I was determined to go fishing today, Barb my fishing partner, and wife was going to her womens bible class, however she had scheduled a craftsman to stretch some wrinkles out of the carpet today, so that left me at home helping the carpet guy. My time calculations were were well off the mark, I thought I would get away by 11:00am, but it was 2:00pm before I finally got the boat hooked up and headed for the Couse Creek Launch, had almost decided not to go, but the river just looked too inviting, and no one out there fishing.

Launched the boat and headed down stream a few miles, to a beautiful stretch of water that has produced many fine steelhead. Pulled the boat off plane, cranked up the Honda, engaged the TR-1 autopilot, scented the plugs with a variety of scents blended together that I marinate red dyed shrimp in, let out about sixty feet of line, then started a slow backtroll. About thirty minutes pass, and my rod slams down with the rod holder making a squeaking noise, I grab it out of the holder, this steelhead is really stripping out line so I throttle the Honda down to the slowest speed, I gain about twenty feet of line, it then comes boiling completly out of the water, lands with a splash, then starts to roll, I get it near the boat and it takes off again, but this is a short run, and she is tuckered out, I slid the net under a bright beautiful steelhead hen, took a quick self portrait, put her back in the river, with a splash from her tail she is gone.

Continued to fish for another forty five minutes, without a bump, one take down, one steelhead, but it would have been a good trip even without catching anything, it was very warm and pleasant, no wind, ambient temp. 55*, water temp. 48.9*. Took a picture of the Couse Creek gravel launch right after pulling the boat out, it was getting dark, but you can see what it looks like, it's a pretty good launch site. Ken

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