By Jan Evans
CHASING THE STEELHEAD
E
lusive, perplexing, challenging, considered by many as the ultimate game fish, and known among anglers as The Fish of a Thousand Casts: Oncorhynchus Mykiss, the steelhead. This fish belongs to the same species as the rainbow trout, but behaves more like a salmon. It hatches
in the gravel bottoms of fast flowing rivers of the American Pacific Northwest, Russia, and, while not native to but introduced in 1876, the tributary streams of the United States Great Lakes. After one or two years, the steelhead then migrates into the Pacific Ocean (or
the Great Lakes), grows larger, with colour changing to that of silver and brass, black spots appearing on its back, and a lovely pinkish stripe emerges between tail and gills. After up to three years, it returns to the hatch river to spawn, but unlike a salmon, the steelhead journeys back to the sea, then returns again and again to its home river, spawning multiple times. Stuart, an avid fly-fisherman living in Ireland, has fished Atlantic salmon, sea trout, and brown trout in Ireland, England, and Scotland, as well as sea trout in Argentina, but after several trips to the Canadian Province of British Columbia, and Northern California, the Fish of a Thousand Casts still eluded him. And so, when he announced he wanted to try yet again, I grabbed my cameras, he packed rods and boxes of self-tied flies, and off we went on a Winter fishing holiday, first to the North Umpqua River in Oregon State, and The strong flow of bright water is broken up by ledge rock outcrops.
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Spring/Summer 2021 Irish Country Sports and Country Life
