waded into the cold water. Jet-boil
cowboy coffee and Clif bars kept
our spirits high, but the fishing was
undeniably slow. By noon, the river
had claimed its share of our flies and
offered nothing in return. Several of
us had never caught a steelhead on
the fly, and the molasses-slow fishing
had us questioning the sanity of our
persistence.
By two o’clock that afternoon, we’d
changed locations, switched flies and
relocated again with nothing to show
for our trouble. I threw cast after cast
into the slick water where another
angler had told us he had luck. The
water was shallow here, and the
slight bend in the river kept the fish