constructeur
Adventurer
Ah, was on the pages last night and saw that it is an Allen S. from Idaho, so it's not you :snorkel: I saw you post, and that you were from Idaho so I had assumed you were one of the faithful Clearwater soldiers out there!
Cheers for sharing your experience in Scotland! Which river were you on? Which distillery?
I'm decendant of a lowland clan myself, but someday hope to be Spey or Dee side swinging for Atlantics.
Two handed rods are a love/hate thing for myself too. I bet in the 80's you had a very full flex rod with a longbelly line, which is something of a pain to cast if one's timing is not right. My hands favour a Scandinavian rod (tip flex) and tapered shooting head style line.
To share a bit of my story: My mate and I had an early start to a favorite hole, only to find it was full of fisherman already. Hmm, and this was mid week, ultra early in the A.M. too!..Plan B, wait there's a plan B? We ended up doing a little hiking, and found some new water. My pal took the head of the run, I middle and down to tailout. We try to make it fair and switch off and on who fishes first water, etc. Digging through my flies and tippet I could only find 8lb material, must have left the 10lb in the car, so I tied on the 8lb which should have been no concern as we were well above the hatchery kings that were in the system. A few minutes into the fishing we had a Great Grey Owl, the largest owl in the PNW, swoop over our heads and attack a crows nest. A fairly amazing experience! I continued to work the run, and when I was on my second or third to last cast my line stopped and I though I was stuck in the stones again. As I gently tugged on my line hoping to save my fly I recieved two firm hard return tugs. OH HELL YES LETS PARTY!! I'm not going to lie, we played by the bucks rules untill the very last couple of seconds in the fight. He fought hard up and down the pool with lots of deep bulldogging, last second charging, and even rolling on multiple occasions. To this point I had never experienced a fish that could bend my 8wt into the cork like that. We both thought I was into a native King, untill I was able to work the fish in closely and my mate yells," Holy ******* that's steel!" We had no net, and he made 3 last second charges from the shallows on me, which were amazing because it took nothing but one swish of his tail to send him out of sight and back into the current. Such raw power! Finally we were able to get him to hand at which time I quickly dropped my rod and turned him upside down disorienting him for a moment, pulled the barbless leech out of his jaw, snapped a photo, and immediately went to work resting and reviving him. At the time I had told my pal to not worry about pics, the last thing I want to ever do is harm a fish like this for a silly picture, but were were able to quickly get one, and now I'm glad I have a photo of such a treasure.
Best-
Terry
Cheers for sharing your experience in Scotland! Which river were you on? Which distillery?
I'm decendant of a lowland clan myself, but someday hope to be Spey or Dee side swinging for Atlantics.
Two handed rods are a love/hate thing for myself too. I bet in the 80's you had a very full flex rod with a longbelly line, which is something of a pain to cast if one's timing is not right. My hands favour a Scandinavian rod (tip flex) and tapered shooting head style line.
To share a bit of my story: My mate and I had an early start to a favorite hole, only to find it was full of fisherman already. Hmm, and this was mid week, ultra early in the A.M. too!..Plan B, wait there's a plan B? We ended up doing a little hiking, and found some new water. My pal took the head of the run, I middle and down to tailout. We try to make it fair and switch off and on who fishes first water, etc. Digging through my flies and tippet I could only find 8lb material, must have left the 10lb in the car, so I tied on the 8lb which should have been no concern as we were well above the hatchery kings that were in the system. A few minutes into the fishing we had a Great Grey Owl, the largest owl in the PNW, swoop over our heads and attack a crows nest. A fairly amazing experience! I continued to work the run, and when I was on my second or third to last cast my line stopped and I though I was stuck in the stones again. As I gently tugged on my line hoping to save my fly I recieved two firm hard return tugs. OH HELL YES LETS PARTY!! I'm not going to lie, we played by the bucks rules untill the very last couple of seconds in the fight. He fought hard up and down the pool with lots of deep bulldogging, last second charging, and even rolling on multiple occasions. To this point I had never experienced a fish that could bend my 8wt into the cork like that. We both thought I was into a native King, untill I was able to work the fish in closely and my mate yells," Holy ******* that's steel!" We had no net, and he made 3 last second charges from the shallows on me, which were amazing because it took nothing but one swish of his tail to send him out of sight and back into the current. Such raw power! Finally we were able to get him to hand at which time I quickly dropped my rod and turned him upside down disorienting him for a moment, pulled the barbless leech out of his jaw, snapped a photo, and immediately went to work resting and reviving him. At the time I had told my pal to not worry about pics, the last thing I want to ever do is harm a fish like this for a silly picture, but were were able to quickly get one, and now I'm glad I have a photo of such a treasure.
Best-
Terry
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Frankly, I doubt that steelhead require only 1000 casts. I've cast plenty more than that. :Wow1: