Out With Heavy

Had the pleasure of getting out fishing today with Heavy D on the local flow before he drives back to Montucky tomorrow. It was classic early winter steelheading with freezing cold water and snow pounding down all day. At the very least it made for some spectacular photography, if not perfect fishing conditions. That said, over the years I've had some pretty good fishing in snow dumps and if we know where to find fish anywhere its on the local. Driving out in the morning, traffic was its usual Western Washington in a snowstorm. Would've been humorous if it wasn't so scary, luckily among the 15 some odd vehicles that were spun out/off the road we didn't see any that looked particularly dangerous.

Given the god awful road conditions we'd expected to find the river abandoned, instead we found more or less normal numbers of folks out on a weekday. Apparently we aren't the only people in the Seattle area capable of steelhead induced lunacy. The weather stayed just warm enough to keep the guides from freezing which made the snow somewhat bearable, top if off with a nice big bill trout and a mystery fish that came unpinned after a couple of good headshakes and it was a well above average day. Stopped by All About the Fly on the way home to say hi to Ron and to bid farewell to the brick and mortar shop that has helped nurture both of our steelhead addictions. Sad to see that place go. Ron also showed us some new stinger wire he's discovered that wont go all limp and wiggly like firewire or powerpro. Watch out world, the stinger fly may never be the same.