What a great day to chase Steelhead, the canyon walls are covered with patches of fog in the ravines, the river is like glass, not a whisper of a breeze. I ask Barb if she would like to go out after fishing after lunch, with a grin she says she will be ready.

Barb backed the boat into the water at a gravel launch site, she powers it off the trailer and waited for me to get the rig parked, when I get to the boat she has both the propane gas heater, and the boat hot water heater going, ambient temp. is 41F so it feels pretty good. I point the bow downriver and head for the spot we want to fish, we maneuver through a couple of rapids and arrive at the first drift. The plan is to take two fish in this location, then head back upriver to another favorite spot to finish the evening of fishing, we have about three hours of fishing time.

I start the Honda trolling motor to get it warmed up while Barb holds the boat in a stationary position, get the plugs scented up, engage the TR-1 AutoPilot. We start letting the lines out, Barb has her line out first on the outside rod, I am still letting line out, and Barb is putting line out on the third rod, she says "take this rod, I have a fish on", I look over to see her rod bending double with a Steelhead on the other end. I grab the rod out of her hand and she then takes her rod out of the holder, and the fight is on, the fish is headed downstream stripping out a lot of line. This is a pretty nice fish, we are close to a sandbar so I tell Barb we will nose the boat into shore to land the fish. The big Hen then comes boiling out of the water, then makes a run toward the boat, I speed up to keep the line away from the trolling motor, the fish comes out of the water again as I turn the boat toward the sandbar. The nose of the boat slides up on shore, I then grab the landing net while Barb is playing the fish, after several short runs I slide the net under a beautiful Steelhead, we lift it out of the water, take a picture, then release her. We give each other a high five, and will try for another one.

We start the slow back troll, almost certain we will get another one in near the same spot, but it didn't happen. We continue with the drift, after about 45 minutes the center rod slams down, then for a few seconds we see the plug is working, the rod then slams down again, a Steelhead is on, I take the rod out of the holder. This one starts to roll and twist up in the leader, it comes to the surface, thrashes for a short time then makes a run toward the boat, At this time Barb has the net ready, the fish tires and surfaces on it's side, she nets it. This one is smaller than the other one, but a hard fighting Steelhead. We let this one go, and then head for the other stretch of water we want to fish, that is about six or seven miles upriver.

We arrive at the second location, put the lines out, in about five minutes Barb catches another nice one. Then thirty minutes later I catch one that is around 14#. It is getting pretty dim in the canyon so we decide to call it quits. It has been a gorgeous afternoon, cool and crisp, misty, low hanging clouds, it's just hard to imagine how lucky we are to be here, and we are very thankful. Ken & Barb

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