Floater Down
For years now the Super Bowl has defined when I can fish for winter run steelhead. Since I have always taken the Monday after off, it’s an easy sell to my family. Unfortunately, the fish don’t follow my plan. Last year we hit the Cascade River near Marblemount on a beautiful day with perfect water, and two weeks too late for the fish. But this year things looked to be different, and everything was lining up for the perfect day to be on the river.
First, the North Fork of the Nooksack River was closed from the Mosquito Lake Road bridge to the Kendall Creek hatchery until Feb. 1. The reason was to allow the hatchery to reach a set quota to ensure future runs. In years past, this stretch of river gets fished pretty hard in those weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and we were encouraged that they’d only get three days at it before we hit it on the fourth. Next was the weather. Much-needed rain in the week before the river reopened fell hard and often. This allows more fish to move into the river and make their way upstream. It was also enough extra water to make the fishing conditions less than optimal that Friday and Saturday after the opening.
Obviously I was giving this way too much thought. But when it became clear the rain would back off, the river drop, and that the sun might even come out by Monday, the fishing trip hype began to out-hype the Super Bowl hype. This was the year, our timing was perfect and we were gonna catch fish. This was also the first year I was going to use a floater rig which allows for better presentation in certain stretches of water. I had cluster eggs but was told floating a jig was just as effective, more so later in the season.
We didn’t hurry and stopped for breakfast on the road out but were still the earliest to hit our stretch of river. Splitting up we worked several less-than-perfect holes without any luck. Knowing we had better water upstream we remained confident, still reveling in the “what a great day to be fishing” moment. And still nobody in sight.
It was a bit of work to get to that next stretch. It was also warming up, so I took off my down vest and we settled onto a couple of promising fishing holes. By now I was a little surprised that neither of us had seen any action, but was pleased with the floater set-up and no less encouraged. So we unsettled and decided we needed to keep moving upriver.
Here we found another nice stretch and our first company of the day. They were on the other side though so still not much in the way. I took a stretch where a braided fork came back into the main stream and floated my rig along the riffle on the far side into that confluence. It seemed perfect and I expected a strike on every cast. After some time a couple of very talented fly fishermen showed up working along that braided fork. They made me glad I’d left my fly rod at home. But they were fun to watch and at this point I was just hoping to see somebody pull out a steelie.
We continued upriver and found the going much easier than other years. Left alone for a minute I decided to float my rig next to a large log whose root ball was facing upstream. A nice pool formed behind this and along the far side, so I tried to drift through the pool and past the roots along the log. It seemed to be working when I noticed my float had stopped. Reeling slowly I found out I was actually hooked on the root. Nothing to do short of breaking the line, and it seemed reasonable that I could do this without losing the floater too.
The force of the line snapping caused it to snake out of the three “O” rings and one rubber band holding the floater on the line. I had to react quickly, I only had the one floater, it was the last one at the store. It was starting to bob to the right of the roots and would be gone if it went around. I quickly nixed the thought of wading after it, way too deep. And I could still get to it with the tip of my rod, barely. First I tried to guide it back to me, but it was too far away and just too floaty. But I did think I could guide it to the left where the current was slower and the water not so deep.
I assessed the area I wanted it to go, and planned to drop rod and run downstream as soon as it hit the current. Closer, closer, NOW! I threw down my rod and ran downstream, across a fairly deep channel and into the safe zone. I kept a careful eye on the floater as I ran in case it changed course. It didn’t, surprisingly floating right into my waiting hands. I laughed out loud both sorry and thankful nobody had witnessed the spectacle.
We fished the rest of the day without any luck. The sun did come out for about 30 minutes; we had a great time, and never ran into anyone else on our side of the river. And from what we could tell the luck wasn’t any better on the other side. Next year.
