Cursed by Steelhead

Ok, let's just say, for argument's sake, that every cast, every drift or swing takes half a minute.  From setup to cast to mend, to drift, to setting up again.  In some cases a minute may result in three drifts, or four swings, but this is argument's sake.  Now, let's just say we are fishing really hard.  On the water and bouncing from hole to hole for ten hours straight, and we are making casts and drifts six out of ten of those hours.  The other four hours, we are driving or floating, hiking or rock hopping, tying on tippet or flies, eating our lunch and drinking our beer.  Sixty minutes an hour for six hours a day.  Two casts per minute over 360 minutes... 720 casts.  Over two and a half days, that's 1800 casts.  I have heard steelhead described as the fish of a thousand casts.  How about no fish in 1800 casts.  That is what steelhead will do to you, especially when you are my primary fishing partner, Pop Pop.

Pop Pop is a helluva good fisherman.  He doesn't adhere to some bullshit new fishing fad, just because some guide who thinks he is a rock star got his photograph taken, and it went into an Orvis catalog.  Pop Pop just catches fish.  He wears his vest until the seams disintegrate, and he just catches fish.  He fishes his double taper lines until the cracks no longer shoot through the guides, and he just catches fish.  He fishes harder than anybody I have ever met, and he is good.  He is a good caster, he reads water, and he catches fish.  He also appreciates every fish he catches, much more than most people do.  Catching an eight-inch cutthroat on a muddler minnow is cause for boisterous celebration.  Why? Because that cutthroat was native, and he hooked it on a muddler, by far his favorite fly.  Pop Pop lets that fish go then smacks his fly back near the bank.  He wants to catch another, and he will.  Big fish and small fish.  Again and again.  Fish after fish after fish.

Pop Pop with a fat Yellowstone Cut, and a sunburn.

But there is something metaphysical about Pop Pop's relationship with steelhead.  When it comes to steelhead, he does not catch fish.  Eighteen hundred casts and no fish.  Fifteen hard hours and no fish.  Two and a half days in the wind and rain and cold and snow.  No fish.  What's more, he has done it two years in a row now.  Thirty six hundred casts and no fish.  I say his relationship with steelhead is metaphysical because the only way he could fish that hard, with steelhead in the river, and not catch a single fish, is that he is cursed.  He knows how to drift an egg pattern, to swing a wet fly.  He knows how to read the water and know where the fish will be.  What he did to warrant such a curse, who can say.  It sure doesn't seem like he deserves it.

One of 3600, but at least it is in God's Country

Ok, so the fishing wasn't stellar.  Nobody on our trip landed more than one steelhead, and we all fished hard.  Maybe it was just that Pop Pop was the odd man out and the chances of such a thing were pretty high, given the overall catch rates of a group of reasonably good anglers. But, there is a larger history here.  Pop Pop is legendary among his peers for a 17-year steelhead drought.  Ok, so he didn't make thousands upon thousands of casts a year for 17 years, but he went fishing.  He went fishing with folks who knew what they were doing with ultra-effective bait-and-hardware approaches that might be a little closer to commercial fishing than angling.  He didn't catch fish.  The drought had been broken, but over the last two years, he is 15 hours and 3600 casts on his way to a new record.

I am an optimist, and I am fast becoming a steelhead enthusiast.  I have developed that enthusiasm because I have had enough success in my short steelheading career to make me really, really excited about it.  I want to share that excitement with Pop Pop.  Steelhead are thrilling.  There is a reason there is a legion of dedicated "metalheads" out there.  Even though steelhead are a fish of a thousand casts, you have to know you will get one eventually.  If a fish every thousand casts is an average, you would sure like to believe Pop Pop is due, and due in a big way.  The law of averages generally reflects some shaky statistical reasoning, but so is a belief in a metaphysical relationship between a man and a bunch of semelparous fish.

A run with cover, and hope

Fishing isn't a world of reason and statistics, it is a world of superstition, myth, and circumstance (it is a bit like baseball, isn't it?).  There is a lot that has to go right in the riverine universe for fly and fish to end up in the right place, right time, and right mood to trigger a strike, particularly from steelhead, yet somehow, we will it into being.  I believe Pop Pop is due.  I believe that the next time he goes out he will experience a fishing story that will last him the rest of his life.  A story about a lightning fast fish, taking him into his backing, coming to hand only after being bested by an angler of Pop Pop's ability.  Maybe that story includes multiple hook ups, only a couple hundred casts apart.  I believe this will happen because Pop Pop is the purest and most beautiful fisherman I know.  He has the drive of a young angler and the knowledge of a sage.  Some of his fishing buddies say he won't catch steelhead because he doesn't have the patience, because he gets the funk when he doesn't catch fish.  Let me be the first to say, nobody has the patience of Pop Pop.  I don't know many who could put up with 3600 casts and nary a tug.  Drift after perfect drift through the best bucket in the run.  Pop Pop put up with 3600 tugless casts to see elk and deer grazing the steep ranges of the canyon, to stand in a river still held back by winter's cold hand, to spend 50 hours fishing with and sharing the hard won successes of his son.

So yeah, Pop Pop is gonna catch steelhead.  He is gonna catch lots of them, because he deserves it.  Pop Pop is due.

Hope that a new fly will bring new luck