What I learned this summer

[steelhead]

This was very instructive evening this past summer. It happened in early June. TIme was dusk into darkness.


"I spent the last two hours on the water down at the Kernwood Bridge here in Salem. Got there at dusk, about two hours after high tide and fished a sand bar the carries out in to the river a ways. I started out with an Ozark bass Minnow in White/Chartreuse and Purple with two split shot. Initially, they were taking the fly after an initial up stream mend and the fly was retrieved in a slow twitch manner. After a while it tailed off and I noticed that they were hitting the fly as I lifted it out of the water. So I took the split shot off and would do a drift with a retrieve consisting of three quick strips and the a long pause. the fly would often be picked up on the first strip after the pause. Then this stopped working. So I just let the fly drift and low and behold they started hitting that! Then that stopped and they began rising in the shallow water all around me and the Bass Minnow stopped working. Then I was stumped! Tried shrimp, worms, etc. with out any luck. Used my flash light and couldn't see anything. So I left puzzled. On the way home, I began wondering if they might have been feeding on glass minnows or very small isopods. I'll try there tomorrow night and bring a dip net and a seine net. Hopefully the same thing will happen again and I can figure out what it is they're feeding on. All in all a good evening. "

The next night the same thing happened. I finally caght glass minnows about an inch long. The fish were holding in the current ans sipping them down as they came by their feeding stations. So I put on three very small, very sparse bucktails that I had tied up earlier in the day, each a slightly different color. They consistently took the the one that was tied as a Ray's Fly pattern.