early morning waterfall

After missing opportunities to go steelhead fishing for most of the winter, I finally made it down to Brian’s place Wednesday night. We got up at six the next morning and were on the water at daybreak, kayaking down the Nehalem River looking for steelhead.


ice

It was really, really cold all morning. Ice would form on the paddle and the kayak, and the guides on the poles would be iced up in a few minutes each time I stopped fishing. Cold water like this does not make for great steelhead fishing, and it didn’t help that the water was low and very clear. Amazingly, I made it through the whole run without losing a single piece of gear. I guess I’ve gotten way better at getting hooks unstuck. Wearing a drysuit helps a lot. Under the drysuit, I was wearing three pairs of socks, and three layers of polypro and wool long underwear, and a heavy fleece jacket and it was just about perfect. My hands got cold, but that was it.


cobble beach

Most of the spots that Brian was hoping to stop and fish at already had people in them, so we had to pass up some pretty nice water and keep on going. But around midday, Brian hooked one on the first cast into a new pool. It was a nice, bright fish, but a native, so not a keeper. We let him go as quickly as possible, so no pics of that one, sorry!

Other than that little bit of fishy excitement, it was a pretty uneventful, but beautiful and relaxing day on the river.


pool


riffles


Nehalem River

3 Comments

  1. Ahhhh. Seeing your post brings back great memories of our low water fishing run last fall with Brian. Its a beautiful river.

  2. linked here from BushcraftUSA and enjoyed my look around. Nice blog, lots of things of interest to me.

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