Sorry Stam, didn't mean to slight you. I only saw you trying to fly cast the one time. Maybe you're ascot qualified, and I just don't know it. Yeah, there are times that a well presented fly will outfish other methods, but I haven't seen that time occur during winter steelhead season, even when I caught fish and conventional gear anglers around me didn't.

The only good reason to fly fish for steelhead, unlike trout where it can be far and away the most productive method, is because you want to. About the same as choosing to fly fish for tropical flats species like bonefish, permit, and tarpon. Fly fishing for many species isn't about gaining membership to the club of ascot wearing elitists, wherever they are. Fishing for a lot of these fish species is about the personal satisfaction of doing something by other than the easiest way, learning a little more, working a little more, like shooting a deer or elk with a long bow instead of a compound or a scoped high power rifle.

And even if peculiar, there's something strangely satisfying in hooking a steelhead with a strange looking contraption like an Intruder when we know that a hunk of colored yarn most likely would have done the job just as well. Fishing, I think, is something that if one must explain it to someone, there ain't no way that person is going to understand it.

Lastly, like Salar says, where the hell are these elitists everyone keeps talking about? I may have seen a couple, but I'm not at all sure.

Sg