Steel Mining in the Mist

Steelhead Fly Fishing at it’s Best

by John G. Sherman

My windshield wipers were chugging along at full speed and still not keeping up. As I pulled off of the highway onto the gravel bar, an inch of water was vibrating on Highway 199 with each raindrop. My two buddies and I stepped into our first California coastal steelhead river with no idea what we were doing. The river was rising rapidly. We felt as if we were on some other mysterious planet. Along both banks, ancient coastal redwood trees appeared and disappeared in the passing mist. Five minutes into the session my popsicle fly stopped mid-swing as if a bolt of lightning had just hit my rod, my Billy Pate Bonefish reel humming like a giant bonefish was on the other end. Instead, a perfect winter-run hen cartwheeled out of the water, jumping six times in 10 seconds. My fly line disappeared downriver as the chrome bar jumped upstream of me. My 896 SP buckled, and I felt totally outmanned. Another three minutes into the battle, the hen headed back toward the Pacific, jumping one final time as the hook pulled out. My hands were shaking and my pulse was pounding. Little did I know that this fish had just changed my life.

That was January 1996 on the Smith River, just below the Oregon border. After hooking that fish five minutes into my first day, I fished for 39 days before hooking my next steelhead on the Smith River. After graduating from college four years later, I spent two months as a steelhead bum, fishing all of thread the rest of the story famed British Columbia steelhead rivers. (I borrowed the names of two of those rivers to name my own children.)  Chasing anadromous salmonids—though born in freshwater and returning to freshwater to spawn,