I have never caught a steelhead on a dry fly before…that is before Tuesday. My wife gave me an hour and a half to fly fish because she had somewhere to go, so I grabbed my fly rod and drove the two seconds to the creek. When I got there my heart sank. The water was extremely low and stagnant and it just didn’t look very promising. Undaunted, I headed down stream. I didn’t have to go very far when I came upon a deeper (chest deep) hole that was loaded with carp and suckers. After watching these fish for a few minutes I decided to move on down stream. That all changed when a massive carp jumped out of the water twice. Intrigued (I have never seen a non-hooked carp jump before) I decided to see if the carp were chasing flies. I slowly eased into the murky water to give myself some casting room and saw even more carp scatter about the only livable water. The fishing hole wasn’t a very big one and I could easily reach every section of it. My first cast targeted a spot that still had some current to it , so I figured if any trout were stuck in that hole that they would be in the faster moving water. After a brief presentation cast with my dry fly I let it gently settle onto the current. To my surprise and great satisfaction, it was immediately engulfed by a twenty-five inch steelhead! I couldn’t believe it. It raced around the pool and shot a couple feet in the air with daring acrobatic manuevers! It became a tug of war match as he raced towards some trees and then ran straight at me and then immediately away again. He would throw in some more jumps just to keep me guessing. This went on for several minutes before I finally tired out the fish enough to scoop it up into my net (which it was hanging half out of) and get it safely to shore. After I took a couple of pictures with my digital camera I quickly revived the fish and released it to whatever fate the stream had instore for it. What a rush! I glanced at my watch and I had only been there 30 minutes.