Barb and I launched the boat off the gravel bar at Couse Creek, there is a small rapid about a hundred yards below, and a pretty good stretch of water just below, we take the boat through the rapid, point the bow upstream, start the 8hp Honda, turn on the fishfinder, engage the TR-1 Autopilot, scent the plugs up with Mike's Shrimp Oil, and get the lines in. Water temp. is 40.2*, ambient temp. is 33*. This drift is fairly long and goes from one rapid to another rapid, for a hour we watched the rods doing their thing, knowing that any time a Steelhead was going to hit, all that positive thinking did not produce any results, not even a bump, so we pulled the lines in and headed down river to the next spot.

Throttled the boat down as we neared the start of the back troll, went through the usual set up routine, in a few minutes my rod takes a sharp tug, stripping out a few yards of line, and then it's gone, while I'm reeling in to check the plug, Barb yells "fish on" and takes her rod out of the holder, a Steelhead explodes completly out of the water about seventy feet behind the boat, then comes out of the water two more times, after fifteen or twenty minutes I slide the net under a beautiful silver Steelhead, they are so pretty, with the red stripe down their side. We continue the backtroll to the tailout getting two more hits but no hookups, then another boat pulls in near us, only boat we have seen all afternoon, and they want to fish exactly where we are, so we decide to fish another good drift not far off, we only have about thirty minutes before dark.

We get to the next spot and put the lines in, in about twenty minutes Barb's rod gets a couple of nudges and we are really concentrating on her rod tip, I turn to look at my rod and it is bent double with a Steelhead on the other end, I lift the rod out of the holder and a small Steelie comes ripping out of the water, it is on for about ten minutes, when near the boat he comes unhooked and we watch him swim away.

It is starting to get dark, it's very quiet, cold and crisp, the water is like glass, from this location we can see the Christmas lights on our home. Barb pours us a cup of coffee, and after a few minutes we head for the boat launch.

Ken & Barb

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