With general trout season now open it’s time for a little reservoir “steelhead” fishing. Never heard of such a thing? Well, read on…it’s a blast!
My first encounter with a reservoir “steelhead” occurred when I was a kid, fishing a small tributary to a vast impoundment. Walking upstream and flicking a tiny silver spinner into the pools ahead of me as I went, I was felling pretty smug thanks to the three 10- to 12-inch trout that I had stuffed into the zipper pocket of my backpack. As I rounded a bend in the creek, I came to a deep pool just below a 2-foot waterfall. I lobbed a cast to the head of the run, and as soon as my spinner broke through the greasy smooth surface of the pool and began to sink, a great monster of a fish hit it with the fury of a Japanese bullet train. In an instant, the beast rocketed the length of the pool, flashed near the surface, violently shook it’s mighty head and then it was gone…
