Steel Dreams

"Nothing in steelheading is always."
-Bob Arnold, Steelhead and the Floating Line

It's been more than a week, and I can't get these incredible animals out of my mind. I wake at night to false strikes and rolling fish. In a dream, I fought one for thirty minutes before I figured out it was a very large goldfish.

But there is more to steelhead than fishing.

Sometime during our first day out there was a short hail shower. The stones splashed into the Situk like tiny exploding diamonds. I reeled in, stepped back, and watched. A small hail pile formed in a fold on my rain jacket. A very large steelhead broke the surface on the opposite bank. Upstream and down, there were no other fishermen. Even the birds had stopped their singing to watch and listen. As with other hailstorms, the sun was still shining at an angle on my back, and the explosions grew brighter and more intense. It became impossible to separate the river sounds from the hail sounds. Then rain. Then sun. Then I casted again to a much more colorful and explosive gem.