Fishing always has a new surprise in store

• Published March 09, 2007

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All the magazine writers said the same thing, and so did the famous anglers on the steelhead videotape I rented.

But there was a nice summer steelhead tipping and sipping away. My head actually started hurting. I couldn't believe that that steelhead was ignoring the facts on steelhead behavior. I actually walked away from that fish, which would probably have been a breeze to hook.

Hmm ...

Five years later, I was still surprised when another summer steelhead sucked down a grasshopper fly I was casting along a grassy Deschutes River bank for big redside rainbow trout.

That steelhead was in about a foot of water and right next to the bank when it ate my fly. It weighed 12 pounds and is still my biggest summer steelhead ever. Experts will say that fish had no business being where it was. But there it was.

Hmm ...

I was on a very popular fishing Web site last summer, and an expert said that Oregon's Deschutes River isn't a good place to cast a grasshopper fly.

That made me go 'Hmm'. That didn't stop me from bringing my usual box of grasshopper flies on my next float, and they caught fish - like they often do. I'm glad Deschutes rainbow trout can't surf the Internet.

Back to Puget Sound

A sharp tug on my line pushed "Hmm ..." thoughts out of my head. A nice sea-run cutt had eaten the wooly bugger. I landed the fish - a little skinny and with a healing puncture wound just behind the gills. I suspect - I can't say for sure - that the fish had recently spawned and also had escaped a heron.

Other cutts were still splashing around, and I thought Trout-O-Rama was about to start.

Nope.

I made 20 casts and got some bumps - but no hookups. I got out the fly box again and tied on a little scud pattern. This little fly imitates the little crustaceans that flit around in the Puget Sound shallows.

I flipped the fly out in front of me to soak up water while I pulled line off my reel.

I watched the fly slowly sink in the clear, greenish water - it was about three feet away from my feet.

A cutt darted in from nowhere and ate the fly. I set the hook by pulling on the line.

I tried to look wise and expert and cool as I played that bold fish.

But my brain was buzzing like a busy bee. Hmm ... .

Chester Allen's fishing column appears Fridays in The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-4226 or callen@theolympian.com.

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