Two Kinds of Flying

First Steelhead Nov 22^nd, 2019

Alright, this is my first attempt at this whole blog thing and I’m starting it with a post about catching my first steelhead last Friday.

Three years, three fly-out trips, two broken rods, four lost fish, and one failed relationship later, I finally caught my first winter Steelhead. The first time I heard about steelhead was inside a bass pro shop in Dania Beach Florida, trying to buy my first flyrod. At the time I was working as a floatplane pilot doing daily trips to the Bahamas, on multiple occasions I carried passengers on their way to Bimini or Andros to fish for Bonefish on the fly and I wanted to try this new challenge that was more than hurling cut squid for snapper. My first fly fishing lesson was inside that bass pro with Keith the shop pro who sold me an eight weight that would catch everything from snook, to bonefish, to steelhead. Fast forward two years and it’s my first week in Alaska and my coworkers Luke, and his wife Tracey, are taking my roommates and I out to our first fly fishing trip in Alaska, my first time fly fishing in fresh water.

Throughout the car ride Luke told us about how he was going to catch his first steelhead, he had spent the entire winter preparing for it, read multiple books, and tied the exact flies he needed. Being from Florida I was more captivated in the amazing views and mountains that surrounded us as we drove into the island, up until then the highest mountain I knew was a dump we passed on I-95 heading south to Ft Lauderdale. While sitting on a large fallen spruce Luke pointed out a large steelhead just ahead of us on the stream, drift after drift and the fish ignored every single fly he had in his fly box. It just sat there intently until it was finally spooked off by an ill-timed splash that may or may not have been me sliding off the log into the stream. By the end of that day nobody had caught a fish, I had sprained my ankle, and Luke had snow shoved down his jacket, but that is a different story. After that little adventure I was obsessed with catching one of those chrome sided beauties that Luke pointed out that day. The Flying, which was the entire reason I came to Alaska, was now an inconvenience that prevented me from fishing. I went fishing all summer long trying to figure out this new freshwater enigma, I had no idea what nymphing was, how to mend a dead drift, or the effect of water levels on the fishing, I only knew that I was having a blast and that the few trout I astonishingly caught were enough to keep me fixated on fly fishing. But before I knew it my summer in Alaska had ended and I was on a plane back to Florida dreaming about coming back earlier next summer so I could catch the Steelhead run at its earliest in the springtime.

The following year I was ready, I had spent my winter tying flies and this summer my roommate was a local fishing sage that had his own airplane and guide service for fly fishing in Ketchikan, Dave Rocke. With a winter of preparation, Dave’s priceless knowledge, and early arrival into town, this would be the year. Or at least that was the plan, the summer started off with a bang, literally, I blew up the motor on my nineteen ninety-nine Ford Ranger halfway to Washington in Kansas City, Missouri. The setback was a thousand-dollar plane ticket and the cash to buy Dave’s old Mitsubishi when I got to town. The few times I did get to go fishing that summer it didn’t end well, I hooked up with two fish and lost them both, one to a hook that straightened out, and the other to a sloppy knot. There were a lot of good things that summer but the steel heading was not one of them. It would be an entire year after that until everything came together and I landed my first fish.

Four O Clock, that was my cutoff time, at that point, it would be too dark to even see my indicator as it drifted down the stream. I had an hour and thirty minutes of sunlight left after I got work to try for a winter fish. At this point in the winter the sun didn’t come up until seven thirty and it was down by four. After a well-meaning warning from my very pregnant coworker that it would be too dark to fish, I left work and sped for the lake. Thirty minutes and two dolly varden later I hooked bottom for the second time, as I sighed and tried to break it loose my line suddenly went taught and the bottom began to pull back, this was no dolly. twenty minutes and three herculean runs later and I had my first steelhead in my net, well sort of, only half of the fish fit in the net. This fish eclipsed every other I had ever caught, this was no canal largemouth bass, this was a steelhead and it was worth every bit of effort it took to get to this point. Well except maybe the blown ranger, it didn’t even have one hundred thousand miles yet.