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Little Bear & Frenchy with a 125-pound king
The largest king salmon and steelhead in the world live in the streams of the island and I can tell you with absolute certainty that, after seeing what I did last month, this sport will never be the same. The following is a journal of my trip…Click here to read more…
Aiming for the bright light above, the little guy — we’ll call him “Dan” — struggled through the pile of gravel where his mother had buried him several weeks before.
As he reached the top of the stones, Dan poked his tiny little head into the light, and without warning, he was rudely greeted by a swift current.
Biscuit Eater could sense something big was about to happen.??There was a nervous electricity in the water and all the others of his kind seemed to be jittery. A low,
metallic sound was emanating from the far end of the concrete lane he’d called home for his entire life. The sound was soft at first but it was getting louder by the second. Something unfamiliar…
He got the idea from a Zane Grey novel he had read a year prior. It was just a passing phrase in which Grey, who spent a good chunk of his time in a cabin on the Rogue River in Oregon, mentioned something about killing a steelhead for Thanksgiving dinner. The old man didn’t think much about it at first, but then the thought of a steelhead instead of a turkey began to intrigue him.
I received a very interesting call the other day from Abril Tolo, a buddy of mine who works for Game and Fish. He asked if I could help him out with a research project he’s been overseeing for the past several years. Tolo (or “Island” as we call him, which morphed from when we used to call him “A-Tol” but I digress) said all I needed to do was tow my boat down to Lake Clementine where we were going to do a little “hook & line” sampling. He said to bring some light-action steelhead rods and he’d have everything else.
It sounded cool to me and I was particularly intrigued by the fact that he made a specific point to have me bring steelhead rods. I didn’t have the foggiest notion what we’d need them for at Clementine, considering the largest fish I’d ever caught there was a 2-pound smallie. So, it was with great eagerness that I met him at Raley’s in Train Village last Tuesday. As we slowly crept down the winding road to the launch, he gave me the full scoop.