Rainy, windy, and just a pretty crappy afternoon…Perfect for keeping all but the diehard chrome chaser at home. I wasn’t able to get out until a little after five this afternoon and I almost didn’t but that little voice in my head kept telling me to get out there and get my line wet. So I grabbed my fly rod and vest full of supplies and drove the five seconds to the stream right across from my house. As expected, nobody was there due to the unfriendly conditions. Undaunted, I walked down to the streams edge and set up my rig. I forgot my strike indicators but I figured that my bright yellow float line would aide in my detecting a strike. After five successive snags, break-offs, and re-ties I set up everything for what I figured was going to be my last couple of drifts because it was getting late. I decided to tie on a brown wooly bugger (I don’t know why because everybody in the last few days was catching steelhead on glo bug patterns) and flipped my rig upstream into the current. When my line got almost 90 degrees from me the bright yellow float line took off back upstream and I aggressively set the hook. The steelhead arched out of the water and raced up and down the stream, getting dangerously close to the stronger current. After a few more flips and runs it tried to settle back into the middle of the current but I muscled him over to my side of the stream. I was standing on a man made stone embankment as I didn’t have any waders (See story about me dropping my camera in the Salmon river and my waders no longer being waterproof). I had only grabbed my little trout net for when I am trout fishing and there was no way that it was going to reach from where I was standing. “Screw it,” I said as I jumped off the edge and into the freezing water. Luckily, it was only a little over ankle deep by where I landed, another step and I would have gotten a good soaking. I kept trying to get the fish over to me in the tight quarters but after awhile I must have looked like a monkey trying to have his way with a football. Getting frustrated, I did something that I really hate doing, I reached down and grabbed the tippet. Holding my breath I eased the fish over to me and scooped just enough of it into the net to land the fish. Frantically, I grabbed my step-daughters digital camera and tried to snap a picture. Wouldn’t you know it, the batteries were dead. Plenty of explicates flew from my mouth before I remembered that my phone has a digital camera on it. I snapped a couple of quick pictures and then hurriedly got the beautiful fish revived and back into the stream. Freezing, smiling and very proud of my routine cluster@#&*, I hauled myself from the stream and sloshed back to my truck.
jinxed — man, you certainly live up to your screen name .. your last fish-tale before this was one misfortune after another — dunked camera, ripped waders etc… and now a trout net for big steel, your ste-daughters digital camera with dead batteries …. etc… but i gotta hand it to ya … you keep going back for more! love it .. man, those pics from the celll phone were terrible .. i did the best i could to make them legable … looks like tight quarters to land a steelhead .. nice work .. great read … i laughed when i read your desciption of trying to land the fish “monkey trying to have his way with a football..” funny stuff .. great fish tale … hope ya get a new camera soon … and some waders…
Thanks..check your pm. You think that was bad…last tuesday lightning hit my house and fried evrything, including my 15 page term paper that was due today. I got my computer back and was up until two in the morning trying to remember evevrything that I had lost. I got it done tho. Thanks again for your help. Maybe I should have a blog called “The mis-adventures of John Anderson.” Seems like everytime I go out something always happens.
you might be willing all of this nonsense upon yourself … could be as simple as changing your screen name to … let’s say … Lucky777 …. or do like george kastansa did on seinfeld …. do everything exactly the opposite of what your instincts tell you … so, if you think “hey maybe i will go downstream” .. then, you go upstream … might just do the trick! .. good luck! sounds like things can only get better … then again??????????? cya.
hey jinxed….you crack me up man! great story! Congrats on the tight-qtr steel! they are not easy in the tight stuff
Way to go Jinx…Glad you were able to put one on the bank after all your mis-adventures. Looks like old man winter is making one last attempt to break our spirit…lets hope the lake effect machine doesn’t crank up to much.
Hey jinxed…………..keep up the misadventures, you make my day! I can definitely relate.
Hey Shaq…did you get my pm before you guys came down? They’re jumping all over the place down here now..espeacially with all the rain that we are getting.
Yeah, I have my fingers crossed that it blows itself out before it gets to us. Right now we’re getting mostly rain and wind but the temps feel like they’re dropping.
Thanks…at least my misery can be other peoples enjoyment…I am sure that I’ll have other cluster *&%$ before the seasons done!!
jinxed-
great story… keep up the “eventfull” fishing trips and you will have enough stuff to write a book… thanks for sharing your stories with us..
bonefisher