For once I can help someone out. This is what we call chuck n duck in the midwest. It worked awesome for me on the Situk. Ask Robbo what he thought. HE saw me in action for a little while using this method. The nice thing is you can meter line out on your fly reel and work every inch of the run all the way to the other bank. This setup gives you a nice clean drift. You can toss gear in to spots that other guys can only dream about.

Try this next time. Use your 12 pound as mainline, and tie the end to a barrel swivel. Leave about two inches of tag on the mainline knot. Tie on 8 pound or 10 pound in a three to four foot leader and then tie on your hook with yarn, fly, eggs, corkie (whatever you want to fish with). Now take and pinch your split shot on to the mainline tag. If you end up with a sinker snag, all you have to do is pull, and the sinkers fall off, and the rest of your rig is intact. It works sweet in real rocky, or boulder infested water.

When you hold your rod, let the line rest on your index finger, and keep the slack out of it. As an extra aid, try and keep your finger in contact with the rod blank where it meets the cork handle. This really helps you feel fish. I use to hold the rod in one hand, and handle the line with the other. Bad habit, it's too slow to get a good hook set on a fish. At least the ones we deal with. The fish you didn't feel at the Situk, were like freight trains to me, because our fish in the Midwest are not near as aggressive as yours are. Make sure to bring super glue with you, as you will get line cuts at the joints of your fingers when your hands are wet and you stripo mono off the reel. Shoot a little shot of glue in the
cut, pinch it together, and you're good to go.

When drifting, I like to meter the line to where I want, and shoot my line in to the spot. If it is deep there, I immediately strip about 4 feet of line as fast as I can. This gets your rig to the bottom ASAP and puts you in the strike zone as quickly as possible. Once you make contact with the bottom, follow your drift with the tip of your rod. You will hit a lot of fish at the tail end of your drift, so be ready.

Cold weather can give you fits with mono on a fly reel, and your guides will freeze up. A Q Tip with a light dose of vaseline really helps. Just swab the inside of your guides, and they will stay free of ice for a while longer than normal. Our rods are 9 foot 9 weight Sage fly rods (990). We build them from scratch, and use ceramic spinning guides on them. They are a little more sensitive when set up this way, and you avoid some of the hassle with mono fouling in the traditional fly guides. The other reason for the fly rods versus a steelhead blank is the slower action. We have to fish down to four pound line sometimes to take our winter steelies, and the slower action keeps you from breaking off a lot of fish. remember the lighter the line is, you have to go to a finer wire hook to get the same penetration in the fishes mouth. Hope this helps, and if you ever want to come to the land of Chuck N Duck, give me a call, and you'll see what light biters reallly are.