I agree with your post WC. I would add that the flyfishing closer to the bank during high water shouldn't be too murky for trying winter steelies (obviously). But I also prefer the medium rivers and mostly summer steelhead flyfishing. I just don't get whazzup with using 14' double handed spey rods to fish large cold colored rivers for winter steelhead!?! I'm sure there are some guys that genuinely enjoy that challenge, for some reason which I don't understand - I see it as a cumbersome handicap to enjoying catching fish. But I also suspect some of the 'uppity fly elistists' take on this cumbersome low catch rate freezing activity for some kind of ego or false sense of 'superiority' above gear anglers? I don't know. I bet I might hear from a few LL Bean/Norm Thompson catalog clothed guys for that take on it. I hope they would rather explain what that's all about, rather than flame the questionable dis. ... I do love to flyfish for summer steelhead, although I do less of it because the wading gets to my bum ankle. But I like a great feeling rythmic casting 9' for 7 wt. quality flyrod (custom GL3 blanked flyrod I'm using lately). In analogy, those big spey rods seem similar to carrying a big ladder out on a basketball court to climb up to shoot over guys?!? Either that or I'm in need of "culturing".

RT