Steelhead Season

Steelhead season is upon us - already. This is the earliest I've seen the run in the twenty-five years I have been pursuing steelhead. For those of you who don't know, "steelhead" is a nickname for rainbow trout - specifically rainbow trout that live in the ocean or Great Lakes and migrate up river to spawn.

In normal years the first fish show up when the rivers break open in mid-April. This year break-up has occurred probably a month early. Rivers have actually opened up, risen with the snow melt, and dropped already.  A number of enthusiasts have been fishing for two weeks or so already.

I'm not ready. I have some projects left over from the winter that I should have done a month or more ago. I always seem to be behind this time of year. I never seem to be ready for steelhead season because it comes upon me like an unexpected guest. It's not like other seasons that are designated by a certain date - like hunting seasons - but it comes when "mother nature" is ready.

I have steelhead fished at Easter before but we are still way ahead of that timing. Many years ago when I wrote for a magazine called Wild Steelhead and Salmon I invited the editor to come and fish with me on the May long weekend (around May 18th if I recall). When he arrived we found that the run was just starting. Our plan was to get ferried out to St. Ignace Island and fly fish for steelhead on the remote streams of the island's south shore. But we were faced with a very big problem: The lake was still frozen over! We fished some small creeks in a heavy rain storm on the mainland until they became too high and dirty to fish. We finally decided to drive back to our hotel room in Red Rock and get dried out. Good thing we did because later that day the Jackpine River washed out the Trans Canada Highway and left many people stranded on the east side of that wild river.

After the rain stopped we went to the Natural Resources office in Nipigon and asked where we might find some inland brook trout lakes. We were given a map and some names of lakes where fishing might be productive.

We went to two of those lakes, and as you might have suspected, they were frozen over as well. We then went to the Nipigon River, which was high and dirty, and did some casting practise under the guise of fishing.

This unpredictability is one of the things I respect and enjoy about the outdoors. Nothing is on schedule - at least our schedule. This is why every year anglers, hunters, skiers and other enthusiasts gather around coffee shops and pontificate about weather conditions.

I wish I had $100-dollars for every time I heard an outdoors person say, "It's been a funny year."