25 years ago on March 14th my father passed away also yesterday would have been his 98th birthday, so in honor on his memory took yesterday day off to do what he loved best, to go fishing!! He introduced me to fishing when I was 5 years old and caught my first trout in the Big Sur river and have never looked back!

Met up with buddy Craig to chase some steelhead and springers on the Cowlitz~ we were on the water by 7:15 and worked the area hard in front of the Blue creek launch and saw one fish hooked and landed. Worked our way down to fish below the hatchery and saw 2 more hooked but lost by another boat. We were drift fishing with just a tuft of yarn and scent with a small amount of weight to get it dancing on the bottom. The river was running at about 14,000 so pushing through pretty fast so we were hoping to find some fish lurking along the edges to get out of the current. No such luck!

After a quick lunch break, motored up towards Barrier and found a nice slot to anchor and put out the rods for springers. Ran the 2 outside rods with cut plug and the inside ones with cured coon shrimp. After sunshine, hail, rain, wind sunshine, more rain, we finally had a nice take down on one of the inside rods that I grabbed and fish on! It ran down steam before making a turn around the boat and coming back up, tangling with another line that went right to the tip of my pole. I slowly worked the fish towards the boat so as not to knot up the lines wrapped around the tip and cracker off this fish and sure enough, got it close enough to get the net under it. A nice little bright steelhead! Number 4 for me this year so I am pretty happy but really was hoping for some of that prized Springer slabs to take home!

Back in went the rods and before long, had another take down that this one went to Chris on the boat and he worked it up to the net for our second steelhead of the day, plus his 1st ever!

That was about it but a great day for me to spend with great company and knowing my pop smiling down on us with a big smile on his face and as always, hoping to make him proud! Hitting the Skookumchuch Saturday so see you on the water!

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