Third and final day breaks. Another breakfast of Clif Bar and Orange Juice. This is the end of the two month once-in-a-lifetime road trip. Back upriver, knowing full well that I had a great trip but all good things must end. We moved upstream, a cold front moved in, and everywhere we got takes the days prior were silent. I don't think we had touched a fish as I moved back into position where I knew Curious George called home. Many casts went unanswered. I fished through the skinny run and went upriver to meet up with Chris and Tom, but they were already heading back down as they were not feeling it and had to get back home to Oregon, as did I.
I had one more shot. I looked into my waist bag. Below the Clif Bar wrappers and maybe one or two crusted Kokanee cans, I pulled out my classic Perrine Fly Box that I used to fill with my own steelhead flies when I was 12. At this point, the box was filled on three sides with perfectly proportioned store bought flies and one side was always left with my home ties. I glanced at it quickly as I had for years. Instead of fishing one of the Orvis or Montana Fly Company flies, I pulled a Fall Favorite out of the corner of my side of the box. The 25 flies were still in the exact same postion I had lined them up in thirty years ago. A thing of simplicity with its tinsel body, red hackle, and orange bucktail wing, the Fall Favorite was to be the last chance fly.
Well, it wasn't the first cast, but it was the last of a two month journey that sealed the deal. He was not big, but he was beautiful. All steelhead are beautiful. I placed the broken hook and unraveled fly back into its corner of the old metal box. There are 24 more flies left in that side waiting for the right moment.
As Tom and I walked back to the cars, we high-fived it a couple times. I was grateful that he ran back towards me for the photos, and I was grateful that I had found the confidence to fish a fly that I had tied thirty years earlier.