Some of the most valuable Alaska steelhead lessons I learned while flyfishing for rainbow trout in California.
They weren’t some magical insight or secret from a guide but observations I made while fishing the same water over and over.
My buddy Kurt and I were fishing a river that had dropped from 7000 to 5000 cubic feet per second. The drop revealed a network of skinny but deep channels that were invisible when the water was up. They were deep canyons of blue water where trout would hold. Get the cast just right, and you could drop a heavily weighted nymph rig in one and likely get a fish. A bad cast would get you hung up on a wall or gummed up with the brown slime that lined them. Six inches made all the difference.
Even if you’re not dealing with channels, there is nothing in a fish that says it has to recognize you’re using the right fly and obey your desire for it to bite. It doesn’t have to move six inches to take the fly just because you want it to.
I kept casting to where my buddy had hooked one — well, at least where I thought it was. Then I considered the chute. The shore on my side of the river dipped sharply then rose almost instantly. If it was like that on the other side, then the best holding water was right next to the opposite bank.
I sent a roll cast to the far side of the river, two feet beyond where I was casting, and almost on top of a monolithic shelf that was in six inches of water. The fly fell off the shelf. One thousand one. One thousand two.
Boom. Steelhead.
Next cast, same spot, off the shelf. One thousand one. One thousand two.
Boom, steelhead.
The spot I was aiming for was in the general vicinity, but wasn’t precise, or tempting enough.
Fishing is all about nuance. It’s the subtle little things that the experienced angler knows that a newbie doesn’t. Or a lucky angler happens to figure out right off. But chances are, there is a learning curve.
If I were to say, “cast just in front of that rock ledge on the far side; they stack up there.” I know the exact one-foot sweet spot to land my fly. “Just in front” is terribly ambiguous to the uninitiated angler.
It takes time. You can feel like the river owns you. When someone tells you, or takes you to their favorite spot, you usually see it for what it is, a 100 yard section of water. What they see is that chute, that lane, in combination with the right weight for the river level.
It takes time to get to know a river on this intimate level. But with experience, even from another state, you can figure it out and save yourself some frustration.
• Jeff Lund is a teacher and freelance writer based in Ketchikan.
