This year is my first year chasing steelhead, so I've been hitting the Siuslaw almost every weekend so far this year. Most of my outings primarily involved nothing but lost gear and confidence, so I really needed to get myself into something.
Today I finally found my skunk-be-gone.
This is one of those typical stories. I took the next two days off because my father is moving to Oregon and this just so happens to be his first visit here. At the last minute, I decided I would head up to the Siuslaw for a couple hours to see if I could find myself a nice late run winter. I only took one pole with me, and a small trout net since all I have been catching recently is trout. I packed up my rig and headed out for the Siuslaw.
I ended up starting with a pink bubblegum worm under a bobber, and drifted it behind a series of rocks at the first hole I hit. After about 20 minutes, I packed it up and hit the next hole. This time, I parked over by the campground, and hiked back to another spot that I knew of. After losing two worms at this spot, something in the back of my head said "spinner. Siwash hook". So I tied up a chartreuse & chrome #4 blue fox with a siwash hook, and headed to the third and last hole of the day for me. Since the water was murky, I ended up using a slow and deliberate technique. After about a dozen casts, I hit what I thought was another snag...until I saw it glistening in the water. Fish on!! This little lady went through all of the motions. Rolling, jumping, diving. After about a minute or so, I thought I had the thing shored until it turned and ran away. It took about 30 yards of line, but ultimately gave up after a couple more minutes.
She was a hatchery hen with only a couple eggs. Measured out at 25" and maybe 3 or 4 pounds. I was so excited that I got my first steelie that I forgot I had a fish scale.