This report comes in a couple days late... Dec. 10th was the day I fished.

December is that magical time of year when the weather cools down, roads freeze, and the holiday spirit runs rampant through the crowds. It is also the time of year that hatchery steelhead begin to creep into the rivers' higher reaches.

I love winter. The snow is beautiful to me, adding a frosty cap to the slumbering northwest greenery. Now that the river flows are more cooperative, it makes my journeying more doable and the fishing more productive.

If you know where to look, it's hard to get skunked on a winter's day. Bull trout are abundant this time of year and are my most common catch in the river, and the odd coho still lingers here and there. Of course a couple of grey ghosts haunt the frigid runs of the rivers as well. Even when the fishing doesn't go to plan, carrying a variety of presentations to chuck at faces will help you find what fish are eating or keyed in on.

Jig color has never really mattered very much for me. I find that 98% of time, the fish will bite the first jig that swims past it's face. Rarely have I switched jigs in a run and caught a fish on the second, third, or fourth color.

Or, there's this example. A jig swims past a steelhead. He doesn't bite. Another less conventional presentation swings by him. He crunches is. The fish is fought for six minutes before brought to the snow-covered shore.

Sometimes the fish come in "odd" ways, luckily for the angler. When analyzed, these odd methods have a clear attraction to the fish.

The moral of the story is that some steelhead don't want to bite a small floating morsel. They need something to piss them off or get in their face in order to want to eat.

I haven't heard any glowing reports from guys, mostly just a fish here and there up by the terminal fisheries... a lot of people, not much being caught. Unfortunately we are in the midst of perhaps the dullest winter season to date.

Being the year of the cutback in plants takes place, all rivers suffered in the PS region. I have heard from reputable sources that 600 hatchery returns will be a good target... not what we want to hear. Other locals met on the river have told me the same story.

I was happy to happen into one fish today along with my other friends of the river, the Bull Trout and Coho Salmon.