A LONG SEASON COMES TO AN END ...

END OF THE SEASON BREAKDOWN

I had a chuckle this morning when some brave anonymous person posted a snide remark on our blog about why bother having the blog if we haven't updated it in 3 months.

Let us tell you why we have not been blogging for three months....we have been busy guiding for steelhead. We have been camping on the river for weeks on end enduring mega storms, freezing cold weather, super hot weather, wildfires, rowing into 30 mph head winds, dragging boats across gravel bars, setting up wall tents, tearing down wall tents, and generally living sleeping breathing and bleeding steelhead. Our only form of communication during these trips is our "use only in emergency" satellite phone. At $3.95 per minute, it is just too expensive to get the wi fi hotspot up and running so that we can BLOG.

For the past three months - in fact up until it got dark last night (December 4 was the official last day of the season) we have been running back to back 4 day camp float trips on a remote stretch of river. The three months before that, we were also guiding steelhead trips. Often we have one day of rest between trips and that day is spent prepping for the next trip by cleaning boats, repairing gear, shopping for food and other supplies, and doing those small other things around the house like laundry. We hardly have time to download photos off the camera or recharge the batteries.

The life of a steelhead guide is very different than that of your typical trout guide. We know, because we are trout guides all spring and summer...right up until the first steelhead begin to nose into the Deschutes. Once the big boys return from the ocean and begin their migration, we replace little 4 and 5 weight fly rods with long two-handed rods. When steelhead are in the river, targeting trout is know simply as pedophilia.

Our steelhead guide season kicks off in July when the days are blazing hot and very very long. We wake at 3:00 AM in order to make coffee and prepare lunches so that we are on time to pick up our clients in front of their hotel at 3:45 AM. We get to the boat ramp in the dark. We back down the boat ramp in the dark. We put our boats in the water in the dark. We row down the river in the dark - listening to the sound of the rapids to find the right line. When we get to our preferred first stop of the day, we pull the boat quietly to shore and turn on the headlamps to let any other guides coming down river know that we are there - a common courtesy to fellow professionals navigating in the dark. Coffee is poured and rods are strung well before it is light enough to legally make the first cast.

When the time comes, we spread our clients out in the run. They are spaced 50 yards apart, each angler with his own beautiful stretch of prime steelhead water. We stand with one angler, giving pointers when needed on Spey casting, perhaps helping the angler understand the importance of controlling the speed of the fly as it swims through the run. Many of our clients are very experienced anglers, no words need to be spoken as we move down the run side by side. The sun kisses the top of the hills around us, and the golden grasses of late summer glow in the warm light of morning. The descending call of the canyon wren bounces off the rock walls along the river and it feels like a steelhead will grab the fly on each and every swing.

We hike back and forth between anglers. By keeping an eye on their casting distance and where they are in the river, we know when each angler is approaching his bucket. There are many buckets. Some are more dependable than others, and the productivity of a hot spot in a run will change throughout the season. Every year the river changes slightly and the buckets change too.

To keep guiding as exciting as it can be, we learn of the special buckets that can be seen from a high perch on the bank, or sometimes from the crook of a dead tree. We climb to those spots just as the fly is coming into the zone. We watch the fly from the moment it lands and begins to swim.The fly we tie on your line has a white polar bear wing with flash over the top....we can see it as it skims through the water inches below the surface. We stifle a shout of joy as a ghostly shape rises up from the depths and charges toward the client's fly, and we exhale our held gasp as the steelhead swirls violently but misses the fly. "Did you see that?" "That huge boil....... Don't take a step just make the cast again......... Be ready......... Ready to do nothing..........Remember, give him the loop.............. Let him take the fly and turn................. Don't lift until you feel him on the reel..............Okay, let's do this!! ............Make the same exact cast you made when you got the boil - we've got a player on our hands!"

If the steelhead is truly a player, he will eat the fly on the very next swing. If he moves towards it, takes a look but rejects it, we begin the game of change the fly. Go smaller, sparser, no flash, only dull colors, back up, work back down into the spot, speed it up, slow it down, this is the game. Between each fly change we run back to the dead tree and climb to the crook, cupping hands around polarized glasses to keep the glare down.

