With regard to the fishing, things started slow for us, very slow. If I was to be honest, and I rarely am, I would say that I was worried if not a bit disappointed thus far. After leaving our first camp, the steelhead water seemed to be hard to find if not non-existent. Lodge boats were getting shut out and so were we. We pounded everything that looking halfway decent without anything to show for it. The river, bankfull and swift, carried us away faster than we would have liked. The named runs, camps, and spots I had tried to hone in on in the pre-trip process weren’t matching up with the river in front of us one bit.


Classy


Stam is good with fire...and the ladies.





Camp water that looked great. We fished it hard and hard again, with nothing but casting practice to show for it.





I got crushed in this run only to have the fish come unbutton (they don't spit) after 5 seconds of fury.









Surprise #2, two falls (the season not the vertical water thingy) ago the entire valley had been hit with a massive, 100+year flood that moved the rivers hundreds of yards in some cases. The river, despite its extraordinarily high flows, seemed to still be breaking in it’s new home. Late in the day on our 2nd full day of fishing I picked up a nice buck that left me a little shaky after a top shelf smash and grab followed by a cartwheeling, backing baring run across to the other bank and back. Maybe these fish were something else after all. The sample pool was small thus far.

Moving the story right along, things stayed slow for a bit and day three or so had Stamly getting into the swing of things (polishing up a nice spey cast and jumping on the catching wagon in relative unison) by beaching two nice fish out of an ideal looking camp water run. We continued lower into the river faster than we had hoped to and eventually our paths collided (literally, not figuratively) with that of the fish. We spent the last four days of the trip wandering the lower river shaking hands with some of the finest steelhead we had even seen, felt, and experienced.



















Still a bit more to come.