I learned to fish in Eastern Washington, and never knew there was any other kind of gear than a cane fly rod - I fished bait, spoons, flys, whatever would tie on the end of it, for all kinds of fish but especially trout. I was trout fishing a small stream in the summer when I was all of 7, with a "pennywinkle" fly that my grandpa taught me to tie, when I hooked into what I thought had to be the hog of all trout, 2 feet long and absolutely crazy. I fought that thing for an hour and a half - it would come out of the water and tailwalk down to the end of the pool, it would take me 10 minutes to work it back up, and it would do it all over again - but finally I managed to flip it up on the bank with my tiny trout net. Picked it up and ran all the way home, and when I got there my grandpa told me that wasn't a trout, it was a steelhead, and explained the difference to me. Said it had been years since he had heard of one caught in that little crick. About 7 years later I hooked and lost another one there, also on a flyrod, but by then I had caught several winter steelhead . Nothing like that first one, though