Steelhead Mysteries, WindStopper Jackets

Steelhead Mysteries, WindStopper Jackets, Vise Squad, Dyna-King Barracuda, Brian O'Keefe Photos.

Topics 
Steelhead Mysteries
WindStopper Jackets
Vise Squad?
Dyna-King Barracuda
Brian O'Keefe Photos

show off his tying skills.  Such a fly box is a legacy of days spend searching the water and of fish hooked and conquered.   Houston Fuller and I viewed such a box several years ago on a trip to the  North Umpqua River. We had spend an unsuccessful morning on the water around the mouth of Steamboat Creek.  Finally deciding to break for lunch, we climbed the trail to the Forest Service parking lot.  When we had arrived earlier, ours had been the only car.  Now there were 

the only fly that any of the three of them ever used.  “When they won’t take a Muddler, they won’t take nothin’.”  Some folks believe that one fly will catch steelhead under all conditions.  Would the sport be as much fun if this were true?  
The Deschutes River occupies most of my summers.  From August until late November I work there as a professional steelhead guide.  The Deschutes is a big desert river in a deep basalt canyon.  Here the air is dry and only a narrow strip bordering the water contains much green vegetation.  Head-high canary grass, horsetails, and short scrubby alders can make a wall that is nearly impenetrable.  The Deschutes is big and strong.  It’s waters are always richly laden with algae giving the fish lots of cover.  With water temperatures in the fifties most of the time, it is probably one of the best floating line fisheries for steelhead in the world.  
Don Wysham, Dave Bretton and myself had launched my seventeen foot aluminum drift boat on the Deschutes River at day light.  The morning’s fishing had been active.  Don had landed a couple of nice steelhead on standard Deschutes patterns, one on a Skunk Fly, the other on a Mack’s Canyon.  Dave, an experienced Atlantic Salmon angler had landed one steelhead and lost another on a Conrad, a fly he had used successfully in Maine.  The sun was high.  It was time for lunch.  
I anchored the boat along a small sand bar that was shaded by overhanging alders and set up my folding table and gas barbecue.  The first gusts of afternoon breeze showered the water with small, yellowish-green alder leaves.  Dave, who would rather fish than eat, asked about the water nearby?  I suggested that he walk upstream one hundred yards and fish through the riffle above the boat.  It had produced many steelhead over the years.  Dave searched through his fly box and selected a yellow and green Cosseboom, saying it was one of the best patterns for Atlantic Salmon.  
Dave left for the riffle;  Don tried the water next to the boat and I proceeded with lunch.  In a short time there was a yell from upstream.  Dave was into a steelhead.  I turned off the grill, grabbed the net, and Don and I walked upstream to join Dave.  After landing the fish, a seven pound buck, Dave said that he had watched the steelhead come to the fly from a long distance.     Don and I were fishing a cast of two flies.  We each tied on a Cosseboom; mine on the dropper, Don’s on the point.  The three of us took seven more fish that afternoon, all on the Cosseboom.  I have since fished the Cosseboom on the Deschutes many times and have caught fish, but never as on this day.  Was it the shower of alder leaves that turned the steelhead onto the green and yellow fly?  We will never know for sure.  
On the west side of the Cascade Mountains, the Cosseboom is a top producer of fresh early summer steelhead when presented with a sink tip fly line.  
To be continued in 09/28/03 "Insider".

Dyna-King Barracuda Vise

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