Swingin' for Steel

After getting snowed in over Christmas and flooded over New Year's I was itching for some river time. Most of the rivers are still flooded or extremely high, but the Necanicum tends to drop and clear early, so I decided to give it a shot. There was still a lot of snow in the Coast Range and blown down trees everywhere along the highway. But the river was fishable, even if a bit murky still.

Having never fished the Necanicum I wasn't really sure of where to go. I talked to a couple of guys getting their eggs ready and asked about fly water. One of them told me "not on this river", and the other told me to head upstream a way and try glow bugs. I didn't have any glow bugs, but I took off back upstream and found a place to park along the road and bushwacked my way in along a little creek to the main river.



I was pleased to see - and smell - a number of salmon carcasses along the bank. I also saw a pair of really beat up old salmon getting ready to spawn in some gravel on a creek that was about 5 feet wide. This was a nice skeleton I found, it's laying next to my 8 wt.



I started using a tandem rig with a purple egg sucking leech and an old pink salmon egg pattern (almost a glow bug) as a dropper. I couldn't tell how deep it was but the rig was swinging nice so I just kept the faith and worked my way down a nice stretch. Suddenly I started getting pulls on my rod - could there actually be steelies in this muck ??? On the next cast I got a hook up - a beautiful 12 inch coast cutt - it would have been a ball on the 3 wt., but not much of a challenge with the big cannon.


After a while with no takes I switched to a dead drift with an indicator, but nothing doing, that cutt was the only fish I brought in. As the morning went on the river started clearing, which showed me that I was not exactly in the prime water, but at least I now have a good idea where to start next time out. Hopefully with clearer water the prime drifts will be easier to spot. If nothing else maybe I'll just bring along the 3 wt and catch cutts if all else fails.