More Sandy creek trout

This morning I found myself and Ethan heading to Sandy creek. We drove through thick fog to get there...boy, it's tough sometimes to be a fly fisherman! Any way....the creek is still low, but not too low. And after a little walk down stream from the bridge we found fish. We hooked into a nice sized salmon and after a 5 minute fight we had landed our first fish of the morning. Then we spotted a trout! A steelhead trout. It wasn't big, but it would be my first steelhead of the year. And after a few drifts, a change of flies and a few missed chances I was hooked up with my first steelhead. And you no what? It jumped. About two feet in the air. Who knew these fish jumped...ha! I certainly didn't tell it too! But what a great way to start my steelhead season. I'm not complaining at all!

As we were taking some photos of the steelhead we heard more fish moving their way up through the riffle sections just below us. And after a 10 minute break to untangle my line(Ethan wanted to hold the fly rod while I was taking pictures) we resumed our search for fish. We walked upstream this time. We needed to be back in time to pick up Katie from school. But before we made it back, I spotted two good sized brown trout moving slowly upstream. Then, at the head of a run one of the fish stopped and held in a small riffle section. After some adjustments and careful drifting, I had the big brown peeling of line from my fly reel. With my rod tip jumping up and down every time the big brown shook it's head, I tried to apply the right amount of pressure to move the fish without pulling the fly out of it's mouth. This seemed to work really well and soon I was able to direct the fish into the shallows where I could get my hand around it's tail. A very nice gentleman who was fishing just upstream from us was kind enough to take a picture to end our morning of fishing. And he was the only other person we saw the whole time we were there.

There are definitely fish around...you just need to go and find where they are!

On another note.....taking pictures by yourself of yourself does not always work well. The photo of me holding the steelhead was done by putting the camera on the bank and setting the timer. I am going to have to work on getting better shots when I am by myself.