Took the wife steelheading yesterday. Started out at dead mans hole outside Challis. Saw a guy get one fish on and spent the better part of an hour re-rigging my wife set up. She somehow kept getting the hook caught on something and breaking it off. After about the 5th set I told her she couldn't cast there anymore. We moved on to Squaw Creek where it was much busier, but we were able to find a hole w/ plenty of room around it and started throwing the fly rod. I soon had a couple light hits, most likely from small trout. I worked my way down to a channel next to the bank and floated the set along the edge of the channel and some rapids. After about an hour with multiple hits from small trout (6-12" range) my strike indicator goes under and fish on! Steelhead even! Took a little time, but managed to land him after about 5 minutes. Bonked it and back at it. I ended up hooking 4 more steelies on the fly rod and eventually turned over full time use of it to my wife who hooked 3 steelies, but was unable to land them. She did land a squaw fish to keep the skunk off though. In the meantime I started bottom bouncing just upstream and managed to land 2 more, one native, one hatchery. Also had one on that peeled off about 30-40 yds of line and got tangled up then foul hooked before finally throwing the hook for good. Would have loved to see that one up close. I lost track of how many I had on but lost. Easily 12 or more. Over all, a personal best for me steelheading.
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Awesome report, thanks! Sounds like a day with some good action! Glad there's still lots of fish being caught! That sure sounds like some fun on a flyrod, i might just give it a go someday![crazy]
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Sounds like a great trip. It is always good when you can get your wife into the action.
Windriver
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Sounds like you guys did a little better than us. We spent about half the day Sat. fishing above Sunbeam. Not many people and lots of fish to target. Fished a fly bead combo and had a ton of strikes. Hooked up solid 10-12 times or more but only landed 7 which 5 where natives. Good times for sure and the weather was awesome. Best part was Avery even hooked into on. He watched and helped us all day Sat. and Sunday morning before we left he said he wanted to try. Set him up with just weight and made him practice for a while. After we got it down I put a fly bead combo on his spinning outfit and let him go. There was 6 of us all up on the bank watching Avery fish the hole. For being 5 yrs old he was doing great and fishing the seam like a grown up. My buddies couldn't believe it. Well on about his 30th cast he nails one and the fight was on. Now Avery is surrounded by 6 screaming people all telling him what to do. We should have stayed back and just let him do it because we got him all
and he lost the fish after several minutes. I was bummed but not Avery. He just said "Well that was fun, I guess I'll just have the catch another on". That was the end though and we needed to get home. Good trip!
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Just a quick fyi for anyone wanting to head up that way, because of the warm weather the water from the turn to stanley up past dead mans hole has come up about a foot and a half and is pretty chocolate, i was up yesterday for my frist time on my fly rod i caught four, ventured up to stanley and the water is crystal clear and low, but still fishing coming out. good luck!
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Great report! Can't wait until my little one is another year or two older and hopefully I'll get him in the like that too.[
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