STEELHEAD

I knotted a Stee-Lee to my line and checked the knot to make sure it wouldn't slip. Here, the speed of the river was about that of a fast walk, probably six feet deep. If I cast as far as I could, I might be able to hit the sandbar on the island.

Next to the sandbar was a deep trough. My lure splashed down a little upstream of the sandbar and I let it sink and tightened up on the line, allowing the spoon to work through the slot before beginning to reel.

Something stopped it and I set the hook. Whatever it was, it was coming at me. It kicked, turned and ran. I reeled when it gave me line, let it run when it took line. "Fish on," I yelled to Dad. In a few minutes it was over. The North Fork Lewis River yielded my first steelhead -- a nine-pound female. Not the first I ever hooked. But the first I landed after two years of trying.

That's why we chase them I guess, because we have to work so hard to figure them out at first. And once we think we've got them figured out, we try a different river and find that we can never know enough about steelhead.

Many anglers fish for years before they land their first one. In fact, plenty of Northwest fishermen have never landed a steelhead, nor even hooked one. Is it because there is something difficult about catching a steelhead? Well, maybe. To consistently catch steelhead doesn't require extraordinary fishing skill, it demands a knowledge of the water, and of a steelhead's life.

He is a sea-run rainbow trout. Programmed to run downstream to the ocean, to roam far and wide at sea, growing fat on the bounty he finds in saltwater. To survive, he must stay out of gill nets and outrun birds, seals, sharks, salmon and other predators. In a year, or two or three, a biological impulse triggers his return to freshwater and he seeks out the stream of his birth, to spend a few months in freshwater before spawning. ...