Guess the gist of it is that I've come around to thinking that hatchery fish, given their obsessive drive to get "home", travel even in less than ideal conditions. Maybe not as many or as quickly as during high water periods, but some are still moving upriver.

Additionally, these travelling lanes are often ideal spots to present a fly. So, if there ~is~ a fish there, you have a better chance of getting a take.

FWIW - this is just a theory I'm playing with after years of terrible luck on winter hatchery fish on a fly.

It's also a distillation of what i've surmised from the types of water my friends and I have managed to hook winter hatchery steelhead in over the past couple years and what it suggests about the steelhead found there.

I may be crazy, but trying to figure steelhead out is half the fun, right?

DS