ryank

Originally Posted by ryank

Took my first official trip east for the season today, rode my bike up the east side of the river to an area I fished quite a bit last year, it took a few minutes to hook up but it wasn't a steelhead it was a redside! That thing hit my spinner so hard that for the first few seconds I genuinely thought it was a steelhead, then I felt that there wasn't alot of weight behind it and saw it was a trout, small, but still a very fun fish. I hiked up stream to my "guaranteed" spot, and sure enough I hooked into my first Deschutes steelhead of the season, it went on a big run as soon as I hooked it and went airborne shortly after the first run, then went on another run straight down stream, then turned straight around came back towards me jumped again and spit the spinner back at me! this all happened in about 10 seconds, so after that I was pretty pumped up, it wasn't a real big fish but it was a scrappy one. I fished a few other spots that were good to me last season but nothing else came from that section of the river. I hiked back to my bike, and decided to fish the run where I parked my bike, I usually don't swing spinners but I wanted to cover some water pretty quick so I decided to try the swing out, I was just thinking to myself, fishing spinners like this is kind of boring, and as soon as I thought that a fish grabbed the spinner, it ran downstream shortly and then it felt like it came off, so I reeled like crazy to pick up the slack line and it had just turned and started coming back up towards me, it then passed where I was standing and started peeling line off swimming up stream, it ended up about 100' up from where I was standing so I followed it up and it was holding in some heavy water I could feel big head shakes, it felt heavy, and the fish never went airborne, so I thought for sure it's a chinook, after a minute or two the fish comes up to the surface about half way out in the river, and I saw it was a big chrome steelhead, I was pretty exited at that point, I worked the fish in and tailed it, it is by far the nicest steelhead I've ever caught! I caught a 13lb summer on the sandy earlier this season and this fish was quite a bit larger than that one, so I don't know how much it weighed and I don't care! I was just really happy to be lucky enough to sink a hook into this thing, my day was made from there on out. I fished for a few more hours, with no other takers, and it was getting really hot out and I started feeling funny so I decided to call it a day. It doesn't seem like there are a ton of fish around but there are definitely some nice fish to be caught if you cover enough ground. Here are a few pics, I didn't get a good shot of the steelhead I just snapped a few quick shots and cut her loose.





Ryank