pink worm for a bit but figured it was not a good presentation. was going to go with a whole worm or at least a longer piece. found i had the back half of a pink worm with the squiggly tail on it. put that on a glittery white jig and tossed it in the river. pulled up a bunch of salad for a while even with my bobber stop set at a pretty short length. then snag. crap. yay it came loose. a few casts later another bobber down in the same spot. crap another snag. i yank on it and it surprises me and yanks back. its been a slow year and the memory of a fish yanking on my line was fading but i managed to realize i had a fish on. i gave it another good tug to set the hook, said fish on to mike (the other guy there) and went to work pulling in my first real steelhead since i was a kid. fyi-i took 25 years off fishing so i wasnt skunked for that long. first fish on my okuma sst float rod and pflueger supreme combo as well. the fish fought well but didnt really take any long runs and thrash hard until i got it close into shore. we got it netted and up onto the bank. nice 2lb hatch buck onto my card. a good start to my week off and a good end to the calendar year.

i put another hour or two into fishing but eventually the toes got cold, the sun dropped behind the fog and i succumbed to a pretty decent day on the river despite not being able to take home a limit. thanks to mike for help with the net and taking pics.