HOT STEEL

Dropping anchor in the shallows, I hopped out of my drift boat, walked a shaded bank and worked a bobber and jig into a seam tight to shore. Fifteen minutes prior I’d watched multiple boats run this same riffle, but all of them back-trolled plugs through the main current without touching a fish. The place looked like fish should be there, but nobody was getting bit.

Thinking the boat pressure and height of the midday sun might have pushed steelhead into the choppy water closer to shore, I decided to float a jig through the untouched water. My assumption paid off, and soon as I was slipping a bright, hatchery-raised summer steelhead into the cooler.

While summer steelhead numbers aren’t what they once were, there are still opportunities to catch these acrobatic fish.