Iron, my advice to you is, when you graduate from high school go to an out-of-state college. The East Coast or maybe even the Great Lakes region; our friend Hawk seems to think that the steelheading is mighty fine out there. What you'll discover is that the Americans out there will be refreshingly different. Maybe then you'll realize the diversity of this country, not only color-wise, but regionally and ethnically also.

For Washinton's recreational steelheaders a huge problem I see is that we can't separate the "fishing" method from the people. We do this to both the commercials and Native American alike. Because we don't like their fishing styles, we hate them. But in reality it's the people that are important, not the method. I saw this at the I-695 rally at Seacrest when Pete Knutson showed up. People were telling him to "f***-off" and "go to hell" and they don't even know this man personally.

We also do this amongst ourselves. Many of us have created this hierarchy of recreational steelheading methods, with our favorite on top. Some of the stereotypes I've seen emerge from this are: flyfishers are elitists, plunkers kill natives, pluggers can't catch 'em any other way, floatfishers are sissies, etc,etc,etc. Again, it's not the method that's important, it's the person.