Report from Mike Bellmore: Son in law (Jered) and I have been busy floating the river and tagging trout. As everyone knows, the water has been high and cold for much of our spring season. We haven’t experienced a red hot trout tagging day, but have heard reports of fellow anglers tagging over 20 trout in a single outing. Our best day so far has included a couple of fatty red-sides and a nice cutthroat!
During one of the few days that we found the McKenzie low and the trout ready, we happened upon a couple of chrome surprises. Jered had tagged a couple of fish and we were dredging the bottom with 5x test tippet material and small nymphs. We were fishing tight to the bank and probing all of the structure we could locate.
As we covered the area behind a downed tree, I set the hook and could see by the flash that we were into a very large fish. 200 yards and 25 minutes later, a beautiful 11lb steelhead buck was indelicately pounced upon and wrestled to the beach by Jered “Bearhug” Fry. To my amazement, the 3wt rod, delicate tippet and small fly had all performed to perfection! For a brilliant moment in time I basked in the glory that comes when a trout angler lands a large fish of that caliper. That glory was quickly replaced with the understanding that dumb luck is like playing the lottery.” You shouldn’t play for investment purposes”!
What happened next, is even more bizarre! As we moved down river, congratulating each other on the brilliance of the day, Jered set the hook on another oversized fish. The entire drill was repeated in about the same amount of time and river real estate. I rowed and he battled. The fish crossed the river, went under the boat, tried to swim into the willows and finally came to rest in a backwater slough. It was my turn to pounce of a fish and I quickly took care of business!
Within a matter of minutes, we had landed two beautiful steelhead and had them laying on the gravel with rods in place. A couple of anglers who had watched the show commented about how lucky we were. After fishing the McKenzie for 40 years and spending so many hours chasing summer steelhead with a fly it is so painfully obvious: If given enough time, a chimpanzee can type Shakespeare’s Hamlet and, a fool can catch a steelhead on the trout fly!