Success! The steelhead found a fly to his liking! Now it's off to the races - let 'im run! If everything goes right we will land the fish and snap a quick pic with the fish suspended in the water before releasing it unharmed. If one little thing goes wrong: a drag fails, a rod breaks, there is a wind knot in the tippet, or maybe the fish is a crazy devil fish cartwheeling all over the place that throws the hook mere seconds into the fight... we will reel up our slack line, check to see if the leader has broken, or the hook straightened out. Congratulatory hugs and high fives are just as appropriate for the lost fish as for the landed fish, after all, don't we want to get our asses kicked by this beautiful fish we pursue? Isn't that what we secretly hope for? What fun would it be to totally dominate every fish we encountered? Isn't it more awesome to have shaky hands, a racing heart and a slack line? Well, landing them is nice too.

So I digress.....the guided day goes on. The first cast made at first light turns into five hundred casts before lunchtime. We cover hundreds of yards of good water, several great runs, and our clients are weary from leaning into the strong current for hours on end, negotiating boulder gardens and slippery rocks, casting, swinging, stepping. The sun is beginning to beat down with intensity and it is shining directly in the eyes of the fish - time for a break.

We set up reclining lounge chairs in the shade of the alders and bite into our huge deli sandwiches. Soon after lunch a soft snoring comes from one of the client's chairs, then the other. They are out. A few hours will pass until the angle of the sun will be optimal for swinging our flies. We will fish several more runs after nap time, right up until it is too dark to tie on a new fly. It is nearly 9:00 PM when the boat is on the trailer and we start the bone-jarring drive back to town. 20 miles per hour on an axle-busting, tire-eating 20 mile long washboard road. 10 more miles on a skinny paved road that snakes along the banks of the Deschutes. The clients are softly snoring again. The last cattle guard as we get the Maupin City Park is known as the "cocktail bell" - it is seconds from the hotel. The clients unload their gear and we leave the Spey rods on the rod rack strung and ready for the next day.

More often than not, the clients (who are really close friends after all the years of fishing with us) will offer a glass of fine Scotch on their deck overlooking the moonlit river. It is a treat that is difficult to turn down after miles of rowing and hours of pacing the banks. That sweet golden liquid warms the soul and stories of steelhead drift around the deck with the smoke from the Cuban cigars. By 11:00 PM it is time to leave the clients because we are going to do it all over again tomorrow, and 3:00 AM is only a few hours away.

The days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months - July, August, September, October, November, December. Fortunately, the days get shorter as the season rolls on. Every five weeks or so the meeting time gets a little later...3:45, 4:00, 4:30, 5:00......by November it almost feels like you are getting away with something by picking up the clients as late as 6:00 AM and getting off the water at 5:30 PM in the dark.

From July though mid-October we guide 12-15 days in a row then take a one day break and start another 12 to 15 day stretch. Day trips allow you to sleep in your own bed but the drive up and down the access road is tough to take day in and day out. Overnight camp trips hosted by the guide with no bag boat are 20 hours of straight work for days on end- not only do you do all the guiding but all the cooking, cleaning and camp set up too. Before too long, our hands are cracked and bleeding after so many days on the river. You don't realize how bad your hands are until you meet the attorney you will be guiding for the next four days, and he slips his velvety soft hand into your 40 grit nightmare.

In mid-October we start a seven week series of four day remote wilderness floats. We have two camp hosts in order to carry wall tents, heaters, firewood, and gear. The river is shallow and very slow moving. The gear raft has to be deflated in order for it to slither through the boulder strewn water and then reinflated in order to row through long dead stretches of river.


Nasty wind storms have, on two occasions, ripped 5 foot rebar stakes from the ground, launched our wall tent skyward, and smashed it into the ground 50 feet away leaving a crumpled spider of canvas and tent poles. 

By December you are ready for a break. You are ready to do some of your own fishing. You don't want to stand on the bank watching others cast. You don't want to give the "fish of a thousand casts" pep talk one more time this year. It is time to catch up with friends you haven't seen in months, time to go bird hunting, time to BLOG about all the fun you had this steelhead season.

If the phone rings a week from now, we are ready to hit the river again, conditions permitting. This morning the thermometer said 0 degrees and had risen to 8 degrees by 9:00 AM. Steelhead fishing in this kind of weather isn't for everyone, very few are hearty enough to deal with the cold. But it will warm up in a week or so and we will have days that feel downright balmy in January - which is still a great time to be chasing steelhead in our neck of the woods.